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?