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