Hyderabad Blues

For long my acquaintance with Hyderabad was through history books about rich but miserly nawabs and their fabulous wealth and eccentricities especially onthe dining table on one hand and on the other the famous telengana movement in 1946. In more recent times, that view was moulded by high dowry demands [no I never thought of marrying a telegu girl at any point in time, I could have been richer] for nice boys in the marraige market. Fortunaltely though in the last few years I have had first hand experience of the city especially its various hotels, convention centres and other things that make up modern Hyderabad including the latest addition, the new airport. After savouring these modern delights in this medieval city, I am firmly of the opinion that if one has to see India's city one has to move out of Delhi and Mumbai. These two cities are old matrons surviving on borrowed make up. If you erally want to see the real beauties of the future look beyond to Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Surat, and perhaps even Chennai which is suddenly grown into beauty in middle age [some women do that trick on you].

Of course, the old Hyderabad looks as beautiful and as dirty as ever, Charminar is as majestic and Golconda fort as awe inspiring and Hussain Sagar as beautiful. But this time old and new culture had a new meaning for me. I discovered the most beautiful heritage building Chiraan Fort in Secundrabad which had been converted into a fantastic restaurant and bar complex. It was the most beautiful bar that I ever visited [and I have visited many]. Built on the model of what seemed to me the Falaqnuma Palace, this place was just out of the world. And to top it all although it was a club, they allowed non-members like me to enjoy a drink and if u are from Delhi or Mumbai a full bottle of beer at Rs 100 in a heritage builing in mid town is almost as good as free... After so many surprises, the only surprising thing left for me was that I did not get drunk.

The Child of the Nation

I was completely disappointed today when I opened the newspaper. There was just this little quarter of a page advertisement from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting commemorating the birthday of Jawahar Lal Nehru, while the whole paper was either full of pictures of scoundrels who had managed to get tickets for the forthcoming polls or full of bigger scoundrels who had not managed to get tickets... A couple of broadsheets tried valiantly to market Children's Day.... But it has clearly not reached the stature of Valentine's Day or even mother's day...
It is a sad day for our democracy that on the eve of elections, we forget the one man who fought everyone else within and outside his party, tolerated ridicule from colonoial masters and the world but stuck to one point that has made India what it is: Universal Adult Suffrage. And this was at a time when in the other large democracy people of colour were not allowed to vote and in other smaller democracies women were still fighting for their right to elect their representatives. Of course, in most countries of Asia and Africa people did not even know that there was a system through which they could actually elect their own representatives.
My humble suggestion is that the birthday of the first Child of the Nation, Jawahar Lal Nehru should be declared as the univesal suffrage day and all of us who never vote take a pledge to respect our demicratic right and cast our vote in all elections. Thus making sure that we do not fritter away one of the most prized legacies.
It is also a bit sad that on Children's Day children have to go to school while on Vishwakarma Puja they are forced to take a holiday

Like Father, Like Son!

I am not particularly obsessive about cricket nor am I very fond of Bengali heroes. I therfore am not sure why I am makng this entry on cricket and on a bengali connected with cricket. But there you are.
Once upon a time, many years back a father would take his son to practice sessions. The father, I think was a member of Cricket Association of Bengal. The indulgent father was ridiculed by his friends and acquaintances on his one obsession, to make his son a test cricketer and play for India. Those were the days when the economy and polity had ensured that the otherwise cocky Bengalis had lost their self-confidence. While people made the right noises in front of the father, when his back was turned, they smirked at the overambitious father and the impossible dream that he had. Of course, as they say the rest is history.... If the father was dogged in his determination, the son was the top dog of Indian cricket for many years.... if the father carried the onus of the son's success, the son carried the onerous task of the country's success; if the father wanted to establish his son as a famous Indian, the son wanted to put his country as the world leader in cricket... Both of them carried out their tasks with grit and determination and at the end succeeded. One is still a young man, the other past his prime. His son has given him enough to enjoy for the rest of his life... I think, like Martin Luther, Chandi Ganguly too had a dream, but unlike Luther, he was able to fulfil it in his lifetime and sit back to enjoy the fruits.
If you think Saurav Ganguly was great as a cricketer, captain and a leader, please do remember to give some credit to Chandi Ganguly.
As they say in Hindi
Baap Ka Beta/ Sipahi Ka Ghora... Kuch nahi to Thora Thora!

Jai Maa Kaali

I remember as a child, every Bengali family of repute and ill-repute would have a very gaudy and hastily framed photo of Maa Kaali reclining on the puja box or adorning a wall to be worshipped with vigour especially by the elderly in the family. The design and printing were quite basic probably crude: the goddess was painted in garish blue with several hands holding arms, a chain of skulls around the neck as garland, a severed head in one hand standing with one foot on the chest of supine Lord Shiva, the divine consort, her decency covered artfully by her long hair. The garishness of the colours or the gaudiness of the whole concept did not affect the devotees. These pictures were usually designed along the lines of calendar art of that time.
I also remember, the bahurupiya who came calling every now and then, painted in blue, with a tin tongue sticking out of the mouth and long tresses of jet black hair on the head dressed as Kaali - it was a bit scary to see a man dressed like that but nonetheess awe inspiring and definitely a good business idea on part of the bahurupiya. Of course, as a budding intellectual, I also knew early that this was one of the roops of Maa Kaali - the destructive roop.
After so many years it was rather fun to see the gorgeous Hiedi Klum dressed exactly as the Kaali depicted in those early calendar art posters. I thought it was a cool idea to resurrect something many my age have grown up with and perhaps forgotten in course of their life's journey. Of course, hindu groups in the US were quick to protest this "insult" to their deity [I doubt how many of them are Kaali worshippers who remains till today a deity local to some parts of India notably Bengal]. I think it was very thoughtful of the now ageing model to pose as Maa Kaali - the ultimate symbol of feminism in my part of the world. One vital element of that motiff was missing - lord shiva, the divine consort lying at her feet. It would have been great if Seal could do that for us. I guess just as Heidi was painted blue, Seal would have to be painted white [for Lord Shiva for some strange reason, was always white in those photos I remember].
Thank you Heidi for reviving a childhood memory after fuelling several middle age fantasies. What will it be next time? Sheronwali Mata?

Celebrating the Humble Plastic

Santosh Desai, the famous brandman, write I regular column in the Times of India. I have always wondered what qualifies a person to write "freewheeling" columns in national dailies? But to stick to the point I wanted to make. I was inspired to make this entry by his article on steel which appeared today. For me it is the humble plastic which needs to be celebrated today as a great business facilitator, great leveller and a great insider to all that we do.
Remember those silly paper bags made by poor widows and chidren, which could not even hold soggy salt [there was no plastic packed tata salt then], remember those metal buckets that used to adorn most bathrooms and those aluminium mugs which kept millions of bums clean every morning? Remember the humble bathroom tin door on a wooden frame? They have all lost out to the plastic and various versions of it. On the dining table there are plastic plates, plastic cutlery sometimes even plastic food [I am exaggerating]. In case you forgot not many years back airlines used to provide real cutlery not the plastic one which can only poke yout tongue or cut your lips. Not to forget milk in glass bottles, coke in glass bottles. We have travelled a long way since then one brand of whiskey very successfully switched to glass bottles for 500 ml servings.
Then of course there is the great recycle potential of plastic as office bags, as tiffin carrier, as everything really.... you just have to look what we get in and what we get out of our houses and you would be convinced that the civilisation as we know it, would cease to exist wihtout plastic. This is the biggest triumph of humanity in recent years and we are like typical humans celerating the success in such a way that we even describe human emotions with reference to plastic: plastic smile for example..... It looks like soon we will have to shrink in order to make room for plastic in this planet. My personal observation is that in India Bombay is the real plastic city both literally and figuratively.
Victory to Plastic!

Amazing Biharis

It is amazing how Biharis continue to be in the news in spite of no known bomb blasts in Patna sicne the salad days of JP Narain and George Fernandes. In this day and age it takes a lot to be in the news for a people and state which does not have a Narendra Mody, a Mamta Banerjee, any serial blasts, no cyclones, no big investments, No Behen Mayawati not even an Amar Singh.
How do Biharis do it year after year? And prove that when it comes to newsworthiness it is unique. It is a simple recipe really.... but supreme sacrifice mixed with a little violence turned inside. The sacrifice story is simple... either there are floods or they are beated up on other states. As perhaps the largest group of internal and seasonal migrants in India, Biharis have been threatened from Kashmir to Maharashtra. This trend is likely to extend to Bangalore soon [my driver's cousin has a pan shop in Bangalore and he is eating up local jobs there, I guess] and perhaps reach Chennai very soon. One day it might also cross the Palk Strait and enter Sri Lanka. In the north, the past time of Bihari baiting is likely to go any further than Kashmir unless, but who knows the next frontier may be Afghanistan or Pakistan may be even China. In any case I will probably not live to see the day when a prospective US presidential candidate makes "Bihari Bhagao" the main plank of her election campaign. With the expanding frontiers of migration and unlimited supply of migrants, Bihar is sure to continue to grab headlines just by the virtue of being beated up by everyone across the country and perhaps across the globe [that will be true globalisation Bihari style].
The second method of getting in to the newsheadlines is natural with extremes of weather forces working on a poor people, Bihar is going to be in the in the monsoons, summer and winter. Unless the weather becomes moderate or the people become rich enough to fight the elements. Both seem very unlikely in the very long run.
It is by being at the receiving end of the weather and every body else that Bihar manages to beat otehr states in grabbing coverage. Sometime when it does not work [rare is such an occasion] there is always the inward looking violence - just kill a few people of other caste and get killed; or burn some trains in your own state; or attack trains passing through your own state. Endorsing the negative perception that most of the country holds about Bihar. Who is to blame? I do not know. But two things are simple: a migration is an economic and social process and cannot be stopped by clubbing a few Biharis. Second, politicians who have screwed up the state along caste and communitarian lines have no right to preach to others who are treating Biharis as outsiders.
By the way whatever happened to the floods in Bihar this year? Has the breach in Kosi been mended? Have people returned to their villages? How did they celebrate Diwali? No news? Not even a human interest story?

Diwali and a Mature Consumer

It is long believed by marketers that children influence the consumption patterns of parents not only in relation to goods and servies consumed by them, but also with regards to goods and services consumed by the adults in the family. It is around this belief that some proud parents happily declare "you know my ten year old son told me not to buy Laura but settle for Civic" or that VAIO was better than HP". it is little wonder that many of the so called kids channel are full of advertisements that have nothing to do with children. I too had a taste of these baby mature consumers in the last few days two. In the first instance, my daughter asked me one evening while I was trying to put her to bed "dad do children make crackers"? I said yes several lakh of them are employed in making crakers and that there was a whole history of Child labour beginning with the Industrial Revolution were little boys where send down the mines and up the chimneys. The next demand was obviously to buy firecrackers "lots of them" but withiout noise. It made me realise how tiny consumers were very mature... there was guilt of consumption, there was greed for consumption and there was awareness behind what was to be consumed at th instersection of guilt and greed. In the second instance, while watching TV with my daughter, I noted with excitement the ad for a famous children's movie and before I could tell my daughter "we must watch it together", she said "how stupid, do they expect us to watch a movie at 9PM on Diwali evening"!
I am learning fast from my new teacher, what to consume, how to consume, how to prioritise comsumption and what not to consume......

Prime and Sub-Prime

At the sub-prime of my life and with lack of a degree in economics it is a bit of a dare devilry to talk about the so called sub-prime crisis that is causing much heart-burn everywhere. Don't worry I am not going to go deep into the problem and suggest authentic remedies - there are hosts of people doing just that [they never read English and are not aware of the adage "too many cooks spoil the broth"]. I am here just to make my little bowl of soup and move on. The so called sub-prime crisis which is the grandmother of all crises now faced by financial institutions across the globe, has been played out in a way that seems to give the impression that poor americans took loans and were unable to play. And by implication, poor people across the world are bad news for lenders. This inference is dangerous: firstly because poor people need loans more than rich; and more importantly, empirical evidence from micro financing institutions show that poor people have the best record of repayment [he pays up for he needs another loan after repayment].
What has not been brought out clearly that the present crisis has been brought about by the greed of a few persons, who had huge powers of manipulating, cheating and otherwise doing anything possible to increase their variable salaries and performance based bonuses. They were usually very rich people and they wanted to become richer. The surprising thing is not that such people would be greedy. What is surprising thing is that they could hold everyone including mighty governments to ransom and get away scott free in the name of free markets. It is time that some of these people were brought to book and made to face the music. And the sub-prime crisis should be promptly renamed super prime crisis.

JB My Friend and Teacher

My friend, my former colleague, a most enchanting gentlemen is no more. He was not yet 60, to be precise he was just 57 or 58. He had gone for a routine check up, a chest congestion problem and was suggested a bipass. He never came back to us after that. This was on the day that this year the Durga Pujas began.
JB what the fuck you thought you were doing? Just going off like that? Why could you not hold on for infinity? Fight the inefficiency of the doctors and nurses and live to tell is the tale? Why should we suffer becuase of your softness, kindness and gentleness? Your caring for us? Your gentle ways? Your ways as a gentleman? Why should we suffer ur absence?
Remember, what u said to me about ur grandfather? About your experience as a student in Delhi? About making me knowledgeable on the history of Assam? And much more?
Why did u have to do this? Where will we learn our manners? Our correctness? Our behaviour while enjoying rich gossip? How will we know what class is? And what classiness is? How will we know what it means to pitch for quality rather than quantity?
You have ditched us early JB, and this is not fair......... All of us are left shallower since your deeper nuances will no longer be with us any more.
I have never me Romola, but I hear that she wore the pants in the family... Bullshit.... if she wore the pants, you certainly wore the suits.....
JB this was no way to go, please come back if you can.
PS: In case u do not know who JB was, his picture is above left.......

Power Surplus or Surplus of Power

Read in the day's newspapers that Delhi would soon be power surplus. No this is no thanks to the not yet signed and sealed nuclear deal thantIndia has recently signed. It is about the fact that Delhi is going to have more electricity than it can consume. The efficient and erudite Chief Minister of Delhi has a very subtle way of campaigning for elections, so one is not sure if this is yet another announcement. I am also not sure if this was a "bought news" [read advertorial] or a "free news".
Even with so many uncertain thoughts, this is the best news that the citizens of this city have got in years. For many years, Delhi has lacked two essential components that make great cities ample water and uninterrupted power supply. It amazes me that a whole modern city could thrive and grow on all sides without sufficient electricity and water. But Delhiites being what they are have artfully managed that.
So no longer buying expensive invertors, batteries, generators etc. [what would happen to these guys?]
But even after everthing has been saud and done much remains to be said. For example: Why did it take so long for a city full of powerful people to get sufficient power? Does this mean that the powerful people in the city never actually suffered from lack of power? Does power surplus mean assured good quality power where we can also do away with the UPS like in Mumbai? But then that would mean a differnt story altoghther. For now, I will take the news or advertorial for what it really is - a subtle election time propaganda.

Al Zajira, CNN and Terrorism

I feel so proud these days as an Indian. We have not yet sent a man to moon and we have had to lean on our Russian friends to send a person to the orbit, but we have come of age so far as terrorism is concerned. Gone are the days when people manning the PMO [Prime Minister's Office] could sit back smugly and declare the hand of our friends across the border was at work in a case of terrorist attack. We now have our home grown, home bred geniuses doing it for us.... Delhi, Ahmedabad, Surat, Bangalore, BAD or worse, are our making. These are our boys not some organised Soldier and Gentlemen across the border.... . We have finally arrived in an area we have been lagging since the 1980s when some of our sikh brothers decided there is more to be made in business than in terrorism and renewed the efforts to migrate to cooler climes.
I do not want to delve into the causes behind terrorism and the factors that will bring them down. There are people who are paid to do this [yes they get paid at the level of an union secretary even after retirement and some of their grandchildren have just become jobless post the failure of i-banks in the US so they need the money much more than we do]
The point is about the media...... Isn't terrorsim more a handiwork of CNN, Al Zajira, NDTV, IndiaTV and all other media? No? Ok.
Media would say that most people "like" terrorism on TV as much as they like seeing mothers of children who have died in 30 feet ditches, or fathers whose sons have been arrested by police as terrorists, or boys whose brothers have been killed because some rich business man or rich peasant did not want to lose honour.
Even if we want it that way, is it the business of the media to show what we want? Aren't there are some dos and donts, principles, ethics, operating principles? No?
Then let me say on behalf of a depraved nation, we want to see porn everyday especially those involving nicely done up white women and those revealing private lives of our leader, and especially those telling us whose child studies where and whose wife sleeps with whom.
We as audience are dying to know these things. Please give us a break from the gory details of people dying of terrorist attacks and please let us have some fun on TV by showing on "popular demand" the private lives of politicians and journalists. We would send your TRP shooting through the roof just give us a chance.

Delhi Women and Bearded Men

Just above the headlines the Hindustan Times carried this smaller headline leading to a news in the inside pages of the paper " Delhi women prefer to kiss clean shaven men". The Headlines screamed "Police Release Sketches of Suspected Bombers". This was a few days back and the headlines referred to the bomb blasts in Delhi.

Apart from the obvious surrealism of these two lines appearing together, the survey raises interesting questions [Quite apart from the most obvious question which shaving razor manufacturer could have sponsored the "research"?].

The first question that came to my mind was what type of women did the survey interview? Please note that Delhi is home to three of the most powerful women in India Mrs Sonia Gandhi, Mrs Pratibha Patil and Mrs Sheila Dikshit - were these and others such as Mrs Renuka Chaudhary, Mrs Jayanti Natarajan, Mrs Sushma Swaraj and Mrs Meira Kumar interviewed for the survey? I mean these are women of substance, if they were not a part of the survey on behaviour of women, the survey has no meaning.

The second question that came to my mind was in a city dominated by our Sardar and Jat friends who are very particular about their facial hair - the whole hog in the case of former and on upper lip in case of the latter - are our sisters in Delhi going Kissless for generations? Is this leading to further social tensions? Should our brothers in Delhi show some TLC to our Delhi sisters and take up that offer from the razor manufacturer to stem the tide of social tension?

The third question was more sinisiter - Do these surveys really matter to the Delhiwalla? We do not ask women of their opinion, nay dont even consider that they exist except when we feel naughty and want to pinch them and in any case most of the times we kill them even before they are born.....

There are surely better ways to sell razors to Delhi men... [what about " A lethal steel weapon, well crafted to kill and maim - you can also shave with it"]

Amen

PS: Look at the picture carefully, Aren't shaving razors beginning to look more and more like potato peelers? What does that make you, Brother?

Hardening Up

It has happened to me quite a few times in quite a few places. The first time it happened was when I was 14 years old and standing in a rather violent queue for a first day first show in my native land. A boy of my age decently attired came up to me and said that he had come from the nearby town and had lost his parents and did not have the bus fare to go back. I trusted him and gave him two rupees [the cost of the cinema ticket was three rupees just to give u a sense of "relativity"]. Crooked that I was even at that age, I started thinking if I had done the right thing or if I was royally cheated [My friends took me for a fool] and I promised not to be so gullible again.
The next time it happended was in Calcutta again at a cinema ticket counter, this time I was old enough to watch adult movies. A smartly dressed gent came up to me and on the pretext of losing his wallet asked for 25 rupees. I hesitated for a moment and then give away 25 rupees [a dress circle ticket at New Empire cost only 5.75 rupees then, u get the "relativity".
The last time it happened was in New Delhi railway station one fine morning when I was catching a train to Bihar. Again well-dressed gentleman with a wife in tow came up to me and said they they too were victims of pickpockets and had lost their money and tickets to Patna. Yes once again, I forked out 300 rupees again with that nagging feeling at the back of my head "was I being taken for a ride?".
Many years passed without trouble and things started improving. In fact for six years in my small way, I started paying a pound to homeless, buskers and drunks in various nooks and crannies of London. But the deal was simple, you give money for food or beer [no busker claimed to have been cheated by a recording company and no drunk claimed to buy vitamins]. And I started thinking world had changed while I was getting older - we were moving towards more transparency and clear RoI on charities.
So when this old lady stood in front of my seat in the AC first class compartment of Rajdhani Express one evening at Mumbai Central and claimed that she wanted to go back to Azamgarh and needed six hundred rupees, I hesitated checked my head first and then my heart, the latter once again won and I parted with the money feeling rather smug having helped an elderly person reach her family.
My happiness lasted for two weeks. Exactly a fornight later under exactly the same circumstances, I found the same lady in front of me with the same story asking for exactly the same amount of money. I will not tell you what I did... But all these and many other stories came to my mind that night and I was convinced that all my life I was gullible and a victim of cheats.
Now I am a hardened man, [I have even stopped paying the beggar at Defence Colony the customary one rupee that I paid everyday for three years].
Can you blame me? I keep feeling guilty though, especially when I pass under the Andheri flyover in Mumbai or the Moolchand crossing in Delhi.

End of the World

My seven year old daughter asked me last night before going to bed: "Dad are there going to be Earthquakes tomorrow? Are we all going to die". I explained to her that these were rumours floated by people who did not know what was happening and what were the implications of the experiments carried out by CERN. She was assured and went off to a peaceful sleep.
But I was not very reassured myself and sat up and read up about the experiment and the arguments for and against it.
Now I am of a scientific bent of my and am fully aware that from a particular perspective, we live under the threat of extinction every day what with so many zombie like asteroids, planetoids, cosmic rays, planets going around the solar system, it is most surprising that we are still around after so many billions of years. You just need to look at the surface of the moon to know what I mean.
However some fundamental questions came to my mind and I list them in no particular order:
1. While scientists were planning this mega planet blower experiment, Indians were begging to be introduced to much less harmless nuclear suppliers group and people were seriously debating if India should be allowed further nuclear tests. I found it ironic.
2. CERN are the same group of people who discovered quite accidentally the Internet while researching some aspects of nuclear physics. It's a bit like Christopher Columbus... He became a famous discoverer after having preciously failed to discover what he wanted to doscover. I mean how seriously should we take cooks who set out to make samosas and end up making rasgullas instead [delicious though they might be]?
3. Fundamentally, how would we benefit if we are able to know precisely what happened after the big bang? Will it help us in any practical way? I know where I could have used that 5.5 billion dollars more fruitfully.
4. Should not there be more information sharing and debate before some such groups start on some such experiments? I mean here people are stripping naked to save some whales from wily Japanese and here there is not even a modicum of debate over what some people think is the end of the world. Remember human cloning is banned in many countries becuase of its moral implications.
5. Finally, I trust the scientists to the extent that they are not sucidal and will start off an experiment which will kill them first. But then who knows? It was after all some very gentlemanly but nutty scientists who handed over the atomic bomb to Oppenheimer.
6. Finally, please do not take such opportunities to seek the services of God. He will not be of much help, he never is.
But by God! if the experiments goes horribly wrong what a way it will be to go..... I wonder will it end with a bang or a whimper.

Made in America: Bill Bryson

According to the author this book is about America's contribution to the English language. But that is just the sub-text. The book really is one of the best history text books for anyone [and I guess there should be many in India] who wants to know a little bit about American history.

But I am getting ahead in the story. Let me begin by two confessions: 1. I have never been the US [that is saying something in this day and age!] 2. I had very little knowledge about American history till I read this book [Again that is saying something because since High School through to PhD, I have read only history. But then a gentleman called Thomas Babington Macaulay and his Indian followers had ensured that I knew more about Tudors and Stuarts than about the Boston Tea Party]

I am not going to summarise the book here since it is one of those books which has to be read and experienced. But just inform you that next time when you are in the US and you are not the type who would carry loads of rice and dal, cook yourself the same food everyday, stick to your community, save virtually more than you earn and look for Green Card from the time of your arrival; you must read this book. It will make you immesely knowledgeable about America and allow you to talk intelligently. The book starts at the beginning even before the Pilgrims [we are told that these were by far not the first settlers and by no means the best set of people]; talks about the several bunglings of Christopher Columbus, take you thorough the formation of the Union, the constitution, the civil war, and all that is American, language, sports, business, advertising and even sex.

The size of the book is intimidating, but once you start reading it you will find it engrossing: each page is like a new discovery.

And this is NOT the book which begins with the now famous Bryson line "I come from Des Moines, someone had to!" Yet I read the whole book but could not find the answer to a question that has been in my mind for 20 years now. In any international gathering an American [US] will state her/his name and the name of the city [even if it is Des Moines and little known outside the county: "Hi I am Bill Bryson from Des Moines"] This is completely contrary to the international custom. I have never heard an Indian saying "Hi I am Subho from Katihar" not a Japanese saying "I am Sugihara from Kyoto". Rarely a Brit would announce his/her city even if s/he is from London, Nor have a met a Rene from Niece. All of us have the natural habit of declaring our place of origin/domicile in an hierarchical order. Thus if I am in Bihar with the Biharis, I would say I am from Katihar; if I am in Delhi with people from other states, I would say I am from Bihar and if I am in London with people of many nationalities, I would say I am from India and then go on to explain my state and town. This, I believe is the general rule for all except Americans.

Mr Bryson does not mention why is this so. And I have not yet been able to develop a theory around it. If you have any theories please share them with me, else, I guess I would have to make that long overdue journey to the land of Mark Twain.

That Time of the Year

It is that time of the year when the place in north east Bihar where I grew up is in the news for the right reason. But even the right reason is not very right and certainly not bright. At this time of the year, that region is in the news not because some MLA killing his rival, or one caste killing a dozen of another in an evening of macho sports not even that of a minister caught with his pants down, no train accidents either. It is that time of the year when my favourite part of the world for the last half a century [I have lived through 40 of those years] has a divine and devastating visitation in the form of floods surrounded or enclosed as it is by three riviers which are either very large or very wily or both: the Ganga, Kosi and the Mananda. the last two rushing to merge in the Ganga to the south.
For those who are usually upset at what is no more than waterlogging in our cities like Mumbai and now increasingly Delhi would note that this area is visited by floods [not water logging] every year for half a century.
Imagine a situation where there is almost clear sky but water rising inside your house or fields in dealthly silence. The scariest part is that you will not know how high the water will rise. Every year it is high enough for a quater of the population of this area [what used to to be the old Purnea district now divided into many others] seeking shelter along with their worldly possessions on sundry embankments or railway line[if these are spared] and surviving anywhere between 10 to 15 days each year on dry chidwa and gur thrown at them from helicopters by a "sympathetic government". Before they went back to their villages to salvage whatever they could. In some areas the rains, flood and the water logging seamlessly merges with the bitter winter [but that is another story]
This is the environment which gives rise to heartwarming stories like the one in which a poisonsous snake and a man spents three nights in perfect harmony on a tree-top just above the water level each too respectful of the other's situation.
This year though, the situation is slightly different: No do not worry I am not going to make you feel happy by saying that the situation is better [situations never get better in my part of the world]. In point of fact, the situation is far far worse than one can imagine. The most wily river of all, Kosi has this year decided to change its course. It has made a breach of 3 miles which is growing at the rate of 200 metres a day and carving out a new course towards the Ganga 100 kms downsrtream. There is a fair possibility that some of the districts in the upper reaches on the boarder with Nepal will cease to exist after the new route of intercourse between Kosi and Ganga is completed and some of the districts further south will be irreparably damaged.
The best part of the story is that very few will ever know of this and yet fewer will act on it. After all who cares about Bihar anyways!

[The accompanying picture taken by an overseas visitor and used without permission]

Mumbai Meri Jaan

If you happen to read three relatively recent books on Mumbai, Shantaram, Millennium City and Sacred games, you will not fail to notice that Mumbai continues to be the most captivating city in India both in terms of dreams and aspirations on one hand and the reality. Shantaram is a narrative of the experiences of a man, Millennium is part fiction part truth and Sacred Games is a pure fiction based on "what possibly happens" in Mumbai. But if you read them together, you will realise that so far as Mumbai is concerned it is difficult to tell where fiction ends and facts begin. To me they appeared interchageable so far as the great city is concerned.
Another striking point is that once you start writing about the city, you just can not stop. Look at the size of all the three books I mentioned.... each of them looks and feels like a brick. Of course Sacred Games takes the cake followed closely by the other two. It would seem that the authors just could not stop writing. And if you keep in mind that all three books describe incidents of only a few years and not decades or centuries of the city's history - you ought to be impressed.
However, missing is all these mega narratives, although there are slivers of this in all and most notably in Shantaram, is the life of the ordinary person. It would be fascinating to chronicle the life and times of an ordinary citizen with all its ups and downs. Unfortunately, I do not read Marathi very well and have not had an opportunity to look for Marathi books on the subject. I am sure there are a few around. However, I have had the opportunity to read a four volume biography of a Bengali who was born in 1899 and became famous after he fled home in Calcutta. Among the various places he fled to was of course Mumbai. The name will not be known today but he was a cult director in 1930s and 40s making such movies as Yahudi Ki Beti. Premankur Atorthi was his name and his voluminous biography is titled "Mahasthabir Jataka" .
Not too many people can read Bengali these days, I am therefore, planning to translate the book and I can assure you Atorthi's description of Mumbai before the first world war will give you goosepimples and put many of the recent authors to shame. Especially fascinating for me was his description of pavement dwellers and fighting among gangs of beggars.
I hope I will find some time to soon to start translating the book.

Inflation in Amar Colony

5 years ago when I moved into a new locality in Delhi, Amar Colony behind my residence was the nearest market one could go to for sensible shopping. But then situated in the middle of a "refugee" colony with houses built like little steel trunks stacked on top of each other, there was not much to the market. You went there only when the posher shops in GK1 markets did not provide the services or goods that you might just require - shortening a new set of trousers, colouring a dupatta, buying note books, art papers, razai or fresh samosas or locally made farsan. You get the slant.
Over the years, there has been a cleaning out process, the toy shop has become so big that Vikki, the owner, young that he is can still dream of giving Hamleys a run for their money in his lifetime, the local milk and paneer shop going by the now famous name of Gopala actually stocks Mishti Doi as well as multigrain bread, there are a few export huts where you can buy original addidas and nike at "affordable" prices, the local confectionary, Junejas, is stocked with all sorts of colourful bottles including a few of English mustard, and packets of exotic chocolates. The Nokia shop looks swank, the Coton showroom looks is full of posh ladies - the crowd of course comes down from as far as Defence Colony and GK2. The small tailor shop, the razai shop and the momowalas are still around as are the cycle rickshaws, but certaily there are more Honda cities and Corollas than Maruti Zens parked all over the place.
This is the market I frequent now and on my last visit, the toy shop known rather sweetly as KiddiLand had a queue at the entrance, inside it looks more like a godown where free toys are being distributed than a well stocked shops frequented by doting parents from Defence Colony. At the milk shop Gopala, it took around 10 minutes to get the attention of the salesperson, at the humble stationery shop at least 10 teenagers were crowding and mobbing the elderley owner. And I did forget to mention, the newly opened Cafe Coffee Day was full too. At Junejas, one had to take recourse to the elbow trick to find one's way. Even the humble but good GP who is gradually building up his practice, now charges Rs 200 at least per visit and has patients lined up.
Those who say we are hit with 12 per cent inflation must visit Amar Colony and breathe a sigh of relief. The news of inflation has not yet reached these parts.

what is happiness

don't know:)
but I am happy in a way for my age::)
I can eat where i want to
I never have to go to a place where there is no loo
I can fart when I want to
I can buy the cd I want to
I can watch porn and people think I am senile
I can abuse my coworkers, and they say he has the right to do so
I can come to office late and my colleagues are happy that i at least turned up for work
I think my daughter is the preetiest and the brightest in the class
I pee with the rim down, ohters can go to the alternative loo
I can sing aloud in the loo and people generally say I sing well
I have the time to read one book every night
I can say fuck off to my employer [ if i see them]
I think people who work for me take me to be good
I love people I love
I hate people I hate
Many more......................................
I am generally happy

Need Based and Want Based Consumption

Staunch believers in market forces like Dr Monmohan Singh, Montek Singh Ahluwalia and P Chidambaram have suddenly changed track and are actively colluding with non-believers in market forces to control the bogey of inflation and why not. No one minds cutting ideological corners in an election year and no one blames them for doing so. of course they would argue, as all market wallahs to this has nothing to do with market mechanisms, if it was a free market then inflation would not have happened, this is a market failure blah blah blah. No wonder we have some of the best ecomomists of the world in India engaged in the worst ecomonic policies since the days of Paul Baran [he was I think the PM's economic adviser for a short period in 1950s]

I think it is best to leave inflation a free hand rather than tinker with it. In the past tinkering with the eocnomic foces have had disastrous result and this time around we have no reason to assume otherwise.

Till a generation back we had a middle class polulation that decided to buy something only when it was a necessity. Nothing that was not desperately needed was ever bought however rich you were. And the need ot lack of it was justified in various ways..... if you are leaving in a small town why do you need to buy a car, travelling is much faster by rickshaw.... Why do u need ACs for three months in a year? just bear it out... Fridge is not a good thing the quality of food is not preserved! Cauliflowers in summer are not tasty stick to bhindi.....

They knew the value of everything

That was then, things have been different since alomost a generation.... u like it u buy it, what use u are going to put it to or if it has any use at all or not will be decided later..... best example is that of Gurgaon where the gentry have on an average 3 ACs per flat in town where there is hardly any electricity for three hours in a day. Or on Mumbai where everyone seem to have a big car, never mind if there is just one road for all of them.

We know the price of everything and value of nothing.

I find it laughable that the same set of people who taught us the principles of free market liberalisation etc 17 years back are now asking us to exercise restraint..... when we have forgotten what restraint means.

For us we have been there done that and been here doing this it's a great fun to watch all these.

If I were serious about checking inflation I would recall Kaushik basu back from Cornell and give him a freehand: )

The picture is that of Kaushik Basu taken from the internet

Is the Sun Rising Over Bihar?

As a young boy growing up in Bihar one of the less lurid and suggestive local songs I heard went something like this.... "धीरे धीरे लागे कलाई थामने; उनको ऊँगली थामना ग़ज़ब हो गया" This was sung by a woman, narrating the fact that "misfortune" stuck her the day she gave an inch to a wily man! This song could not have been a more realistic representation to what happened in Bihar in the last 60 years since independence, especially since the mid-1970s - a period which also marked the height of political movement in बीihar under the leadership of the formidable JaiPrakash Narain. Those were heady days when most Biharis thought that the Sun would rise in Bihar. Little did they realise that that was the beginning of a long sunset for Bihar. Each successive government since then has taken advantage of the ungli [finger] and gone for the kalai [wrist] and much more... and Bihar all the while has acted as the helpless girl who can't say no, taken over by the persuation.... The result was for all of us to see.
It might sound unbelievable to many that till the early 1980s when my cousins used to literally fail exams due to what was known in Calcutta as Load Shedding, we in a small town in Bihar did not know what power cuts were. Of course, by the 1990s, we did not know and did not need to know that there was a something called the Bihar State Electricity Board we were connected on private gensets.
But for the past two years, we have been hearing informally that things are changing and last week there was some proof in the sense that a leading English daily carried the story of turnaround in Bihar as headlines. It was after many years, most certainly since I started reading English newpapers daily, that Bihar made the headlines for all the right reasons.
Of course, there is still a long way to go to reach just where we were in 1980s. But it still feels good to know that there is a group of people who are taking us back to where we began.
We biharis are practical people, please do not show us dreams of an utopia, light at the end of the tunnel, bright future etc etc. Just please take us back to what we left behind, give us back what we had, we will be happy with it. In fact we never wanted more than that...

The Last Mughal and the Last Sahib

THis is my review of THE LAST MUGHAL by William Dalrymple for a portal.
Short background about the author
William Dalrymple understands India, Indian history and his readers inascending order. That is what makes him a very good writer and a reasonably sound historian writing on South Asia. The fact that his writing is not determined by academic exigencies such as the pressures of a thesis, the load of a prejudice or the hassles of artificial deadlines allows him the supreme freedom of choosing a topic and going all out to collect sources. And the fact that he deliberately writes for a larger audience than the incestuous circle of South Asian historians, allows him to present history in a form that is at once not intimidating to the layman and very challenging to the more professional practitioner of the craft.
"The Last Mughal"
It is a biography of the last Mughal Emperor (that is the romantic side of Dalrymple) but it is firmly rooted in the social, political and cultural changes of the times (that is the historian and the story teller in Dalrymple). It is a voluminous book, but its essence both as a literary and a history treatise can be captured a few short paragraphs:1. It fills up a major lacuna in the historiography of India in the sense that it supplements the works of Erick Stokes (for NorthwesternProvinces, modern UP) and Rudrangshu Mukherjee (Awadh) among others, who have undertaken in depth regional studies to bring to light the complexitiesof the Uprising of 1857. Before "The Last Mughal" Delhi was, rather, strangely, left out of such in depth treatment.2. For less strange reasons, Bahadur Shah Zafar never enjoyed theattention that his more illustrious forefathers received from Indian historians. Although, in many senses, he presided and lived through over a complex socio-political transformation that few of his predecessors except perhaps Babur did. Dalrymple successfully puts the focus back on this "black sheep" of the family.3. Finally, and this is very important, Dalrymple clearly shows how complicated simple social divisions like class, caste, race, gender and loyalties were before, during and immediately after the mutiny.4. In terms of substance, the book is rich is use of sources, nuanced in its arguments and very textured in the way that arguments and substantiation are knitted together.
From a historian's perspective:
Another new regional study on the events of 1857 - filling up a major void; unearthing of new sources - another big contribution to the historiography. But nothing new in terms of argument. Believe you me, we already knew the broader arguments around race and religion. In fact, Dalrymple's extra leap to connect the Jehadis of 1857 totheir current cousins seems like what it really is - a giant and unnecessary leap.
From a reader's perspective:
That is the way to write history, each character stands out on its own. And although it will not be apparent to an ordinary reader, a trained eye will not miss the hard work that must have gone to flesh out each character with such meticulous detail. And Oh boy! What a style of writing - captivating to say the least. It does read like a best selling thriller.
Lessons for the historian: "
Isn't that the way we should write our history so that more and more people read and understand what really happened and how?"

In the Line of Duty

It is often said in not very loud tones that civil servants in India are neither civil nor servants but uncivil masters. But I had seen a remarkably civil but very effective civil servant albeit a very minor one in the form of a Train Ticket Examiner while commuting in a suburban train in Kolkata. Naihati is a quaint little junction forty kilometres from Sealdah [one of the railway terminals in Kolkata] and the suburban trains usually stop there for a couple of minutes more than the usual start and stop formula in other stations. I was travelling back to my place from Kolkata in a local train and as soon as the train stopped at Naihati a very serious and scholarly looking man in think blackframmed specs and the mandatory black coat boarded the train. There was no doubt that he was upto checking tickets. Little did I know that he was not the usual bribe taking, conniving ticket checker. Nor did I know then that he was not foolish enough to arrest and fine ticketless travellers [ticketless passengers in Kolkata are often violent]. Nonetheless, he carried on his duty in the most unobtrusive but effective way. He placed himself in the middle of the compartment and announced loudly in Bangla "Those who do not have tickets please stand up and allow those with tickets to sit on the seats". Believe you me, there were people who stood up and people who took those vacant seats. By the time I realised what happened, he had moved on to the next compartment. Later I gathered from the murmur around that the man and his style were well known to the regular passengers.
I also gathered that the passengers in this instnace were lucky. For there was another ticket examiner at Naihati who chased ticketless travellers like a mad dog. He was reputed to have jumped the overbridge stairs in order to catch ticketless travellers and broken his limbs a couple of times.
If you think these civil servants were weirdos.... please note that that in the four years that I was in Kolkata and occassionally took local trains to the suburbs, three ticket checkers were pushed out of speeding local trains and two of them had died.
PS: Naihati's claim to fame of course if that it is the birthplace of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee

Murder: A Middle Class Vocation Now

Once upon a time, crimes including murder were committed by criminals whose business it was to commit crimes. These crimes were reported in newspapers as a matter of routine much as terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir are reported now. Then came a time when crimes like murders started to be committed by those connected with the film industry, crime especially murder dope and women related graduated to the third page of newspapers. Then crime came to the front page and prime time when politicians' sons and relatives were allegedly involved in it..... Crimes especially murders especially of young women became headlines. Headline stuff built it's own ecology of experts, retired cops whose own career recods were pretty shoddy commented on those who had not retired, security company chiefs whose primary jobs was to recruit poor biharis, clad them in stinking and dirty uniforms and make them secutiry guards started analysing crimes on TV, media persons used to copying and pasting press releases became crime investigators, even the ordinary citizens not only consumed crime reported in the media but were active as commentators and so called eye witnesses.

Finally, like everything else in this country crime became very middle class.... it was your neighbour or your friends neighbour..... These were neither famous criminals who were adding feathers to their caps, nor famous politicians nor were they famous people connected with movies. These were ordinary middle class people who became famous only because of the crime they committed and lives and families they destroyed including sometimes their own.

The police long used to the justification that if criminals are killing criminals [gangsters killing gangsters; corrupt politicians killing corrupt women; shady film producers being killed by shady music directors!] they have nothing to do but sit and watch, soon forgot about crime detection and investigation. But now that crime has become middle class they are finding it difficult to get back to good old investigtion...... a generation of police has no clue about investigation. It is like my doctor friend who when asked about the functions of the left ventricle in a medical interview told the interviewer "Sir questions related to heart were asked last year so this year I have studied only kidney and can answer questions only about kidney".... If you don't get my drift....... try jumping signal in NOIDA, you will not be able to do it without paying bribe, the policemen are so efficient..... But kill someone, it is likely that you will get scott free.....

Over Rated

Just thought of some of the people and things that are overated in India tody:
People:
Manmohan Singh's honesty
L K Advni's flexibility
Lalu Prasad's Intelligence
Sachin Tendulkar's batting capabilities
Shah Rukh Khan's Chrisma
Amitabh Bachchan's crimes
Salman Rushdie and V S Naipaul's writings
Vijay Mallay's business sense
Objects:
Handicrafts
Nike and RBK shoes
Value of advertisements
Contirnbution of technology
Capability of government
Global warming
Knowledge economy
Please feel free to add your own and enrich my list.

Bermuda Triangle and BRT

To the generation born with mobile phones and iPods Bermuda Triangle may sound like the latest brand of men's underwear from California. But to the wiser generation it would still inspire curiosity if not awe. But then it is a myth from a different era which also believed in the insane writings and findings of Eric Von Daniken. Bermuda Triangle was a trinagular rea in the atalantic off the cost of southern US where airplanes and ships regualrly disappeared since the second world war. In the 60s there was much myth and speculation surrounding this spot of Ocean and the stories around BT [Bermuda Triangle] were still still popular in 1982 when I was in class 9. it was on a fateful day with much excitement and apprehension that we asked Father Steno who taught us Geogrphy about the reality behind BT. Father Steno, a Maltese by birth and member of society of jesus by choice and a evacuee from Malta during the second world war by compulsion, was exceptionally short and exceptionally bright and exceptionally a man of few words. It was said of him that if you presented a Boeing to him, gave him a manual and a couple of hours, he would safely start flying it. In any event, in his normal conduct with us he showed very few jesuit like qualities.
It was to this man that we asked what we thought was the most important and intelligent question in Geography at that time:
Father what is the reality behind the Bermuda Triangle? Father Steno, who was then teaching us the intricacies of of south west monsoon, looked up in momentrary surprise and then seemed interested in answering the questions. Took off his glasses, ran a hand on his goatee and gave us that rarest smile between a smirk and a grunt.... and then gave the following answer in his heavily accented English: "Hah, Bermuda Traingle? Take any imaginery triangle of equal size in any part of any ocean and if you look hard you will find equal number of stories surrounging missing airplanes, ships and may be a few mermaids" That was the end of our romantic attachment with BT and Eric von Daniken!
When I read in newspapers about the daily jams, accidents and pain that the newly constructed BRT is causing to Delhi residents, I am reminded to father Steno's words.... "Take any imaginery 5.8 kilometres stretch on any Delhi road and you will find an equal number of jams, accidents and pain....

PS: The photo is the most imaginative representation of Bermuda Triangle myth I found on the internet....

We Are Finally Americans

Many years back an overseas friend told me that what struck him in India was the lack of overseas brands at airports, railways stations, street... India had cafes' soaps, detergents, shampoos, refrigerator etc.... but most of them were Indian brands... This he said was unlike any other place that he had visited, where American brands were prominent. Since my life ran parallel with the Licence Permit Raj, I felt proud at the observation. But that was then.... Now American brands are everywhere, afterall we are strategic partners which means differnt things to Kapil Sibal, Sitaram Yechury, Pranab Mukherjee, George Bush and Strobe Talbott... never mind. But the Americanisation of India is happening quietly but most certainly. Our business leaders who till the 1990s went to UK to watch wimbledon and strike business partnership have forgotten London and are flying off to Connecticut, Texas, Seattle and California. Ratan Tata, Anand Mahindra, Rahul Bajaj and Jamshed Godrej, Gurcharan Das. Asim Ghosh all US educated CEOs of the older generation are trying to keep pace with the much younger harvard and wharton returned CEOs in keeping up ties with US. Our youngsters, especially of the BPO and software industry variety are geographically separeated Americans [Gurgaon and Bangalore can be the 51st and 52nd states of the Union including the wild west spirit]. Our babies are brought up on a strong does of barbie and American cartoons. Our elders too are getting exposed to small town US through their migrant children mostly as baby sitters... We are all exposed and there is no escape.
Yet, we are fiercely Indian and would baulk at the thought of turning into Americans. How long can this process go on till we can definitely say that India as a nation has become Americanised? There is no definite answer: perhaps if the nuclear deal is signed; perhaps we start making films only for our brothers and sisters in the US, perhaphs when all the fortune 500 companies have back offices in India; or perhaps when there is a McDonald in Purnea[my place of birth?
So far as I am concerned, we have already become Americans as a nation in the last fortnight or so. This has happened with the launch of IPL or Indian Premium League. Please do not laugh.... We had taken the game of cricket from our rulers and turned it into our own and now we have given it away to our newly made American friends. I contend that IPL has very little to do with cricket so please do not spend time discussing whether 20 overs is good or not. It is just a mixture or fusion of Baseball and American Football adapted to Indian conditions including the cheerleaders, the dress, the agression, the money and the teamowners.. There is very little of cricket in it.
We have finally beocme Americans... Mr Yechury you do not stand a chance here.....
Cheers to the Cheerleaders:)

Flyovers are Chasing Me!

I just realised that I had almost half my adult life in Delhi and hold a Delhi passport. By Delhi standards, where you will hardly find a third generation Delhi-ite of my age, I am truly a son of teh soil and a true son, I really love my city fo reasons I am never tired of narrating to a patient listener.
Of late, however, my patience is wearing thin, not because of anythng else but because of the fact that I am now being chased by flyovers all across the city. It began way back in 200o when I went to live in nearly godforsaken East Delhi soon after the construction of the Nizamudding Bridge that connected Delhi with east Delhi. I was confident that in the next decade no new civil construction was doing to be take place in my locality. To my surprise, soon after the work started on a clover leaf flyover connecting various parts of east delhi to various other parts of east delhi and NOIDA, thankfully, Delhi contractors try and finish their work faster than elsewhere, but I had such night mares travelling that I left the place before the complicated flyover was completed.
I moved to what is known as south delhi in an older area and thought now this is the ideal place there is no scope for any contruction here everything has been done... I could not have been more mistaken..... They actually started working on one of the longest flyover in Delhi connecitng Lajpatnagar to Ashram chowk right at my backyard. I maintained my calm. Then they started builing an underpass over which was a road as well as a flyover. An underpass seem impossible there.... I remained calm, then they started repairing the old flyover across Moolchand to Defence Colony, builing gteh now infamous BRT, I was still with the planners firmly believing that this was for my good. In between, they dug up the roads on both sides of my house and buried the till now dry sarita vihar pipeline [the pies were about 8 feet in diameter. The last straw came 15 days back when they blocked the main road in front of my house to begin construction of over head metro lines...
I can;t sleep at night these days.... I dream of jams, pile drivers, diversons, pillars falling on my head.. I am traumatised. I am staying put in the hope that in my lifetime things will improve.
By the way, I think I am a good omen for you if you live in a locality where people are fighting to get flyovers, unerpasses, metro, waterworks, drainage systems, electricity: anything that can disrupt settled life done.. .So do please invite me to stay in your area. if you do not believe me hear this out: Two years that I was in Mumbai, the entire length of pavement from the city to Dadar was relaid and the work started on the airport flyover.

It's Politics Stupid!

It is fashionable to say following our liberalisation gurus in the US and Western Europe that politics should be separated from Economics. This coming from countries how have in the last 1000 years not been able to separate politics from religion sounds specious, but we shall let it pass for now. Following the dictum of separation of politics and economy many Indians who love the way things have turned out for them including myself, would like to believe that since 1991 politics has been somewhat separated from economics. Any government who has come to power since then has followed a smiliar line [if not in practice at least in preaching] of economic development.
Carrying on this trend of separation [separation of executive from judiciary, religion from politics and economics from everything else] further and separate politics from sports? I know most of us are slightly jealous of or threatened by China but this does not mean that we should try hard and screw up the Olympics, like the US and USSR did in the 1980s [I thought Cold War was over]
President Bush, President Sarkozy have been politicking against the Olympics really hard, not so much against the Olympics but against. And their feelings are being echoed by many others in that country. Ohterwise, one cannot account for so many Tibetan supporters in France and in the US. In normal times you do not see these countries or their leaders making too much noise for the Tibetans...
Of course, the fever has caught up in India also. First it was Baichung Bhutia declining to carry the torch, then it was Aamit Khan giving a confused reply and now it is Kiran Bedi who has declined [does not want to be carried in a cage] Who are these people in any case and what is their claim on carrying the torch? Why has the IOC approached them to carry the torch? The mind boggles.... Why can't we get a few former olympias to carry the torch? Why can't the government come out in the open and say they would like to see politics and sports clearly separated and make sure that the torch is carried safely to China?
There is a bengali proverb which says that when the elepehant is stuck in the mud even the toad kicks him... this is what is happening to China now... but remember the elephant ultimatley get out of the mud...
It is time that we stood up for the cause of sports and separated it from politics before we talk of separating sports from politics...

Loin Kings

Recently in course of a train journey in a very private compartment shared by only three of us, one of my co-passengers mentioned about "fond mammaries". I was a bit startled. Being middle-aged and much worldly wise I have heard of if not seen many types of mammaries but never heard of a fond one. I was further intrigued after I looked up the right spots on my co-passenger and found that what I had guessed all along was right. For he was unmistakebly a man of around 50 years and an serving army officer at that.
All these fleeting feelings, doubts passed in the next 5 seconds when the revered colonel completed the sentence. I realised what he meant was that he had fond "mammaries" of serving in Kashmir. I am of course not quite sure nor did I dare ask, if that was the way the colonel pronounced the word or it was just a freudian slip connected with his fond experiences in Kashmir. [I wondered then how he would pronounce the actual word]
Many of us living in this particular part of the world have had such encounters..... When someone says he will sport you, he does not mean to hunt you down or engage in a 100 metres dash.. but just that he wants to support you. I still wonder how such people would pronounce the real sports.
Hair you go in my part of the world is not a romantic lament about the loss of hair, but the simple : here you go. And if you hear, "hear hear" while eating, please do not mistake it for someone cheering someone else, instead look for hair in your food.
Similarly saxy obviously does not refer to the talents of the 42nd president of the USA with the saxophone, but simply sexy, nor is painty a new initiative by Asian Paints or ICL, but it is you know what...
Of course nothing in the past 20 years had prepared me for "fond mamaries" except one from my earlierst experiments with truth in these parts of the word.... When someone in my part of the world say consumed by the loin, he is not debauched or decadent in the 19th cenury sense of a D H Lawrence [Remember the opening lines of Lolita?]. But simply that a man has been killed and eaten by a lion. I again wonder how they pronounce the original word.
So long.... and I mean it in the original english sense, please. Do not let your dirty mind think otherwise.

Back to Delhi

After spending two eventful years in Mumbai, I have come back to Delhi hoping to spend many more eventful years. In no way was my return to Delhi "motivated" by the recent political and parochial events in Mumbai and Maharashtra although I was eminently qualified to be a victim as a Bihari as well as a "fortune seeker".
Delhi has it's shares of problems, perhaps much more than Mumbai: there are these horrible things they are doing to roads, entire roads are being closed for Metro, realigned because of Bus Corridor, new pavements are being laid; there is power shortage even in winter, seriously bad traffic. Girls are still being attacked in their homes by neighbours, men still pee on roads in broad daylight and people still think that everything can be bought with money, men still do not understand the need to queue up. The hindi word Jugad is still the operating principle of the citizens.
But the problems of Delhi are essentially existential - and in resolving them together is the effort of the Delhite to build a better future of herself/himself. Past has got very little to do with it. Present and future are what matters.... Where you come from [figuratively as well as literally] matters much less than what you are and where you are headed. This is where I guess it differs from the colonial cities such as Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai and now Bengaluru.... All colonial cities surprisingly run on pre-colonial sentiments of caste, race, sub-caste and identity and communitarian based society and politics.
It is indeed very surprising that the oldest city in India, Delhi, has the greatest collective urge to think of the future while the relatively youthful ones show a strong tendency to go back to some utopian and idyllic past... which actually never existed.
Why is this so? I do not know... But can guess: Delhi is a clever woman, she does not want to belong to anyone whatever the promises made.... She is suffered very badly for this attitude in the last 1000 years, but she still wants to remain free of emotional attachment.... While the others have tied emotional knots with many a suitor at different points in time and are now suffering from the claims and counter claims of each of the suitors.
I love your independence Delhi... Be that way and you will get the best of us seek your hand, although we know you will decline it with a wicked wink.

Ancient Knowledge and Modern Science

I have just finished reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everthing. Bryson is a prolific and very good travel writer but he deviates a bit in this book and writes about the travels and travails mother earth has undertaken to be where it is and also indicates where she is headed.
For me reading the book has been a humbling experience and a scary one too... from the size of the galaxy to the size of the bacteria that lives at 130 C, I have lost all perspective of size.
From the impact of a moon sized meteor crashing on the earth to the havoc that mutant strains of virus can cause, I have lost all perspective of fear.
From the fact that for the last 300 odd years "modern" science has just been trying to understand things to the fact that some of them have done more harm to us than the collective good scientists have done, I have lost much respect for "knowledge"
What struck me most about the book is right at the beginning.... "Something came out of nothing" That is how the universe was created and the best part of this is that I have read this theory somewhere in a more flowery language.. Can you guess where? If you can't here is a conversation that apparently took place between a guru and a shishya in an ashram more than 2000 years ago:

Student: How did this mighty banyan tree come about?
Teacher: Son, This mighty tree came from the seed
Student: How did the seed come about?
Teacher: Go fetch a seed and see what is inside it
Student: I see nothing inside the seed, teacher!
Teacher: That is correct my son, the mighty banyan tree came from "nothing"

This is from one of the Upanishadas and you will find the whole conversation translated into English in Romila Thapar's Penguin History of India....
Thank you Mr Bryson, your brilliant book has restored my faith in ancient Indian knowledge, in our myths [the large oversized mammals and other weird creatures that you describe from times past are all there in our mythology].
PS: Those interested in scary things, here are three instances from the book of how fragile we are:

1. The whole of 70 odd acres of Yellowstone National Park in the mouth of a volcano, if it bursts one day, and it is due to burst if you belive in probablity, more than half the population of the world will perish as collateral damage:)
2. When you go to sleep remember for the millons of bacteria living off your skin your head looks like a tasty doughnut.
3. Twice in the last 20 years two planetoids have passed the earth's orbit at a few lakh kilometres. This is apparently a miraculous escape, something close to a bullet passing through your shirt sleeves....

Bongs and Communism

For some both these two words would be synonymous... To an extent this would be true. Intellectually 90 per cent of Bongs are socialists and politically at least 47 per cent of them are Communists of different hues. Even the formidable Congress leader Subrata Mukherjee was branded by his own partyman as a melon.... Green outside but actually Red inside... Such is the influence of Marxist thought in Bengal...
But I think that is only on the surface.... Bongs are certainly not defined by their left thinking but by great intellectual confusion at best and blatant hypocrisy at worst. To give two example: Bengal has ove rthe last 100 years sent most widows to Vrindavan [how these young women were taken to Vrindavan and abanadoned is the subject of many a Nengali classic]. Nearer my time, in a place where my grandfather settled down after partition [a small town in 24 Parganas about 40 Kms from Calcutta], since 1972 every one in the mohalla has voted for CPI or CPM, but I have seen with my own eyes a "guru" visiting each house in winter and some of the housewives washing the feet of the guru and drinking that water....
But I guess there was a time when Bengalis called themselves rational and did not accept anything that did not pass the test of dry rationality... One of the biggest literary figures and proponents to cut and dried rationality was Syed Mujtaba Ali, a true renaissance man. His stories could make you cry and his anti-Nazin and anit-Communist jokes which he claimed to have collected as a student in Germany are real gems of Bengali rational thinking and humourous writing.
Here is a sample: A Russian Citizen was punished for 50 years for publicly calling a Cabinet Minister "Insane".... The judge although a communist was liberal and took the pain to explain to the "offender" the quantum of punishment: 10 years for insulting a government servant and 40 years for leaking out a state secret.....
If you are interested, you can read one of Mujtaba Ali's classic collection of hilarious stories "HasyaMadhur"
Sadly, rationality and laughter are almost dead in Bengal, little wonder that most Bengali look either bloated with self-importance or shrunken with constipation

Beggars as Choosers?

If you live in Delhi or Mumbai beggars at traffic junctions are a common site. In South Delhi and in the western suburbs it is pretty common to see young kids playing on the kerb, mothers with babies in arms begging for food, Children playing small tricks on the roadside to earn a fe rupees. But of late you would not have failed to notice a new phenomenon.... beggar are increasingly being engaged as salespersons and the line between street side begging and street side selling is getting blurred.
Initially, at least in Delhi small time vendors used to compete with full time beggars for space and mindshare on the traffic junctions.... not small time vendors are jostling for space with full time beggars turned out as part-time salespersons of recognised brands. There are the usual children's toys, agarbattis, chinese stuff etc that these people have been selling to shore up their incomes from begging, but more recently they have been selling well recognised branded stuff.
And I would like to out on record the fact that the worst offenders are newspapers and branded international society magazines.... the names of Mid Day, Hello, Cosmopolitan among others come to mind immediately. Also in the race are pirated book sellers.
These beggars turned salespersons represent a massive pressure on you..... first with their blatant knock [all beggars in India have the right to draw your attention by any means]; then by appealing to your consumer side by showing the goodies they want you to buy and if that fails then by telling you on your face "buy something, I haven't had my morning cup of tea"....
Nothing wrong with these people, they behave just as some of the corporate types that visit your office from Airtel, ICICI Bank or some such do. But everything is wrong with people who engage their services.... First of all no one knows what is their term of engagement, secondly and especially if it is a child's toy why do you get a filthy beggar to sell it to a child [I never buy ballloons from beggars on streets]? thirdly, those sitting in board rooms are clearly not aware of what this means for the erosion of their brand.... I have stopped reading Mid Day sometime back and do not even look at the magazines sold by beggar/salespersons... finally, I find it strange that print media one of the most virulent critics of social exploitation engaging this practice openly... Just imagine buying a copy of a leading newpaper froma beggar and a report inside read "beggars are exploited in our country". That would be a real irony...

Ratan Tata and Tata Salt

To ordinary middle class people like me, Tatas have been the most honest and transparent industry groupo in India even before Ratan Tata took over the group some 15 years back. Lots have been written by famous people like Vir Sanghvi and Tarun Das and Swaminathan Aiyer about the famous turnaround that RNT managed in the Tata Group.... How he cut down and finally threw out the shatraps, how he broght about speed and efficiency, hired and empowered younger people, how he nurtures talent etc. etc.... But I have a different take on RNT......

Tata group have been famous for low cost Indian product and some of us recall the fact that they always targetted the lower half of the pyramid.... Remember Tata Hair Oil? Tata Shampoo, very popular products of Tata Chemicals? Incidentally both of them came is the same bottle and in the toilet those days, it was difficult to differentiate which was the oil and which was the shampoo..... as a young boy I made the mistake several times. Again take the case of Tata Tea, it makes tea which before the takeover of Tetley was consumed either by people who did not know what tea was or used in Chai shops... the cheapest in the market... Same with their trucks.. which are responsible for spoiling the respiratory system of half the country..... same with TCS... the largest unforcussed body shopping company country. RNT continued which these products till very recently..... and he added one very significant priduct to it... Tata Indica, the worst but most economical pasenger car in the Indian market....
It is only recently tha the Tata Group has realised that people do not necessarily want to but outdated technology just because they are slightly cheaper and made in India... People are increasingly going for expensive teas, Tata Shampoos and Oils have long disappeared from the market, Nobody is keen on buying lowest cost steel from India, Indica has been a hit only among taxi companies and Tata buses were being abandoned for the more expensive Volvos even by the captive state transports...
So the need of the hour was to make state of the art products and only then low cost would make sense.... the result so far as Telco is concerned are first the low floor hi tech buses running as Starbuses in Mumbai or their more expensive Marco Polo version in Delhi and the Tata Nano, what could not be made in India was bought... Corus, Natsteel, Tetley, Jag etc etc.... My guess is there would be something similar for TCS and with a very brilliant FMCG man sitting on the helm of Tata Sons, we may soon see some movement in that space as well.
My take on Tatas is simple..... they have given us the best product that any good honest and transparent company give to it country.... You can't even guess what it is.... Yes ladies and gentlemen, the best tata Product which has and will stand the test of time is Tata Salt......

Oh Calcutta!

No, I am not referring to the famous restaurant which claims to sell Calcutta cuisine in Mumbai and Delhi. In fact, if you are planning to be there, please drop the plan, it is the worst and most expensive restaurant for bengali food in the whole world even if you include the seedy bangladeshi joins in London. Not that... I am referring to Oh! Calcutta with an emphasis on the exclamation marks and the way the city was referred to when the first strands of hair appeared on my upper lip...
In winter, most expat Bengali from Delhi to Djibouti would, I guess fo that. Winter is the time when Bongs fatten up on some of the best foods that Calcutta has to offer whether it is Marco Polo in Park Street or Amber further up or Bhajahori Manna further down in the city, Calcutta is the place to be in in winter. Does not matter what is your choice of food, Calcutta can take care of you.. Does not matter if you are from down south, up north further west or extreme east.. it does not even matter if you are from Southampton of from South Pole. Calcutta has something for everyone in terms of food.
My memory fades and I have heard that there are new and much fancier places coming up every day in Park Street and other locations... But, my guess is that none can beat the old haunts of mine, Royale in Chitpur, Nizam and Amini near New Market, the chinese food at Tangra, the hilsa in Ballygunge Market, the sweetmeats in BowBazar, Mouchak and the telebhaja shops on Surya Sen Street, the punjabi food near Krishna Cinema, Continental food at Skyroom, sattu, the quintessential Bihari food in any of the streets, Sindhi food at Sindhi Society in Bhowanipur.... whatever you want you will not be disappointed. Any if you are a brown sahib you could visit Nahoums, Flurys or any of the Clubs, Calcutta, Saturday or the Tollygunge.....
The best part of the food in Calcutta some would tell you is its authenticity, others would tell u is the service, yet others would tell you is the taste... all of which would be true.... In fact, I can personally vouch that the best Mughlai food is available in Calcutta and not in Delhi or in Dakhan...... But at the end of the day, the best part of the food in Calcutta for an expat Calcuttan is the part when you pay your bills..... If you are not shocked at the prices...... you would be really below poverty line or mentally challenged....
In case you believe only in liquid diet.... Calcutta is the place for you... in case you believe like is a smoke Calcutta is still the place for you..... I used to buy my liquid diet past midnight from Kola Bagan and my smoke right on the pavement adjcent to my hostel on Peary Charan Sircar Street - a much renowned street between the side entrace to the University of Calcutta and my alma mater, the Presidency College....
So every winter, whereever I am, my thoughts go back to Calcutta... Ask any Bongs, they would agree with me.....

That was my city of joy....... all other cities have been cities of pleasure but never of joy:)

Sweet Memories

Benazir Bhutto's death was very much like Mrs Gandhi's... no one dreamt that it would happen [except perhaps those who plotted them]. So most of us were stunned into silence rather than agitated with shock.
It was in 2001 [most probably] that I met her at the Taj Mahal Hotel in New Delhi, when she had come visiting. The wonderful opportunity was ceated for me by Mr Tarun Das, who more than anyone else of his age knows how technolgy can be used to reach out to people. He and my then boss Mr Ajay Khanna insisted that I accompany them to the august meeting and show Madam the wondeful website that we had created [among many other initiatives] to take care of her "track II" diplomacy.
The meeting was at the Taj Chambers in a small meeting room. Soon after entering the room, I powered up my laptop and got ready with the site which we were to show her. The machine was set on the "head" side of the table where Madam was supposed to sit.
I think it was around 12 noon when she walked in. She at that time for some strange reason had taken to wearing brightly coloured jackets over her shalwar kameez... that morning she was wearing a bottle green silk jacket which I thought was hideous...
She walked into the room greeted Mr Das and us and went straight to the laptop with Mr Das explaining what the website was all about.... By the time Mr Das has finished, she has started navigating the site and called me over to her side to explain what was what. I was quite amazed by her skills with surfing, but more than that amazment, standing next to her and bending down to speak to her, I was completely mermerised by her looks, her complexion and the way she spoke. Of course, the whiff of her expensive perfume added to the effect. I am sure, the other two gents who had met her on many occasions before, were similarly enhanted. She was fourteen years older than me.... Never mind.
On hearing the news of her death, only one thought stuck me. She came from the most dysfunctional political family in the sub-continent where no two members of the family spoke to each other. She could have decided to marry a man who really loved her, migrated permanently to London and spent the rest of her raising her lovely kids... But none of these happened to her....
She was a destiny's child and went where her destiny took her. May her soul rest in peace.