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.