Remembering 26/11

I’m not very good at remembering dates, usually – I forget what date it is unless I am writing an official letter to someone, I forgot to wish A on his birthday this year because I just had a complete black out when I woke up…but last year this day has been on my mind all day. Bojjandi was a newborn, less than 2 months old, dad was out of town, and we were all staying at my parents’ place, grandma included, when mom switched to a news channel and we sat, horrified, for the next few days as the crazy, nightmarish events unfolded on national television. It was horrific, it was tragic…and it was unnecessary.

Delhi, where I live, has been the target of terrorist attacks for years now, since the Punjab terrorism began all those years back. I remember, back in 1992, one of my classmates from the South came to Delhi for a vacation and two of us picked him up from the station. We got onto a DTC bus and he was startled to see a sign saying “Watch out for unidentified packages. There could be a bomb. Raise alarm. Earn reward.” He was so shocked and frightened to see such a sign and face the possibility of a terrorist attack on an everyday means of transport that for the rest of the journey back to our house, he kept peeking underneath the seats in front of and behind ours, hoping o unidentified packages lurked there. Today, terrorist activity has become so widespread in the country that police barricades, sandbag barriers and all manner of security checks, from frisking to electronic detectors, have become commonplace at every movie we go to watch, every mall we visit, even ordinary neighbourhood markets.

But one of the reasons that 26/11 really scared me – no, I’m not a habitué of the Taj or the Trident, so it’s not that it touched ‘people like me’ – was that these armed men, a mere handful of them, were able to hold the country hostage, literally take over key points within a city and hold off trained armed forces for days, and indulge in massive carnage in the duration. Nowhere else has one seen such a situation except in a war, for example the Blitz, that a whole city is held hostage and people are scared to venture out of their homes. The last time something like this must have happened in India must have been the Blackout during the indo-Pak war.

How on earth did our security forces not manage to raise an alarm in advance? What kind of intelligence were they collecting? Why did the MSG take so long to even reach the site? Why did no one from the Central Government seem to take charge of anything, be it taking strategic decisions on rescuing the hostages or deciding to wall off the media so that vital information regarding the plans of our defending forces were not made available real time to the terrorists? Why did the media not have the common sense to make delayed broadcasts so as to ensure the safety of the poor hostages trying to escape? Why did our local police not have adequate equipment including working flak jackets? Why did the police leaders in the city decide to plunge into the fray, without adequate information about what exactly was going on, rather than be part of the strategic planning for the invasion by the NSG?

These are questions to which no one has been able to give a satisfactory answer so far. The so-called spirit of Mumbai – I don’t know whether it’s something to be celebrated or regretted. First of all, to a large extent the so-called Spirit of Mumbai or Delhi is nothing but pure economic necessity – millions of people won’t get a square meal or be able to feed their children if they don’t stick to their daily work schedule, terrorist attack or not. The Indian State is not a welfare state, and won’t even bother to organize soup kitchens for potential evacuees, should they be in the position of needing to evacuate people from their homes. Moreover, should people really get back to life as usual or should they ‘rage against the dying of the light’ and keep the anger and the need for accountability alive? Should they not remember the events and rather than just mourning, get angry and demand both answers and responsiveness and improvements? It’s very easy to sweep such events under the carpet of our consciousness and go back to our normal routines once the media circus is over. It’s much harder for us to protest and keep protesting until something is done - but that’s what is really the need of the day.

And the last thing - I am not expressing solidarity for the citizens of Mumbai/ Mumbaikers today. What happened last year was not an attack on one city but on my country. It was an attack on India. More - it was an attack on all free citizens of every country round the world. I am expressing solidarity for every citizen of India and every citizen of the world who has ever faced a threat from people who believe that might is right, and that there should be only one way of thinking. I can't put it better than John Donne - "No man is an island. Therefore send not to ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee."

RTI Works

Well, for one reason and another, I wound up having to file an RTI petition a couple of weeks ago to retrieve two critical documents. Just the day before I set off to the Secretariat in Gurgaon, I had read in a media report that only 23% of all RTIs yield the information asked for and that most citizens are pretty unhappy. Given the popular public opinion about Haryana, I was prepping myself to expect the worst as I entered the Secretariat building. The first ten minutes turned out as visualized – I entered one room, was directed to another, then a third…But then finally one helpful young man (HYM#1) told me the department I was looking for was on the third floor. I clambered up the surprisingly clean flight of stairs and met up with a polite, helpful young man (HYM#2) at the RTI desk. I told him what documents I wanted and he gave me instructions as to what to do – Go down to the Treasury office on the ground floor, pick up the challan form, bring it back to him for getting it filled up, take it to the State Bank branch in the next building, the Gurgaon High Court, and then bring the receipt back to him to get the request authorized. Of course, I was huffing and puffing so loud from all the climbing up and down I had been doing that I only half heard the instructions and started dizzily criss-crossing the building to the bank, then back to the treasury office, then to the RTI desk and so on. Weirdly enough, it transpired that every time I made a dash to a new location, I ran into HYM#1, who politely guided me onto the right direction. It was like a Hindi movie or something the way, unerringly, each time I was taking a wrong turn, I ran into him.

I finally got my payment receipt from the bank and gasped and wheezed my way back to the RTI desk and plonked it in front of HYM#2. He dictated the RTI request letter to me in Hindi and then told me he'd call me within 7-10 days with the documents I had asked for, and that I would have to pay Rs. 10 per page of the requisitioned document.

Lo and behold – today, exactly 10 working days after I filed my application, I got a call from HYM#2 and he asked me to come down and pick up my docs. When I landed up at his desk, he asked me for the challan which I had forgotten to get from the ground floor. As I turned to go, chivalrously seeing my decrepit condition, he said he'd look around and see if he had a spare form with him…he did! I dashed down to the bank with the form, paid p and dashed back to him, and was out of there with my documents in about ten minutes. The whole transaction today took me less than half an hour – isn't that terrific?

We often moan and groan about the many things which the government doesn't do right, or which don't work, but rarely spare a word of praise for the things that do work. Well, these are my words of praise – the procedure was transparent, it was painless and quick – and I got what I asked for, PDQ!

Never buy Whirlpool products

I have a fair share of domestic appliances from a variety of different firms. Curiously as it turns out, only 1 product from a non-Korean company, the Air conditioner from Whirlpool. Over the past weekend, we have had such a truly awful customer service experience that I have sworn never to buy any Whirlpool products and to spread the word out. Frankly, what the company has demonstrated is that once they have managed to sucker you into buying their product, they just don't give a damn. How you manage your life with/ without it is your problem, they are too busy counting your cash all the way to their bank.

Our air conditioner conked off last Thursday thanks to the wonderful voltage surges that are a delightful feature of life in Millennium city, aka Gurgaon, or as a bucktoothed KBC contestant said once, Gud Gaawan. Friday I called the Whirlpool service center, and was pleasantly surprised to find a polite voiced person on the other end who said I would get a call back within 2 hours to fix an appointment for a service visit at a time convenient to me. Wonderful, I thought, finally someone who appreciates the fact that the person owning an appliance has a life and may not want to stay home all day waiting for a service call.

No call back came within 2 hours. I called them back instead and asked what had happened. The call center person apologised but said the complaint had been logged in and I would get a service person at my home between 4 and 6 pm. By quarter to six I had to leave for a meeting, and no one had turned up. Since I haven't come this close to 40 years of age without any experience, I began to suspect what was coming but called up their service center anyway. I was then given the name of a service mechanic and informed that he would definitely be there by 7 pm and he had gotten held up on his way.

Somehow not surprised by 7 when the mechanic failed to show, I called the service center again, only to not get through. Instead, I was assaulted by a barrage of ads extolling Whirlpool products, and may I say, these ads do not go down well when an irritated and irate customer is waiting for their conked-off product to be serviced? I also heard the mechanical voice say that if I sent an sms to a certain number, I'd get a call back within 1 hour. Since I was busy in a meeting, I sent off the SMS, and by the end of the day, having received neither callback nor mechanic, went to sleep in the kids room, where the Voltas AC is functioning extremely well.

The next day, between my husband and I, we must have made 8 calls to the service center, getting more and more angry and frustrated each time. No senior person from the service/ call center was ever willing to come on the line, despite requests and we were met with stonewalls each time we insisted on having a name for the senior person, a contact number or waiting for the said person to be free. The call center would either cut off the line or transfer us to an automated menu.

Saturday evening someone gave us 'a personal commitment' that someone would reach our home by 8 pm. Well, commitments really aren't what they used to be, are they? Sunday the same story was repeated, except that after some shouting and a serious upping of blood pressure, we got a supposed senior, "Sameer" calling us back and informing us that the service person would be there any time between 1 and 8 pm. So we were just supposed to press pause on our life/ plans and wait for Godot, who like the mythical character from the play, would end up not arriving, after all.

We have by now given up all hopes of this brand and asked a local mechanic to come from a nearby market. I am sure he will be as well trained and at least my expectation of response from him will be lower than that from a company. Meanwhile I am posting this to all Indian blog aggregator sites to warn all consumers against buying Whirlpool products, because if they do, the burden of obtaining service from the brand will be on them and not the company.

There's just some things I don't understand. Why bother with setting up a call center and then not have it connected to a service center? Why bother spending millions of rupees on ad campaigns aimed at new customers rather than sowing and harvesting goodwill from existing customers by servicing them properly? I guess it's always easier to find a new sucker each time than go to someone you've burnt before.

Branding A Country

Today, I was on my way to work and the moon launch by India randomly popped into my head. As I thought about it more and more, I realized what a truly stupendous achievement it was. I mean, which other developing country do you know that just out of nowhere decides to launch a rocket to the moon, and then with much, much less than half the time and resources that other countries have been throwing at the task, just ups and does it. No transfer of technology, no buying, no asking for a loan. Quick, simple and efficient.

What a huge opportunity for India as a country, in terms of image, particularly in business. Also, as the world becomes an increasingly tech-savvy place, it's important to take a good position in terms of capability. Moreover, it would also be a great way to get positioned in global importance.

I admit, I didn't see any of the information flow overseas so perhaps I am not in the best position to comment on this. But I was here, and I thought the information flow was weak and uncoordinated. There was no attempt to use this to drive Brand India, which would then have flowed as the message overseas too. In fact, I remember my uncle in the US who is a great patriot was actually highly disappointed in the kind and amount of coverage. If any other country, say China, had achieved something like this it would have dominated global headlines for some time. But since this was us, we remained a one-day wonder.

When will governments realize the tremendous need to position the country? It doesn't happen by chance, it's something you work on consciously, that you drive strategically. You use every opportunity to leverage yourself into a position of greater global importance, because these opportunities do not come along every day. It helps when you negotiate for a nuclear deal, it helps when you have aggressive neighbours, it helps when the global economy is sinking…it has numerous and hundreds of intangible benefits.

When I was growing up, India was typically perceived as a poor country awash in tigers, elephants and sadhus. It took the IT revolution and companies like Infosys and TCS for India to be perceived in a whole new league. When I was at INSEAD, we held an "India week", where for one week we had various cultural programs devoted to a discovery of India. As part of that, the many graduates from BITS who were part of INSEAD's IT team created a complete website on India and its culture. Even as classmates shook their heads in disbelief at how we had done it, they acknowledged our abilities in the field.

It's more and more important today that India not just perceive itself as powerful but that it make other countries conscious of the tremendous potential and beneficial power in the form of capability and intellectual talent that we have. It is a pity to keep frittering away our opportunities as we do.

The verdict

I am so proud of India's elections, for so many reasons. First of all, remembering the elections from when I was a child, when it'd take forever for the voting and then the counting process. We'd have Prannoy Roy on air for days, as poll data came trickling in. DD would show lots of movies, including Chupke Chupke, so it used to be a fun time. And now, this year, I voted week before last, and the results are already out. Apparently it's one of the fastest counting processes in the world. And when you think about how large and complex this country is, how many things the Election Commission has to manage, and then delivers it so well, you can't help feeling a huge sense of pride in India's efficiency. (Of course, you are entitled to wish it translated into more areas of activity!)

Another thing I'm proud of is that India seems to have voted for performance over polish. The anti-incumbency factor hasn't just swung in randomly as it used to, but has only come in where the citizens have a genuine grievance against the incumbent government for lack of care and concern (e.g. West Bengal). The last time around, one of the things that got me really riled was that even friends who I thought were quite rational thought that the BJP's loss was an anti-development vote.

The fact is, the only thing that ever made the BJP palatable was their economic agenda. And once the Congress took that agenda under its wing, they lost any claim to importance. They of course cinched their place amongst the notorious multiple times, be it the Rath yatra or the breaking down of Babri Masjid in 1992 or in 2002, with a state-sponsored pogrom in Gujarat. I find it really hard to stomach when educated, so-called liberal and secular people say that the only bad thing about Modi is the Pogrom – to me that's a huge bad thing. It's like saying, "So Hitler killed a few Jews. He did well for Germany, didn't he?"

I'm making chocolate brownies to celebrate the result of these elections. Any likeminded, secular people are free to join me J

Journalism and comprehension

These days, I get an ulcer each time I read a newspaper. The level of copy-editing has reached appalling lows, and there are typos on a daily basis on the front pages of various papers and even in headlines of lead stories. But today, tucked away inside the HT city, I found a piece of such poor reporting that I really saw red. The journalist wants to write about the emergency contraception pill but has ended up confusing the reader and herself about which pill. It actually comes across as if taking normal contraceptive pills lead to all kinds of side effects. I don't know whether it was sheer ignorance on the journalist's part, poor writing skills or malicious intent.

The article in question: "Sanyola, 23, is happily in a relationship. She and her S boyfriend of two years have a healthy sexual life. Never the one to shy away from taking a birth control pill, by now Sanyola has lost count of how many she has actually popped in — blissfully unaware of the side effects.

Dr Anup Dhir, a reconstructive surgeon and andrologist atApollo says, "These emergency contraceptive pills were approved by the government only to deal with unavoidable situation such as forced intercourse and unwanted pregnancy.

But if one takes it on a regular basis it will result in extreme hormonal imbalance and in some cases cancer, though theoretically it is yet to be proved." Dhir reasons, "Why those high intensity doses when you have condoms in the market?" Reportedly, the number of school girls who consider it fashionably smart to pop birth control pills has increased remarkably and almost 70 to 80 per cent are in the age group of 18 to 25 years.A quick check with local drug stores confirms the report. Durga, a chemist owner at Malviya Nagar says, "Every day we sell at least 810 pills." Though the sale of contraceptive pills over the counter was made legal by the health ministry to safeguard them from unwanted sex and to avoid pregnancy, the practice is becoming a frivolous day-to-day activity among the teens."

It really gets my goat to see such a combination of bad writing compounded by poor editing. What's worse is that many young girls may see this, misread the information contained and actually opt out of birth control pills, with disastrous consequences including abortions by quacks. The editor of this part of the paper needs a good kick in the pants, as does the irresponsible journalist!

 

The world is so full…

This morning A and I were out for our daily walk and stepped out of the house to find an amazing sight. The Jacaranda tree outside had shed its gorgeous blossoms all over our garden and the road outside. As we walked further, we noticed that there were many Jacarandas in the colony and they had just spilled forth their richness to form a purple carpet for us throughout. Yesterday morning, I noticed a lovely sunbird, its back gleaming blue in the sunlight, chirping to itself. My carnation has finally put out one carmine red flower. The more we walked around the colony, the more we found things to admire, whether it was the showy bougainvilleas which had almost aggressively burst forth into bloom or the dewy subtlety of frangipani flowers, birdsong from the myriad trees and the plumbago flowers which looked almost neon blue against the sober dark green of the plant. The Robert Browning poem, which is a favourite, came to mind, "The world is full of so many things, I am sure we should all be happy as kings…"

For a while now, I've been wanting to explain what I mean by saying Happiness is a choice, because I do truly believe that and if only more people were to realize it, the world would be much happier. It all began with an epiphany years ago, when I was in a relationship that had started going south. It was a very important relationship for me and created an immense amount of trauma. There were times when I'd break into tears on my way to work. And then one day, as my auto was passing under an old Jamun tree around CP, it all fell into place. Why should I expect someone else to make me happy? I should be in charge of my own happiness. I should find things and interests and people in my life who make me feel alive and add to my fun but the essential core of happiness – to believe in yourself and your ability to carve out the life you want for yourself – has to come from within you. Once you realize that and you get going, life takes on a whole different avatar. You tend to notice so many more things created by Nature or God that delight the senses. You find new reasons to smile or laugh. You find a purpose for yourself, even when life takes different turns to what you had imagined and you find yourself in a situation you had not foreseen.

I also feel that once you have realized this and taken charge of your own happiness, you find the strength for many things - be it living live to the full, with many activities and purposes, or be it getting rid of things that don't contribute to your happiness, whether it's something as simple as clutter or as complex as a relationship. You learn to change the things or situations that don't give you happiness into things or situations that do. I remember reading in a book a lovely anecdote which had to do with the Bible – an angel came to Jacob, and he said, "I will not let thee go unless thou bless me". I know many people who have decided to adopt the opposite point of view. They sit around, sad and defeated, and seem to be asking other people to 'give them happiness' or 'make them happy'. They don't have the energy or the resources to go out and find a purpose for themselves – and I'm not saying it needs to be a noble purpose, it could be as simple as cooking, reading, collecting recipes or gardening. And the more they brood on their wrongs but do nothing about it, the worse they feel and the sadder they get.

There's a lovely children's story by Maurice Maeterlinck called the Bluebird of Happiness. Two children set off to find the Bluebird because they feel that only once they find it can they be happy. After travelling through the whole world, they come back to find it was in their garden all along. That pretty much sums up my take on happiness!