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.