Chain Letter

BILLY CONNOLLY'S CHAIN LETTER
Hello, my name is Billy and I suffer from guilt for not forwarding 50 billion fucking chain letters sent to me by people who actually believe if you send them on, a poor six year old girl in Scotland with a breast on her forehead will be able to raise enough money to have it removed before her redneck parents sell her to a travelling freak show. And, do you honestly believe that Bill Gates is going to give you, and everyone to whom you send "his" email, $1000?
How stupid are we?
Ooooh, looky here! If I scroll down this page and make a wish, I'll get laid by a model I just happen to run into the next day! What a bunch of bullshit.
Maybe the evil chain letter leprechauns will come into my house and sodomize me in my sleep for not continuing a chain letter that was started by St Peter in 5AD and brought to this country by midget pilgrim stowaways on the Endeavour.
Fuck 'em!!
If you're going to forward something, at least send me something mildly amusing. I've seen all the "send this to 10 of your closest friends, and this poor, wretched excuse for a human being will somehow receive a nickel from some omniscient being" forwards about 90 times.
I don't fucking care.
Show a little intelligence and think about what you're actually contributing to by sending out these forwards. Chances are, it's our own unpopularity.
The point being?
If you get some chain letter that's threatening to leave you shagless or luckless for the rest of your life, delete it. If it's funny, send it on. Don't piss people off by making them feel guilty about a leper in Botswana with no teeth who has been tied to the arse of a dead elephant for 27 years and whose only salvation is the 5 cents per letter he'll receive if you forward this email. Now forward this to everyone you know. Otherwise, tomorrow morning your underwear will turn carnivorous and will consume your genitals.
Have a nice day.
Billy Connolly
P.S: Send me 15 bucks and then fuck off

Our Intellectuals Their Intellectuals

Oh what a drama is being played out in the media [now mainly print because there is nothing to "show" only to write about] over the plight or flight [depends on your political outlook] of Taslima Nasreen in/from Kolkata. Reads alomost like one of those Alistair McLean stories from my childhood.... whisked away in the middle of the night to one place across the coutry by plane, driven to an unknown destination in the morning, hidden in an unknown Delhi suburb and then disappearing to an unknown place near Delhi airport.... Reminds me of a McLean novel "Puppet on a Chain" set in the Netherlands and about a man's fight against drug lords...... Woooof.. leaves you almost breathless... But then if you have been reading more than one newspaper and watching more than one channel you would know that she went from Kolkata to Jaipur to Gurgaon and was then taken to the SPG special "guest house" near Delhi airport. Nothing hidden about it.. she has also been given Y category security which means she would have around 11 officers to protect her.... One would think Osman Bin Laden's men were after her. But as a matter of fact and unless the security and IB knows more there was not personal attack on her in Kolkata and what happened in Hyderabad was no terrorost attack either, most radical intellectuals and student politicians face that in College canteens in their youthful days.... There has so far been no court order to arrest her or Fatwa from a recognised outfit in India...

Now turn to four cases, my favourites......
1. Our iconic painter [not withstanding the some of us are jealous that he is still able to attract Ms Dixit at his age], where is he? he wants to come back to India and live here, why can't he?
2. Our intellectual par excellance [not withstanding the fact he he can still serially attract women quarter his age]... why isn't he allowed to visit India?
3. Our youung and radical teacher at Baroda university... what happened to his job
4. Last but not the least... our iconic protestor of social evils, from the banks of Narmada to Nandigram... she was physically assaulted several times in her life... In Nandigram police actually stood and watched her beaten up.....

Do we have double standards for our world class intellectuals and third rate trash authors from Bangladesh? Have we lost our collective minds...

Delhi Leads Road Accidents

My last post has been vindicated... The figures of road accidents were out two days back in the Times of India. Accordingly, based on the 2005 figures Delhi topped the list of fatal road accidents with over 1,700 deaths. The numbers in 2007 must be considerably more in 2007 and Blue Lines have claused only 106 of these deaths... Isn't it time that we plugged the others who kill on the roads rather than whip the bad blue bus drivers...
Think about it...

Blue Line and Red Eyes

Deli newspapers are ever ready to show red eyes to the Blue line bus services in Delhi and not without reason. The blue line bus services in Delhi which comprises all of public transport buses are almost like "Devil in the Blue Dress".... Between January and November this year the number of deaths caused by these buses is 106... 106 families have been shattered by these buses in less than a year. The government apparently has tried every trick to discipline these rogues... from insisting that the drivers wear uniforms, to speed monitors to automatic doors to lane driving. In fact this time I noticed that every major bus stop had a Marshall who was directing the blue line buses to stop at the right spot and not overtake... But these measures have not stopped fatal accidents as the records kept by newspapers in Delhi would show.

I am no fan of blue line buses and really do not care if they are there or not in as much as I do not care about Delhi autos, taxis call centre cabs and such likes which make Delhi roads like the jungles of sunderbans where the only operating principle is "might is right".

But I am amazed that a trasport which would end up killing 200 people in Delhi is being so horribly badmouthed by the media to the extent that every week teh delhi high court regularly enquires of the Delhi government as to when these services are going to be withdrawn.

Do not get me wrong, I am not heartless, but at 200 a year they do not even deserve mention in the annals of road accidents in Delhi where if I am not far off the mark over 1000 people die in road accidents every year... It would seem that bluelines are getting 100 per cent flak for 10 per cent of crime.. I would like to ask our friends in the media what is being done to save the lives o other 900 people who are not victims of blueline buses? Here are some other culprits:
1. Call centre drivers [you can ask anyone who drives to Gurgaon eveyday what they are scared of most, all of they would say call centre cars... Their record at killing and maiming is much much better than blue lines
2. Drunken and Rash driving... Culprits and victims are mostly young people with rich parents and big cars... what is being done to punish the parents of such youngsters?
3. MCD and NDMC: pathetic road signs, signals covered with trees, no signage at construction sites, no cleaning up after construction... and so many others.... cows on roads
4. Bikers, Cyclists and Jaywalkers: First category should know that Delhi roads are not for stunt practicces, the second should know that the inside lane is for fast vehicles not for cycles, and the third category should know that in cities roads are mainly meant for vechicles not for walking and crossing whereever you wish to

Till such time as we distribute the onus equally among other "stakeholders" let us at least be fair to blue lines and whenever you publish their score card please mention it as a part of total road deaths so that we can understand their responsibility in the right perspective. Thus: January to November 2007 Total Roaddeaths in Delhi 1000, total killed by Bluelines 106..... This will help up look at roaddeaths as well as blueline from a fresh perspective.

Disclaimer: I or any of my relatives to not own, operate or use any blueline services.

Crowded Skies and Timeless Travel

Air India's international flights were delayed by 24 hours and there was violence at the Delhi airport last weekend... that was the big news.. The bigger news of course is how the concept of crowded airports, low cost flights and overcrowded skies are combining to change the concept of time altogether in India. Take this example below
When I started flying before the start of so called railway passengers taking to wings, a flight to Mumbai from Delhi actually took 1:30 mins but the declared time was 1:55 mins... the exra twenty five minutes was time to taxi etc.... After two hours if a flight was late by 15 mins, you could see some of the older passengers getting uneasy and some younger people complaining about the sorry state of Indian Airlines [Indian Airlines and Jet take 5 minutes to travel Delhi Mumbai route even today 1:55 mins as oppsed to 2 hrs by all other airlines... I do not know why]........
But as I said, the concept of time itself has changed.... My much younger colleague who flying started post crowded skies, low cost airlines etc.... has a different concept of time altogether... The other day he was on a flight to Calicut from Delhi with a change and stopover to 1:40 mins in Mumbai. When he reached Calicut I enquired after his flight... He was all in praise for Jet Airways and told me in the passing that the Delhi Mumbai flight was only an hour late..... A two hour flight taking three hours is so normal that no one complains nowadays... I could not figure out why this change in us.
Is it because our inherent believe in fatalism, karma or some other tangential cultual experience? Probably not. It's probably those used to train travels have a differnt concept of late/delayed and when they take to flights they retain at least in the initial years of flying the same concept..... It is not surprising therefore that so few people in India complain about late flights and there are so few scuffles at airports... From my colleague's point of view one hour is no big deal since travelling to Calicut from Delhi by train would have taken him a week.....

Has this got to do something with the theory of relativity?

Hindustan Times

The Hindustan Times, arguably the largest circulated English language newspaper in Delhi has undergone some dramatic changes in the last few months. The regular readers would not have failed to note these changes. First it was the cricket led headlines evey day of the T20 championships, then there is a great page on "user generated content" the best one being "Your HT Your Photo" section. The general tenor of the newpaper now is peppier and happier and I assume it is trying to move away from stodgy old readers like me and move on to greener pastures, becoming the newspaper of the future, so to say. The Sunday edition especially in the post edit page has seen some drastic though not dramatic changes. Thankfully for us Vir Sanghvi still writes his liberal democratic columns and I guess most us oldies read it because of him [although he is now into cooking and lifestyle, he remains, I think along with Vinod Mehta, an old fashioned editor]. Regretfully, Karan Thapar is still there, writing about his daddy and mummy and all those he met through them. Manas Chakravarty has made an appearance as has Indrajit Hazra; the first makes economics easy for us and the second makes reading difficult for us, both of them bring some amount of pleasure.
However, overenthusiasm must be curbed at all costs, they do sometimes cost dearly and make a laughng stock of the paper. And here i am not talking about spelling errors but other interesting goof ups: Here are some: a) Cricket might be a passion of the country but not headline stuff every day even when a tournament is going on. b) circket leads to major goof ups like the one day after India won a match it had almost lost. The headlines read something like "India at the verge of loss", but India had won the match at night after the paper went to print and in the morning everyone had a good laugh. Just imagine what would have happened in a match where India snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory. The headlines would have read "India at the verge of winning" and would have lost the match while the paper was in print. We would have read the headline and cursed the paper. c) The most interesting, the YOUR HT YOUR PHOTO Column carried the photo of a langur with a bold caption "your HT your photo"; Yeah I guess if I am still reading HT I must be a langur.
Running a newspaper in this day and age can be a monkey business afterall.
Jai Hind [the last word to be pronounced as in hindi not as in English:)]

Ram Setu or Hanuman Setu?

I have always wondered why I can't think straight. Believe me I have tried for many years to think straight but failed. Now I guess I am too old to even try.
There is a great debate going on in country at least it was on sometime back, between the secularists and religious fellows; between rationalists and those who believed in the power of the myths, between the north and the south, between those who belived in the power of cement and those in power of scriptures. These debates are nothing new in our vast country. In fact they are very common. This is what inspired Amartya Sen to write a tome called the The Argumentative Indian to much acclaim and which also I guess signalled the end of his career as an economist [nothing much is left in that discipline post Nobel prize and one needs to move on in life]
Be that as it may, what is important in India is the topic of the debate not the two sides [the two sides remain the same whatever the topic] And what is more important that the topic is the fact that there is a humongous effort the reduce any debate to two sides only by simplyfying, recalssifying the many other sides.
The current debate was on the benefits of dredging a piece of sea which was either built by Lord Rama [the pious kind who always doubted his wife] or by a stroke of nature; depending on which side of the debate you are on. Obviously, by common agreement, it was accepted that for the country it was more important to debate how the bridge [Google can help you locate the bridge or the sea depending on whether you are an optimist or a pessimist] came to be, rather than whether it was economically, socially and politically beneficial to dredge the piece of sea and make it navigable.
Was the bridge built by Lord Rama while on his way to Sri Lanka to kill the demon king Ravana? Or was it built at some geological time when the continent of India separated from the Island of Sri Lakna? The debate continues.
However, in spite of having an opinion on things I know and also things I do not know, I am unable to offer an opinion on this. Not because I want to sit onthe fence, nor because my head is somewhere and my heart somewhere else, not even because I am scared of being beaten up by either side. None of these.
But for the fact that the debators have got it all wrong once again. The debate should ideally have been on whether the bridge was built by nature or by hanumana [the monkey god much revered or as much revered as Lord Rama in certain parts of India]. If you go throught the Ramayana, it is clear that Rama caused the bridge to be built, he did not build the bridge. The bridge was built by Hanumana and his cousins. having reached the sea in hot pursuits, Rama simply took the decision to build the bridge [as anyone else in his place would have]. The full credit of building the Bridge must go to hanuman and his "associates". if you realign the debate thus, it would be interesting to see how many of the Ram supporters are ready to take up the cause of his trusted lieutenant Hanumana. My guess would be not many. Is that a better way to take the winds out of a good debate? Shall we wait for some hanuman fans [we would have all the kids on our side] to raise a hue and cry against Rama for getting all the credit?
While of course, the nature continues to do its work quietly on the far margins of this debate. One more tsunami, well targetted, we may have a six lane sand highway to Sri Lanka or a Palk Strait which can take the largest Oil Taker.

Hutch's Dog, Vodafone's Pain

Once upon a time there was this cute little doggy who was a great pal of this cute little boy and they followed each other everywhere. They became famous as Hutch boys [I am assuming that the dog too was a "boy", I have not really watched the ad so closely to be able to arrive at a definite conclusion]. Together they made a great ad for Hutch "The networks follow whereever you go".... The Dog symbolising the network and the boy symbolising you, presumably.

They came a big red giant across the seas with a logo like one side of an qoute (') it had a nordic name although it was British, perhaps reminding the Brits of the vikings and their exploits in British soil. They bought the prince and his dog and wanted to change everything, tell everybody that they had arrived. But by then the little prince and the little dog were too firmly and warmly entrentched in the people's memory. So what did the red giant with half quote marks do?

It dropped the prince altogether and put the dog in the dog house and ran huge ads all over the country announcing its arrival in the land of milk and honey.
What do the citizens of the land of milk and honey understand from this?
Is it that their favourite prince is gone - sent to exile by a big red giant? And the the network no longer follows you anywhere since the dog is safely confined to the dog house? Or does it mean that the two red giants in the land of milk and honey are going to raise a toast to their success having and plan a great future together?

Who knows?

Stake Over-Done

Rare to well-done seem be the normal range of stake choices. But in the case of India, the stake now seem overdone.
As if it was not enough to flout $11 billion FDI last year, we dementedly voted to get Taj Mahal among the wonders of the world, a bunch of rookies won us the World Cup in a cricket format that is designed to make quick bucks for greedy cricketing associations than any thing else; it was not enough that increasingly faced with years of haranguing; women too have become cricket fans. Nor was it enough that India's sixty years of independence is being celebrated more in the US with motley of Resident Non-Indians and Non Resident Indias than in India itself or that we are made to believe by an otherwise educated Minister that the 123 Agreement will take care of our power needs. Nor was it enough to send millions of emails across thousands of networks listing the achievements of Indians from Aryabhatt to Sachin Tendulkar. It was not enought to talk about the lakhs of engineers and doctors, and nurses that our system spawns every year. Nor was it enough to say India is the most youthful nation in the world.
The constantly churning publicity machine has really gone overboard now and been taken over by non-Indians, strangely, people and groups who even a few years back did not know where India was on the world map are carrying out extensive surveys on Indians and coming up with ridiculous and quite supefluous conclusions:
One of these recent surveys mentions that India youths are the happiest in the whole world. All the major newspapers picked on this and give it such prominence as if it was the biggest truth. I wonder what kind of Indian youth they met for the survey?
The second survey was even more ridiculous, Indians known to be almost as prude as their former masters, now seem to be the most satisfied nation so far as sex is concerned. This bit of research too made headlines in all the major dailies. Each Indian man on an average has had 6 partners [I guess all female] and each Indian female on an average 2. I would certainly like to take some tips from these men:)
A word of advice, its time we rewrote the Kamasutra empahsizing that Kam in Hindi actually means an honest day's work not what your dirty mind thinks it to be.

Abacus: What's That?

Just read this morning in Hindustan Times that more and more Indians are getting drawn to Sanskrit plainly for the sake of learning and using that ancient and almost dead language. There is also a revival of interest in Ayurvedic medicines in India, Yoga has been reinvented and patented and is thriving in the galis of Kailash Colony in Delhi as much as in Hounsolow probably. Vedic Maths and Vedic Astrology are increasingly becoming popular and Management gurus of Indian origin are increasingly looking towards ancient Indian text to come up with new ideas on corporate strategy [Gita is very popular among these gents].
This phenomenon of "going back to the roots" is otherwise known as revivalism and is not always and not necessarily good for the society. Fascism was one revivalist movement in Europe on perceived roots and pasts and has since the 1930s emerged in many forms across the globe.
But the aim of this post is not to start a learned discussion on revivalism but to mention the revival of another "scientific" learning tool which is gaining grounds in India now. The most interesting thing about this learning tool is that it has its origin in ancient Greece and not ancient India.
The "thing" is the revival of abacus the crude but very effective calculator. Many of us would remember the ubiquitous slate boards from our childhood days.These were actually made of slate and not wood and had on the side rows of colourful beads strug together with thin wires embedded in the wooden frame of the slate. Although we were told that these were called abacuses, we really did not know what they were and what functions they served. I came to know much later in life that they were ancient calculators used by the Greeks.
However, recently, I got to know more about them through my daughter who attends a "abacus class" in Delhi and had recently won an interstate trophy in the under six age category. I liked my winning daughter but could not actually figure out how the bloody thing worked. What amazed me was that the thing actually worked and my daughter could do all her additions and substractions correctly using the bleeding and beady instrument [kids use a smaller, handier plastic version of it]. IN fact, she helpfully told me that since the last semester, she has discontinued the use of the actual instument and only uses it "mentally", i.e., in her mind. I have not yet learned the use of the instrument having sat with a few times. I guess I was taught maths by another school of thought, the finger line calculation school. But I must admit, Abacus works and the great art of using abacus is being taught in literally hundreds of learning centres in India. It does not matter if it is of Greek origin, it is helping us continue with our glorious tradition in mathematics. Aryabhatta would have been happy:)

Getting Worse Before it Gets Better?

Those of you who thought Delhi has a better infrastructure than Mumbai or any other city in India, and I was one of them, are having to change their opinion rather rapidly. The whole city now seems to be "under construction" pretty much as it was before the Asiad in, I think, 1982. There is the metro whose digging seems to be happening everywhere fron Nehru Place to NOIDA, then there is this rather funny thing called High Speed Bus Corridor. For the life of me I can not fathom out why they need a high speed bus corridor when the problem with buses in Delhi always as been that they either move at very high speed or do not move at all waiting to be filled. Then of course there are civil works such as redoing the pavements, relaying the verges, recarpeting the roads, and construction of buildings which almost invariably spills over onto the roads. Add to that the half done flyovers at critical junctions like entry to NOIDA and Gurgaon which held up the early morning and late evening exit and entry from the dorm suburbs. Finally, of course there is the menace of monsoons which have left most of the roads in tatters.
Amid all these, there is dengue, malaria, viral fever and hepatitis.
If you think I am exaggerating, here is a personal example. Siince I have moved to this new locality in the heart of South Delhi I have had two flyovers, one under pass, one high volume underground water supply pipeline and now the High Speed Bus Corridor and metro have arrived. Not to mention minor iritants like trenches for electricity and phone lines which seem to be in a perpetual state of repair. That you would say is a mark of progress. But for me none of them are useful, they are useful for people who pass through my area to various dorms in the city. For me it means more crowd, more dust and more disease. Little wonder that the small campus that I live in has seen four cases of dengue in the last two years not to mention small things like malaria and viral fever.
At the end of this hectic building activity, I have realised that this is the best time to work in the cement industry. And I am hoping that the civil work in my neighbourhood would come to an end before I kick the bucket so that I can enjoy the fruits of my pain.

Delhi: A Novel

Oh what a book. many years back when I cared too much about what others thought of me, the first edition of the book was out in hardcover with a titilating paining on the cover, a half naked dancing girl [after reading the novel, I now realise it might not have been a girl but a member of the third sex] - I thought it was risky to buy the book and worse still get drawn into the shady world of Khushwant Singh's novels. I finally bought a more recent copy with a nice cover of one of the Delhi monuments in watercolour and read it.
I do not want to give away anything, but only suggest that this is the best history of Delhi you will get to read. William Dalrymple's book actually pales to insignificance. Although to be fair to Dalrymple, he dealt only with the late 18th to 19th century of the city's history.
Reading through Mr Singh's book, and the subtitle clearly mentions it to be a novel, I felt that this was far from a novel. In fact it was history and biography. But, I guess, it is so exaggeratedly real the the author had to mark it as a novel.

Sir Francis Younghusband and Johnny Walker

Just finished reading the biography of Sir Francis Younghusband by Patrick French. I guess very few people would remember who he was and what is his claim to fame even among trained historians. In fact even for me it was a geat discovery of sorts. All I had read about him in all my years of "doing" history can be summed up in a this subtitle "Younghusband's Expedition to Lhasa". Till now I was much impressed by the fact that at the turn of the century an Englishman with troops had acutally marched to Lhasa walking across the formidable Himalayas.
After French's excellent biography, I realised that the man was much more daring, verging alomst on insanity, than I had thought him to be. The famous expedition to Lhasa started at the far end of Himalayas in Sikkim consisted of a large troop of Sikh and Gurkha soldiers and coolies [8 coolies per soldier] lead by Brigadier McDonald. Old McDonald was a soldier while the title of Colonel was conferred upon Younghusband, and by some machination the civilian had forced the senior army officer to report to him [civilians always have their say, even today!].
But the fascinating part of this story was not this trek through areas which were sometimes 30 degrees C below freezing, but there were no existing maps.
If you are impressed by this, it may interest you to know that Younghusband had practiced well for this trip and in his younger days as an officer of the Raj had walked from Manchuria to India [Kashmir] through the dreaded Gobi desert. And also crossed most of the impossible passed in the Pamirs. If you look at the distance between manchuria and kashmir through gobi desert, you will realise that the expedition to Lhasa was a small change for him.
Amazing character.
I wonder what the Johnnie Walker guys were doing those days, they could not have got a better model for their slogan "Keep Walking" that Younghusband.
In case you are interested the book is titled Younghusband and would be available in any large second hand book shop in Delhi. I do not lend my books.

Rediscovery of Railways

Yes, recently, after a few unpleasant experience in mid air caused by bad weather and my intuaitive fear of flying, I have taken to travelling by trains. Not fully true because there are still places were trains can not take you or can not take you first enough. But I have really taken to travelling between Delhi and Mumbai by trains and I have to make the following observations;
1. It only takes 16 hours to travel from Mumbai Central to New Delhi and the timings are very decent. You can almost finish your day's work in Mumbai and reach Delhi early enough to join office by 930 in Delhi. If you are travelling by Rajdhani you can be sure that in 90 per cent of the time the train would be on time. If you are travelling first class in that train you can be assure of a) a good night's sleep in airconditioned comfort b) great breakfast c) a shower so that you are fully prepared to rush to office in the morning.
2. In a sixteen hour journey you get three full meals which are much much better than whatever they serve you in planes and you can actually choose from a wide menu [at least in first class]. And those cutleries that have now disappeared from airlines, you still get to see them here with real plates, bowls and forks and knives. Food is served to you and not thrown at you. I was amazed to see once that they also carry sugarfree sachets as well as extra chocolates and icecreams, addressing both youngsters and oldies like me.
3. The toilets are cleaner than the normal airline toilets and if you find them to up to your standards of cleanliness you can get someone to clean them for you. The first class coach also has a shower. Toilet papers and mugs both are provided:)
4. You get to sleep on a berth which is six and a half feet by three feet and someone actually makes your bed for you. In addition there is an attendant to respond to your call, a bell being provided in each coupe. If you are an early riser you get bed tea too.
5. Sight seeing is free: You will be amazed to see Neel Gais and Peacocks at dusk while travelling from Delhi in addition to quaint little villages; while entering Mumbai the scene is not so attractive, though:)
If you want to enjoy this journey all you need to do is to book yourself once [you can do an online booking and travel with a printed ticket with your id from the irctc website] and enjoy the experience, I am sure you would be hooked.

A word few words of caution though:
1. Sometimes you will get stuck with the wrong type of co-passenger [ask the conductor to change your seat] I had once been on a 9 hour non stop flight with a pubjabi gentleman who was very talkative and was convinced that Punjabi is the national language of the world and he was shocked that I did not speak the language, that of course did not stop him talking with me all the way]
2. When the waiters come in the morning with saunf post breakfast you are supposed to tip them. 50 Rs in the first class is fine.
3. Most importantly, be careful at dusk and dawn. People standing by the side of the track are neither a welcoming party nor have they come to watch the train. If you watch carefully each one has a water container in their hands. Shakespeare said "world is stage" they say "world is a bog". So do not disturb they with your curiosity.

Bon Voyage

An Englishman in New York

This is the chair on which sat the "writer" of the Indian Constitution when he handed over that bulky but a watershed document to the first president of India, Dr Rajendra Prasad. I am not sure many would know who the write of the constituion of India was although most of us would be aware of the importance of that document in defining our national lives and our freedom and democratic principles in the last. Some of us who are a bit older would of course know Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar or Babsaheb Ambedkar as the father of the Indian Consitution.
It was almost by chance that I happened to visit the small and rather quaint museum at Pune which has a few of his personal belongings such as his books, working table, dining table, crockery and cutlery, clothes, walking sticks etc. To me he looked a more western than many of his contemporaties and I did not anywhere see the hideous blue suit and the red tie which is most of his statues and calendars are painted. Instead there were some very elegant white shirts and dark grey suits. The museum itself is small but well kept by the Symbiosis Management Institute and happens to be on the main Senapati Bapat Road across the passport office.
Finally, for those of you who would be wondering why this entry is titled the way it is: Poona is traditionally the land of Peshwas and brahmins:)

What's Wrong With Our Kids

First there was this series on television - not the saas bahu but more ominous type of children dropping left right and centre in borewells and manholes. One day I sat all evening and nearly whole of the night watching live coverage of a kid being rescued from a borewell in Hissar or Hastinapur, I forget which. A few days back, the other child was not so lucky. Then another one fell through a manhole in Ghaziabad, yet another one in some part of Madhya Pradesh. The series, it seems, is far from being over.
In the meantime, we have a new series of abandoned babies being miraculously rescued here there and everywhere. Then there was this remarkable story of one child who was recovered three days after he was abandoned by a milkman. This series too continues.

Then of course there is the penennial series of children [both boys and girls] getting raped and molested in every part of the country with remarkable regularity. And finally there are the usual stories of children getting killed as collateral damage everywhere from kashmir to assam.

What is wrong with you kids? Can't you behave? Don't you know your sixty year old mommy is now decked in a new western outfit with a smear of maybeeline and a hairdo from bblunt is parading herself in front of a global audience flaunting her newly reconstituted figure much to the envy of many other younger global mothers? And daddy dear as usual is drank out of senses basking is her reflected glory. Can't you kids give them some piece of mind and some space to do what they wish to do? Can't you grow up on your own, after all we are 60 now, let us glow one last time before we are snuffed out.

Jai Hind

Bihar Loot-ney

I was much enchanted by a hindi song rendered on the screen by Dr Shilpa Shetty. It went something like this "Dilwalon Kay Dil Kaa Karaar Lootney; Main Aayi Hoon UP Bihar Lootney". I will not attempt to translate it because much will be lost in translation. Having lived 16 years of my life in that state [in the real Bihar and not the current Jharkhand], I read more meanings into the song that many others. For one, like miss Shetty, the rivers in Bihar also have patli kamar [narrow waists], they are beautiful, dangerously attractive, and lethal when they strike:) And of course, they come to loot Bihar once every year, unlike Ms Shetty who has never set foot in Bihar.

True to tradition, this year too with the arrival of August Bihar is again on our TV screens with large parts of it flooded and with our leaders making sorties on helicopters to "assess the damage". And true to tradition of the last forty years, media is presenting this as something that has happened only this year. Hence statements like biggest flood in living memory et al. I have seen this story repeated every year since at least 1980 when I was old enough to separate bull from bullshit and it pains me to see that the trend - of repeated floods, air sorties by politicians and the reporting remaining the same. No one has ever done anything about it nor will. The reason is simple, Bihar is the most backward state in the country it neither has any money to give to anyone no do it's people ever voted on the basis of "economic and social achievements of its leaders". And of course, since the 1980s most resourceful biharis [like myself] cutting across class, caste and religion have chosen to migrate to Delhi and Mumbai if not New York and California never coming back anywhere near the Patna airport. And of course, Biharis are too good to harm anyone, all they do is to kill each other in their own state - never taking the violence out of the state nor killing anyone who pass through that state. It is, therefore, a completely autarkik society and economy, about which no one need fear and hence not do anything about anything and anyone.
For those who do not know this, there are districts in Bihar notably the Maithili heartland of Madhubani and Darbhanga where the land is flooded for almost nine months in a year. It would need a super economist to explain how people live off the land which is flooded for most parts of the year - but they do and its a miracle. The endemic flood seems to be spreading its wings to parts that were not usually affected even a decade ago, such as Champaran in the west and Katihar in the east.
I have taken the escapists route, but there are two people currently deciding on where Bihar goes tomorrow, both respectable, both with vision and both with the required talent to wind their ways through the byzantine alleys of Patna and Delhi politics to steer Bihar not to a bright future but at least to what it used to be when my father as a young 20 year old migrant landed up in the unknown town of Katihar in 1954. Oh you would also want to know the names of the two gentlemen who could "do something" about Bihar - here they are : Nitish Kumar and N K Singh.

Child Lock

I have one child and I am very protective about her. Statement of Fact, right! yes right! But do I know what to protect her from? I thought I did, especially by controlling her TV viewing time as well as content and channels that she could view.
She has been watching TV since she was one year old starting with telly tubbies, so she is now and experienced TV watcher. yes a six year old can be an experienced TV watcher especially given the amount of programme recycling that goes on in India. But I digress. To come back to the point.
Till last year due to this amazing mechanism called Child Lock my child's TV viewership was limited to kids channels only, and I was under the impression that what my child was watching was the rith stuff that children her age across the globe watched. I have to say I have had to change my views after going through with her the channels and the programmes she watches. here is what she watches, I don not remember the exact programmes but can give you a gist of the contents: The biggest problem though is that most of the programmes are not avaialble in the original english but in weird sort of translation. Thus there is this popular Japanese cartoon in Hindi of course where a monkey and a terrier are fast friends, but the monkey for some reason is called Mummabhai and the terrier Circuit, they speak in the same style as the eponymous characters in the movie series. The second prorgamme comes in the Disney Channel which for long I thought was a provider of wholesome entertianment to children, till last week that is. The programme she watches is set in a school where you can constantly see the girls and the boys bitching abut each other and trying to undercut each other. it is a child's version of a deadly saas bahu serial. They, of course there are two others one called Ninja hattori in Hindi of course, the best dialogue of which is a onomotopaeic sound which goes like this Tintin tintin ..... tintintin...; and the other one is where the main character is a piece of cheese with the usual holes and some teeth.
Is my daughter especially wicked or retarded, not really. But then what makes her watch these programmes, you may ask? The simple answer is nothing else is available. She is watched tom and jerry so many times [they are repeated very often and she knows all the episodes by heart] that she does not feellike watching them. Animal Planet? She will take some years to understand Richard Attenborough's accent, I guess and she really has no interest in the mating habits of moths, National Geographic? sometimes it's risky. That does not leave too many options. Does it?
So what should I do to ensure that my little darling does not really become retarded watching children;s channels? Or that she does not become an adult before her time watching Children's channels? There is no easy solution, but I have thoght of one simple one and am hoping that it works... I have decided to remove the child locks from all channels to give her more options beyond children's channels. This is the first step and I am sincerely hoping that she will "diversify" even if it means watching Fashion TV - yes, i am quite desperate. If this does not work, i am really wish it works, I have decided that plan B is going to be more drastic - I am going to make the child lock stand on its head and lock all the children's channels, I am sure that will make my child an adult faster than I had planned to, but that will also make sure that she will not be retarded.
Long Live Child Lock.

Taslima Nasreen and Salman Rushdie

Taslima Nasreen writes against Islam, that is what we are told by some people who consider themselves legitimate mediators between the almighty and ordinary mortals. The government of India does not ban her books [only government of west bengal did], gives her political asylum in India and she is free to preach her cult of anti-Islamic feminism in her Bangladeshi British accent. Fair enough. India is a secular society and is also trying to be a tolerant one and the Indian state should give a democratic platform to people who are deprived of that platform in their own countries.
Salman Rushdie too once wrote against Islam, Salman Rushdie is a person of Indian origin. The Indian state banned his book and made sure that the circumstances were such that he is never able to enter India and visit his native city of Mumbai without fear. Indian state at that instance did not uphold it's secular and freedom of speech values for an Indian citizen.

My belief is that if we had treated Salman Rushdie through our demicratic principles, what happened to Taslima Nasreen in Hyderabad would probably had not happened.

Someone should remind our policy makers the old adage "what you sow is what you reap"

Jai Hind.

Delhi the Piracy Capital

Yesterday a national news channel in the absence of anything better to do carried out a long story on book piracy. Two things were highlighted in the story a) Delhi is the piracy capital of India b) students, especially medical students, were the worst pirates so far as books were conerned. Coming close on the heels of the recent judgement against a swiss pharma MNC, the story opened up the issue of IPR violation and piracy once again. My views on piracy are simple:
No one has yet come up with a detailed sociological report on piracy. My personal view, having, read pirated books, got my degrees by reading illegally photocopied articles, bought pirated softwares, music and a host of other things, is that any one trying to resolve the issue of piracy should answer the first question, why would otherwise law abiding citizens willingly violate the law?
The simple answer is high need, high cost and low affordability. I need something real bad, I do not have the full money to pay for it, because in my view it costs more than what it should. That is the simple reason for piracy. I have never realised why a trash paperback by John Grisham should cost 500 Rs, I am going to read it once in the plane and throw it in the dustbin; why a medical course book which has been through 100 editions should still costs $100 when the author, publisher and their daddies have recovered the cost of the book several times over, or why for that matter pharma companies keep extending the patents of an old drug through various non-transparent means often in perpetuity, or for that matter why should a CD with five songs cost Rs 300?
The main reason for piracy I feel is the failure of the companies to understand the market and the paying capability of the consumer and every market goes through this process before piracy is well within the acceptable levels. On the other hand consumers also go through their own education and realise some goods and services will continue to carry a price premium because they are better for the rest of it, pirated or genuinine does not really matter.
Take the case of PCs with prices coming down, grey market has almost disappeared. Yet brands like Sony still command a premium. Take the issue of DVD where moser baer is making the consumers aware of the "real" price of a high quality movie on a DVD.
I think more than anything else, piracy is a signal to the marketers to reconfigure their prices or products and they should learn important lessons from a market where piracy is rampant. That's the real consumer feeback and should be taken seriously - we love you but not that much, is the consumer response.

Disclaimer: This blog entry was make with the aid of a genuine IBM laptop running on genuine Microsoft softwares by a genuinine person with a twisted by genuinine brain.

The Train to Pakistan

To many of us Khushwant Singh looks and writes like a sordid and perverted sardar. To me though he is the greatest living "Indian Writer In English". Not because he is a very powerful man, not because his father was one of the richest men in Delhi, not because he is the most erudite Indian alive, not because he is so alive and acive till this day, not because he is well off enough to have great friends in Delhi and a house in Kasauli for his summer retreats. Not because of none of these. But for these reasons:
1. He writes the best english in all five continents, even though he is a humble Indian and a sardar to boot. All of us thought good Indian english was the prerogative of Bongs and Southies.
2. His one book "A Train to Pakistan: should have won him a nobel in English literature, just that he never knew ho to lobby
3.He is the most fearless anti establishment thinker for four generations now
4. He still thinks and has not gone senile and we should congratulate his mild drinking for this.
5. His children are by our standards better than him intellectually and in terms of achivements, but they will never admit to this. That is like a great father: when you children feel humbled by you.

What can I say to that great man, but may you have may lives and live forever:)

A Woman President

Unlike most civilisations, we have really complicated kinship terms. For example we do not have simple uncles but complicated mamas, chachas, mausas and buas [all by the way first uncles from mother's and fatehr's side. Likewise for aunts we have mami, chachi, mausi and so on. Kinship terms run so deep in our society that we still sometimes follow the ancient system and call all our father's male siblings "father" in order that they were born relative to the biological father. Thus "bade Papa", "Majhley Papa" and "Chote Papa", Papa and Chacha. if you do not belong to this cultural milieu you would get perplexed trying to figure out who the biological father is, but not so a discerning Indias.
In fact, kinship terms are the first things we teach our chidren after they have learnt to say papa and mamma. It is long process of training and takes upto 10 years for the child to understand and then correctly apply these terms. After all it would be darn insensitive to get this wrong - in fact to address your mami as mausi would make the entire family incestuous.
With so much of training and such finely tuned kinship terms, I was damned surprised when the entire nation started tearing their hair on the latest issue of what would be a female president of India be called. The Presidents have always been men and we have called him Rashtra-Pati [husband to the nation, literally. Though is slightly more complicated that just husband].
Some suggested the obvious, she be called Rashtra-Patni [wife to the nation]. This would make the plight of the Madam President worse than Draupadi, we are a nation of 1.2 billion half of which is our male population. Others, although realising the need to come up with the correct term, kept quiet since Rashtra-Patni was too embarrassing a term to be attached to the first Woman President.
I think, all of us got it wrong and I think I am the first one to crack this. Hear me out on this one and you will soon realise that I am right.
Rashtrapati is so called not just because he is male, but because our rashtra - bharat - is a female. We call it the motherland. Hence the Head of the Sate is called Rashtrapati - Pati [husband] of the state. Now if the nationstate is a female [mother] then isn't it so easy to find a kinship term for a female president?
I think if you are true to our tradition of kinship names a woman president should be called Rashtra-Sautan [sautan again is much more complicated than the simple anthropological term co-wife], but it is the correct term.
Rashtra-patni should correctly be reserved for a woman president in a country which styles ifself as a fatherland - by that standard the only true Rashtra-Patni is Angela MERKEL of Germany.

I hope you will agree with me.

Mahabalipuram

I had seen the images since I was a kid and also remembered that they were really reall old. Later of course, I ead much more about them and finally yesterday I was able to visit Mahabalipuram and was able to see with my own eyes the work of Pallava sculptors 600-700 AD. The village of Mahabalipuram is a World Heritage Site because of these ancient monuments. It also helps that the beach extends to as far as the eye can see on both sides and the sea is really blue. It was a great day's outing rounded up with a lunch at GRT resort. For the first time in my life I felt jelous about Chennaites. Pity I could not enjoy the beach, which seemed to me to be exgtending from the outskirts of Chennai to probably the southernmost tip of India without a break. Incredible India!

Deluge in Delhi

For those who believe that good and bad are relative terms, please read on. It rained in Delhi for an hour. It was a Sunday afternoon and after a week of high humidty and temperature rains were a welcome change. But for those who had to travel and for those who have some experience of living in Mumbai! I unfortunately qualified for both the categories. The eight km journey through the city to the railway station took me forty minutes on a Sunday afternoon on Delhi roads. Both sides of the roads were flooded and traffic could move only on the inner lanes of what are usually six lane roads. The entry to the New Delhi Railway station was in knee deep water and the site was more like a third world Venice than that of the capital of an aspiring nation. The two municipal bodies of Delhi have long ago abdicated their civic responsibilities and are engaged politicking, most of the work is outsourced to contractors although there are scheduled departments and workers for all the jobs. So it has been an excellent case of outsourcing without cutting back on internal staff [a situation Americans would have loved].

For once, I felt happy that I was returning to Mumbai. I of course with the typical survival instict of a Delhiite manged to board my train on time. Others I left behind were not so lucky. My neoghbourhood in Delhi was hit by a cable fault which was temporarily repaired late at night.

As my train sped away from Delhi, I was wondering what would happen if it rained for two days in Delhi. Thankfully mother nature has been very kind to Delhi and it is unlikely that it would ever rain as hard as in Mumbai and Kolkata. This would of course, leave the municipal officers in Delhi enough time to do what they do best - petty politics.

A Museum for my Daughter

Many years back while walking the Royal Mile in Edinburgh I spotted a quaint museum called the People's Museum. In spite of the strong tradition of socialism in Scotland, Royal Mile isn't exactly the place where you would expect a People's Museum. Suffice it to say, the museum reconstructs the life of an ordinary working class scot in the 18-19 century. It captures the technological developments due to the Industrial Revolution and how that changed people's lives and lifestyles. The reconstruction is so well done that you would have to see it to believe it. In fact it is one of the best museums I have seen.
I was reminded of the museum the other day when I tried to explain to my six year old daughter about certain gadgets that I and even my much younger brothers in law have grown up with. Soon I realised that making my daughter understand the technology we grew up with would be a difficult task. Many of the things I grew up with have disappeared from use but have not yet found their way to museums... so where do we find them?
The first one was a rotary phone: where do I find one? The ones in the museum are still from the time of Mr Bell. My first phone was a serious looking black rotary phone
The second one was the steam engine: The ones in the railway museum are 19th century not the powerful ones of 1970s
The third one was the Handwound watch: where do I get one? Museums have fancy repetors and pockets watches from 19th century but not a handwound watch. I am sure HMT still makes some, but..... My first watch was handwound.
The fourth one was a black and white TV with wooden stands and shutters, where have they disappeared? The first TV I watched was a Keltron with four legs and sunmica laminated wooden shutters. Not yet found in any museum
The fifth item would definitely be the Video Casette and Video player. I grew up on a healthy dose of hindi movies on this fantastic gadget
The sixth would have to be the music cassette: I wonder where have those lovely cassettes of Kishore Kumar I collected over the years gone?
There are at least 15 more such items that can be added to the list. And I have just stuck to changes that have been brought about by pure technology and not mentioned anything which is connected to better availability of goods and better purchasing power. That list I guess would be much longer
So after this rather long conversation with my daughter, I realised I need to be happy about the "old things" that she is still sticking to and not be too unhappy and sentimental about "old things" she is discarding. And... one of the biggest piece of good news is that she still likes books and she is just getting into the habit of reading them by herself. Perhaps better still is the fact that printed children's books are still available and doing very well. Although most of the popular heros in the books and indeed the topics have changed, I was happy to discover shared loved between us for some eternal characters such as Mickey Mouse and Jataka Tales.

First Love

Food is my first love.
I can say this with a lot of commitment and conviction knowing full well that my wife, my daughter, my mother, my sister and three people who I call friends and who have stuck with me through thick and thin for the last 5 years to the last two decades do not read blogs:) [That is what I call freedom of expression].

I am agnostic about food.
I use the word not in the recent sense of technology but in the original sense of religion [techies are using a lot of serious words without understanding them nowadays]
I love food irrespective of where they origin and who cooks them. That is agnosticism for me.

I am religious and dogmatic about food.
Food should be good to taste and made of good ingredients. That is what I mean by I am religious and dogmatic about food.

Armed with the above parameters [again a word which is pythagorean but currently being used by IT project managers], for the last one year I have been hunting for good eating places in Mumbai.

Again, I must mention that my search for good food in Mumbai is not dependent on a) Times Good food guide or Vir Sanghvi's Rude Food or any such tome [I think they are fake]. My tongue and pockets are the best judge. b) secondly, I have my biases: However good a dal is it cannot be sweet, for example, you cannot make a sphageti bolognaise with chicken mice, for example, and there are not diet sweets.....

With such huge biases I have drawn up a list of places where I would like to visit again and again. The list is random:

1. Mondy: Value for money for so called continental food and reasonably priced booze. [Leopold is horrible but the cylinders they serve their pitchers are interesting]
2. Copper Chimney [Good Indian veg and non-veg food, they make their rotis with atta not with maida] Please avoid Delhi Durbar in Colaba if you know your food.
3. JafferBhai: best Mughlai takeaway if you know what to order and if you do not compromise with your mughlai dishes [no salt no chilly types keep out]
4. Taj Mahal lunch buffet [if you like cold cuts and salads for lunch there is no better place than this. They also have a wide selection of "Indian" dishes from Kolkata to Goa]
5. Ivy Bistro best value for money, preparation and excellent wine. Must try the red and white port here. The costs are a real steal here and the bakery stuff is the best
6. Gordon House: The best Indian Chinese in the Chinese restaurant in the ground floor.
7. Sports bar buffet lunch on a late Friday afternoon with beer: Good value for money and you can just gorge on the salads and soups.

I am still working on the list and will update whenever possible. Also, I forget the names of some places which I liked: E.g.; the small place in Malad where they served exquisite chilly meat balls [beef]; or the numerous takeways which are great value for money Or even my local bar ani restaurant where they can prepare a chilly chicken to order.

Please do not take my views lightly if you care either for your stomachs or for your wallets, since my opinion is based on spending my hard earned money and experimenting on my rather mature stomach.

Last but not the least: If you love bengali sweets please not got to sweet bengal try visiting Brijwasi instead.

Bon Apetit

CEOs Salary and Generational Vision

The Prime Minister in his inimitable style seemed to have set the media on fire. Just one match stick was enough... At the annual general meeting of a large employers' body Dr Singh, among other things, mentioned that CEOs should check their own salaries and generally refrain from conspicuous consumption.

Since then I have read at least three CEOs from three generations all connected directly or indirectly with the employers' association mentioned, come up with typically generational answers: CEO in mid fifties India Chairman of a top consulting firm: 70 per cent agrees with PM 30 per cent disagrees in a national daily. CEO/promoter of a telecom giant just enterning his 50s; 55 per cent disagree and 45 per cent agree with the PM's views again on a national daily. CEO/Promoter of a tech company in his early 40s, competely disagrees with the PM and calls it a demand and supply situation. if there are better schools and colleges training better CEOs and ensuring their steady supply the cost of hiring them will go down, this was in a blog.

All complicated arguments to drive home a simple point to the Prime Minister who is a very 1960s honest man, like many of our fathers. Just to digress a bit and profile such a man. No income outside salary. if you were in government, low salary and low tax, in private sector high salary and 90 per cent tax [if you do not believe me ask any CEO of private sector company in the 1960s]. Only people who made money were doctors and lawyers [but their income too was limited by the poor paying capacity of their clients and a doctor's fee was anything between 2 and 10 Rs and they played the volumes game those days]. What was the mindset of such men. They were brought up in the nehruvian tradition of nation building, sacrifice before consumption. The biggest social achievement then was to show others how much you have sacrificed. Cars were not needed, air conditioners were almost a sin, eating out was waste of money etc.

Great men these were, but at the end of their generation they left behnd a divided and inequitable society and to be fair to them some of them like the Prime Minister himself realised that this model had failed to deliver and consciously chose to move on to another direction that of economic freedom and liberalisation... creating a generation of people like us who now look like frankenstiens eating into the nation's entrails by those who created us.

In this debate neither side is wrong. These are two different ways of looking at things: While the PM looks at the 2000s with his prism of 1960s [not sure how to handle it] the generation of 1980s and 1990s looks at it through their own prism [agains not too sure how to handle it].

To get back to the point. What were the CEOs in their own generational way trying to tell the Prime Minister. I think two things: a) there is a generational gap in thinking and perceiving reality. Please let our generation run the show. You have handed over businesses to us, now handover the politics and economics of the country so that we get a chance to show how it is run in the new regime. b) Economic prosperity is not percolating not because of excessive freedom of privileged classes, but because of lack of freedom of non-privileged classes and non-privileged sectors like agriculture. c) please do not behave like Indian crabs by pulling down those that are going up in life.

I was was in positive awe of my father, his honesty, hardwork for a PSU, commitment, sacrifice, simple lifestyle. But never really bought into his philisophy. Like millions others of my generation. And as I grew older and had a stronger voice did not fail to mention to him at times that a) if he had taken care of himself he would have ensured a much better life for his family [I really do not know how much better since I and my sibling and my mother are doing pretty well in life:)] b) my generation has no human heros: self success is the only hero always looking for a new heroine: money.

Jai Hind

Know thy History

In India history as a discipline has been a much maligned subject. Just need to look at the controversy each version of the NCERT history texts generate. This does not happen with any other discipline. But as a normal interest area of a student, the importance of history is declining. it is even losing favour with potential Civil Services candidates. I think it would be a sad day for us when our civil servants are not well read and not well read into our history. Among the civil servants especially those who rise high to determine local policies and are responsible for security some books which are quite immortal much be read and updated. I was for example told by a senior civil servant of kerala cadre that William Logan's Malabar Manual written in the 19th century was the most helpful book he ever read as a non Malayali officer of Kerala cadre. He in fact has committed the book to memory. it helped that he was interested in reading as a Engligh literature student and as a polyglot. another important sets of books were the District Gazette series. I have read most of them pertaining to Bihar and Bengal and though written in the 19th century and some of them shoddily updated in the 1970s, they are a wealth of information for the educated district officer. As are the Final Report on Survey and Settlement operations of each district [there would be one for each british district]. As opposed to Col Todd's romaticised Annals of Rajasthan or numberous British translations of Persian and Sanskrit texts, the works that i mention are based on field surveys and meeting with real people and what they thought of themselves and others in thier locality. Also, a must read are the decennial census reports starting in Bengal from 1872 and appearing regularly for each province from 1891 up to today. They are literally invaluable in understanding local language, customs etc. I wonder how many of our civil servants would have read any of these. It does not really help especially since most of our civil servants have little or no training in social sciences [they are mainly engineers and management students or worse still doctors].

To the senior policy makers given the political situation in the country I take the liberty of suggesting an essential reading: William Hunter's "Indian Mussalmans". Published in 1882, less than 30 years after the first "Indian War of Independence " this book is a masterpiece. Hunter was probably the first one to envision that from the Northwest frontier provice [starting in what is now Afghanistan] to the gangetic delta in what is now Bangladesh, there was a continuous tract running through punjab, united provinces {UP}, Bihar and Bengal dominated by the Muslims whose social needs, needs to address their grievances were different as were there responses to the reforming influences of the British rule. Juxtapose this area on a current map of India and you would begin to realise the importance of this book.

Another set of books came out from the mid 20th century till recently. These set of books spoke about civil disturbances, popular movements, millennium movements etc. in a geographical congruous area forming a necklace from southern bengal bihar, chattisgarh, madhya pradesh, andhra pradesh, maharashtra and western parts of Gujarat. Plot this area on the map of India. You will not miss to note two things: a) the area is mostly dominated by "adivasis" b) this is a the now dreaded naxalite belt".

Who says you dont learn from history? it all depends on whether you want to learn anything from it.

Cheers,

Ancient Wisdom

Many years back I was told by the scion of a large industry house down south that it was a matter of shame that while the Japanese, Chinese and the Koreans always go back to their ancient corpus of knowledge at times of crisis or faced with a dilemma, Indians would fall back and rely on American and English books of management. This was seen clearly as a sign of what came to be known, thanks mainly to many historians, "colonisation of the mind". I am all against the concept, who in their right minds would like to be colonised at this day and age.
To back to the ancient Indian wisdom when faced with crisis was easy for me being trained in Indian history and having actually read some of those classical beauties. Life for me has become much easier since then and I can not resist sharing some of those philosophies with you. 1. No salary rise for 3 years? Open the Gita: it tells you "serve with love without hope for reward [sounds very biblical too]
2. Dont fear if you are blamed to be ostentatious: Open Charvaka "As long as you live happily, if need be borrow and buy ghee" Sounds dangerously like the hedonists of ancient Greek.
3. Tax Raids: Don't be demoralised. Arthashastra prescribed taxing prostitutes [I guess that would have been the service tax] Our Finance Minister has not come anywhere as close
4. Fear of taking risks: Open Mahabharata, five young men of decent upbringing chose to gamble with a professional gambler to get a kingdom and at the end they were successful... but at the very end.
5. Fear of backbiting: Get used to it. Read Mahabharata again.
6. One of the corporate tricks is not to take any decisions: Like Narasimha Rao was supposed to have done when he was the prime minister: Who did he learn that from? Of course Bhishma Pitamaha, Dhritarashtra and other seniors who just sat and watched while Draupadi was being de-sareed.
7. Non-nepotism: Remember Rama asked his wife to go through the fire test. You can do the same to your nephew at the interview.
8. Finally, gender Equality: At least 5 Dharmashastras devote 20 per cent space to the same subject "how to control" women. What does that mean? Since ancient times, women were not controllable by men... So why try it now?
Tathastu...

India: Living on the Edge!

As an avid watcher [and only a wacther] of AXN and other similar channels which highlight the acts of bravado that "others" perform on screen such as bungee jumping, skydiving, rock climbing, fighting with crocodiles, participating in reality shows where spiders are showered on you or you are asked to eat crocodile eggs or kiss a crocodile on the lips; I have always wondered are we Indians a nation of cowards? are we incapble of such acts of gross and raw bravery? It would apparently seem so, since not one of these shows ever features an Indian. On the other hand from American Idol to all sorts of "gambling" and guessing sort of programmes you would see a fair number of Indians participating.
I thought about it long and hard and was just about to get depressed when the idea stuck. Why do you have to display overt acts of bravado in front of a camera or in an attempt at self fulfilment when your day to day living itself is so dangerous? Irresepective of caste, colur creed or sex all indians live dangerously and on the edge. You don't believe me? Read on:
Farmer: fear of crop failure, non- repayment of loans, expenses on marriage and death, floods, caste and revenge killings
Rich Farmer: Fear of dacoity, retaliation, kidnap of children
urban poor: fear of death by contamination, death due to misdiagnosis, death due to illicit liquor, death due to train, bus accident; fear of employer, fear of unemployment
urban middle class: Fear of EMI, Fear of crowded skies, Fear of being banged by a truck on the road, fear of children being kidnapped to raped; fear of losing jobs, fear of lack of balance between home and office, fear of aspirations not being met.
Business man: Fear of new taxes, fear of collapse of stockmarkets, fear of sealing, fear of kidnap, fear of raids,
Bureaucrats: Fear of RTI, fear of being shunted, fear of being bypassed for promotion
Industrialist: Fear of workers, fear of government rules, fear of FERA, FEMA and many others, fear of hostile takeovers
Politicians: Fear of losing elections and retaliation, fear of immigration authorities, fear of tehelka

We have to overcome so many fears each day just in order to live on to the next that we find acts of bravado done for TV shows or for self-fulfillment pretty gross and pompous.

What do you say?

Globalised Names

Much before Indian economy became globalised and Indian women started wearing hipsters, Indian parents in order to make their children more competitive and hip and cool have been giving "global" names to their children. So in Punjab you had Tony, Vicky, Lucky and Bobby, In Kerala you had a Dolly Nair and in rest of India you had anything in between.
Bengalis have been very serious about names and for at least the last 70 years preferred secular names. My late father had the fancy and short name of Subrata, he was born in early 1930s. I think Bengalis did away with mythic and religious names long time back and became serious about names. A case in the point is the full version of my own name:) It is little wonder therefore, in globalised names too, Bengalis have been thought leaders. I knew someone in Calcutta who was named Monami Mitra [From the french mon ami] In the Calcutta of 1960s you could find many a woman named Lucy [not to be confused with the bengali Luchi]; and a class mate of mine was called Happy Ghosh. I do not think any other region can beat that.
My pride in Bengali names lasted for nearly as long as I have lived and increased until last week. It happened on a Saturday when I was working alone in my office with the front door of the office open and unattended. On hearing footsteps and rightly suspecting that it might be a bunch of salespersons I got up to get out my room and to confront them. I am usually very poilte but firm with such pushy salespersons but that day I was in a foul mood and decided to be very rude and nasty. In fact when I left my chair I was already gnashing my teeth. By the time I entered reached the door of my room to get into the hall from where the footsteps were coming, two young salespersons were alredy pushing open my cabin door. At which my determination to get rude became even firmer.
Finally, I managed to open the door first and before I could open my mouth, a young man, very fair and with locks that must have killed a hundred girls spoke up " Sir I am from Hutch and my name is Romeo Khan". I do not know what happened to me, suddenly instead of shouting at the guy and being rude I burst out into incessant peels of laughter.... The only thing I remembered while laughing was why didn't the guys parents name him Majnu Khan, why Romeo? By the time I had finished laughing Romeo Khan and his female colleague had left my office. Probably taking me to be insane. While I resumed work after that hysterical bout of laughter, I remembered you can not be more rude to a person than laughing at his name.
I also realised sadly that the best global names in India did not come out of Bengali households anymore.....
Jai Bharat

Zombie Banks

If you do not know what that term means, you can either call up an economist friend or forget about it, it does not really matter. Simply, put a public sector bank becomes zombie when the government is ready to put just enough money for it to survive and not enough for it to thrive and grow in a liberablised environment. The term was used by Percy Mistry who chaired a committee to prepare a report on how to make Mumbai a financial hub [not clear financial hub of world, india or maharashtra, I guess it must be the world since all of us are thinking global nowadays]

The excerpts of the report that I have read with a layman's perspective has lead me to the conclusion that in order to make mumbai a financial hub the enitre country or at least the entire financial policy and structure have to change. Hah hah!

However, this entry is not about making mumbai hub of high finance, but about a so called zombie bank and my experiences with it. When I enter the bank at 10 am every one seems to be awake and there are actual people in the counters, who talk to you, sort out your problems and very often know you and your last transaction. From opening to a locker to closing an account can be done absolutely fast. You sometimes also get a cup of tea while you are waiting to be served. This does not look zombie to me at all. Most important people in the counters do not change every week and they do not forget the commitments they make to you for the next week.
Compare this with a non-zombie bank which is more in news for floating ADRs and aspiring to become the largest bank in India and aiming to lead the charge if Mumbai ever becomes an international financial hub... It took me two months to convert an account to a joint account since every week the person behind the counter changed and each time I went back the person had no idea about my application form and supporting documents. Nothing is issued from the branch, you would have to wait for everything to come from "mumbai service centre"; cheques are home delivered, except that the couriers have strict indstructions to give it to the person whose name they are in [you are expected to wait at home because the couriers choose to come only in the afternoons or soon after you have left for office]. Even if you have an account with them they will not endorse your address. All these and much more in the name of "your own security". I feel proud that at least in my bank I have Z category security, makes me feel like Jyoti Basu. But does it really make my banking better. Not at all. Of course, a new feature has been added recently to help me serve better, I have to take a queue number even to queue up......

I think I would prefer zombie banks any day. What would you prefer?

Hype over Hapoos

Summers in Mumbai are always interesting especially in traffic junctions when the hapoos vendors vie for space with sellers of pirated books, toys and other sundry items. Many of these vendors change vocations and switch to selling hapoos during summer going back to pirated books and cheap toys when the hapoos season is over.

14 years ago when I first visited Mumbai [having spent a considerable amout of my life in backward areas such as Bihar, Kolkata and Delhi] I was curiously amused by the fact that mangoes were sold in card board boxes. I had before that never seen mangoes being sold in cardboard boxes in street corners or at traffic junctions much like some tacky consumer item. I was also shocked by the price [which still continues to shock me, although at 300 Rs a dozen every Mumbai equivalent of Tom, Dick and Harry are lapping it up]. A year later and for many years after that, I regularly saw those cardboard boxes making their leisurely journeys on the numerous carousels at Heathrow Terminal 3, as an essential part of the travelling NRI, most of whom actually carried them to sell them at even more exhorbitant prices in their corner shops. The famous hapoos has now worked its way to the US, of course in much puerer form through irradiation and all that. I am happy for the hapoos. It has been the most internationally recognised mango brand from India and given some time, it will definitely give a run for its money to those large ugly fibrous red and yellow mosters from latin america which pass off as mogoes in the west. At least our friends in the west will know what a real mango is [it is not a sour vegetable most certainly but a sweet seasonal fruit!]. I am happy too for the exporters and the orchard owners who would make a mean buck by exporting the delectable hapoos.

I, however, am of the opinion, that hapoos is a highly overated fruit in India. It is an aspirational fruit and people buy it for snob value. And quite frankly it it overpriced. And more dangerously, it has hegemonised the discourse on mangoes in India - people, at least in western India, do not seem to care for any other mangoes. It is much like the case of Nescafe and Bru which most people in India take to be the real thing which they certainly are not.

While the hoopla over hapoos is killing much of the varietly in western India, I can vouch for north and east Indians that they do not care much about hapoos/alphonso. Ask any self respecting mango lover anywhere between Delhi and Kolkata, they will probably name the famous Langra [literally lame]. In spite of its being of very high quality and dominant in the minds of people up north and east, the poor langra has not killed its lesser cousins the zardalu, safeda, malda, himsagar or the hunk of a mango called fazli. In fact, mango season follows a complicated ritual in these parts. Unlike in Mumbai, you do not start and end the season with Hapoos. it is far more complicated and graduated...

Here is how it goes at least in eastern India... At the first flush of summer say in April you start of with the fazli which is sweetest when unripe and tasteless when ripe, then move on to the tasteless but colourful sindoori which is often sour, but tastes good really since you have not had mangoes for a year. Then the yelllow safedas make their appearance, slightly better tending towards sweeter, then comes the higher quality ones like himsagar, zardalu and the rest and the climax is reached with Langra which comes towards the end of the season. The defining features of a good langra from outside are two and you can not miss them: a) they look exactly like the mangoes that your teacher taught you to draw in school b) they are still green when ripe. The defining feature inside is fibreless, not too soft and exquisitely tasting golden fruit with a very small stone and paper thin skin. Commercially, it is good value for money too. Last season I bought them in Delhi at 35 Rs a kilo [a kilo would take 5 magoes].

But alas, like all good things, the langra season does not last for more than 15 days in the summer and if you are a fan, you have to make the most during that short time. And do not look out for them from March end to September, they are not sold irradiated in cardboard packets, nor do they travel across the globe as accessories of NRIs. They are home made, home grown and are there to tickle your taste buds for 15 days a year only.

Richard Gere in Fifth Gear

Delhi usually is hot this time of the year and in the occasional presence of stars like Richard Gere and Shilpa Shetty tends to get even hotter. The temperature broke all records when the venerable Richard Gere hugged and cheek kissed the lissome Shilpa Shetty on stage at a public function. The protectors of our culture were on the streets demanding the arrest of Mr Gere [Mr Gerehas been a major supporter of Dalai Lama and that was the reason why he started coming to India but I have never heard the Chinese government demanding his arrest in the US or his externment from India, a point to be noted]

But the more interesting point to be noted was in fact, was that gesture a just social cheek pecking or was there more to it? That really depends on the cultural shades you are wearing. While Mr Gere did not even figure out that he had kicked shit. Ms Shetty initially held forth like an educated and westernised Indian woman, but actually got nervous when Mr Gere executed the dance pose and the cheek pecking became somewhat passionate. To be fair to Ms Shetty, she held her fort in front of the mediapersons and steadfastly denied any wrong intention on part of Mr Gere.

Why did people get so excited? Of course, the protectors of our culture tend to get excited at short notice. I have never seen them so excited when students from north east get raped in the streets of Delhi, nor have I seen them so excited when underage girls get pinched in DTC buses. They do not hesitate to make catcalls or unwanted passes at women. Why were they so upset then? Was there racism involved? Perhaps yes. But I think not. What was involved is more subtle and more deep rooted in our systems than perhaps we realise.

It was the deep rooted Indian pysche of reserving the right to exploit our own women and giving others the right to exploit their women. But you dare not exploit our women. The definition of our and their can be as broad as anglo saxon versus Indians, Hindus versus Muslims and as narrow as Jats and Jatavs, Rajputs and Kurmis and so on. We just love our women and reserve the right to exploit them, we do not want others to do it. Please respect that right or you will hear from us.

Just to be a devil's advocate, let me ask you this: I have seen hundreds of clips of Mr Gere but never seen him that expressive with any western woman out of screen, was he then really getting into fifth gear? What about Ms Shetty? if this is her definition of air kissing at social events in Mumbai, she surely is going to be a huge crowd puller....

Sex in the City

Maharashtra and Karnataka governments have decided that they would opt out of sex education in schools. Education being a state subject in India, the centre can not override the legislature of these states. The impact would be on the state run schools primarily, because my guess and experience from many years back is that most missionary schools and private schools provide some semblance of sex education in schools.

For us many years back, it was easy, missionary school, all boys schools and our biology teacher, Mr Mian became by default our sex education teacher. Mr Mian of course could draw extremely well with a chalk on the board and had access all sorts of colourful chlaks. So unbeknown to him the biology classes from standard 8 onwards became really colourful. Initially we giggled, then we asked clever questions and finally when all that excitement settled down we learned something.

What we learned was not much in the sense it was a functional education, we learned about various parts and their functions... It was to scientific and clinical... It certainly never helped us take critical moral and social decisions such as why a woman should not conveive before 18, why it was morally incorrect to sex before marraige, why one should be aware of diseases and hygiene etc etc. Of course, those were pre-aids days so how and why one could contract that deadly disease was till then unknown. The clinical education although interesting enough to tease a conservative teacher was useless. Do you teach a fish to swim? Do you monkey to climb trees, do you teach tiger to hunt? to you teach any animal how to procreate? No you do not... All of them learn it by instinct.

So if the schools going to provide what I called technical education on "sex" it is better not done. If on th eother hand the curriculum is going to include more broad based issues related to sex it may make sense.... Questions such when to have a baby, what health measures to take, what precautions to take, what kind of effect an unwanted child can have... etc etc may be useful...

But getting into the morality of it all can be tricky. Like all moral issues, we can only be judgemental and being judgemental with a child is either likking his/her initiatives or to take him off any learning at all this applies to sex education at all.

I therefore think that it is too tricky to get into at least in schools in our country. If for nothing else, schools which for the last 50 years have not been able to teach maths, physics and history properly should not be dumpled with soemthing as sensitive as sex education.

The second reason for schools to keep away from it is, parents have now almost outsourced every part of child rearing, ayahs, governesses, day care centres, creches, teachers, drivers, private tutors, music teachers, dance teachers, in fact an army of specilists have take over the taks of training the child. Most of these functions till 10 years back would be performed by parents. I think sex education is one which should still be with parents. This will at least ensure that every child suffers from the prejudices or openess of her own parents and do not have to suffer from the prejudices or openess of the teacher[some one else's parents]

By the way, by the time Mr Mian introduced to technical side of sex, most us seem to know much more than him.... so there goes all the education and training.

Cheers.

Mind your language

As bilinguals and trilinguals Indians have a distinct advantage overseas as well as within India about the language the choose to express themselves. The choice is of course largely determined by who you are talking to, what you want to disucss and whom you want to exclude out ofthe coversation. Say you want to badmouth Mumbai in a crowded bus and you are travelling with you can easily break into Bengali with your bengali speaking friend and rest assured that no one else will understand and respond adversely. In London, you can easily break into Hindi with most Indians leaving the sahibs to look perplexed. In Delhi you can start talking in Tamil and in Chennai in Punjabi. In Bihar you can safely break into English!
This was my wisdom for many years, having grown up among Begalis, Punjabis, Sindhis and Hindi speaking friends. But that gradually began to change as a result of some rude and some pleasant surprises as I became older.
The first experience was a shock... Standing in the admmission queue at New Delhi's JNU, I freshly from Calcutta broke into Bengali with my mates from Calcutta and started criticising not in very charitable language. Until I was told by the student standing behind told me in crisp Bengali that he was a Tamil but could speak Bengali like a native....I as chastised.
The second incident actually did not happen because I was forewarned. This was in a place called School of Oriental and African Studies in London University where I studied for 4 years. I was forewarned by seniors not to use any Indian languages especially to criticise teachers. Apparently between them, the SOAS teachers, most of them British, knew all the Indian and African languages.... I soon go the proof when I met Rachel Dwyer, a teacher, who knew more about hindi movies that half the mumbaikars put together.
But once on a vacation with friends in a really really remote village of Scotand near the Edzell castle on a hiking expedition all by ourselves, we broke into chaste hindi and was being very uncharitable to the "stupidity" and miserliness of the Scots. On the jungle track very far and out of ear shot we say two very old ladies approaching us. We had not expected to see any human being in those parts let alone two old ladies who could speak chaste Hindi since they had spent much of their childhood in what was then the Central Provinces of India. The older of the two hugged us and said Indians were like her "jigar a tukda". A very embarrassing moment avoided since being advanced in years and quite far away she had not heard our views about Scots.
The last incident happened two months back at a large business conference that we had organsed. Three speakers dropped out at the last moment, and I was left with the worst speaker of the session and the much respected and very senior session moderator and was desperately looking at picking up some good speakers from the delegates as the ultimate effort to save the day. The session moderator was the head of a very large company and a Tamil. He could see the tension on my face and gently tapped my shoulder and said in chaste bengali"Chinta Koro Na Sob Thik Hoye Jaabe" [don't worry everything will be alright]. Those were the most comforting words I have heard recently. Thanks to his confidence booster we did manage to have a very good session and end the conference very successfully.
I now have stopped doing bilaterals in a crowd and stopped taking advantage of language and do really mind my laguage.

Sleepless for Mumbai

Last week I was in Delhi, but spent a couple of sleepless nights thinking about the future of Mumbai, a city I seem to be slowly and quite unintentionally adopting to be my home town. My views on Mumbai are not private and secret and I do not hesitate to reiterate it once again: I like it in small measure, but in large measure I do not like the city... For two reasons mainly:
1. It does not teach you to struggle [weather is mild, people are mild, everything is too mild; water, sunlight, electricity are enough and easily avaialble, transport is easy, jobs are easy etc etc]. In India if your city does not teach you to struggle, if are deadmeat.
2. In spite of 1 above, it sucks quite a bit out of you slowly but surely, reminds you that your dreams are just dreams, takes a lot and gives you very little in return. It keeps you alive by giving you a subsistence that's it.
However, last few nights I have really been scared to return to Mumbai.
One reason was of course, the constant media coverage of so call lack of power supply in Mumbai and its suburbs and the impending doom thereof.... I for one am not scared of power cuts... But in Mumbai you are so helpless if that happens. because as i said earlier, the city has for generations not prepared you for a power cut. There are no invertors, generators etc etc here in Mumbai. In other parts of the country no one really cares the power supply is there or not, every one has their private arrangements.
The second reason was that there were talks of water shortage as well. Again for the same reasons Mumbaikar is not prepared to face it. She is so dependent on BMC suply that she has forgotten to make her own arrangements
The third reason was the news that BPO and ITjobs are going to be cut and Mumbai is one of the cities which is going to be majorly affected. That is going to pinch hard all those merry makers in the hypermalls
The fourth reason was that with the government tightening the money supply very seriously, there will be less of loans. I was wondering how will the Mumbaikar survive
The fifth reason was that with RBI cracking down on various bank rates, the stock market looks like a conoe in an open sea. bad luck to all those who make a killing and then buy fancy flats for cash in the posh suburbs
Finally, the biggest cause of my nightmare was the impending natural disaster. Along with bangladesh, Mumbai is going to be worst effected by rising sea level and large parts of Mumbai will be under the sea. Here again, Mubaikars have no experience of fighting natural calamities. except the July deluge a couple of years back.

I am really worried about Mumbai and Just want to tell Mumbaikars "Welcome to India my dears"

Emergency Response Team

Have you seen scenes of major train and plane accidents in India on TV. I have for many years and have come to the firm conclusion that no one who matters have seen these gory scenes on TV. Here is why.... the most riveting aspect of these scenes is a few local carrying mangled bodies to no where and a few local state police poking around the debris with lathis. In ultra urban areas like Mumbai, the scene is no different. My first memories of such a scene on coloured television was the clash of two planes over haryana on the wee hours of a foggy winter day. And my lasting memory of the scene of the accident was haryana policemen covered in blankets probing the debris with lathis. These memories were refreshed the other day when I watched the post blast scene in Mumbai on TV. Nothing much seems to have changed.

Haven't we realised in the 60 years of independence that police is not there for accident and emergency response, haven't we realised that there is no point in calling the police to the accident scene they do not know and are not expected to know the abc of emergency response, haven't we realised that security forces are not not gods or not least paramedics..... Clearly we have not. The result is all of us call up a hospital and the police in case of a major accident, terrorost attack, flood, or at best the fire brigade.

Since independence, we have riased so many special forces from teh BSF to the CISF that most people in the Home Ministry has lost count. We have, however, failed to raise on force that would have saved the lives of millions in the last 60 years... India does not have a centralised force of paramedics to response to emergency and trauma... We have spent trillions of dollars on national security but when that security is breached and ordinary citizens fall victim, we have no one to respond.

Dont you think we should have a national emergency response team with paramedics as members. This should be like any of the central security forces the only difference being that they are not fighters but saviours of lives, their jobs? to be the first on the spot, deliver on spot treatment and take them to the nearest hospital... end of work. What would they need? Ambulances, are medical emergency equipement, a few helicopters for large cities, training in paramedicine, driving skills. Where would they be based? In all district headquarters to begin with and their performance would be based on their response time... They would be commondos in a different sense. Where will the money come from? 50 per cent central government and 50 per cent corporates. We have enough money for a good cause, in the last 60 years we have created enough wealth, it is time that we use it for some good causes. This one is on top of my mind. At least, aesthetically, I do not have to see dead bodies being dragged by localvillagers and debris being poked by Police lathis....
What do you think?