The Hole Truth

Sunday mornings are days when, usually, I wake up late. The wife tends to wake up even later, giving me a rare opportunity to enjoy, in peace and quiet, two of the most enjoyable things to start the day.... 

............ I get to make my own giant mug of filter coffee

....................and I get some "quality time" to read my favourite newspaper without too much interference

And so it was, yesterday too.... having read, on the net the previous day, about the sad death of the unnamed gang-rape victim I was feeling a mixture of grief, anger, rage, hope that things should change etc - and wanted to know what the Indian Express had to say. 

So, when I kept the water for boiling to get that perfect decoction of SIFC and opened my door to pick up the papers (IE and BS for self, Loksatta for the wife and fil) my heart slowly SANK.

I knew my day was shot.

Disappointment stared me in the face.

Not because the paper was not delivered. It was. There it lay, on the floor, staring up at me.

The story ought to have been there. It was, too. 

But not the whole story..... 

what I got, instead, was a wholly different thing, a story in which I could pick a hole - literally. I mean, take a look at THIS 

this was the condition of the newspaper delivered to my doorstep. The "depth" of this damage extended right through to the 9th page...

The Hole Truth!!

Sats

 

"Quotable Quotes..." - I

Having been "informed" at an early, impressionable age by no less an eminent authority than my highly regarded elder brother (yes, he IS reading this too!) that "People quote others when they have nothing to say for themselves" I've kind of avoided quoting others by and large..... I'm sure you've noticed that I tend to have lots of useless, nonsensical things to say for myself anyway...

So, having inhabited this little corner of the world for long enough, here are some "original" thoughts that have occurred to me from time to time....

Memory: All too often, memories are the fuel that drives our lives towards our dreams. 

Happiness: On reflection, I've come to realise that happiness is always a spontaneous state - it can never be pre-determined or pre-meditated.

Happiness - 2: There's more happiness within the innocent laughter of a gurgling child than all the accumulated sorrows in this dreary world..... 

Respect/Self-respect: Respect is the currency of an incorruptible person.

Shall keep boring you with more.....

Ring out the OLD

There's life left, yet, in this aged and ageing year.... 31st December seems so near and yet so far, so this "headline" - Ring out the Old - is deliberately deceptive... and has nothing at all, really, to do with the imminent roll over to 2013.

No, I'm talking about the small, unimportant detail that India - a nation of around 126 crore humans, a nation that is undisputedly "young" with more than 40% of the population less than 25 years of age - witnessed an anniversary yesterday.... 

The Indian National Congress Party celebrated its 127th anniversary (see the photo here: http://epaper.indianexpress.com/78471/Indian-Express-Mumbai/29-December-2012#page/10/1) - a young nation, with an average age hovering around 40, led by a party that is 127 years old, peopled by geriatrics (oh, how much I wish the creators of Asterix were here to give an image to this picture!! - would Manmohan be Geriatrix, Chidambaram the Fulliautomatix and Sonia be Letutia? I wonder?)

Where, on earth, are the "Young Turks" - where are Sachin (Pilot, not Tendulkar - and, irony of ironies, the latter named has become too "old" while the former is "too young"), Jyotiraditya, Deepender or, even, wonder of wonders, our very own crown prince THE Rahul (Gandhi, not Dravid)?

I say, fellas, before you put on those party hats and begin to usher in 2013... spend a moment to contemplate this drunken and/or sobering thought. Ring out the old..... ring in the young!

Outraged in and by Delhi

There's been a lot of "noise" across all channels/newspapers/discussion fora on the Delhi gang rape incident in particular, and crimes against women, in general. 

There was a ToI article by Shashi Deshpande - "A Human Rather Than A Woman's Issue" (See: http://toi.in/Cl4z1Z)

I'd like to disagree with the opening statement: "Rape is a CONSCIOUS PROCESS.... by which ALL men keep ALL women in a state of fear". It is an exaggeration that ought to have been abjured. This is the kind of sweeping generalizations that tend to irritate even the moderates, let alone being the equal of waving a red flag before a male chauvinist bull.

Let's begin, first, by trying to understand in a general sense, "What is rape?" - without resorting to legalese, I guess it would be safe to say rape is an act where one (or more) person(s) engages in sexual intercourse with another, without the consent of that other person. 

For the sake of keeping this clear and without muddling the issues. I will (for the moment, at least) not getting into issues of deemed consent. Let's keep this straight. 

Most rapists, in my uneducated, simplistic view, possibly commit the crime when they see an opportunity - I'm talking here of rapists who act alone and not the gang rape situations. 

An uncle, a father, a grand father, a friendly trusted neighbour - all these are examples of a criminal breach of trust of the worst kind. They choose a victim, someone who is innocent, unable to (a) understand what is happening, (b) persuaded to remain quiet and not say a word to anyone, (c) made to feel complicit. The victim need not be a child - the victim could be, in cases, even a fully grown adult woman - a young bahu, being compelled to service her sasurji, or dewar? Not unheard of, no?

In the absence of authentic statistics showing the demographic profile of the rapists, and excluding the incidents of child abuse/child rape committed by members of the family/immediate circle (incest IS rampant in India) I may be pardoned for assuming that most rapists are people who come from the poorer strata of society (not "people like us"!) - drivers, servants, slum dwellers etc. I look at a typical taxi driver in Mumbai - he's around 25 - 40 years old, is from Bihar/UP, stays away from his wife for long periods at a stretch, has no legitimate release for his sexual fantasies and is, yet, someone who:

• watches Hindi movies in which the heroine is a "sex package"...
• watches Hindi movies in which an "item number" is virtually mandatory (with lines such as "Main tandoori chicken hoon, mujhe alcohol se kaat ley")...?
• Spends time, while driving around Mumbai, watching the rear view mirror in which he sees the "couple" in the rear seat engaging in "action"
• Spends time, while driving around Mumbai, LISTENING to young women engaged in extremely flirtatious - and at times very suggestive/sexy - conversations with their boyfriends at the other end (or vice versa)
• is uneducated, impressionable and then tends to imagine that he too can get away with such behaviour..... aspirational needs?
• On getting an opportunity, sometimes - yes, sometimes - tries to grab the same? Especially when he's had a bit to drink? 

In today's age, it has become risible to say that "Women ought to dress conservatively, they should not be provocative!" - not just risible, it is considered even reactionary! So, by all means, let women/girls dress as provocatively as they wish. Then let young men and old lechers ogle all they want too! I draw the line there, ogling is fine, but passing lewd comments, or going beyond that to attempting to molest etc is reprehensible and criminal. 

Problem is, we now step into the area of mob mentality - a girl/lady dressed in revealing clothes. I am alone and I merely ogle. I am NOT alone, I am standing along with a group of friends/acquaintances. One of them passes a comment, lewd, dirty, whatever.. The rest snigger, and then the lewd comments fly thick and fast. How quickly this can spin out of control is anybody's guess. It will depend on a variety of factors - location, time of the day, presence/absence of other people etc. Where "eve teasing" (what a stupid word) stops, where "outraging the modesty" begins, where "molestation" happens and finally rape and/or murder....?

Gang rape is, usually, the outcome of competitive machismo arising from a drunken state of euphoria. A mob mentality, where even 2 people can become a mob. 

What I, personally, find "gruesome" is the incidents of a 6 month old child, or a 4 year old child getting raped? Where is the "provocative dressing" argument here? This is truly the gruesome work of a sick mentality. 

What I find gruesome, too, are those many, many incidents where a victim has been raped in public, in full view of people like you and me - and we stood by and watched, without a single person daring to step in and try and stop this. Such incidents have happened in local trains at 9 pm in Mumbai (certainly not a lonely hour), on top of a platform in Dadar railway station, etc. I'm sure we've got similar episodes from all over India. 

And in all this, I haven't even begun to talk of the rapes that happen during our several communal riots - whether it is a Hindu/Muslim riot or a Hindu/Dalit riot or whatever. When the rape is merely "collateral damage".

Nor have I spoken about marital rape. Nor have I spoken about sexual harassment at the work place. Or about the sexual exploitation of maid servants, washerwomen, etc in middle class Indian homes (urban, rural there really is no divide). 

What about the easy identification of women as "sex objects" - I did, briefly, mention about the influence of movies. Let's also look at one or two other issues - is there a general decline in societal morality as a whole? Easy accessibility to technology (camera phones), to pornography on the internet as well as on the pavements, visible "public displays of affection" on Marine Drive, Bandra Bandstand etc, loose behaviour in the back seats of taxis, in corners of cinema halls, in discotheques, etc. Does all this, in some direct/indirect way contribute to an atmosphere where women are commoditised? To what extent do women themselves share a portion of blame for this? 

Talking of easy accessibility to porn on the next - forget about the huge commercial pornography industry of the USA or Europe (decadent civilizations, let us sneer). I am constantly amazed and also shocked at the sheer numbers of Indian girls who willingly perform sex on camera, girls who seem to be from perfectly "normal", "middle class" families.  

Solutions: All those young men and women who gathered at India Gate and kept screaming for our ever obliging cameras... "WE WANT JUSTICE" till they went red in the face... I want to ask them, "What is the justice that you want?" 

Is justice a packet of Maggi Noodles or Nescafe Instant, to be delivered in two minutes by the Home Minister or the Chief Minister? Or by the ever so popular Inspector Chulbul Pandey in Dabangg Version 3? Or a dark and brooding Ajay Devgan from "Gangajaal"? 

Are we a blood thirsty nation seeking a vigilante justice delivery system? Is that our aspiration? To be able to summarily lynch an accused, or, as the Hurriyat hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani said should they be "stoned to death"? Is this what we want modern, moderate India to become? A stone's throw away from a barbaric or Sharia state?

Yes, I too will lend my voice to the "WE WANT JUSTICE" brigade. But when I say this, what I mean is:

1. The state/executive must provide better policing with all that it means - more police stations, better use of technology, better jails, a modern police force equipped with modern tools of policing including but not limited to soft skills, gender sensitivity, capable of avoiding racial/communal profiling etc.
2. An effective system of checks and balances to ensure minimal abuse of untramelled powers of the police.
3. A complete overhauling of laws that were inherited from a British Empire days - laws that reflect the fact that "We, The People" are supreme and the state is meant to serve US and not the other way around.
4. A complete overhauling of laws, with a crystal clear view that punishments should be commensurate with the crime (reflecting, too, a mature, modern, democratic society and not some prehistoric, barbaric throwback to pander to our atavistic craze_
5. An effective Justice system - more courts, better judges, better lawyers, accountable courts with timelines instead of the typical "Tareeq pe tareeq" syndrome. 
6. An incorruptible judiciary, accountable to the people (it is a miracle that despite the rampant corruption in the lower hierarchy, at least at the Supreme Court there seems to be a modicum of integrity) 

And, most importantly, I believe justice is to be sought in the courtrooms and not in your or my living room with a Zee TV or an NDTV holding court! 

Sats

The BEEB Tube? A Whodunit!!

I'm almost (but not entirely) ashamed to admit this, being a self confessed pseudo intellectual, among so many other pseudo states that I inhabit (pseudo secular, pseudo theist, pseudo philantropist, pseudo this that and the other....) - actually, there ARE times when of an evening, I do switch on the idiot box and bask in that blue haze of light that flickers....

 

 

I try to watch "serious stuff" - you know, those documentary shows on NatGeo, Discovery, History etc, especially when my pseudo misanthrope son of mine is watching the tube alongside me... thankfully he's not around here, these days, in fact he's about as far away as can be possible, on an entirely different continent (still in the same hemispehere, though!) so, I need no longer pretend to be interested in the mating habits of penguins or arachnids, in the secrets of quasars, quarks and stuff like that...

 

Which doesn't mean that I sit, all engrossed, teary eyed, mouth open ajar, watching some "poor" bahu or saas and their shenanigans.

 

What I love to watch, really, are those programmes that come on BBC Entertainment or Z Cafe etc. English programmes which I find myself more in sync with than those of American origins... stiff upper lip, what, eh?! "Sherlock", "Hustle", "Inspector George Gently", "Dalziel and Pascoe".... I've enjoyed these serials for a couple of years and, typically, look forward to a Saturday/Sunday night (when I can) with a glass of the right stuff (ably tended to by my now missing bartender son), those typical Brit jokes that merit a smile (never a guffaw) of quiet mirth....

 

And so, there it was, a few days back, I switched on the damn TV, switched on the even more damned set top box (isko laga dala toh life..... jinga lala?) and Channel 205 was a complete BLUE BLANK!! I mean, what the blazes?!!

 

I am, among other things, a pseudo stoic as well. So, I grasped the remote more firmly in my palm, thumbed my way up and down the entire range of channels, up and down, and up and down again, in an increasing state of irritation and mounting apprehension.... they were all there, every single one of those unwanted channels.... Doordarshan, Zee TV, Sony TV, even damn you Fashion TV, CeeBees etc... I even stumbled across no less than 17 Tamil channels, 6 Malayalam channels, countless Telugu (thelledhu), Kannada (gotilla) etc... but the Beeb seemed to have vanished - pardon this poor pun - into thin air!

 

Wait, I thought for a moment! Is BBC News still on? (Not that I watch it, different story that) But yes, BBC News was still on air. But, BBC Entertainment? Like one of those magic shows where Criss Angel or Dynamo make the Taj Mahal vanish, some mysterious power had done the vanishing trick with all my shows!!!!

 

My whiskey vanished too, in a trice, as I knocked one back and howled in a silent cry of distress... and then I entered into a surreal world of conversation with Tata Sky Helpline.

 

 

You call, if you're in the Western Zone, to 020 (Pune) 66006633. And you get to speak to a computer (don't ever complain of India's humongous population!). Which tells you, in that disembodied voice, to dial 1 for Hindi mein jaankaari ke liye, dial 2 for English etc... so, the Brit in me ensured I dialled 2... that disembodied voice continued to spew information that was almost entirely useless till I did a little bit of cheating. I dialled the option for a new connection and managed to get to speak to a human being finally..... who (but naturally) spoke to me in chaste, shudhdh Hindi.... in a voice that was perhaps trained to set the listener's nerves on edge...

 

We sparred for a few minutes on the protocols... why don't you speak to me in English? I asked. Surely sir, I shall speak to you in English, he assured me, and said main aapse maafi chahata hoon for the inconvenience caused by speaking in Hindi. How can I help you, was his next question. So I ventured to tell him, ask him in fact, why am I not getting BBC Entertainment.

 

A simple question, I thought. All he needed was to give me a simple, straight forward answer...

 

He wanted to know what was my subscriber identity number. I did not know why that was relevant. So we went around the issue again, a few times, by which time he'd reached the end of his English and I'd reached the end of my patience.... my good friend, dear departed Dipankar, he of the immaculate wit, used to describe certain people as "Father of English", his back-handed way of describing someone who fu#@* up the language right royally!! The gentleman with whom I was sparring was one such Father of English so, I surrendered, sequentially, again and again... first we ended up speaking in Hindi..... then I gave up the battle of the subscriber identity number and went searching for the same and gave that to him...

 

and waited.... and waited... while he "put me on hold" - with my permission of course, while he tried to "help" me with my query. We're already 4 minutes into conversation now, mind you. And he comes back, finally, "unholds" me and says with that absolutely unerringly identifiable smugness in the voice... "Ji, mein aap ko yeh batana chahoonga ki Tata Sky mein BBC Entertainment Channel ab uplabdh nahin hai!"

 

I was sitting down and so I did not fall. In an extremely pseudo polite voice I asked him "Why not". And then we went around sparring again, in circles, round and round. Finally, in a rare admission of defeat he put me on hold again while summoning reinforcements. His supervisor came on, another clam when it came to sharing information, but definitely a clam made of better stuff. Some five minutes after Super Clam came on, and still none the wiser, I admitted a complete rout, surrendered abjectly and hung up in almost total disgust.... almost total disgust because, in those wonderful 10 odd minutes, I had developed a grudging admiration for my antagonists at the other end... If ever someone wants to develop a training module (Any HR guys out there, reading this?) on "How to drive a customer stark raving mad while keeping one's cool?" I suggest you call Tata Sky (Western Zone) on 020 - 66006633.

 

What can I say? Isko laga daala toh life...... pagal jhaala!!

 

PS: can someone tell me, which are the really good saas-bahu serials worth watching now? Eh, what? I'm sorry, Old Chap, but we're off for the nonce, toodle oo!

 

Waters of Life?

As a child, many million years ago, one of the nicest things that used to happen to me was attending PC Sorcar's Magic Show , an annual feature back then. Dad, Mom, brothers, some cousins, uncles etc we'd all go and get goggle eyed at the sheer magic.... Sorcar, ever the stage master, would leave us spell bound with that special trick "Waters of India"..

Not so many million years ago, in fact just around last month, during the Dussehra, I was in Varanasi - Benares, Kashi.... call it what youl will - a kind of a family gathering, siblings and mom (hopefully dear departed Dad looking on from up above with that rather silly looking smile that sometimes crossed his gruff face). And a trip to Benares is certainly incomplete without that mandatory dip in the Ganges, she being the holiest of our many sad rivers. And God knows, the promise of a cleansing away of accumulated sins (of which there have been far too many to ignore) ensured that we (brothers, sisters-in-law, et al) took the plunge.

Not once, but twice, even thrice, some ten or twelve times, each time coming up for a gasp of air before plunging in again, eyes shut firmly to the floating mass of flowers and bits of cloth (Dussehra, after all, does have its own visarjan frenzy up north).

No, it was not piety that solely guided our dipping .... blame it on the Keralite genes that flows though these collective veins and the sheer weight of nostalgia, we see a body of water, we take a dip. And so, we bathed in the Ganges...

First at Allahabad (at the Triveni Sangam)..... and then again at Sitamarhi..... and yet again in Varanasi...

..... because these are our holy rivers

Despite the pollution, despite the muck, despite it all, simply because the water was REFRESHINGLY COLD, had a surprising nip and chill, a surprisingly strong current despite a placid external appearance... and enjoyed it to the hilt. 

But, yes, honestly? We revere our rivers and pollute it too, at the same time, in a manner that defies logic, defies understanding, we treat our rivers (and our environment) in a manner that is beyond shabby, beyond description and yet, continue to revere, pray and worship..... 

See the picture here: http://epaper.indianexpress.com/71799/Indian-Express-Mumbai/30-November-2012#page/12/2

Holy? 

PS: At Sitamarhi, we'd just spent a blissful 30 minutes frolicking in the Ganga and were towelling ourselves dry and changing clothes on the river bank. A mere hundred metres away, a few people came and floated downriver the carcass of a white cow.... 

Holy river, holy cow!!

Zodiac Signs

The wife never allows me to forget the fact that she has a very strong faith in sun signs, moon signs, ascendants, descendants and all those assorted stuff. The fact that, by nature, I am a wee bit finicky in matters of hygiene, discipline, order etc is straight away ascribed to the Virgo sign under which I exist - it does not matter that any other person who is a Virgo but unmoved by chaos or disorder is, well, a Virgo. Without batting an eyelid (she's got two, rather large sized ones too) she'd exclaim "But, Satheesh, he has a Gemini ascendant!" as if, duh, can't you see?!!

 

I can't - really.

 

Anyway, that was not what I wanted to say....

 

A couple of days back, there I was, sitting with a client who's become a friend, over time, and we were generally chat-chitting. Suddenly he gives me a penetrating glance and remarks "Hmmm, nice shirt that. Zodiac!"

 

Not a question, that was a statement, confidently asserted. His confidence was not matched by me, the wearer of the shirt. I paused for a moment to try and recollect. Yes, light blue, full sleeves, but hey?! Where's the logo?

 

The pen in my pocket was a Cross - the logo said that. My wrist watch, that day, was a Titan Edge - the logo said that, too. My trouser pocket had the small, discreet Louis Phillippe emblem... but this shirt?

 

Nothing on the pocket.

 

Nothing on the sleeve (a la Arrow)

 

Short of pulling my collar around and/or turning my neck like "The Exorcist", there was no way I was gonna get a glance at the one place where the logo ought to, surely, be! 

 

Ashok smiled at me, knowingly, like the enlightened Buddha. The smile was warm, filled with harmless mirth. "Kya dekh rahe ho, mujhse poocho! Main batata hoon... aap ke shirt ke button ko zara goar se dekhiye. Only Zodiac shirts have buttons that have 3 holes! And they're made from mother of pearl!" 

 

 

Pearls of wisdom, that, in case you (like me) are among the mass of uninitiated.... to hell with Virgos or Sagittariuses.... here's the true sign of the Zodiac!

 

Sats 

So there I was, sitting in the dark, all by myself - mercifully - comfortably ensconced in a well padded push back seat, no one to the right of me (a whole empty row), no one to the left of me (a corner seat, on the aisle). Here and there, scattered across the hall, a few seats occupied, some (like me) alone, a few couples, a few gathering of three or more... and to think, this was in the FIRST WEEK!! 

James (Craig) Bond, the latest avatar, SKYFALL - a good movie, no doubt, as movies go. Fast, action paced, superb stunts, and all that. But, sitting back and thinking about it later (yeah, yeah, I know - one is NOT supposed to do THAT!!) I just couldn't help wondering....  

What a FALL there has been.....

Yes, an old fogy like me, belonging to that ancient generation that has seen every single actor to have played Agent 007 - Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan, Daniel Craig..... heh, heh, heh, wait - even Timothy Dalton (Licence to Kill), and also that ever so forgotten George Lazenby (OHMSS, anyone - I saw that, too!)... for me/us I think Bond will always be Sean Connery despite his best efforts to shake that image off in a host of subsequent movies... I mean, we grew up reading Ian Fleming and Bond is rugged, dark haired and macho.

What have these guys gone and done?!! Political correctness, gender sensitivity, "comfortable with the emotional side" and all that, effectively they've gone and neutered the poor guy. Sheesh!! And while Dame Dench as "M" has essayed her roles hitherto to perfection I'm glad they bumped her off finally!! Too much of sentimental mush, Old Chap, what?! Understated, to be sure (they're Brits after all) but still there, mushy it is. 

The stunts, as always, superb and not too much computer imagery - the motorcycle race over the rooftops truly Gee Whiz! and all that but you now what?

I've got a word of advice to the Broccoli's of this world.... for the next Bond movie, I tell you, look no further than Madras, sign on Rajnikant I say, and mind it!!!! You want yentertainment? You get it!! Skyfall? Pshaw!! Not even hairfall can dent the won and wonly syooperstaaaaaar, James Rajnikant Baaaand! Aaama, like that wonly!!

The last time I saw a "Housefull" sign was, incidentally, the first time my son saw one - in Mumbai, 3rd week, night show, "Sivaji - The BOSS". Daniel, dude, I'm sorry, but move over, what?!!

 

(Back, after a while - hope to return more often...)

Cough Cough!!

The rather small news item, tucked away on an inside page, caught my eye. "Pakistan: 16 die after drinking cough syrup" Eh? What? Even before the insurer in me began conjuring images of defective batch of medicines and product liability claims and product recall situations, that little naughty evil imp inside my head woke up, prodding my ageing memory to my glory days as a bachelor way back to 1987.....

and a town called Nasik, a lodge where I stayed several months, where some everlasting friendships were born and built.... and some friendships that were less immortal. One such, a Vinod Khanna lookalike, Arindam by name, employed in a private bank, handsome to a fault, impeccable English, improbable sense of humour and moody as a grandfather clock with a giant pendulum...

and how, on days when the "gang" of us would be having a gala time in one or the other's rooms we'd suddenly realise "Where's Arindam?" and go hunting. His room would appear locked, lights out, dark windows and we'd wonder "Where's he GONE?" until the next day he'd offer some rather lame, unbelievable story... until one day...

he was missing, again, and we went up, searching for him, the windows were dark and we turned back thinking Arindam's done the bunk again.. and heard a cough from within. And banged on the door, got him to open up and there he was, hiding, in the dark, drinking Benadryl because ..... well because with alcohol content 5% it was even better than beer and, more to the point, was available even on "dry days"!!

          

So, that explained the mystery of the missing Arindam..... and brought a smile to my lips as I  recalled those days... 

and I read "Pakistan: 16 die after drinking cough syrup" (see this:http://epaper.indianexpress.com/71111/Indian-Express-Mumbai/27-November-2012#page/17/1)

Did you notice it? 16 die, the headline said, no? And the news story speaks of 15!! So, where is the missing 16th man?!! Where is Arindam?!! (Who, by the way, is missing, last seen somewhere in Pune but might as well be in Pakistan or Neptune for all I know...)

******************************* 

Somewhere else, before I sign off on this.... on Yahoo, the headline fleetingly said "RBI will take steps if currency shortage persists".... I had filed that away, mentally, to read later. I guess they must have taken the elevator by now because the story seems to have vanished.... as for currency shortage, well, what are our Swiss Banks for?!!

*****************************************

Shooting Straight From The Lip

Here I am, back again after a long break. Had been mourning - the death of a friend (un)surprisingly leading on to a temporary (?) death of my muse - these past few months, unable to bring myself to believe that life must go on...

Random thoughts off and on did flip through an inattentive mind, floating up like semi-inflated balloons but not really able to achieve the desired buoyancy

• For instance, Delhi University has 100% as the "cut off" for B.Com students while, on a recent trip to Gujarat I read a news item that said the cut-off for MBBS was 72% - duh??!!
• VVS Laxman calls it a day because MSD was not answering his cell phone - and till just the other day the press was baying for VVS' blood but all of a sudden now he's a tragic-hero? (VVS has always been someone I've admired, though - ALMOST as good as Azhar of the silken wrists)
• Pakistan's Supreme Court has been busy (in between sacking errant Prime Ministers) determining the price of the humble/mighty samosa...

and so on, every day matters that once moved me (poor you) to inflict my thoughts on a wide, unsuspecting world... till the aforesaid death(s) occurred...

And then many more deaths took place. Disasters, man-made... in Kokrajhar, Assam when Bodos clashed with Muslims; in Myanmar/Burma when Buddhists (aren't they supposed to believe in non-violence or did someone come along and amend Buddha's 8 fold path? In Sri Lanka, too, prior to Myanmar) clashed with Rohingyas...

"Clashed with" sounds so very delightfully martial, doesn't it? Brings to mind images of two warring groups facing each other across a battlefield

The reality must be vastly different, no? Rioting, murder, looting, rape, people running helter-skelter, being chased by a mob, mindless to reason, focused only on that one single thought that mobs seem to develop, that atavistic thirst for savagery... 

So, there was the provocation. And hence there was the retaliation too. In Mumbai, first, on 11th Aug., followed soon by similar reactions in Lucknow, Srinagar and Allah only knows where else. Oh? How could I forget the targeted attacks on "Assamese" peoples in our modern cities - Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai, Mumbai...

and, while all this has been going on, I feel compelled to ask these questions...

is it all right for a Muslim to kill a Muslim in Syria or Iran or Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan - the mullahs do not march to Azad Maidan asking for peoples to live in harmony and co-existence? But a Buddhist killing a Muslim in far off Myanmar means a mob of 5000 can attack policemen AND police women , beat them up, tear off the ladies' clothes etc?

is it all right to attack anyone who  "looks like as Assamese"  because some gang of equally reprehensible scoundrels have killed Muslims in the Bodo districts?

I wanted to wish all my Muslim friends whose cell phone number was on my contact list - and discovered the "5 sms per day" limit. Eid Mubarak was e-mail driven, thereafter. Equally, think of the sheer injustice faced by all the millions & millions of law abiding Muslims who would not have been able to share their feelings over SMS with their friends! How sad?!! 

Around the same time we also had our Independence Day - 65 years after the bloody partition, why is it that we have still not been able to remove these walls from our hearts & minds?

Iss desh ka kya hoga?

An "Identity" Crisis

My newspaper gives me the "information" - and, truly, I had not known this - that 2012 is the NATIONAL YEAR OF MATHEMATICS. And then goes on to paint a rather depressing picture of the state of maths in the country, bemoaning the way it is taught, the way it is researched, and so on...

My mind goes back in time. To my days in school. To those wonderful sepia tinted memories, given a truly safe distance from the reach of some terrifying teachers' arms (and rulers, canes, hands...)

My "love affair" with Maths started, if I remember right, in Std VI - till then we were taught Arithmetic which was fairly interesting and easy, interesting perhaps because it was easy. And then, in VI we came to a new class, a new subject called "Modern Mathematics" and a new tyrant of a teacher. Years later, I now can empathise with her frequent use of rulers and canes - not to draw lines on the blackboard but on our backs - because I now suspect that "Modern Mathematics" was equally beyond her understanding. So, we were given "homework" day after day while at the same time we were such wonderfully "outstanding" students, spending class after class outside in the corridor, kneeling down and copying our arrears of homework from those nerdy, geeky kids who had actually done theirs! The arrears of homework, therefore, continued to grow like our current account/fiscal deficit soon to resemble a Greek crisis.

Std VI, I remember, was also a time when I visited the Head Master's chambers almost every single day, a hand outstretched to receive 5 or 10 of his choicest. One learned, at that discerning age, that a thick fat cane was less dangerous than the thin reedy ones.

Std VII and VIII weren't much better, the went by in a blur of repetitive sessions of being outstanding, further research into what is the best remedy for a "pain killer" after one of those sessions with the head Master... we discovered that toothpaste had a remarkably cooling effect! (Talk of research!)

Std IX and X saw the love affair with Mathematics going up into a higher plane. A new teacher, for once a male, young, handsome like Amitabh Bachchan, and we fell in love with him - we tried, too, but in vain, to fall in love with the subject. Anthony was his name, I'm sure he must have been brilliant - the fault was ours, we just couldn't understand what he tried to teach. His aim was accurate, too, he could hit us in the face with a broken piece of chalk from a distance right across the classroom. He ought to have been in the national archery team, bulls eye every time!

   

If only he could explain as well as he could aim..... sigh.

I sat through 2 years of Trigonometry living under a whole cloud of darkness. Even today, those wonderful problems called "Proving the Identity" or whatever, proving that the LHS equals the RHS can leave me shivering and not because if the weather....



After many, many steps - many more than prescribed, certainly - I would arrive at that wonderful moment of truth. Having spent several minutes with my nose to the notebook, I would suddenly lift my head up, a look of joy on my face, a "Eureka" moment, the problem SOLVED..... right hand raised up in excitement.

Anthony would stroll over, take one look, his right hand would then catch hold of my earlobe between his thumb and forefinger while his left hand, index finger (looooooong one) pointing accusingly at the first line of the equation.

I would go red - not out of embarrassment, had run of THAT way back in Std VI - but because of his skill in deploying his fingers on my earlobes. What I had managed to do was LHS equals LHS. Somewhere, in those myriad steps, my RHS had quietly given up the struggle and sunk without a trace.

2012 - National year of mathematics. RIP. 

C.A.A.D.D??

I first heard of the term "Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder" a few years back - perhaps 10 years back? Or was it 9 years? 8 maybe? I don't really remember, as I grow older it seems to me this really doesn't matter. Not that I suffer from AAADD.... what did you say? Eh? What?

But, listen.. here I am, plonked in front of my telly watching the French Open, Djokovich is being shown the ropes by a guy I hadn't heard of (well, he wouldn't have heard of me neither, duh!) - Andreas Seppi, 22nd seed, up two sets, before Djoker got back in the 3rd. High quality, engrossing game, a viewer's delight. And, something rather unusual, in a French Open, a clay court tournament, I'm seeing a lot of rushing up to the net, not merely baseline rallies...

Began watching tennis back in the 80's, I remember. Around the same time that we began to have colour telly broadcasts... we had, then, a Solidaire CAT 1000 SE. (The image below is NOT me or mine, got this from the net - but that could well have been me and my brother, perhaps! Proudly posing before the newest family member!)

And Doordarshan. And, what, 4 hours of programmes? Which included news in English (from New Delhi), news in Tamil (in lieu of news in Hindi) from Madras, and then of course programmes such as Chitrahaar, Krishi Darshan (or "Amci Maati, Amchi Manoos", or down in Madras "Vayalum Vaazhvum"), adult literacy classes (I remember, even today, quite vividly Professor Paa Nannan teaching the viewers how to write "a", "aaa" !)

And OF COURSE within those 4 hours we had, too, those rather wonderful moments of sublime nothing.. remember this?

 

 SORRY FOR THE BREAK

And we'd spend our time, patiently gazing at this fascinating screensaver which, often, would wave and weave gently, our patience back then boundless, time running out like the sand through an hour-glass... we could spend a minute, sometimes even 2 or 3, waiting for the screen to come back to life.

And today, even as the Djokovic - Seppi match, fascinating contest stretching to the 5th set, continues to be a game of top quality tennis I have been hitting all the channels right from BBC, NatGeo, Star Movies, Comedy Central, News the whole damn works. Not because the tennis is boring. It's like that chappie who climbed the Everest, when they asked him "Why?" - "Because it's there!"

So, where once we sat, unmoving, eyes riveted on that "Rukhavat Ke Liye Khed Hai" or "Sorry For The Break" screen, today I am (and I'm sure YOU do this too) unable to watch any ONE channel or programme without reaching for that remote and hitting the channel surf button...

It IS "Attention Deficit Disorder" - got nothing to do with age, though. In fact, I guess the younger one is the more acute this problem has got. I call it "Choice Activated Attention Deficit Disorder" - C.A.A.D.D.



"Schadenfreude"?!!

 

"Schadenfreude" - a "foreign" word but one that most of us can understand as something that we (that's I as well as you) have felt at some point or the other. It is a German word now accepted in the English language too and, very simply, means "joy/satisfaction/pleasure felt at someone else's misfortune"....

Remember the time when that guy on the motorcycle who zipped and cut across your path was pulled over by the traffic cops?

You smiled? Schadenfreude!!

Your neighbour's son (that snooty, arrogant no-good kid?) got admission into that swanky new college and suddenly, one day, the college was found to be unregistered - you remember telling that neighbour to first check out the courses (though, come to think of it, you really never did!) - Schadenfreude!!!

That "kitty party" where Mrs. Mehta kept talking and talking and talking about the diamond necklace that her husband had gifted her while all the time asking you "And, Mrs. Joshi, doesn't YOUR husband ever buy diamonds for you? Silk sarees? Oh how BORING" - and, you hear from Shantabai that the Income Tax department had raided the Mehta's only yesterday??  

 

Concern writ large on your face, you listen, wide eyed, open mouthed, saying "Oh??!! Is that so?" as you speak on the phone to Mrs. Mehta as Shantabai looks on, "No! How can they!! They're ALL corrupt!! Really?!!" you speak while inside your heart you were singing such wonderful happy songs (Heera Heera Heera Heera...?) - Schadenfreude.

All of us, at some point or the other, have felt this, no? We're humans, after all, with our essential decency still intact but with that ever-so-once-in-a-while human failing... 

But tell me -  would you actually LIKE to go and watch people suffer? would you actually be willing to PAY, spend money AS WELL AS YOUR (ok, we're in India, so may be "not so precious") TIME (amazing how we seem to put so little a value on that commodity, "time") to go and see people (and I'm using that word in a massive, humongous plural sense - not one person, not 2 or 3 people but a much, much larger population) suffer?

Sitting in the air-conditioned comfort of our rooms, plonked securely on our behinds, watching the news on television - lets say an earthquake in Sikkim? Or, the tsunami in Fukushima? Or, take you pick - there are any number of such "hot-spots" around the world as God plays his "leela" or as the Buddha smiles...

I can picture the more sensitised among us, the next day or the next week perhaps, responding to the newspapers and writing out a cheque for the disaster affected people (and a bit of Sec. 80 G Income Tax relief won't harm, either, no?)

But, seriously....... Can you picture yourself logging on to "makemytrip.com" or "cleartrip.com" or even the humble "irctc.com" to book tickets to go on a jaunt to visit these areas? I doubt if we're that ghoulish by temperament and I'm sure most of you would agree too.

So, given that, where does this man get his "kicks"? The man, in question, being the Tourism Minister of Orissa - Prafulla Samal - who has reportedly stated that the floods in Orissa are an opportunity to promote tourism. He said people would like to see how flood-affected areas look so districts reeling under the floods should use this opportunity to promote tourism.

Go figure! Figure, too, WHY we continue to have a "leadership deficit"......

Ab Tak Chhappan!

No, not the movie. Not Nana Patekar and his intense glare and that tigerish growl. Not encounter cops and their scorecards. Not even RGV.....

I'm talking of something even more directly firghtening than am encounter specialist! (After all, what is the realistic probability of you - or, for that matter, ME? - being on the "hit list" of a Pradeep Salve or a Daya Nayak?)

I refer to the Rupee and its all too uncontrolled sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide over the past few months, racing like a Chris Gayle sixer or an MSD helicopter shot.... from 47 to 48 to 49, 50, 51,52,53,545555.5 barely pasuing and crossing 56.... abhi toh chhappan hai..... aur aagey kya hoga?

And, while the world may still say that our venerable economist Prime Minister is knowledgable and all that, believe me, I have stopped believing that! Arrey, what use a PM who cannot stop his own Cabinet Ministers (the Raja's and the Gills) or his own party veterans (the Diggy Raja's) or his own coalition partners (irrepressible Mamata, unmanageable Pawar) et al.... while the rupee slides... and slides.... and slides

And the Finance Minister, perhaps busy looking at new carpets and furniture for that palace on Raisina Hill keeps hoping that Subbarao of RBI will "do something" like that story....

So Subbarao wrings his hands and frets and fumes while the rupeeeeeeeeee sliiiiides deeeeeeper into a mess and then, suddenly, the government goes and does a quiet cheat, a morally defunct depraved act of sheer cowardice......

They wait for the Parliament session to get over, waving friendly smiling tata-bye-bye-see-yous to the Jaitleys and the Sushmas and the Mamatas and the Lalus..... and, then stab you and me right in the gut, a whopping big Rs.7.50 per litre knife in the gut.

Look at the positive side, though - an sms that someone sent this morning. "At least we won't have to worry about drunken driving - no one can afford to have liquor AND petrol on the same day now!"

Forget drunken driving..... I'm in the market to buy a bullock cart. The way the economy's sliding, I guess that's the next big thing. Anyway, with the monsoons around, the roads won't be worth driving on....

See, there's space for you too - come along, join in!

What's in a name?

"That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet...." wrote Shakespeare many hundred years back. And, several hundred years later, a rose may still smell as sweet regardless of its name..

But hey, whaddaya mean, what's in a name? There's a lot that hinges on that - take mine, for instance. It's "Satheesh Kumar" with that egregious "EE" and a rather unnecessary, superfluous Kumar tagged on at the end. And I'm not even going to tell you what that mysterious "K.V" stands for in my full name. Suffice it to say it has nothing whatever to do with my late, great father. Every time someone writes my name by the more commonly accepted "Satish" I take offence. (It is entirely another matter that I sign off as "Sats"!) Why, I even joined a new school solely on the strength of the fact that the clerk, on hearing my name, wrote it correctly with that double EE - that she was quite good looking also helped, but you get the point, don't you?

Which also explains my strange obsessive fascination with reading the "Change of Name" columns in the daily Indian Express. And I have had reasons to smile over that, often enough.

Why stick with people who change their own names (or their children's?) - as a country, we are all too familiar with the stories of how

• Connaught Place became Rajiv Chowk (though, I think people still call it CP and poor Rajiv came to nought)
• Mount Road in Madras became Anna Salai in Madras and later, in turn, became Anna Salai in Chennai
• VT (Victoria Terminus) station became CST (Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus) in Bombay which became Mumbai

and so on...

Some changes have been accepted easily, I guess - more people now speak of Mumbai and Bombay seems to have quietly slipped into the Arabian Sea.

Some changes may, perhaps, take a longer time - I daresay it will be several more years before we give up Bangalore for Bengaluru.

Some changes may never be a reality - I'm quite sure Mount Road will remain precisely that, regardless of the Anna's or the Thambi's who may come and go along that wonderfully long serpentine highway of Chenaied Madras....

But tell me, I am totally befuddled, confused, amazed and all those other synonyms - WHY do I see OFFICIAL "Tender Advertisements" in newspapers issued by GOVERNMENT Departments belonging to "Orissa" as well as to "Odisha"? I mean, it IS official, isn't it? This change of name? From "Orissa" to "Odisha"?



Then why? 

A Government "Of The People, By The People..."

Originally written on 26th December 2011

Barely a week to go, 2011 in it's fading moments. A chill winter in Delhi and the rest of the northern regions.

Mumbai, relatively pleasant with just that right nip in the air to make an evening seem just right for a peg of whiskey.... 

Someone sent me an e-mail which had, among other things, the following thought inducing sentences:

• A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can count on Paul's support. - Bernard  Shaw
• Democracy must be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. - James Bovard, Civil  Libertarian (1994)
• Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. - P J O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian
• No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while Congress is in session. - Mark Twain (1866)

I've wondered, often, about how our famed Indian democracy works. We will, shortly, have yet another opportunity to see it work - with elections to 5 states (Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur) announced to be held between January and March.

 

We have the Lok Pal Bill being discussed/debated inside Parliament. We have the Lok Pal Bill being discussed and debated OUTSIDE Parliament by Anna Hazare and his team. My personal take on this?

 

I USED to have a very high opinion of our Prime Minister -  and, even today, I still believe that he is personally "clean" and not corrupt. His fault seems to be that he is surrounded by "politicians" (synonymous for corrupt people?) and his inability to rein them in.

 

I started off, initially, having a very high opinion of Anna Hazare.

 

 

Today I believe he is personally clean and not corrupt but, like Manmohan Singh, surrounded by people who are less than clean, manipulated and unable to differentiate between the idealists and the hypocrites. I also have very strong reservations about someone who believes that it is perfectly all right to tie up and beat anyone who imbibes alcohol. (Sigh, go back and read such perfect weather for a whiskey!)

 

For all our middle class vehemence and indignation with which we condemn corruption, for all that disdain with which we sneer at the corrupt, conniving politicians and that new bad word "crony capitalists".... what do we make of the fact that in Karnataka, a state that has a Lok Ayukta, a state where the Lok Ayukta succeeded in getting the Chief Minister to step down.... what do we make of the fact that in the recently held bye-elections in Bellary the voters re-elected B. Sriramulu (the alleged corrupt MLA, an associate of the infamous Reddy brothers) by a thumping majority?

 

Should we conclude that "democracy" in India is "like that only"? Will a Lok Pal Bill really change things for the better? Or, do we really need to revisit the Westminster model of democracy? Do we need to redefine the basic tenets of representative elections?

 

Will we continue seeing crooks and their kin "making" laws for us, for generations yet to come?

 

On a parting note, I understand "Team Anna" had asked for a discount in the rental fees for the use of the grounds at Bandra - Kurla Complex - I wonder is THIS not asking for "discretion", the very same thing that we are all fighting against? One rule for others but a different rule/yardstick for ME?