"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?

Be Tech!!

Originally written on 14th Dec., 2011

The newspaper headline screamed School "Asks" 840 students to buy iPads - the paper, "Midday" I think, is one that I normally would not be reading. Today I happened to be sitting in a meeting room at a client's office and this was the headline that glared at me accusingly, daring me to ignore it!

  

I ignored it. Took up a glass of water and quenched my thirst - curiosity aroused I just "happened" to glance at the subtext and learned that the school in question was Podar School at Santa Cruz, Mumbai. Well, not being a "Mumbaikar" despite my 9 odd years I am unaware of the pecking order in terms of snob value of schools - but I do believe Podar ranks right up there with the Bombay Scottish or the Dhirubhai Ambani types (pardon me if I'm wrong on this - as I said, I'm guilty of being a Madrasi!) Anyway, I was able to avoid reading more as the meeting commenced just as I finished reading the sub headline..

  

Finished with the meeting I was now en-route for another and, as I do quite often, switched on the FM Radio - to once again encounter an RJ posing the "outraged" question to listeners. "Should schools be allowed to ask students to use iPads? Is it good or bad?"

Listener after listener, mostly women, were quite categorical - NO, this IS bad!

• Children should not be encouraged to use computers and laptops etc because they will forget how to write.
• Kisi bhi tarah dekho technology kharaab hi hai!
• Children should not be allowed to .... because they will never learn to do arithmetic etc.
• Old is Gold. Hamara zamane mein aisa nahin tha.
• Nowadays children are being given even cellphones. That is bad. Because they have cell phones they don't come home on time.

What made the programme enjoyable was the songs the RJ continued to play and so I stayed glued to the station while also, at the same time, listening to weird views like those mentioned above...

 

Technology - can it be stopped? Impossible. The real issues, perhaps, should have been -

• Can a school be allowed to compel students to buy an iPad? 
• Can a student (this rule apparently is for students from Standard II and above) be expected to be responsible for the safety/safekeeping of such a costly asset? (Almost every other day I forget my lunch box at work!)
• How would the school monitor the content that young minds would get exposed to?

There could be many more such issues that could be framed. But to think that children should not be exposed to computers or cell phones? Why, they take to technology as easily as a fish to water! Just yesterday I noticed an "icon" on my cell phone - I knew it was a sign showing "BlueTooth" was "On" but had no clue how that had happened or how to turn it off. I showed it to my son and within a second PROBLEM SOLVED.

 

To say that one can stop technology is futile. To think that children should be "sheltered" from technology is even more futile - yes, there are some inherent risks and dangers (and show me any field where there isn't). I feel the negative reactions come from those who fear technology has made us obsolete...

 

This is the age of the youngsters. The future is already here.

 

 

With OR Without Malice to one & all

Originally written/posted on 2nd Feb., 2012

In a country of 123 crores but a literacy rate of less than desirable, I know for a fact that it's not too many people who have the hobby of reading books. And, among those that do, I have my serious doubts about how big, really, is the population of Indians that read English books. And, even among those, the truly "serious" kind, those that read (or, some of them at least, CLAIM to read) the "high brow" works of such writers as Salman Rushdie, I guess, would be not more than a few thousands. Correct me, if I am wrong.

Given this, rather shamefully small minority of alleged readers, who, exactly, are the people who are offended by Satanic Verses, and that too so many years after the book got published (and, quietly, banned too)? 

As a nation, we seem to have become - no, I'll amend that: we seem to have ALLOWED ourselves to become "victims of extra-sensitive interests". Our Constitution (given the number of amendments - 115 amendments in 63 years, if one is to believe Wikipedia - I think we ought to classify that as a bi-annual magazine!) promises us "Right to Freedom of Expression" but successive politicians (and the governments formed by those politicians) managed to manipulate their "vote banks" for their vested interests and "free speech" gets thrown into a dustbin, where it lies, rotting and putrefying.

So we have Muslims screaming at Rushdie for his remarks.

And we have Hindus screaming at MF Hussain for his paintings and drawings.

 

And we have Christians screaming at Hindus in Madhya Pradesh because the BJP government wants to introduce teachings of the Bhagavad Gita as a part of the school curriculum. And we have the Buddhists going on a rampage in and around Shivaji Park because they want the government to allow them to erect a memorial to BR Ambedkar, in the process undermining the very Constitution and the rule of law that Ambedkar (never mind) wanted to uphold. And, to top them all, we have Anna (what a Gandhian idea) saying/practising that people who consume alcohol in his village should be/have been flogged in public.

We have a whole country filled with people who get offended at the drop of a hat.

So, we have hartals, gheraos, bandhs, rasta rokos, chakki jams... we have violence, we have threats of violence, we have honour killings (we've even exported that concept to Canada, just earlier this very week!) and much, much more simply because "I do not like what you said, never mind I have not read what you said! Someobody told somebody who told the pretty, no-brainer TV journalist who then screamed it all over the country that so-and-so said such-and-such" What the hell is wrong with us?!!

All of this is bad enough by itself. But, then, what really and truly gets me irritated is when people start using "SECULARIST" as a bad word! I'm sick and tired of reading mails from some so called intellectual who thinks that what is wrong with this country is that we are "secular".

I got a mail, today, from a good friend, one of those chain mails that seem to go around the whole world and then on to the universe and keeps going round and round in a never ending cycle. This mail is, allegedly, authored by Gurumurthy (convener, Swadeshi Jagran Manch) and attacks our so-called "secularists" for a variety of ills.... to give just an example:

"Now something even more shameful. The ‘seculars’, including the media,had ceaselessly condemned the normal protests against shows displaying Husain’s painting and pontificated to Hindus about the need for tolerance. But they wouldn’t utter a word against the violence by Muslims nor ask them to be tolerant.
The reason is obvious. They are dishonest."

I've felt a compelling need to stand up and state this: If Muslims (anywhere in the world) can take offence to the writings of a Salman Rushdie or a Taslima Nasreen, or to cartoons in Danish newspapers; if Hindu's can take offence to paintings of Hindu Goddesses by MF Hussain; if Buddhists can take offence to "insults" to Ambedkar; if Catholics can take offence to Protestants; if Maratha's can take offence to James Laine's book on Shivaji; if Kannadigas can take offence to Tamils; Tamils take offence to Malayalis; Bengalis to the whole world that is not peopled by bhadralok; and so on.... where, for heaven's sake, do we go for some peace and quiet?

Why are we all so very over-sensitive, extra-touchy and willing to get offended for everything? Why should someone called Pramod Muthalik (remember him and his Sri Rama Sene in Mangalore?) become a "celebrity" on TV because he and some goons went around bashing up girls for "the audacity" of visiting bars?

       
I'm sick and tired of all this bashing and "feeling hurt" and the governments' repeated admissions that they are afraid of a "law & order" problem!

Interestingly, that chain mail from my friend, the one I referred to - I noticed it was sent to a mailing list consisting of Hindus! That's how "secular" we truly are, afraid of hurting the sentiments of people we know?

For my part, the word "secular" means to treat all groups of people in the same manner, not showing any favour or bias, nor revealing any prejudice. Sarva Dharma Sambhava.

So, this post is in defence to being secular in the truest sense of that word!

Lost in Time

Mumbai - maximum city. Mad rushing crowds. Crazy scrambles. Tight deadlines. Tearing hurry. Everyone's in a rush. All the time. All the damn time. Since the time of Rak Kapoor and Johnny Walker - "Yeh Hai Bombay, Zara Hatke, Zara Bachke...." from Borivli to Andheri to Ghatkopar to Thane to Chinchpokli to wherever.... this is 21st Century in a headlong rush to collide smack up into the 22nd century fully many decades ahead of time. This is the guy in the car behind you at a traffic light honking away so that he can rush like mad to the next traffic jam 200 metres away and get stuck all over again so that he can honk all over again....

Mumbai - maximum city.

And yet.... and yet, bang in the heart of this crazy, chaotic cosmopolitan madness, right there in Churchgate, barely a few hundred feet away from the bustling madness. Come with me. Step in. Just off the main road. On the ground floor.

Step in to a world that almost has stopped in time. Come, sit down on these chairs, at these old tables. Time is slower here, it does not rush, it does not even run, it does not have that frantic walking speed that you see barely twenty metres away on the main road. Time walks here. Slowly. Gently. At a measured speed.

Sit down and enjoy your cup of tea. Yes, tea - I am, as you know, a confirmed coffee drinker but here I shall be a non-conformist. Darjeeling tea, Assam tea, Ceylon tea, Earl Grey, Oolong ..... why, even Masala chai, khullad chai etc. Served by waiters from an earlier age. Dressed in white, with green cummerbunds. Waiters who walk slowly. Softly. Unhurried.



Tea Centre - that's the place I'm talking of. On the stretch of road from Churchgate to Marine Drive, two buildings away from the station.

They have these little bells that tinkle, softly, on each table. You want to summon a waiter you lift the bell. And tinkle it. You do NOT make that "Mumbai" noise by puckering your lips and saying "Brrrrrsssssssttttt" or "Pppppprrrrrrrrrrsssssttttt" or stuff like that. You tinkle, gently, and the waiter comes with a smile - not with a frown.

 

And the food, too, is nice, gentle and friendly. From an earlier age. But fresh. Like the tea. Quiet. Understated.

Now, if only the people who sit there can speak a little less loudly! Can't be helped, I guess. This is Mumbai, after all. You can have everything that you want here. Except some quiet :)

No Laughing Matter, This - seriously!

I am annoyed. I am really, truly and seriously annoyed. Look at my face! See that big frown? Look into my eyes, they're bloodshot, no? (No, not because of Vijay Mallya's liquid assets) I am not laughing - nor should you.

We're Indians, after all. We are not supposed to laugh. We're not ALLOWED to laugh, come to think of it.

Look at that fellow, what's his name? Kapil Sibal. Falling all over himself and apologising because of an "offensive" cartoon. That too, not a recent one - something published well before I was born. bah, why before I was born, before Kapil S was born!

We saw, just last month - no? Mamata did not laugh when some poor lecturer sent an e-mail with some cartoons showing Didi and her current railway minister in "poor light". They took offence. As did the lone MP from an almost unknown party from Tamil Nadu - go on, I dare you, identify the man who made our wonderfully erudite, loquacious and oh so capable Kapil S apologise with alacrity - naah, you can't I bet.

We're a nation filled with people who must not laugh at public figures. So, cartoons must now be censored. Soon we will censor newspapers for denigrating the office of public figures. And then we will stop reporting scams and scandals too. We will stop reporting Anna Hazare. Baba Ramdev. Nirmal Baba. Nityananda.

We will stop carrying cartoons showing that wondefully spontaneous question that Anna Hazare asked when someone slapped Sharad Pawar - "Only one?" Or other such comments...

Because someone might laugh. And thereby insult a "leader" - why, dammit, even the use of inverted commas such as ".." can be offensive.

I am, therefore, upset. Angry. Offended. I deman an apology. From all those cartoonists who've drawn cartoons. Anywhere. About anything. Dammit - I demand an apology from Kapil Sibal AND the whole bloody cabinet. My sentiments are hurt. Somebody do something. I demand an apology from all the Chief Ministers of all the states. And their Governors. Even that chappie who was caught on camera in Hyderabad Raj Bhavan doing things he ought not have been doing, not on tape at least, or even if he did didn't he know he was not supposed to be caught, or even if he did get caught ought he not have had an obliging driver tucked away somewhere in the background who would step up and say "Mea Culpa?"

On a more sober (soberer?) note: does any one ever think of offering an apology to the nation for all the lives lost, lives maimed, livelihoods destroyed due to the day to day bungling in the name of (mis)governance?