we are like this only

The thing about free speech...

2012-01-27T07:47:00.000-08:00

…is that it’s hard to draw lines in the sand and say, this is the extent, the limit to which free speech extends, and beyond this, you’ve got to pay for it, in blood and tears, in fatwas and apologies. You can draw a line in personal relationships and say this is it, the Lakshman Rekha beyond which lie discord and distress, pain or shame. But if we start doing it as a society, we are doomed.

Because there’s no thing anyone can say which offends no one else, except maybe the word yes. On the other hand, as Woody Allen said, ‘What if the question is “Does the queen have the clap?”’ So even ‘yes’ is ruled out. If we have to constantly censor and re-censor everything we say just because someone somewhere may be offended, we’ll become a mute society. Freedom of speech has to be a given in a civilized society, regardless of whether it offends someone or not. I may disagree or be offended by something someone says, but I will defend to the end the person’s right to not only have an opinion but to state it.( That, by the way, includes cow-belters referring to me as a madrassi, a fact that offends me deeply!)

How come no one arrests or stops Raj Thakre when he starts spouting hate speeches targeted at certain communities? I’m pretty sure those communities were offended. But if lumpen political goons find something a writer says or a painter paints or a filmmaker takes up as a subject offensive, the state bends over backwards to safeguard their freedom to vandalise, threaten violence and abuse and generally be a threat to life, limb and free speech. Meanwhile, the right to freedom of speech of the rest of the population is forgotten as politicians and demagogues join hands to throttle our freedoms one by one.

It’s really sad to see that a party that supposedly espouses Nehru and Gandhi is now Chief Kowtow to this kind of communalism. To re-arrange the famous poem by Tagore which has been quoted ad infinitum the past few days:

“Where the mind is full of fear and the head is bent low,
Where knowledge is limited but degrees are easily bought,
Where the world is broken up into ever smaller fragments
By narrow communal walls
Where words come out from the depths of slimy expediency,
Where tireless conniving stretches its arm towards the next electoral votebank,
Where the clear stream of reason has lost its way
In the dreary bogs of hitherto unequalled manipulativeness
Where the mind is led backwards by threats of violence
Into ever-more circumscribed thought and action,
Into that hell of narrow-mindedness, Oh lord, my country now awakes”

Now I shudder in fear of reprisals from admirers of Tagore whom I must have offended!

Violence against women awareness month

2011-10-03T07:27:00.001-07:00

As part of this initiative, I want to speak about the story of someone I used to be close to. I grew up with her, thought she was the coolest ever. She was always wonderful to my sister and I and we loved to hang out together every summer. When she got married, I was 18 and I thought she was one of the most beautiful brides I had ever seen. She went off to the US of A with her Prince Charming, the kannadiga version of the fairy tale, off to her fairy tale life, or so I thought.

Her mother-in-law had some problems with the fairy tale, it turned out. Having lost her husband at a young age, she bitterly resented her daughter-in-law's 'happy married life'. Every time she went out to visit them, she managed to inject a dose of venom into their married life. The one time I visited while the mother-in-law was also staying with them I saw some amazingly bitter fights between the MIl and DIL, instigated by the MIL over imagined slights and'misdemeanors' by the DIL who was too nice or mild-mannered to tell her where to get off.

Over the years I saw this girl, who had always been reserved but talkative with me turn more and more taciturn. Soon, she was almost monosyllabic when we spoke. She would sometimes call my sister, who had moved to the US, to chat but odd silences would hang in the air even as she stayed on the other end of the line. It took a long time for my sister and I to realise that possibly she was clinically depressed.

The MIL eventually wangled a green card and moved to the US to stay with her. Things took a turn for the worse. Every time the son went off on a business trip, the MIL would accompany him so she could 'enjoy' herself, instead of the DIL who had been 'handed this on a silver platter'. The DIL anyway was scared to leave her kids with this woman because she knew the MIL would do her best to inject posion against her into their minds. Quarrels would be instigated between husband and wife, and fuelled by the MIL. The MIL didn't hesitate to suggest that the son leave his wife and throw her out, and live happily ever after with her and the grandchildren, even after the son and his wife had been married 15 years and more.

The final straw came when one day, mother and son ganged up on her, had a furious showdown about nothing at all, and eventually jointly beat her up. Finally, she said enough was enough. Living in the US had given her some smarts, and she called 911. The cops arrived. That's when the husband realised he was going to be in deep trouble. He and his mom begged her to not reveal anything to the cops and that they would never repeat such behaviour. She agreed, for the sake of the kids.

They are still together. The MIL is still with them, and still doing her best to cause trouble. She still seems to be clinically depressed, having little to say most of the time. She comes to life occasionally, when she is out with her kids and other family, sans MIL. She's still loyal to her husband, never speaks badly of him. All the information I have above came second-hand. The only thing that may have changed is the lack of physical abuse.

I don't understand how women do this to other women time after time. Why they feel they have this degree of ownership on their sons or brothers; or why those sons and brothers don't have brains or spines of their own. I don't understand the reasons that make the women go back to their abusive husbands. Abuse is abuse, physical or mental. I think women become victims of the 'for our children' argument and the abusers always know this and use it against them.

It's easy for those of us who have never faced abuse to say it, but at the end of the day, one has to think of what one is teaching one's children, by forgiving abuse. Are we teaching them about love and forgiveness or that it's okay to accept abuse to stay in a relationship? I'm just glad she knew enough to call 911 at some point. I wish there was a 911 for emotional abuse.

Follow the month of awareness on this blog. Raise awareness. Raise hope!

Fashion Police

2011-08-08T23:24:00.000-07:00

While not a fashionista, I think I have a pretty good style sense. Even back when I was obese, I managed to dress stylishly and look well-put together. So it really offends and annoys me when people neglect basic sense when putting themselves together. Honestly, it doesn't take more than a few minutes. It's not a sign of being intellectual to be ill-dressed, really. And it'll make them feel better about themselves. And other people, like me, feel better in general!

Here's what I saw on the streets of Delhi last week:
At the front porch of Le Meridien, a lady, late 40's. And here's what she thought fit to wear - cropped pants; loose, stripey ill-fitting Tshirt. Ankle socks!!! and flat-heeled Mary-Janes. Why ankle socks? Even teenyboppers do not consider it cool anymore! Why flat Mary-Janes - even schoolgirls don't have to wear them anymore. Why cropped pants at a height of barely 5 feet? Urghhh!

And, arriving at a child's birthday party, at 2 pm on a hot, muggy afternoon in the monsoon: lady, wearing chiffon sari, peach colour. But, heavily embellished, i.e. a truckload of sequins and pearls had thrown up all over the sari. Heavy make-up - deep maroon lipstick, eyeliner, mascara. Gold sandals. And over-dyed black hair blow-dried into fat, puffy curls, cascading down the sides of her face.

Why???

Avis - We're Number Two, You try harder!

2011-05-27T10:32:00.000-07:00

Dear Avis rent-a-car people,

I would like to tell you about a wonderful holiday my husband and I enjoyed last week in France, and how much our enjoyment was enhanced by Avis and its wonderful service. We were travelling to France from India for the 10th year reunion of our business school class at INSEAD, and driving from Paris to Fontainebleau, the venue of the reunion. We looked forward to driving down the familiar roads from Paris to Fontainebleau and enjoying the beautiful French paysage.

We arrived half an hour early at the Avis address given on the confirmation letter of the booking, at 9:30 am. Imagine our surprise when we found that it led into a parking garage! We thought it was a weird place to have an office but with a Gallic shrug, we trustfully marched down with our bags to the second level, following the Avis signs. Weirder still, once we got to the second level, we found that the signs said Avis retour – Avis return. Return is fine but how about going, in the first place? Well, there was neither an office nor a person in sight. Hmm, puzzling. After considerable waiting for Godot, a man appeared from an unmarked elevator and upon anxious questioning, said that the Avis office was across the street, at the Gare de Lyon, and that this was only the return venue. But here’s what the address on the confirmation letter says, we wailed. His turn to do the Gallic shrug. After two more people emerged from the selfsame elevator and confirmed what he had said (simultaneously restoring my faith in my ability to speak and comprehend French, since I thought I had misunderstood what the first guy had said).

Half an hour of form filling and option picking later (yes, 20 euros extra for the GPS, no, 30 euros for insurance), we were finally at the car – a gigantic Toyota Verso, since we were planning to ride back with friends from the reunion. 10:45 a.m., only over an hour since we had reached the correct address given by Avis. Put away our stuff, got in, plugged the GPS into the lighter outlet and got ready for lift-off. Only, nothing happened when we turned the key in the ignition. Tried again. Rien. Again. My husband went back to the Avis counter and spoke to the lady. She came out, did a magic trick, and the engine came on. The trick? Pressing the brake and the clutch together, while turning the key!

We started off, and the car lurched erratically out of the parking lot. At first my husband thought it was because he was new to the car. Each time he tried to change a gear, the car stalled or bucked like a feisty bronco at a rodeo. The GPS hadn’t come on after the stipulated 5 minutes, despite frantic pressing of its buttons, so we were also a bit stymied for directions. I remembered we used to take the A6, so we routed ourselves towards the Peripherique entry for A6. I thought I smelled a burning odour soon thereafter – and half wondered whether it was burning rubber from the wild screeching and lurching of the car every time we slowed down at a light or had to restart.

A few moments later, the burning smell got stronger, and we thought we saw a wisp of smoke from the engine. It dissipated moments later so we careened on towards the highway. At a traffic signal, the engine died again. As my husband struggled to get it to sputter into life, black smoke started spewing furiously from the engine. Quite alarmed, we tried to get the car started so we could steer it over to the side of the road. A Good Samaritan driving behind us also pulled over to offer us his help. They opened up the hood, the French gentleman tried starting up the car…they struggled with her for 15 minutes but couldn’t figure out what was happening. As it turned out, our new friend was also driving down to Fontainebleau and asked us to follow him, saying he’d stop if the car smoked again. Easier said than done, he pulled away before Christine started. Moments later big clouds of black smoke were spewing out. Seriously alarmed we pulled over to the side and stopped. I called Avis emergency, and the lady was helpful, only, she said, since we were now stalled on the entrance to the Peripherique, she couldn’t send the Avis rescue and we’d have to call the French highway police and ask them for a bailout.

About when I got off the phone with her, a French police car pulled up. The lady officer said that we were endangering traffic by being parked where we were. Once I explained the problem, she said the police van would push us to a safe area and we could then wait for the rescue mechanic. By then it was 11:10 a.m. The class photo was scheduled for 12 noon – there was no way we could make it. After having paid 1876 euros in airfare and registration fees, to attend the special classes being held for the alumni, the class photo, the lunch, we would be lucky to make it there by late afternoon and find a few friends hanging around. The police van bumped us up an incline and peeled off. We called the French highway police, who said they’d get help out there. The Avis emergency had told us to expect an average wait of 30-45 minutes for the rescue squad. An hour down, we were still waiting, on a blistering hot day, afraid to turn on the AC or the fan or to drink too much water since we weren’t in reach of a restroom. Two more phonecalls to the highway police and another 45 minutes finally brought an end to the ordeal. The mechanic loaded up our car and drove off, leaving us and our bags on a sidewalk. Avis had said they’d send a taxi out to us.

The taxi arrived another half hour later and took us, yes, right back to the Gare de Lyon, a bare 15 minutes away! The lady at the counter was surprised to see us back. Emergency didn’t inform us of this, she said. The only other cars we have are all automatic. We have a small car, an Opel, that’s manual. Fine, give us that, we said, eager to get gone. How much less do we have to pay? Oh, no, you have to pay the same as for the big car, because emergency didn’t inform us about this problem. Otherwise we could have sent a car out to where you were. Of course, that Avis emergency didn’t speak to Avis rent-a-car was our problem! Okay, fine, whatever. At least give us a working GPS. Also, can we get insurance this time, since we no longer trust the quality of car you rent out? Sorry, you should have picked that option the first time. Your contract is sealed. We can’t give you insurance.

Thoroughly irritated, we decided to turn to the last resort of harried consumers everywhere – customer service. We called our friend at emergency and asked her to put us through. Waited for 15 minutes. She came back, all regretful. “Sorry, customer service doesn’t work on Saturdays and Sundays”, she said. I could have sworn I heard the sound of a Gallic shrug as we hung up.

Yours truly,
XXX

PS1. I forgot to thank you for helping me practice my rusty French – I had to, to deal with the cops, the emergency service, the highway police and what not!
PS2. I wish this had happened in the US of A so we could have sued your pants off!

The Economist - Racist Much?

2011-02-17T01:00:00.000-08:00

Just read an article in the latest Economist that made me see red. In the edit piece about Egypt's revolution and how the West mustn't fear the consequences thereafter, since even the Muslim Brotherhood is unlikely to be able to carry out its more fundamentalist agenda since they will need to go through a democratic process and enjoy only about 20% popularity, it ends by saying that the West can't now fear the aftermath of Egypt espousing 'Western' values like freedom and self-determination.

Hello, are we speaking about the same West that colonized much of the world until recently and refused to get out until they were booted out? The same West that props up dictatorships world over from Saudi Arabia and Egypt to Latin America, for reasons that have more to do with economic or political expdiency and less to d with principle? The same West whose President once famously stated about a dictator that "he may be a son of a bitch but he's our son of a bitch"? The West that finds it easier to ally with a Pakistan harbouring terrorists and run by military despots than a democratic India? That pays people like Osama to fight their wars for them and then complains when they become powerful in their own right?

Oh, I get it. By Western values, they meant applicable to Western people, so now Egypt should consider itself suitably westernized! Shades of White Man's Burden all over again!

Anish Kapoor Exhibit

2011-02-02T07:12:00.000-08:00

A and I finally managed to get to the Anish Kapoor exhibit at NGMA before it got over. I had seen one piece by the artist ath the 2009 Art Summit in Delhi, and of course photographs of his work have been appearing for a while now, but I didn't really know what to expect. I was very curious, because I had heard rave reviews from Mumbai and yet Manjula Padmanabhan's review said that it was almost frighteningly isolationist in terms of dwarfing human experience with scale - art without heart.

As for the exhibit itself, most of the pieces here are models of work that is installed or in progress elsewhere, so in that sense, while one gets an idea of what he is doing, one doesn't get the full experience. There were one or two smaller pieces though, and the one that got A and me hooked was titled triangle mirror. It was a rough circle, composed of hundreds of triangularly shaped mirrors, about 2 inches a side, pieced together like a stained glass piece. And it was magical. It drew one in instantly, and we and other people at the museum spent a good while approaching the work from up close and farther away. After a few minutes, one couldn't tell where one left off and the work began, and the real surroundings around us began to blur and the disparate images in the mirror seemed to be becoming more real...

NGMA airs a documentary that plays continuously through the day about Anish Kapoor and his many works. We saw that after we had walked through the exhibit, and that's when the pieces fell into place, because one gets a better idea of the scale of his work, and the experience of it. His entire oeuvre is about drawing the spectator into the work of art, to make him or her an integral part of the artwork and to transform the artwork into an experience rather than a display.

I thought it was such a humanizing and interesting take on art, which otherwise can be quite detached from the viewer, since it primarily exists to state the creator's point of view or worldview. His architectural artworks also blur both time and space, distorting or stretching them, and that's reflected in the fact that his structures are never linear, they all have the most wonderfully spherical or tubular forms, intertwining in unexpected ways, with exits and entrances in surprising places.

I found I disagreed thoroughly with Manjula Padmanabhan's take. Cathedrals, especially gothic ones built during medieval times are isolationist structures, were meant to overawe mere mortals into fear of and submission to God. Kapoor's works are very much about transforming the human experience of linear things like time or space, and about making the human interaction part of the art itself.

I would highly recommend the exhibit to everyone, especially the documentary. I'm looking forward to seeing some of his work 'in real' as Chubbocks would say.

KLPD, otherwise known as CWG

2010-10-06T04:20:00.000-07:00

They are really getting many of my goats - maybe to make mutton biryani out of them!!! So...we thought it'd be nice if we could go watch one of the sporting events with the kids. Yesterday afternoon, I tried the official CWG site, hoping to be able to book some tickets online, snce, as you know, India is an IT superpower. So I go through the entire process, log in, pick the event ( gymnastics), am all ready with credit card in hand, when the site says, "We are handling the maximum number of customers right now. Please try after some time." Okay, so some of those stadia seats will now have bums that paid for the privilege of sitting there.

I wait half an hour, then try again. same result as above. I wait another hour, then try again...have you ever heard the definition of insanity? That thing about trying the same thing again and again and expecting different results?

So in the afternoon, a friend and I trek to the one mall in Gurgaon that has a live kiosk, manned by some company called Fasttrac, which I am told specialises in food. So why CWG ticketing, unless kisi ko khilaaya pilaaya ho, I dunno. the counter is tucked away in a corner with a disconsolate looking Shera and two guys who look even droopier. We ask about ticket availability. They mumble something about how their manager has gone to get their phone recharged. We say that's nice but we weren't planning on asking for their phone number, just tickets to one of the events. They launch into a long-winded explanation about how the amount of money/ tickets is pre-charged into their phone/ computer/ id number ( didn't really understand what they were saying), and how the amount for each kiosk is limited to their manager has gone to the bank to get it recharged and will return. It was 2:30 pm then. They said the manager should return and the kiosk would be functional by 6:00 pm. Why four hours? I dunno! Why one kiosk in one mall in all of Gurgaon? I dunno!

A trekked there after 6:00 pm to get the tickets, having had another fruitless crack at the online booking by then. He traipsed home ticketless. The manager was still MIA and the recharge thing had not happened. He had run into a friend there who told him that tickets were aparently also being issued by Central Bank of India. Why only one and not all public sector banks? I dunno! Anyway, so after waiting at the bank for eons, he was finally told that yes, the bank was issuing tickets and yes, they were available but the bank's printer was not working.

We tried the online booking thing this morning, and hallelujah. It appeared to be working. So I almost went through, then saw a nasty little sign stating that tickets could only be picked up at Connaught Place/ Tolstoy Marg. Why in the name of the CWG, should there be only one pick-up point? Surely it should be easy in an IT-savvy country to create a central monitoring software and have people just show up with their ticket number at any of the 50-60 pick-up points that they should have installed? Oh, I forgot, Kalmadi and the rest of the OC was busy commenting on differential hygiene standards, holding up collapsing bridges while delegates walked across and forgetting to install food/ sanitary arrangements for the security people handling the event.

Apparently there is a ticket-couriering option but you have to book 8 days in advance, in this century. Err...why? Are they sending them by stagecoach? Why didn't they just get Indian Railways to do the ticket booking and couriering, especially as they are one of the sponsors? They have an amazingly foolproof system and barely have you clicked on book tickets when the tickets arrive at your place. Every single time.

Today we took the kids out for lunch and thought we could pick up the tickets during the outing. a went and stood in a long queue at the selfsame single kiosk in the Gurgaon mall. After patiently waiting for half an hour, he saw that the line wasn't getting any shorter, so he went up and asked the two tweedledums manning the counter. Guess what they told him? Yup, the recharge of whatever it was is still being waited for, along with Godot, and at this rate Godot may arive sooner.

One guy had actually done the online booking thing and it had taken him over 3 hours to pick up the tickets in CP. Does the OC know that not everyone has a government job and that taking off for more than half a day just to pick up tickets is likely to be behaviour that it noticed and frowned upon by one's employer? On the other hand, this is the same OC that thought sceurity people and volunteers don't need to eat/ pee so I think a small general knowledge course may be in order. Of course, that'll only happen after the CWG, which will go by with empty stadia or filled by complimentary-ticket/ pass holders. So much for making money from ticket sales/ merchandise!

Really, just when I thought the CWG had reached the zenith of pissing off and were finbally starting to move into a positive direction, we go through this. And then read in the papers how the stadia are going empty and how the Disorganising Committee is lamenting and saying, Please do attend the games.

Getting my Goat

2010-09-30T07:07:00.001-07:00

For any of you who are my friends on facebook, you may have noticed my less than enthusiastic updates on the commonwealth games, otherwise known as CWG. So...here's why they are getting my goat:

First of all, aren't we, as a country, a little too poor to afford such exhibitions of chauvinism and ego? Yes, I know it's the world's 11th largest economy and growing at the second fastest rate. But the GDP per capita is still $ 1000, barely Rs. 45,000 per year. 850 million Indians are below the poverty line. The money is far better spent on doing something useful to make them part of the India that is shining, rather than on buying a little more spit and polish for shining India. It's the equivalent of me spendingmy money buying my son books rather than on hosting his birthday party at a five-star venue. One is going to have a long term benefit, the other is momentary, for the sake of impressing other people and soon to be forgotten.

Secondly, if at all you insist on holding such an event, why, for pity's sake, must it be at such an enormous expense? I'm sure Barack Obama's forthcoming visit to India is going to cost far less, despite state-level hospitality. The initial budget of Rs. 325 crore is large enough. For it to officially balloon to Rs. 20,000 crore and unofficially to Rs. 80,000 crore is unforgivable! It is evidence of a complete lack of sense of accountability on the parts of the Organizing Committee and the governments - central and state. The politicians and the various govenment agencies and private firms have assumed that they can continue to fritter away or pocket, with impunity and complete immunity from prosecution, the hard-earned money of people like me, legitimate tax payers. They know that no other politician will dare raise a finger at someone who is corrupt, because that guy is just waiting for his chance to be in power and do the same thing! Whether it is a Raja in the telecom scam or the fertiliser scam, the kargil coffins or the Rs. 1000 per roll toilet paper ordered for the CWG, what do politicians care, it's not their money, it's ours that is getting spent.

Thirdly, the display of utter incompetence on organising the event was a shame to witness. Why does anyone need an 'Empowered Group of Ministers' to organise an event, as opposed to a project manager who is given full powers to take the final decision on everything? Look at DMRC, where Sreedharan runs a tight ship and delivers each stretch of the metro ahead of time, and gets extension after extension. The EGoM has no idea how to organise anything, apart from a walkout from the Lok Sabha, and these are the people entrusted to ensure that detailed arrangements for hosting an event with hundreds of athletes go off without a hitch. Thank God better sense prevailed in the UID project and they hired Nandan Nilekani to head it - let's watch and wait to see the comparison.

Fourthly, it's the CWG, not Davos or a meeting of the UN Security Council. The CWG is an idea so weak that even the titular head can't be buggered to show up and sends in a substitute. Yet, for the duration of the CWG, every single person in delhi is getting his life disrupted, because of some so-called privilege of hosting. All roads have suddenly become narrower because of lanes blocked off. Not only that, but you can get arrested for trespassing into a CWG lane, because that is obviously a bigger crime than, say drunk driving, burglary etc. Moreover the delegates actually want the lanes blocked off entirely for the duration of the games ( thank God better sense prevailed for once). Schools are closed for 15 days. College hostels have chucked out students who now have to pay several times the rent and stay in rented accommodation themselves, so colleges can host delegates. Offices have been forewarned to change their timings in order not to crowd the poor delegates. On radio, a government ad actually exhorts people to either use public transport or just avoid stepping out of the house during the games.I know we believe atithi devo bhava, but that doesn't mean that we become abject slaves in front of the atithi!

Fifthly, we have the ridiculous statements made by politicians to demonstrate our 'worldclass' status to the world. So what if a footbridge falls down and injures labourers? (So what if it had fallen after construction and injured normal citizens.) as long as our foreign delegates are not harmed, opines Shiela Dikshit, not known for displays of intelligence or sensitivity. (In 2008, when TV journalist Soumya was shot dead while returning home from work late at night, Madam famously stated that 'girls should not be adventurous'). "Our standards of hygiene are different", states Lalit Bhanot, convincing the world that an average Indian home would have shit everywhere but in the pot and fleabitten dogs on all beds. Maybe a fit punishment would have been for him to have been locked into one of those famous rooms, complete with stray dog. On the other hand, the stray dog may not have been able to withstand it!

Lastly, this mess-up of an event has now emboldened our extremely intelligent leaders to start dreaming about an India bid for the Olympics! As a legitimate tax payer, I vociferously object to this misuse of my tax money!!! Can i resign my citizenship?

Roohi (June 1995 – Sep 4th, 2010)

2010-09-05T11:08:00.001-07:00

Roohi came into our lives in 1995, by accident or happenstance. Our servant had adopted her from someone, as he had always wanted a dog. She was just a little puppy when she came, about a month or two old, a small ball of fur. The name Roohi suited her, because she looked like a piece of cottonwool. It was later that we realized that the other meaning of Roohi, soulful, was also apt.

Roohi soon made friends with us, as she gambolled through the extensive lawns of our home, and we grew to love the frisky little thing, eager for everyone's affection and so playful. My sister, always an animal lover, famous for having wanted to adopt a 2 day old kitten when she was a little girl of 8, was in love with her, since she had always wanted pets. A neighbour's Spitz, Pepsi, also became a frequent visitor to our house, as his owners used to be away most of the time and the servants used to illtreat the poor guy very badly, beating him and starving him. He used to crave affection and had a lovely temperament. All too soon, the inevitable happened and we realized Roohi was going to have a litter. It was too early for her, because she was less than a year old. My sister took her to a vet recommended by a friend, all the way in Noida, and we got her whatever treatment was possible by then to ensure a healthy pregnancy. Roohi gave birth to 8 pups on Republic Day in 2006, 2 male and 6 female.

Our servant said he would gift us one of the male pups (Jackie), and the other one sadly died, the runt of the litter. The pups were full of beans and it was a tough task to keep all of the pups in one place. We found a cardboard box, lined it with cloth and made the pups comfortable inside, where they would sleep all curled up on top of one another. The minute they saw Roohi, they would clamber out of the box with shrill cries and Roohi would resignedly feed them, irritated at having to sit still for so long, because she was just a baby herself. The vet had prescribed several medicines for Roohi as the pregnancy had weakened her since she had not been given the right vitamins when she was a pup, and our servant began looking more and more doubtful about being able to care for Roohi. Finally, he told us that he had decided to give her away to someone.

Dad, while appearing hardhearted on the surface, had long ago lost his heart to Roohi, and since we already had one of her pups, he said we would keep Roohi too. "This is the only home she has ever known. It will break her heart to go away somewhere", he said. And that's how, with no planning or forethought, we ended up with two pets!

Roohi was an incredible personality. Extremely loving and affectionate, the minute anyone entered the house, she would hurl herself at the person's feet and paw at them to give her a thorough petting. It got so that for the first fifteen minutes after entering the house, no one could do anything but give her her quota of caresses. Very often, we almost tripped as soon as we entered, because of this habit of hers. We had a family joke that if anyone ever tried to burgle our house, they would be brought down by the two dogs. Roohi would make the burglar trip and fall by throwing herself at his feet for petting. Once he fell, Jackie would bite his face off!

Very active, in contrast to her snoozy son Jackie (who by a bizarre genetic accident turned out to be a Samoyed with two Spitz parents), she always wanted to play. She would often worry Jackie awake from one of his dozes and bully him into playing with her. It was a very funny sight to see her put her front paws on Jackie, who was twice her size, and make him run around the room, yipping away at him. She would leap three or four feet into the air, like those Seaworld Dolphins, to catch a biscuit. She loved mangoes and would busily lick the seed until it had become almost bleached white. She also adored oranges and one couldn't peel an orange anywhere in the house without feeling a cold nose at their knee and a gentle yet insistent paw pulling at their arm, saying, "Where's my share?" She had to have her food very soft and mushy and would approach it with great delicacy.

She was a very dainty creature who almost appeared to dance along on her elegant legs. She would never soil herself, being fastidious to a fault. She had some very funny quirks and was very, very possessive about her belongings. If you gave her any piece of cloth to play with, she would growl if you tried to take it away. Every year, come winter, the first couple of days after the winter coat was put on her, she would sit and cower in a corner as if it weighed a couple of tons and she was unable to move. But once she got used to it, she would growl when we took it off. If we hung it out to sun it, she would keep leaping up and trying to take it off the line.

When we shifted homes from Delhi to Gurgaon, we thought it would be very difficult for us to manage the two dogs while arranging the house, so we left them in the care of the servant while we organized our new home. Suddenly, on the second day, we received a distress call from the servant and rushed home. Jackie and Roohi had not eaten in the last two days, fretting away for us, even though they were in the home they had always known, in the care of the servant whom they were very familiar with and who had always looked after them. Regardless of our plans, we had to take them back with us the same night, we couldn't bear to see their sad faces.

Roohi was so fluffy and frisky and full of life, it was only when she was all wet for her bath that one would realize how tiny she was. In her last few days, we had to have her hair shaved off because of an acute tick attack and she looked like a shadow of herself, not a wag left in her formerly permanently turned-up tail. Her illness flared up suddenly, and left this lively thing too tired to even look up. But she used to feel a sense of great contentment when we sat with her and petted her. Dad and I were fortunately with her as she took her last few breaths. It was very difficult to look at her, gasping for breath, in her death throes, in contrast to the livewire we think of her as. It was and is unbearable to think that no one will ever trip us up again, asking for a petting, as we enter the house. Once she passed away, we had to switch on the AC and then put her on ice overnight, as the cremation was to be this morning. And all night, I couldn't help worrying, because Roohi always felt extremely cold, and here we were, putting her on a chilly ice block…

I think that's one of the tragedies of the final ailment – to look at the patient and contrast that with the way that person has always been, full of pep and dash and opinions…

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

We were fortunate to find a pet crematorium, which had been inaugurated very recently, the day Roohi fell ill, in fact. Conceptualized by two pet owners who had faced the dilemma of how to ensure a dignified farewell to their beloved pets, this is in Chattarpur Farms area, and has the option of burial and cremation. Owners can preserve the ashes, if they wish, or have them buried in the garden, and plant a tree in memory of their pet. They can also hand over a photograph and a write-up about their pet. Charges are Rs. 3000 for the service.

Vodafone does it again

2010-06-27T22:01:00.001-07:00

26^th June 2010

Mr. Martin Pieters,
CEO,
Vodafone Essar
Peninsula Corporate Park
Ganpatrao Kadam Marg
Lower Parel
Mumbai - 400013
India

Dear Mr. Pieters,

Re: Terminating Vodafone connection due to terrible service

I realize that one customer terminating the services of your brand may not be very important for a company as large as yours. However, it may still interest you (in case the company is at all interested in actually providing service rather than grief to its customers), to understand why I am terminating a 14 year old relationship with Essar/ Hutch/ Vodafone.

I had written to you in May regarding the problem I was facing. While that elicited an immediate response, for which I thank you, of having my phone connectivity restored, I still did not receive the bill until much after the due date, and then only after I requested for duplicate copies of the same. I was therefore forced to make a blind payment this month, without seeing the detailed bill, which I am sure you would agree is highly unfair to the customer.

I then received an sms from Vodafone on 26^th June 2010, stating that my current bill is for Rs. 1771, due on 12^th July. However, from this morning onwards, every time I make a call, I get a recorded message stating that while my Vodafone services are still active, I need to make immediate payment or service to my number will be terminated. When I called up your grievance number, 198, to complain about the same, I was informed that I had to make payment within 24 hours in order for the situation to be rectified, as my bill was over my credit limit, even though my bill has regularly been to the amount of Rs. 2000 and more per month for the past 5-6 years.

Therefore, firstly, I fail to see how my current bill is above the credit limit. Secondly, I fail to see why I should be arm-twisted into paying my bill much in advance of the due date. Is Vodafone's deficit really that large? Thirdly, I fail to see why the company is bent on harassing me in this way. I am sending this complaint on to TRAI as well as to Shri Gajendra Upadhyaya, Vodafone's General Manager of Regulatory Affairs. My previous complaint was also forwarded to him by TRAI. Needless to say, I have yet to hear from him or anyone else from Vodafone.

Disgustedly no longer a Vodafone customer,

Breaking up with Vodafone, or…

2010-05-26T21:28:00.000-07:00

…Why I am banging my head on a stone wall hoping to numb brain activity so as to make sense of this!

I was away in the US visiting my sister when I got a message from Vodafone that my mobile usage had exceeded my credit limit and that I should immediately pay up a certain amount. I forwarded the message to A who paid up immediately. The day after that payment, I got another message saying that twice the earlier amount was outstanding and that I should pay up immediately.

By that time I was in the middle of a mess caused by the volcano, busy rerouting my flight and making hotel bookings and so on for the return trip, so this was the last thing on my mind. Plus as it happened, after I got that message, my phone stopped receiving any network signals so I couldn’t make calls or send any messages from it.

I landed back last Thursday and at the airport when I tried to call A, I got a message saying that calls were disbarred. I told A but what with the extreme exhaustion after having flown for 24 hours straight and the jet lag, was too zoned out to focus for the next couple of days. Plus my driver was unwell and unable to come and I don’t drive, and since Gurgaon is apparently an American suburb with no public transportation, didn’t venture out anywhere.

We tried to make an online payment on Saturday but there was something wrong with the portal so the transaction couldn’t be completed. I tried to see my bill details online, but was unable to register. Sunday A went to make a credit card payment at the Vodafone service center but could not print out a copy of the bill because apparently the printing portion of the machine doesn’t work. Anyway, the machine showed my outstanding as negative! But given the sms I had got from Vodafone, he decided to make a part payment and hope their billing would sort it out. It apparently takes 24 working hours for them to reactivate a phone after payment, so I waited…and waited…and waited…

I thought it was really strange that I hadn’t got an acknowledgement of the payment made on Sunday till Tuesday evening, even if it was still going to take time for the service to get reactivated, so Tuesday evening we called the call center. An executive who seemed clueless answered. First he said my outstanding was negative. Then he said he was not allowed to tell us the outstanding amount. Finally he told us a huge outstanding amount and refused to divulge bill details or tell us how to resolve the matter. He also declined to call his superior, as is standard practice at all so-called service firms.

On 26th morning, A and I went to their service center, which by the way opens at 10:30 am, reminiscent of the timings of a kirana store. Once the center opened, we still had to hang around waiting while the system got started up. Finally we were called by the service executive. We went through the same rigmarole.
First, she said my outstanding was some paltry Rs. 2500. Then it turned out she was looking at the previous month’s bill. Then she looked at another page on her system and said I had a negative balance. Finally she came up with a bill page which showed a huge total and didn’t mention either of the two payments I had recently made. After I burst an artery speaking slowly and patiently enough so she’d understand what I was saying, she managed to open another page which shows the balance due – still a pretty whopping amount, and much more than indicated on the service message from Vodafone.

So why does my message from you say this? I ask. Because we add in other amounts like rental and roaming later, comes the reply. So once you had the total amount due, why did I not get a service message from you indicating the total? I ask. We did send you a message but we have disbarred all services to your phone including our own service messages, in a masterstroke of pursuit of customer delight, so you will not receive these messages from us.

Is that why I did not get an acknowledgement of the amounts I have paid thus far? Yes. Is that why I can’t register for your website and see my bill total? Yes. So…(speaking in words of one syllable and counting to 1 million between each word) how am I supposed to guess that I owe you more money and come pay you if you won’t send me service messages? Loong pause while I seek the nearest stone wall for that headbanging we talked about.

How can we resolve this? Can you please show me my itemized bill, since the amount is really large and I want to verify that the details are correct before I fork over half a month’s salary? Umm.. your bill date is in 11 working days from today, so after 11 working days, we will be generating the bill and couriering it to you and you can see the details for yourself. Meanwhile my phone won’t get reactivated? Yes. So you’ve already lost me a week and more of connectivity and now I have to wait another 11 working days (so in reality about 2.5 weeks) to check my bill and make the payment? Yes.

Otherwise I should make this whopping payment in blind faith that you guys have everything correct in your system and aren’t overcharging me? Yes. So later on, if I find a mistake, I can keep jumping through hoops trying for rectification? (Yes).

I don’t need a paper bill, can’t you send me an email or show my detailed bill on your system? No, your billing date is after 11 working days so after 11 working days we will be able to show you the bill on the system. But if you know that I have a certain outstanding now, you obviously have the details of all my calls and other usage so why can’t I just see it on your system, and then pay up? No, your billing date is after 11 working days so after 11 working days we will be able to show you the bill on the system.

Is there a supervisor or senior here I can talk to? As usual the supervisor/ senior is skulking in the employee loo and pretending not to have come in so he doesn’t have to face irate customers. So, the answer to that question would be..umm, no?

Basically, Vodafone assumes its customers have ESP and should be able to divine bill amounts all on their own, even if their own service messages and payment machines indicate different totals. To make sure the customer gets full delight and bang for the buck, they also stop their own service messages indicating the final outstanding and access to your bill on their website and call center, to give your ESP skills a real workout.
To sum it up, the company has the details of my transactions but refuses to give them to me because as per their timelines my bill isn’t due to be generated for 11 working days. Meanwhile I can take their word for it and cough up or live without connectivity, losing business and unable to call in an emergency, even. Well, judging from what I’ve seen the last few days, I wouldn’t place a naya paisa of faith in their systems being tickety boo so I guess I’ll just have to wait.

Meanwhile, I’ve been an Essar customer, then a Hutch one and now a Vodafone one since 1996. But you know what? Sometimes history just isn’t enough in a relationship. I think Vodafone has forgotten that they exist because of consumers, not the other way around, and that consumers do have alternatives. So long, little pug dog. So long, zoozoos. I’m going to sign up with a new service provider and have a completely transactional relationship with them, since I won’t have this history. And then, if the new service provider lets me down in terms of service, well, number portability is round the corner, you know!

Caste no bar

2010-05-26T02:04:00.000-07:00

So the census people visited my place when I was away. Rather, they were at my parents' place, and A and the kids were there, and by way of bizarre coincidence, I had called in so was part of a telephonic census.

My parents refused to name their caste, of course. Then it was A's turn. So he admits to being Muslim and is asked, "what caste?". Took him a while to convince the censustaker that Muslims don't have a caste.

Then my details were taken. And the census lady says I'll be put down as a Muslim because I'm married to one. Excuse me, I'm married to a man, so does that make me a man too? What rubbish! So I was indignantly frothing at the mouth and gibbering remarks and vituperations to A who was patiently, in his quiet yet forceful way trying to explain to said lady that I remained and would continue to remain a Hindu. And what of our three Mundus? Heaven - or rather the census officials only know.

I have little confidence in the ability of these guys and full expectations of having my identity in the identity number thing be a mangled mess that will never get sorted out because I'll be Muslim on that but my passport will show me as a Hindu and so on....

It totally annoys me that the state machinery, instead of being neutral, actually perpetuates the patriarchal society we live in through rules like this, that the wife automatically becomes the caste/ religion of the husband. Excuse me, but we do have brains capable of taking our own decisions and mouths capable of voicing those decisions. How dare anyone else apart from me decide my identity post marriage?

The state is only capable of making superficial gestures like the women's reservation bill, not actually doing anything to improve the lives of people or empower them. It's much easier than taking measures that would ensure that the existing laws themselves be implemented properly, that women be safe to work and come and go as they please without harassment from any average ram eve-teaser or Shriram sene goons, that women not be married off below the age of 18 and go on to have children before they become adults themselves, to ensure that girls get educated and get to make their voice heard. No, we live in the age of soppy governance, i.e. which temporary sop can I give to whom!

Those lazy, hazy, crazy days of IIM C

2010-03-06T23:23:00.001-08:00

When I began preparing to take the CAT, I was very clear that IIM C was the one I was gunning for. Rusty (PGP 91), a neighbor, had waxed eloquent on his vacation trips home, about nights spent hanging out on Howrah Bridge, music sessions on the jetty by the lake and mishthi in the canteen. Ravi (PGP 91 IIM A), a close friend, had complained miserably about the hyper competitiveness prevalent there, where classmates stashed critical reference books in wrong sections of the library so other classmates would be unable to find them. IIM B sounded very boring, because all my relatives lived near Bangalore and I had nightmare visions of one or other of them wanting me to go home every weekend. Not to mention Bangalore brings on my worst asthma attacks.

Luckily, I got in. When we all trooped into IIM C, I don't know what other people expected but I had had visions of a grand old campus – reminiscent of some of the famous campuses of the world, Oxford, Harvard and so on. I was pretty shocked to find a cluster of low-lying buildings coloured marzipan pink and bilious yellow, looking as if DDA had built them. And any image I had of preppy students dressed in Oxford shirts and ties and so on vanished when I saw a bunch of seniors dressed in ragged shorts clustered near the jetty outside OH. One of them even had a weird resemblance to Jesus…and later I found out his moniker on campus was indeed Jesus, or C for short.

It was a first time at hostel for most of the girls and the first few days brought on homesickness, invariably. Until late one night the senior batch decided to play a trick on us. They turned up as a group, one of them covered with a white bedsheet holding a lit-up torch in his mouth. They would knock on our doors and as we unsuspectingly opened them, this spectre would rush at us, flailing his arms. Screams resounded through L-wing as we all fell for this trick one by one, then joined the gang to play the trick on the next door.

Also, some of us behaved like city slickers visiting a village. The weather was hot and muggy, so many of us from Delhi and Bombay would wear sleeveless dresses or shorts in the first few days. Until we discovered that the campus bred a peculiar type of fighter-bomber mosquito whose sting was worse than a hornet's. the army could recrit those suckers to flush out terrorists from any hide-out, I swear! Within a couple of days, we were covered in unsightly red bumps and decided discretion was the better part of valour. These mosquitoes were so powerful their bite could reach through thick jeans, double layers of socks and full-sleeved sweatshirts. The first time any of us visited a beauty parlour after landing on campus, the attendants looked at us as if we were victims of chicken pox.

I remember Gabby, Ritz and I decided one evening that enough was enough and that we needed a visit to civilisation. So we got all dolled up and went to the Taj Bengal to meet a mutual friend, Bonny. Feeling much recovered after an hour in such surroundings, we took the bus back to campus. We weren't sure where exactly the stop was so we anxiously pestered the conductor to inform us in advance. So as we reached the stop, the conductor hollered, "MANAGEMENT"! The entire crew of passengers turned to stare at us as we dropped off the bus and walked in.

Classes were a mixed bag. Far from the high-powered and intense discussions we had imagined, one of the professors, on Day 1, demonstrated to a stupefied audience how to make tally marks. He made one hundred tally marks on the black board, all the while whispering his lecture in such a low tone that even the front row could not hear him. The black board probably thought he was whispering love songs to it. Another professor had a weird habit of sliding from one end of the professor's desk to the other while delivering his lecture. One professor used to spend a good five minutes flicking chalk dust off his fingers in the middle of a lecture. Doors were left open to cope with the muggy weather so some of the stray dogs which lived on campus would also wander in to see if they fancied the lecture.

We also had some wonderful professors. There was Ramu who made finance so fascinating that a batch more full of 'haloo's than 'muggu's got ready in time for his 8:30 am lectures. There was Leenchats, who had a passion for her subject of OB and an infectious enthusiasm so that everyone soon started regarding her as a friend. There was Indivar Kamtekar, the intellectual professor type who was brilliant and whom most of us nursed a mild crush on.

And the campus was full of magical experiences. Howrah Bridge was an innocuous white bridge built over one of the lakes on campus, and must have more than seen its fill of romance over the years. When you sat there in the hushed quiet of a Joka night, you could almost imagine being out at sea, with a far-off light somewhere across the weeds. You could discuss all the burning issues angsty no-longer adolescents-not-yet-adults have with the world. You could discuss lost flames or new, emerging ones. You could watch the full moon sailing through a midnight-blue sky. Or you could simply climb up on one of its bars with a bunch of friends, strum a guitar and sing old Hindi film songs and Billy Joel numbers.

And you made friends who were lifelong. Because…You had lived together with them during a tumultuous two years. You grew into an adult with them. You stood side by side with them and did a dharna for what you believed were fair practices. You wept together when a classmate died in a horrific accident and when another was badly injured during his summer training. They helped you get over the trauma of an F in stats II, and shared their last goodies with you when you didn't want the mess food. You travelled unreserved in trains together, sleeping on the floor on a bed of newspapers. You became hysterical with laughter with them when you both couldn't understand database management. You had food fights and water fights together and jumped into the lake, all covered with mud on Holi. And when you came home for your first vacation from campus, Sweetie called you and said, "I can't wait to go home again to Cal, can you?" and she had just spoken the very thought in your mind at that moment.

Exercise, here I come

2010-02-02T08:03:00.000-08:00

I've always had an irregular kind of exercise routine. Back when I was single and living a pampered life chez parents, I would keep starting workout routines - sometimes a Jane Fonda tape, which actually used to show amazing results really fast, sometimes on an exercycle I bought cheap from a friend, and once, after I attended a workshop of yoga and meditation, I did both of those for about a month.

Later, when I was a student in France, I'd go to the gym. I've always loved working out at gyms, and most of all, working out with weights. It gives me a real high to literally be able to test my limits and feel them being pushed week by week. I think, in terms of body structure, I'm a mesomorph so I do better with weights than with pure cardio. In any case, I've never loved pure cardio because I tend to start wheezing when I run. Even way back in school, the most I did was participate in the 80 meter run.

I started exercising properly when Chubbocks was around 2 - I needed to lose weight and feel better about myself, and I was working half days so I could make the time for a trainer three times a week. I and some other women in our colony used to work out together, and the trainer took us through different types of workouts every week - aerobics, weight training, tae-bo, pilates, flexibility, yoga and so on. i loved it and kept it up until my 9th month of pregnancy with Puddi and then took what I thought was a brief hiatus. But after Puddi I went back to work full time and given my office started at 8:30 in the morning, there was never any time.

Finally last year when I decided to take a break from work, I went back to the gym. I really needed it, having become grossly overweight after the birth of Bojjandi. As usual, and as recommended both for women and for people who start working out after a long time, I focussed mostly on weight training so I could build muscle and bone mass and rev up my metabolism. I did a bit of cardio but not too much.

But for the last couple of years, I've had a somewhat surreal ambition - that of wanting to try and run the half marathon. I made a pact with a friend back in 2008 to start training for it and then got pregnant, with Bojjandi due at the same time as the marathon, so that put paid to that. last year, I had just about gotten back into working out so I didn't even bother trying to think about it. But since the Delhi run last year, I've been feeling the urge to get up and start running...to train for it, at least to try the 10 km run. The only thing that's been stopping me? Wheezing like a grampus after the briefest effort on the treadmill.

So finally I found this wonderful website called coolrunnings.com. The name comes from a lovely film I watched several years ago about an African island-nation (can't remember which one) which wanted to enter the bobsledding event in the Winter Olympics. Only problem - no winter there. Anyway, the website has a section meant for complete greenhorns like me, and it's called couch to 5 k. It promises to get a non-runner to go from being a couch potato to being able to run 5 km in 9 weeks, and the whole objective of the founder is to get people through the program as gently as possible. His philosophy is that when people start hurting and feeling the pain, they typically drop out. But if they can gently and gradually ease into it, they stick with it.

The website also has podcasts compiled by a man named Ullrey. He's basically compiled podcasts for each week, and since the program is based on interval training, his podcasts tell you when you should run and when you should walk. The Couch to 5 k program is meant to be run 3 times a week.

I've started the program in addition to my gym visits, where I still revel in mostly weight training machines. I'm on week 2, and my muscles are hurting in a good way so far. I'm hoping I manage to stick with it, and then go on to train for the half marathon in October this year. Most of all, over the past few months of exercise, while I have lost or redistributed some weight, I have changed my attitude to myself. It's easier to say no to desserts now, for instance. While we do eat very healthy, it's become easier for me to welcome every opportunity to heave myself off the sofa and around the block.

Will I actually make it through the c to 5 k program? Will I continue running now that I;m back to a fulltime job and an intensive one at that? Will I actually sign up for and run the half marathon? Watch this space.....!

No man is an island

2010-01-20T04:06:00.000-08:00

The Ruchika case is not news to most people anymore. And almost all of us want that smug, self-righteous, pompous smirk wiped off from Rathore's face. But is that enough? does that mean justice is served?

What about all the bureaucrats who failed to act on time to the various investigative reports that were filed? What about the policemen who acted like brainless goons and followed Rathore's instructions to lock up and beat up Ruchika's brother? What about all the politicians - Chief Ministers, Home Ministers and so on - who consistently ignored the case and kept promoting Rathore till he became the DGP of Haryana? What about the stupid, antiquated, inadequate laws that allow the punishment for something like this to be as minimal as six months, and then let the guy off on bail? What about the courts that threw out the complaint of abetting suicide when it was filed by the CBI?

In fact, in general, what about the unholy nexus between politicians, bureaucrats, influential/ rich people and the police which makes sure that they mutually agree to keep each other out of trouble? The Delhi government agreed to let Manu Sharma out on bail on a fake plea by him, not even bothering to check it out. And this is a guy that shot a girl at point blank range for refusing to serve him a drink, and got away with it for years, and only put him back behind bars when there was a media and public outcry. That Vikas Yadav is out on bail for attending his sister's wedding - that same sister whose romance with Nitish Katara caused Vikas and his thuggish friends to burn the poor boy to death. That Sanjeev Nanda who drunkenly mowed down 6 pavement dwellers mercilessly is out after serving barely two years, that too after initially being acquitted and then being convicted only after a public outcry. After the Soumya Viswanathan case, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit made an amazingly Pilate-like and insensitive comment about how women 'should not be adventurous', putting the blame back where politicians and their ilk believe it belongs - with the victim, not the assailant.

It's disgusting and scary to see how in each and every case that involves someone with political connections or money, justice is thwarted and subverted, with everyone from the judiciary to the politicos and the cops working overtime to let the culprit off easy. It's appalling that in each of the above cases, it was only after a public outcry and notice being taken by the media that any action was taken, more out of fear of public reprisals at election time and bad PR than any genuine desire to take action and make sure that India is equally safe for everyone - rich or poor, male or female.

Mera Bharat Viraan, indeed!

Women and their supportive men

2010-01-09T02:16:00.000-08:00

I remember watching a TV program recently in which the young woman said her husband is very supportive of her career. 'He says as long as the house and kids are taken care of, he has no problem with my working'. I know Indian men are typically less liberated but even so, I'm appalled that someone would in this day and age consider that statement as supportive.

But I know someone who works in advertising, is very senior, runs a multi-crore business and supervises hundreds of employees. Yet in her house, she is forbidden from hiring a cook and wakes up at five every day to cook food for the family, and never stays overnight when she travels because she has to cook for the next day.

Some of my friends who have made traded careers for being stay-at-home moms find that suddenly their equation with their husband, which used to be that of an equal, has suddenly changed to junior/ silent partner and that the whole relationship revolves around what is convenient for the husband, rather than for both. It's as if the minute their paycheck stopped, their importance in the equation fell. It's strange too, because many of these couples are at an economic level where the additional income really didn't matter in the first place, so I wonder what caused the seismic shift. Was it the loss of one of their identities - or of a designation? Is stay-at-home mom less glamorous than Vice president, Unilever India? Was the equal status in the relationship primarily based on the fact that both had followed the same path when it came to studies - graduation + MBA? So that when one of them went off the parallel track, it became a lower status track? I don't have any definitive answers to any of these questions and it just makes me sad and mad thinking about it.

I've taken several breaks from work for one reason and another. I took a one year break when Chubbocks was being expected and then a newborn. Last year I decided I had had enought of a crappy workplace and just quit and have been at home since July, though the plan of moving back to a fulltime job is there. A took a break from a corporate set-up and spent several months last year trying to become a corporate film maker. At none of these stages did either of us think the other had become of any less value to the relationship, or that the other person's opinion counted for less on any decisions. I've had to make several work trips and be away from home for many days, and on none of those occasions did A ever make me feel like he was doing me a favour by taking care of the kids and the house. He took over for me the way I take over for him when he's travelling or busy ( and he did it with more grace than I do!). The way scores of wives take over when their husbands travel yet somehow when it's the other way around everyone thinks it's a big deal and that the husband was either a hero or a patsy.

Why do we need to apply these very different standards to men and women? Isn't it about time we took equality for granted? The first decade of the 21st Century is over...dinosaurs are sooo extinct.

Remembering 26/11

2009-11-26T08:22:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-25T07:49:00.001-08:00

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

2009-06-28T22:34:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-27T04:07:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-18T05:10:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-18T01:44:00.001-07:00

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…

2009-04-12T22:34:00.001-07:00

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!

The Cinderella Myth

2009-03-16T05:57:00.001-07:00

I've been doing some thinking about where and why the whole cosmetics/ clothing industry thrives on women. And I think I've got it figured out. The whole thing starts in childhood, when some well-meaning person reads out the Cinderella fairy tale to a little girl. And she starts planning on two things for her future – Prince Charming who's coming to take her away from the drudgery, and the transformation scene with the fairy godmother. So when you grow up, naturally you spend all your time and money looking for that fairy godmother. Each time you go to a gay hairstylist, you're praying for the before-and-after scene.

Same thing happens each time you visit a make-up counter. And especially when they promise you a make-over, you're like "Omigod, my childhood fantasy is coming true at last. Next thing you know the PC will be coming on his white charger/ personal Learjet!" And with my supreme bad luck, you get a make-up artist who doesn't know how to deal with a face that doesn't have flaws to skillfully conceal/ minimize under a few litres of concealer. Hey I'm not saying I'm a beauty but my features are fine. So the one time I went in for a professional make-over, the MUA was all, "Your eyes are too big, we have to make them look smaller. Your lips are too full and even. Your skin doesn't have any zits…" you get the drift. By the time I emerged from the scented lair, I looked like the bride of Frankenstein . I even got my sister to take a picture of my 'make-under' to remind me never to get this done again.

But clearly I don't learn from experience, because a couple years later, when I was getting married, I again lined up a MUA to do my face for the reception. At my own wedding I did my own make-up and even today when I look at those pictures, I feel I look like myself, and I look good. But on my reception? First of all, the MUA was really late in arriving. Our reception was on 25^th Dec, and she had forgotten to tell me that she was half Christian and needed to be at Church that morning, so she came barely half hour before the reception. She was supposed to do up both my sister's and my face, and my sister was developing a stye in one eye. So that naturally became the emergency that took precedence and by the time she was done, my sister looked stunning. But then she always does. So the MUA had about 10 minutes to get my face over with. She started with Foundation, a product I cordially detest, went on to pin my hair sideways and then used a dull shade of lipstick – a king of muddy brown. By then A and I were late for our own reception and some of our friends had already arrived, so we hotfooted it to the venue. Let's just say that when I look at those pictures, apart from one taken in the lobby of the hotel where we were staying, which was very well lit, I would be happy if I weren't in so many of the pictures. But when it's your own wedding reception, what are you gonna do?

Same thing befell my sister at her wedding. At her reception, she looked washed out while I actually looked glowy. Not fair. So lesson well-learnt, from now on we're eschewing all hopes of transformation by a fairy godmother. And as far as Prince Charming goes, nix to that too. And think of the saving in horse-feed!

Women's Day II

2009-03-09T00:32:00.000-07:00

Women's Day happens to coincide with Chubbocks' birthday. The first time a big hoo-hah was being made of the day, I was getting my stomach cut open and spent the rest of the day in a comatose condition induced by the general anaesthetic.

Since then, I can give you a breakdown of the standard women's day drill in our household:
1. Wake up early and wish Chubbocks
2. Get started on making his favourite breakfast/ lunch
3. Clean up in a frenzy
4. Be in the kitchen, most likely barefoot, and in my case given the number of kids, pregnant, cooking party food since I'm an oldfashioned mom and insist that birthday parties be at-home affairs
5. Barely get ready by the time half the guest list has arrived
6. Run around like mad at said party, making sure everyone's eaten, drunk and generally enjoyed themselves
7. Organise dinner for in-laws and spouse
8. Go to bed, every bone in the body aching

This year we added one new step:
-1. Stay awake most of the night between feeding and putting to bed cranky baby, worrying about Puddi who's been puking with a throat infection and being attended-to by A, and cussing out birthday-boy-to-be for waking us to:
a. Ask for water
b. Say that he's awake but won't disturb us and will read quietly; and
c. Inform us that he needs to pee, forgetting all about the attached bathroom to his bedroom

Not very feminist/ liberated, some might say. Well, you know what? I think it is. Because it's out of choice. I'm exercising my freedom of choice to be the woman who likes cooking up things to feed her family and friends, who's damn houseproud and wants it to be on its best behaviour. There are other ways to exercise my freedom too, and I use all of them - shopping for myself, working or choosing not to, taking major life decisions - whom to marry, where to study, what job offer to accept, whether to cut my hair short or not...

The point I'm making is that I'm against the 'exclusive' school of feminism, which seems to think that if a woman enjoys cooking or enjoys making her husband/ family happy then she's a traitor to the cause, that if a woman isn't working she's letting feminism down. The whole point of feminism is to empower women to make their own choices, take their own decisions - whether those choices include going out into the workforce or staying home and nurturing a family - or doing both to the best of her ability.

Actually, my version of feminism is to want people to stop looking at me as a 'woman', and pigeonholing me into some tidy little compartment. Instead, I want to be seen as a person, an individual, and for my life to be simply seen as the chosen life of an individual. I think that would be quite a major change of perspective for most people, to just turn off the gender switch and see people as people. See both men and women simply as individuals and not as part of 'gender' groups. All of a sudden, the Taliban, Ram Sene and all seem even more hollow and ridiculous than ever.

I don't want anyone analysing my choices or decisions through the prism of 'woman'. It's part of my identity to be a woman but I don't know how much that comes into play on a daily basis and influences my behaviour or decisions. Except those to do with my appearance, of course. And my collection of shoes and bags! I just think from my own individual point of view, as do most people who have the good fortune to be well-educated and from families that don't pigeonhole them.

Instead of Women's Day with its ridiculous tokenism and the plethora of brands announcing sales - which is quite insulting - can we just institute 'Individual's Day'? And celebrate it every day of the year?

Women's Day

2009-03-09T00:31:00.000-07:00

I went to the mall saturday to buy A a gift, JLT. Being a contrary, cussed man, he insists he doesn't want/ like anything because he doesn't need it. Therefore I end up with 3 pairs of shoes from Nine West ( major sale - got 'em for about 700 Rs each!). It was this woman's day, all right :)

Flowers Flowers Everywhere

2009-03-06T04:29:00.001-08:00

Sadly, in life, you tend to appreciate things more when they are gone. Like all the gardens in the various Lutyens bungalows we lived in while Dad was in the government. Now I have a handkerchief-sized patch of lawn on which you have to really struggle to make even grass grow, and most of my 'trees' grow in pots. But luckily I live in Delhi which in this season is spectacular. All manner of spring flowers are out in a riot of colour – phlox, pansies, poppies, dahlias, mums, Sweet Williams, impatiens and more. The colony I live in has many avid gardeners so it's a joy to walk around and see how different people plan their garden. One lady has a gorgeous Petrea which blooms for barely 15 days but in that time the entire creeper is covered in starry lavender coloured flowers. My gardener unfortunately killed off my petrea but today I'm planning to go shop for it at the Khan Market nursery. Another neighbor plants the flowers in great masses in front of her house so it looks like one of the cottage gardens one sees in England. In fact, her house looks like it belongs in fairy tales. Ours is a somewhat eccentric garden – there's one sand garden with a lotus pond in which hopefully at some point I'll get to see a lotus flower – and not the floating candle kind. A horse and a camel stand sentinel around it.

On the other side, I've planted a pomegranate tree which is still a tiny plant,
and thickly clustered around it are pansies in various colours.

There are roses against the wall,

and various flowering plants to form a border for this small patch.

What do you think of it?

The Buck Stops At You!

2009-03-02T21:15:00.001-08:00

I found this on facebook today and had to put it up – both out of shock and out of pride that someone is saying, The Buck Stops Here'.

"Yes, everything changes.

The fantastic invisible sweep of time rushes and roars past us every dull and intense second that ticks relentlessly away every day, and all around us things constantly morph. Twin towers crumble, good people die, the good earth turns brown and bare, and old love fades.

And what precisely is your role in the incredible kaleidoscope of change?

A slack-jaw by-stander who barely registers the impact and implications? A commentator spectator who freely critiques but somehow rises above being affected by it all? A fatalist loser who bemoans everything and blames it all on circumstances and other people?

Look around you, you who reside in the so-called mind and knowledge capital of the shining new India. This is Bangalore.

Many of the quiet avenues that used to snake through the wooded shades and fragrant flower-scatters of a thousand gulmohars, flames of the forest, bougenvillias and silver oaks are now shorn of even a single blade of grass, their tar guts upturned by mammoth earth moving equipment, tortured sites full of grime, steel and concrete through which an endless procession of loud vehicles crawl back and forth, utterly indisciplined, frothing with impotent anger and frustration, from the early dusty dawns to the midnight hours, every single day.

We are the victims, you say? The civic governance of Bangalore is sub standard, you claim? Well, you may be right, but does that mean that even as an individual citizen whose real powers to influence matters is way less than what it theoretically should be, we have absolutely nothing to do?

I am re-thinking this premise, my friend. Unfortunately not a self realization case, but prompted by a black incident last Friday, 6th February, 2009. And this time it was not about aspects that affect your life and mine indirectly. It wasn't the death of yet another 100+ year old tree. It wasn't another instance of criminal neglect of any civic infrastructure. It wasn't road rage. It was a kick in the groin. Literally. And it woke me up all right.

So, in brief, this is how the drama unfolded:

A few of my friends and I were just paying our bills and coming out of our regular Friday night watering hole and dinner place in Rest House Road, just off Brigade Road, and most of the women in the company were already standing outside. Some of us outside were smoking, people were happy, there was laughter and jokes, as there were many other people in the street, all coming out, satiated, in the closing hour of the various pubs and restaurants around.

Suddenly from up the street a massive SUV comes revving and speeding, hurtling down, and stops in a scream of brakes and swirling dust, millimeters away from this group of 4 women, barely missing one of their legs. A white Audi, imported, still under transfer, with the registration plate of KA-51 TR-2767. Some millionaire's toy thing, that in the wrong hands can kill.

Naturally the women are in shock. And quickly following the shock comes indignation. These are self made women running their own businesses, managing state responsibilities for global NGO firms, successful doctors. They are not used to being bullied. So they turn around, instead of shrinking back in fear. They protest.

And as soon as they turn around in protest, the car doors are flung open, and a stream of 4-5 rabid men run out towards these women, screaming obscenities in Hindi and Kannada against women in general, fists flailing. Some of us who came in running at the sound of the screaming brakes now stand in the middle in defense of our women, and then blows start raining down. One of the goons make a couple of calls over the cellphone, and in seconds a stream of other equally rabid goondas land up. They gun straight for the women, and everyone – a few well-meaning bystanders, acquaintances who know us from the restaurant, basically everyone who tries to help the women – starts getting thoroughly beaten up.

Women are kicked in the groin, punched in the stomach, slapped across the face, grabbed everywhere, abused constantly. Men are smashed up professionally, blows aimed at livers, groins, kidneys and nose. A friend is hit repeatedly on the head by a stone until he passes out in a flood of blood.

A plain-clothes policeman (Vittal Kumar) who saunters in late stands by watching and urging people to stop, but doing absolutely nothing else. A 'cheetah' biker cop comes in, with our women pleading him to stop this madness, but he refuses action, saying a police van will come in soon and he cannot do anything. Everyone keeps getting hammered. Relentlessly.

The carnage continues for over 20 minutes.

Finally when the police van does come in it is this vandals who are raging and ranting, claiming to be true "sons of the Kannadiga soil", and we are positioned to be the villainous outsiders, bleeding, outraged. How do the cops believe them, especially seeing the bloody faces of our men and the violated rage of our women, while they carry nary a scratch on their bodies? Don't ask me! Yet, it is us who these goondas urge the newly arrived law-keepers to arrest, and the police promptly comply, and we are bundled into the van, some still being beaten as we are pushed in. Some blessed relief from pain inside the police van at least, even if we are inside and the real goons outside, driving alongside in their spanking white Audi. The guy who was hit by the stone is taken separately by the women to Mallya hospital.

Inside the police station at Cubbon Park it becomes clear that these goons and the police know each other by their first names. The policeman in charge (Thimmappa) initially refuses to even register any complaint from me, on the purported grounds that I am not fluent in Kannada and I have taken a few drinks (3 Kingfisher pints, to be precise) over the evening. No, it doesn't matter that I didn't have my car and was not driving, and no, it doesn't mater that the complaint will be written in English. We watch them and the goons exchange smiles and nods with our our bloodied and swelling eyes and realize in our pain-clouded still-in-shock brains the extent of truth in the claim of one of the main goons when he claimed earlier in the evening in virulent aggression: we own this town, this car belongs to an MLA, we will see how you return to this street!!

This was the turning point of the saga, I guess. For we refused to lie down quietly and be victims.

One of our girls, a vintage and proud Bangalorean who is running one of the town's most successful organic farming initiatives, took upon herself to write the complaint, when I was not allowed to write the same. Another Bangalore girl, a state director of a global NGO firm, wrote the other molestation complaint separately on behalf of all the girls. Some of us called our friends in the media and corporate world. Everyone stepped up. And even when the odds were down and we were out, we did not give up, and as a singular body of violated citizens we spoke in one voice of courage and indomitable spirit. That voice had no limitation of language, not Kannada, nor English, or Hindi. It was the voice of human spirit that cannot be broken.

And in the face of that spirit, for the first time, we saw the ugly visage of vandalism, hiding behind the thin and inadequate veil of political corrupt power, narrow-vision regionalism and self-serving morality, start to wilt.

We spent 6 hours next day in the police station. The sub-inspector of police who filed our FIR, Ajay R M, seemed a breath of fresh air inasmuch that he did not appear a-priori biased like others, even though the hand of corruption and politico-criminal power backing these goons was still manifest in many ways: a starched, white-linen power-broker walked in handing over his card to the sub-inspector in support of the goons; the goons got an audience with the Inspector because of this intervention, while we had to interact one level lower down in the hierarchy; the plains cloth policeman of last night, even though he had arrived far too late in the crime scene, gave a warped statement, passing it off as a "neutral" point of view, repeatedly stressing that we came out of a pub and hence were drinking, positioning this as a 'drunken brawl', while completely forgetting to mention the unprovoked attack against the women and the one-sided vandalism and violence that ensued. I guess one cannot blame the low ranked police officer – the criminal connections of these goons must be pervasive enough for him to be careful.

Thanks however to the impartial handling of the situation by Ajay, soon the goons were all identified. The lead actor was one Ravi Mallaya (38), a real estate honcho and owner of a small property off Brigade Road which he has converted into a "gaming" (you know what that means, don't you?) adda. The others identified are Mohan Basava (22) of Chamarajapet 12th Cross, R. Vijay Kumar Ramalingaraju (25) and Shivu Rajashekar (20). All are residents of 12th & 13th Cross in Vyalikaval. Their bravado and machismo were by that time evaporated. It was good to see their faces then.

Of course nothing much happened to them, nor did we expect it. They were supposed to be in lock up for at least the weekend till they were produced in court, but we understand that they were quickly released on (anticipatory?) bail. The car, purportedly belonging to an MLA, also does not figure in the FIR, apparently for reasons of "irrelevance to the case".The media also have given us fantastic coverage and support so far, strengthening the cause.

The goons meanwhile, as an after thought, also filed the customary reverse complaint on the morning after we filed our own complaint: the women have apparently scratched the car! (Why did they not file the complaint the same night, considering they came to the Police Station in the same car? Why was the car allowed to be taken off police custody? Why is the car still irrelevant to the case and not in the FIR? Questions.. questions..).

Is this the end of this saga? Probably not. Are these women, more precious to us as friends and wives than most things in our lives, safe to walk or drive down Brigade Road from now on or are the goonda elements, slighted by this arrest and disgrace, are lying in ambush, waiting, biding their time to cause some of us more grievous harm? We don't know. Is there reason for us to remain apprehensive of future attacks and victimization? Perhaps.

But here is the point.

We stood up.

We believed in the power of individual citizens even in the face of hooliganism, intolerance, corruption and power mongering. Even though many of us have the option of leveraging political or government connections, we deliberately chose to fight this battle as individuals. Sure, these connections have been activated and they have been kept informed, should the worst case scenario unfold tomorrow. But we have chosen to not leverage them. And in every small win we register as a group of individual outraged citizens of Bangalore and India, however insignificant these milestones may be in the larger scheme of things, there is one small notch adding up in favor of what is right, one small notch against what is wrong. And we believe that every such small notch counts, each such mark is absolutely invaluable.

It is the people who make this city, this country, this world. It is you and I, as much as the terrorists inside and outside. And in our small insignificant little ways, it is my responsibility and yours to not shirk from investing effort – not just lip service or any token attempt, but real effort – in backing up what we ourselves believe in. It is so easy to logically argue that everything is corrupt, nothing is worth it, there are so many risks involved. We must not fall trap to this escapist trend. We must not fail to try.

Next time you feel outraged, violated, abused, don't let it go by and add up to your list of litanies and complaints. Stand up and take it to the limit - at least your own limit. Not in the same way as they wrong you, but in the way that every citizen, at least in theory, is entitled to complain and protest. Do not let the hooligans power rant scare you or prompt you into submission. Do not allow the corrupt cop make you give up trying. Carry the flame forward. Try harder.

If are up to it, start right now.

Forward this note to everyone you want to be made aware of this. Post it in your own blogs. Talk about it amongst your circles. And if anyone of you should like to step forward with a word of empathy or advise, talk to me. Comment.

It is not Bangalore that is going to the dogs. It is us. We have far too long become accustomed to let everything go. And the more we let things go without any protest or fight, the dormant criminal and dark elements of the society get that much more encouraged. Every time we turn the other way, the hooligan next street gets incentivized to push the boundary a little further, provoke a little more, try something a little more atrocious. It is time for us to refuse to let this go on. We are responsible for making ourselves proud. Lets believe in ourselves. We can do this.

My name is Saugata Chatterjee. And I am standing up.I refuse to let Bangalore go to the hooligan dogs of war, even if some of them are pets of corrupt power millionaires."
Read all about it here, and here, and here.

Winter Wonderland

2009-02-23T04:44:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we enjoyed one among the free pleasures of living in Delhi. The weather was perfect - sunny but with a cool breeze that made it delightful to spend time outdoors. So we set off on an expedition to Mughal Gardens, my grandma in tow. We sped through the traffic on the expressway and reached the heart of Delhi in barely 20 minutes. Of course, it then took us another 20 minutes to finally figure out how to get to the entrance of the garden, which is attached to Rashtrapati Bhavan, the President's Estate.

The parking was pretty haphazard and the queue seemed endless so we had nightmare visions of standing in line for hours. But luckily the line moved fairly quickly, the only hitch being no mobile phones ( or cameras) were allowed, so once they separated the men and women, you could end up lost inside. In fact, as we queued up for the many security checks, we kept hearing announcements of lots of children separated from their parents, husbands missing wives and so forth.

Once inside, we found a treasure trove. The gardens are beautifully laid out in the formal English manner. As soon as you get inside, they have a large rectangular space, all sandstone, with huge spaces earmarked for flowers and plants. All manner of seasonal flowers were blooming there - roses of many varieties, stock both pink and white, larkspur, poppies, chrysanthemums, marigolds, dahlias which must have been a foot in diameter, snapdragons, pansies, violas and so on. The colours were beautifully planned and the parterre interspersed with fountains or just shallow channels for running water. There was even what looked like a grotto into which water from one of the channels fell like a waterfall, the noise of the running water adding to the feeling of being in an enchanted space. As one exited this space, there were vast banks of sweetpeas giving out a heavenly fragrance and running wild with colour - purple, blue, violet, pink, mauve and magenta.

Once you had completed a tour of the parterre walking on the designated paths, you were led into a sunken garden with tall rosy-red sandstone walls on either side, and an arbour with sandstone pillars and green runnels overhead. Both sides of the sunken garden were planted with roses of many varieties while the arbour had jade, petunias and other plants swinging in baskets. From this we came into a space that epitomised one of my favourite books from childhood, The Secret Garden.

There was a narrow little entrance, and once we stepped through, we were almost dazzled by the beauty of a circular garden. The garden was planted in steps made again of sandstone, with each step about 3 feet wide. We entered at the topmost tier, and that was the only level at which walking was allowed. As we walked around, we gazed down at a wilderness of flowers of all colours, hues and fragrances mingled together in the kind of picture that Monet painted so well. In fact, it was hard to believe that we had not stepped through a magical door and fallen into one of Monet's paintings of his garden in Giverny.
We just couldn't get enough of it and I ran about identifying the various flowers and sniffing their perfume like a dog gone mad. It was incredible to see the sheer variety of shades, colours, perfumes, shapes and sizes of flowers in that beautiful space - ladylike stock, bold dahlias, lacy, fragile larkspur, happy pansies, vibrant poppies and coy roses all turning their joyous faces to the sun. They seemed to be listening to some secret music and dancing to its tune. I couldn't do better than to misquote Wordsworth:
"Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line...

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance...

A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company"
The Mughal Gardens perfumed my whole day, and I realised that the new dream of my life is to live, even in a small town, but in a space where I can create a magic garden for myself.

Delhi 6 Review

2009-02-21T07:43:00.000-08:00

'Try to realise it's all about within you,

And only you can make you change'

The Beatles

The music of the movie has had me hoooked for a while now, be it the atmospheric 'Yeh Dilli hai meri jaan' or the traditional romantic song, 'Saiyyan cheed deve' and of course the completely joyous 'Masakalli'. I even wound up coming up with a chaat-ey salad dressing to celebrate the movie. I think Delhi 6 is one of Rahman's best scores, with an astounding range of music, from a qawwali to a traditional bhajan, a jazzy-bluesy title song that riffs mellowly on the streets of Delhi. And the picturising of Dil gira Dafatan is amongst the best visual renderings of a song I've ever seen, seamlessly moving between Dilli and New York...
The movie was...interesting. I have to start out by admiring the way Abhishek Bachchan inhabits the characters he plays in whichever movie, and Delhi 6 was no exception. He was Roshan Mehra to the core, and one could feel every nuance of bewilderment, culture shock and eventual belongingness that he went through. I could really relate to that, having faced a similar culture shock when we returned to India after 5 years abroad - much more of a shock than the foreign culture was to us, to be honest. The camerawork was brilliantly executed to help the viewer get inside the film, the jerky, fast movements imitating those of one walking around in Chandni Chowk, the extreme close-ups of people and places conveying the impact of in-your-face-ness that India often creates in newcomers. The atmosphere of Chandni Chowk and the jovial bonhomie and family-feeling of the characters was very natural and as a Dilli-wali it felt just right about this city.
The first half of the film meandered gently through Roshan's days of adjustment and exposure to the city, its people and way of life. The Ram Leela was a brilliant sutradhar throughout the movie, its many incidents serving to punch home the message without punching one in the face with it. The second half of the movie was where it got seriously down to the business of what it was all about, tying together many threads. One point that hit home very hard, in view of our own family construct, is how quickly the simplest thing was turned into a Hindu-Muslim conflict and how fast bonds and friendships forged over a lifetime turned into us versus them. That is something I am scared about on a daily basis for my children and to see it in such a believable context just heightened my fear.
There were a few weak points, for instance the pow-wow between Abhishek and Amitabh which was unnecessary, the conflicted ending ( spoiler alert) where one thought Roshan was going after his girl but he turned out to be trying to sort out the communcal tension in his neighbourhood. I thought the last sermonising voice-over was unnecessary since the movie had already made its point. But thankfully after all the tension, the movie did have a happy ending so one could go home happy for the moment.
The ensemble cast was amazing, so true to life...from Jalebi, the low-caste cleaning woman to the Punjabi wheeler-dealer beautifully played by Pawan Malhotra - friendly one moment, out to corner his monent of glory the next, insensitive to the core and willing to take advantage of anyone weaker. Rishi Kapoor - like vintage wine, with a smooth, complex finish. Sonam was just right as the girl with wings clipped who longs to fly but is held back by the bogie of 'family honour'.
It's a movie that makes you think, at least, if you have any semblance of intelligence. Not so much with the family in front of us who laughed their way through, which really makes me wonder. I mean, you can dislike the film but the message is scary and yet empowering all at the same time. How can you not get that? But, unlike RDB, it's not a film that I think I'll be watching again. Maybe I'm too scared by the 'best within us'.

Rules of Indian Culture circa 2009 ( as per Ram Sene and the like)

2009-02-02T02:02:00.000-08:00

1. Indian men shall at all times scratch or otherwise interact with their gonads, at five minute intervals
2. Indian men shall assume that all women, from the age of 8 months to 80 years, are asking for lewd attention even when they’re just walking by minding their own business. She’s breathing, isn’t she?
3. Public displays of affection – hand holding or couples sitting together in public places – are against Indian culture. What about Khajuraho, you say? D-uh, that’s Public display of lust, silly. Plus that’s in a temple. So PDL in a temple is A-ok.
4. Of course you should slap, kick and otherwise molest any Indian woman who dares to exercise free will and go out to public places. Hang on – some idiot is saying how is that Indian culture, we worship goddesses. Well, the goddess is just sitting inside the mandir, innit, not going out to enjoy herself?
5. Women drinking is just not Indian, traditional texts and ancient recipes for Som Ras be damned. Men drinking – well, of course, that’s ok. It says so in all the traditional texts. We even have ancient recipes for Som Ras.
6. But we are not the Taliban. As long as our women don’t go out of the house, express an opinion or do anything without consulting us, we let them be. We don’t insist on them covering their faces and hair.

Freedom For All, not Some of the People!

2009-02-01T20:21:00.000-08:00

I remember the phrase 'Draconian laws' being bandied about way back in the late 80s when the then government wanted to pass laws restricting what the media could cover and what they could say. The media made a spirited defense of the right to free speech and eventually managed to prevent the law from being passed. sad to say, according to media behaviour, it looks like the principles of free speech only seem to apply to the corporatised, powerful media today.

Indi blogger Chyetanya, after the Mumbai attacks in November, had more than a few pithy things to say about the media coverage of it. Of course, many journalists have taken up this issue since, and it seems quite clear that if on the one hand the government was stupid to not orchestrate the media coverage of the event, the television media in particular left no stone unturned in covering every minute detail of what happened, to the extent of endangering the rescue operations. Television channels competed with each other to be the first to cover each gory detail, even getting in the way of the rescue team at the Nariman House site, while the poor SWAT team practically pleaded with the reporters to stand back.

But Barkha Dutt and NDTV have decided that while they can't do much about the mainstream media's condemnation of the type of coverage, the place where they can win is the blogosphere and they have bullied this blogger to take his post off the blog. Here's his post: http://ckunte.com/archives/withdrawal withdrawing his earlier post.

Here's what some other bloggers had to say about it:
http://themadmomma.wordpress.com/
http://eveslungs.blogspot.com
http://mommustbecrazy.blogspot.com/2008/11/imho.html
Some linked up posts on Desi Pundit - http://www.desipundit.com/2009/01/28/blogger-silenced-by-ndtv/comment-page-1/
http://dipalitaneja.blogspot.com
Also, another blogger found the facebook converstation where it seems Barkha talks about sending legal notice to Ckunte
http://retributions.nationalinterest.in/so-ndtv-did-sue-mr-kunte/
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=52492265639&topic=5983

What's next - suing all the facebook members who joined the group Get Barkha Dutt off the air?

It's time the media remembered that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Free speech means not just for the media but for all the people!

Ram Rajya

2009-02-01T08:58:00.001-08:00

I don't know why all mention of Indian culture seems to consist of subjugation of women and denying women their right to lead independent lives bounded by their own choices. The so-called guardians of morality don't think that the so-called Indian culture they supposedly venerate also includes showing respect for women or not molesting them. I notice that not one of the moral police was out protesting against the gang of men who molested two young women on 31^st Dec 2007 in Mumbai as they emerged from a hotel. Well, of course, stupid me. I forgot this was 21^st Century India. Of course the women must have done something to cause what happened to them. I'm sorry, I must have missed it – just what was it that these women were doing that was clearly wrong and that gave these men the right to molest them? Oh, right – they were exercising their rights as independent young women to go out and enjoy themselves. Or was it enjoying themselves that was wrong? Or was it that they offended by leaving the party at that five star?

I notice none of the moral police came out and protested when the young student was raped in Noida in January. Well, naturally, since there was a woman in the case, she must have done something to call this upon herself. Umm, let me guess…driving in a car? Expecting the suburban road to be safe? Breathing?

No surprises, the Mangalore goons are out scot free and probably feeling all too triumphant at having emerged unscathed. In fact, they are now known and feared by people in their right senses across India, so this was a great PR exercise in gaining political clout. Next thing you know, Sunil Mittal and Ratan Tata will start supporting Muthalik for Minister of Culture.

That humble and self-effacing politician, the Minister of Health has also jumped on the bandwagon now, claiming that pubs are against Indian culture. Never mind that giant ancient boulders engraved with the recipe for Som Ras are strewn across the beach in Dwarka, right outside the temple. Never mind that Tuberculosis has returned with a vengeance to India and the number of cases is steadily rising. Never mind that AIDS is spreading and that polio which was supposed to be eradicated in 2003 as per government guidelines is still around. Never mind that malnutrition remains one of the severest health concerns of India. No, no let's not get distracted by these small petty things like disease and death. Let's focus on the big health stuff – closing down pubs in urban India.

While Renuka Chowdhury, true to her image as firebrand came out with a tongue-lashing against what happened, I don't see any of the young, so-called future leaders going out on a limb here and protesting against what happened. In fact, whenever a major issue erupts, the young politicians are noticeable for their silence. Why should any of them protest or voice an opinion, even though going out to pubs or having a drink with their male and female friends is part of their everyday life, just like it is for hundreds of other Indians? Is it going to get them any votes? Of course not.

And then we have the National Commission for Women which was ostensibly in town to figure out what and how it happened. Instead, they're busy pointing fingers at the pub owner that he didn't have a valid liquor license. It's another matter that someone else should be looking into that independently, not as a result of this incident. Could the NCW just stick to the job they were supposed to be doing?

And then there's the media. Forewarned of such an attack by the publicity-hungry Ram Sene, rather than warn the police or other authorities, they hung around in wait, cameras at the ready to capture this news story. No one tried to help the women who were subjected to this attack. The other people in the pub stood on the sidelines, apart from one lone student who tried to help.

And post the attack, the parents of the girls are going to town about how the girls were 'modestly dressed and drinking only coke', when it happened.

Does no one get it, that it's about freedom of speech and action and not about what the girls were doing or wearing?

I'm not surprised that the mob called itself the Ram Sene, given what Ram did to Sita. In such a Ram Rajya, no wonder Sita is standing around denuded!!!

But why, Mama?

2009-01-20T04:32:00.001-08:00

So this Faberge exhibition was on at the National Museum in Delhi. It's been on since December and just wound up this Sunday. I happened to read an article about it in the newspaper supplement but with one thing and another we didn't manage to make it over until the last day of the exhibit. Interestingly enough, despite such a unique exhibit, there was so little publicity that most of the friends I contacted to ask if they wanted to go were not even aware that this exhibition was on.

The exhibits were fabulous. Each and every piece was crafted so delicately, with such precicion, love and attention to detail. What I found heartbreaking were the pictures of the Russian royal family - one of the eggs was a 15th aniversary present from Nicholas to Alexandra with three miniature photographs, of himself and two of the children, who both looked under 5 years old. It was presented barely a year or so before the revolution during which they were massacred. I just can't understand who would want to or have the heart to murder small children.

But that's another matter. The museum, as expected, was mostly deserted and the few visitors were either foreigners or students. The few signages that looked good were all for the Faberge exhibition. There were masses of sculptures from different centuries and geographies, all cheek by jowl with each other, with no reference to context or attempt to be organised in a particular manner to cast some light on Indian civilizational development. Something carved in 22 AD was randomly placed next to something carved in the 12th century. The labels were old, typewritten ones, crudely pasted on and giving the barest information - name of the figure carved, age and where it was found. There was no information placing the sculptures in a context or informing us why that piece was important.

The overall atmosphere of the museum was dull, uninspiring. We didn't see any signage that tempted us to visit more than the one exhibit we had come to see. The walls are dirty and the floor cold. The lighting is industrial, and one sees no guides to take one around, or a planned tour of the museum through signages. The museum shop is a bloody joke, with a half dozen things available, the prices crudely written by ballpoint and placed in a room whose door is hidden behind curtains as if to dissuade potential shoppers. Three staff members were sitting and gossiping among themselves when we went in, and didn't even bother to look up or offer to help us. The layout of the museum did not automatically end at the museum shop, potentially generating revenue for the museum. Outside the museum was an exhibit of a massive wooden rath made in Tamil Nadu in the last century. The route to the exhibit was through a muddy and wet lawn, with interested visitors having to step extremely gingerly. The poster explaining this exhibit was old and covered with mud, extremely verbose and hard to read.

Why are we like this? Has no one from the Ministry of Culture or Tourism ever bothered to visit a museum abroad - or are they too busy shopping while there to pay attention to how things are done? Why does no one care about preserving our past better and about safeguarding national treasures? These exhibits are priceless and could be real sources of revenue for the government, not to mention major tourist attractions. Would anyone dream of visiting Paris and missing out on the Louvre or London and not visit the Victoria and Albert? Why can't we, with a far older civilisation and any number of antiquities even do half as good a job?

My nephew, who visited us recently, has a steady stream of questions for his mom. Everything is met with a 'But why, Mama?' Most of the time, we don't have an answer to the rather existential questions he asks!

150 things to do before 40...and time is running out!

2009-01-05T23:18:00.000-08:00

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa

17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb (does a kid goat count?)
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and didn’t care who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Taken a midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow

56. Alphabetized your CDs ( No, but I colour-coded my clothes closet!)
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theatre
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken

69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch

78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice ( No but I did ride a vaporetto...)
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on a television news program as an “expert”
83. Gotten flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music (For my own ears only)
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date ( heck, we weren't even on a date!)
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone (My house is one, now that I have three kids - does that count?)
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
98. Passed out cold
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking with the windows open
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a TV game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for 30 hours in a 48 hour period
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. States
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad and The Odyssey
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts

144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life

151. Published a book?

152. Been friends with an ex

Apathetic Government

2008-11-30T22:20:00.000-08:00

I don't know whether apathy or pathetic-ness is a better way to describe the attitude of the government to the gruesome event last week in Mumbai. This is a government that has raised inaction and incapability to a new high. From the time that the attacks till almost a full day later, no official spokesperson from the government appeared on national television to inform India's citizens of what was going on, what was being done and what the citizens should be doing, how they could help. And what we got after the day's wait was a low-voiced mumble reading out a speech which made the words "We are not prepared to countenance a situation in which the safety and security of our citizens can be violated with impunity by terrorists" sound less threatening than my daughter's threat of 'Chandamama tumhare sar be broke doonga' ( I'll break the moon over your head.

Nobody from the powers-that-think-they-be thought that there was a need to control and direct the flow of information about what was going on. The tailor's dummy distinguished himself by revealing exactly when the NSG team was going to reach the site, thoughtfully giving the terrorists time to prepare. Various people at the site helpfully relayed every detail of what was happening and what was planned to the waiting media. Whatever information has been gathered from the captured terrorists is out in the public domain.

The Prime Minister didn't think it was important to address the nation after this harrowing ordeal was over ( not that that mumble would have made much sense to anyone) to offer words of comfort or acknowledge the depth of tragedy we witnessed. The CM thought it was important to go sightseeing with his son and movie director. The deputy CM thinks it wasn't a big deal because 'in big cities, these incidents happen'. Rumour has it that between 25 and 40 terrorists landed in Mumbai and only 10 or so have been accounted for. Given our 'intelligence', they could be anywhere in India by now, and be planning an attack on another city. But there is no advisory from the government suggesting that people in the big cities stay away from crowded public places, malls etc.

Nobody knows what the government was doing during the rescue operations, and it almost seems like the government only cared about the political fallout of the same. Surely it would not have been difficult to create a sense of unity in the face of such an event, to give people the reassurance that the government is watching, is concerned and cares. But then, that's assuming the government actually gives a damn...

The Resignation of Despair

2008-11-30T22:16:00.001-08:00

There was a proverb that said every dark cloud has a silver lining. I can’t think of one to the Mumbai attack by terrorists, can you? The only thing that the attack has done for India is to rip the mask off from the faces of our politicians and shown them up for the scheming, soulless, power and publicity-hungry creatures that they are. To my mind, they are far, far worse than terrorists who at least have the mitigating factor of believing so strongly in their cause that they are willing to sacrifice their own lives for it. Politicians on the other hand believe in no cause, no value and no ethic apart from the ones of money, power and self-aggrandizement.

It is absolutely foul to see Mumbai plastered with hoardings by each political party in praise of the three police chiefs who died. The same parties which bayed for their blood when they performed their jobs in a way the party did not like are now trying to benefit even from their deaths by indulging in a gross game of friendlier-than-thou one-upmanship. The ads they have and are releasing on the eve of state elections in many states and in the run-up to the national elections proves only one thing – that we have no leaders worth the name and that they take no responsibility for any of their actions, preferring blame-storming and hoping public memory is as short as their own.

The BJP and Vajpayee who headed the government at the time have a convenient attack of amnesia regarding the shameful caving in on the Kandahar incident during which then foreign minister Jaswant Singh practically embraced the terrorists he was handing back. Nor does the party remember the attack on Parliament post which the MPs proudly spoke of their presence of mind in dashing behind the pillars of the building. The Congress on the other hand, keeps bringing up the horrific events at Godhra, while choosing to forget what happened after Indira Gandhi’s assassination, led by party leaders.

The concept of democracy being of the people, by the people and for the people has been completely vitiated by India’s politicians. If of the people means that Parliament is meant to reflect the composition of the population, how come we have so few women or so many criminals? If it is for the people, how come the aam aadmi’s lot doesn’t get better regardless of which government comes to power? How come we still don’t have the basics that have been promised in every election – clean water, power, roads? The only principle of democracy which is followed is that of by the people, which then results in divisive politics – by caste lines, by community, by religion, by any and every possible division so that ultimately only the politician benefits after each election.

The young parliamentarians who got into the Lok Sabha last time around were seen as rays of hope, as people who might be better-equipped to run this country than the octogenarians who are so far out of touch with modern life and the age composition of our country. But so far, we have not heard a single statement from them that touches a chord, not a single speech in parliament, except during the no-confidence motion against the present government, which demonstrates a vision or even the will to do things differently. Most of them, having used a family connection to get into parliament, are content to tow the party line, because after all, it’s a family business they have entered.

Barack Obama talks about the audacity of hope. In India’s case, given recent events, I think we might have to talk about the resignation of despair instead.

Hospital Review

2008-10-22T20:53:00.000-07:00

So Bojjandi was born in one of Delhi's new and privately run, posh hospitals - the kind that try and create the ambience of a 5-star hotel as opposed to antiseptic warehouse. Vir Sanghvi, the bon vivant, had recently written about the ways in which 5 star hotels gouge their clients. I mean, that pack of Lays Chips isn't going to taste any more gourmet because you consumed it in the hallowed portals of the Oberoi and paid Rs. 100 for the privilege, instead of buying it for Rs. 10 from the neighbourhood kirana store. But I think 5 star hotels come off as innocents compared to these new-fangled hospitals.

We'd asked for a single room when we did the pre-admission procedure at the hospital. Of course, when we arrived at the hospital on the due date, they said the single room we had opted for was unavailable. In fact, the process of figuring out which room was available was annoying - the guy would look up room numbers which seemed vacant, then call the head nurse and check and he'd veto all suggestions. He claimed it was because sometimes the room might be marked vacant because the patient had gone to surgery - seemed a bit weird and inefficient to me, but whatever. So anyway, they said we had the option of a double room or a more expensive single room - a deluxe classic. We asked what was the difference between a classic and a deluxe classic. The guy said the deluxe classic had a refrigerator, and the difference in room rates was Rs. 1000 a day. Why would they have a fridge in a hospital which doesn't allow outside food to be brought it? What am I going to store in it, my medicines? And why should I pay for the privilege?

Anyway, we decided that the total difference in costs would be minuscule over a 3 day stay and opted for the deluxe classic. That's when the guy broke the news - the difference in costs would be Rs. 15000, because all charges went up - the consultant fees, surgery fees, nursing fees...! WTF? Is the consultant going to stay hidden in the fridge? Are the nurses going to come running faster because my room has a fridge? Besides, for Rs. 15000, I can buy a new fridge and get it installed in the hospital!

Well, there really wasn't much point to the discussion because I was definite about a single room so we opted for the deluxe classic. Moved into the room and it looked identical to the one which Puddi had been hospitalised in earlier in the year. We looked around but didn't find any trace of a refrigerator in the room. Not that we were in need of one, but when I pay for something, I like to get full value. So we called the admin office and informed them and they told us that the fridge was only installed in the room after the patient had checked in. So the deal is - there's a useless fridge for which you are charged an additional amount, and once you move into an ordinary single room, they move it in so you can be charged extra! We followed up three times over the next one and a half days but the fridge never arrived, so we finally had a showdown with the admin department and refused to pay the additional fees.

Why do hospitals never manage to design good gowns? The one they gave me had half the strings missing - and the amount of flesh it revealed, it would have been welcome at a nudist camp.

The bland and tasteless food usually arrived in tandem with the nurse who wanted to start various procedures so it turned into bland, tasteless and cold food by the time I had it.

Hospitals should have signs on the entrance: Do not rest. The whole time we were there, we couldn't go to sleep for longer than fifteen minutes. One afternoon really took the cake. As soon as we went to sleep, the food service guys came to take away my lunch plates. Then, a few minutes later, the nurse came to put some saline drip on. Some minutes later, the housekeeping guy came to spray the room. Then another housekeeping guy came to check if he needed to empty the trash bin. He was followed by the Cafe Coffe Day guy who'd delivered A's lunch, coming by to give him his change back. Then another nursing department lady came by to stock medicines in my bedside drawer. Another helper came in to check if the water jug needed filling, and of course, it wasn't sufficient for her to merely check inside the jug to see if it was empty. She had to wake me up and ask if I needed her to refill the jug. Then came another guy from Cafe Coffee Day checking if A had ordered a burger. He had - but it had been delivered and consumed over an hour and a half back. Finally, a visitor for the room next door knocked and stumbled in, having not bothered to read the name on our room door nor the room number!

The check-out process was another revelation. Having been given the all-clear to leve at 8:30 am, we finally managed to make our getaway only by one o'clock, due to the various procedures.

I have to say that the nursing staff was very good and patient and quite prompt to appear when called. The hospital was nice and clean and didn't give us that sense of ill-health that one typically gets in a hospital. And their pre-operative procedures included getting a full medical history which made me feel reassured about the quality of care I'd be getting.

Suppandi moment at hospital: the nurses were meant to change the baby so we decided to take full advantage of postponing the diaper duties. But each time we called the nurse and asked for a diaper change, she'd ask:"You want me to change the baby's diaper?" Who else did she think was wearing a diaper?

2008-09-24T00:05:00.001-07:00

My present domestic help is far from being the only Suppandi I have come across, and some of the stories are too good not to share. Years back, at my office, we had a security guard named Pyarey Lal. A thin, weedy-looking specimen with reedy voice to match.

Once one of the girls in office had complained that the cab driver had tried to act fresh when he dropped her home late at night from work. So the head of the office issued a diktat that if any girl worked later than 8 p.m., one of the security guards would escort her home in the cab. One night, I was working till about 3 a.m. editing a film. It being winter, the night was bitterly dark by the time I finished work so I called up the guard from the studio and told him he'd have to drop me home. Of course, with my luck, the guard on duty was Pyarey Lal.
"Who said I have to drop you home?"
"The head of the office"
"How far is your place?"
"Half an hour"
"Goodness gracious, you expect me to travel back alone in a taxi at this hour of night after dropping you home? No way!"
I figured in the case of an attack, I'd be better equipped to defend myself if I was alone rather than have him with me!
*************************************************************************************
One of A's clients had an irritating habit of calling after 6 p.m. on a Friday or the eve of a holiday to load him up with work on his days off. One week, A was rather fed-up and when she called, instructed Pyarey Lal to tell her he was not in office. Of course, this was way back before mobile phones, blackberries and emails.
Pyarey Lal had an earnest confab with the client and turned to us with a worried face:
"She's saying it's urgent."
"Please tell her I am not in office and you have no way of contacting me."
Pyarey Lal goes back to the telephone...
"Sir, I told her you are not here but that you have got the message and will call her in half an hour!"
*************************************************************************************
Once A was in his cabin having a discussion with a colleague about some client issue. The colleague strolled out to freshen up and hadn't returned for a good 15 minutes so A poked his head out of the cabin and asked Pyarey Lal: "Where is S sahib?"
Pyarey Lal: "He is sitting in your cabin talking to you!"
*************************************************************************************
Then there's the famous CPWD or Central Public Works Department, which used to be responsible for the maintenance of our house back when dad was in government service. One day, dad and I were heading out of the house when we saw a CPWD worker diligently working away at the hinges of our front door.
Us: "What are you doing?"
Workman: "We are replacing these old doors with new ones, as per the department order."
We looked around and didn't spot any new door lying there.
Us: "So where's the new door?"
Workman: "My job is to take out the old doors. That's the job of another department. They'll install the new door within 2-3 days!"

Cross-posted on Rainbow Days

Low Cost Labour?

2008-08-19T02:06:00.000-07:00

India's economy has been cruising for the past several years with the ITES sector on overdrive all due to the abundant availability of trained 'low cost labour'. And India's demographic deficit, i.e. its burgeoning population of under 35s is supposed to drive its economic growth for many years into the future. But is that really going to happen? To my mind, the day the myth of this so-called low cost labour explodes, there will be a panic-stricken exodus of MNCs, and no number of ready-mix IITs and IIMs or added seats in graduate courses are going to be enough to stem the rot resulting from India's completely inadequate primary education infrastructure.

The problems are already evident when one goes to recruit from or for any institute. I had posted some time earlier about my horrifying brush with the naked truth when I went on the interview panel of a 2nd rung Bschool in Delhi. And speak to anyone about the kind of domestic help they employ and it becomes even more obvious. They can't read or write in many cases, are ignorant of the most basic ways to conduct themselves, don't understand time management or commitments and end up causing all kinds of problems which then cost much more to solve.

We have a normal-sized staff for an upper middle-class Indian household. One live-in maid, one day maid, two drivers and a gardener. Our travails began with the first driver we ever employed - gormless, as he was called by A and me ( and not fondly, at that). Every morning, it was a toss-up to see whether he'd manage to make it here before A had to leave for work. Invariably 2-3 days out of 5, he'd be late and A would have driven himself to work. The days when he did make it, he'd still be too late to clean the car so it always carted a year and a half's worth of dust on its roof. The man would almost never shave and I think baths were an unknown quantity, which was tough in the summer and monsoon, especially after I got pregnant. He didn't know and couldn;t remember any routes, so each time you had him drive anywhere, you had to be on the 'qui-vive', pointing out turns and stops. He took one day's leave for a relative's wedding and returned after 5 days, claiming 'they' had asked him to stay on, employers who pay salary be damned. And when we asked him to go after 6 months in which he'd probably taken 80 days of leave, he asked why.

After him, we had another specimen nicknamed 'face' as his name was Surat, whoch was supposed to combine cooking skills with driving. Face had many issues, not least among which was that he objected to being directed a) by a woman; and b) by people younger than him, though he had no problems taking his salary from A and me, half of which duo was female. His cooking skills were miniscule and consisted of chucking the same masalas in varying order at the wok and hoping for the best. His driving was even more varied - he would race across every pothole on the road, leaving all bones jarred into new places on the bosy and drive as slow as a snail on smooth-as-Hema-Malini's-cheek roads. Once we were driving back from A's dental surgery appointment. I asked Face if he knew the way back home. An emphatic yes later, he promptly took the wrong turn. Then, we told him he had to make a right turn on a particular road - he parked so far ahead of the traffic signal that we couldn't see if it was red or green. And lastly, he was on the verge of taking another wrong straight when we told him he had to make a left. He took a sharp 90 degree turn to the left in the face of oncoming traffic at full-speed, because 'we had told him'.

We had many unnerving experiences with maids as well. Now we have the latest edition of gormless living with us, while I wait hopefully for her predecessor, a real and rare gem, to come back from the village. This one can't remember any instruction for the space of more than a nano-second. Every day, every task is like a new discovery for her. If asked to fetch anything, she usually can't find it, even if she has put it away herself and then turns up with any random article. The other day, I asked her to fish out the steel colander for draining noodles - "The steel vessel with the many holes" was exactly the terminology used. The first thing handed to me was the shallow aluminium vessel in which we cook rice in the pressure cooker. The next was a multi-divider thali which is used for Chubbocks' meals. There are days when my daughter has apparently sauntered to the park wearing a frock on top of jeans, or even in her night pajamas, because this lady who sees my daughter every day has not figured out what clothes are worn together as yet. Each and every instruction has to be repeated thrice and then I have to remember it and check to see whether it has been carried out, which 90% of the time it hasn't. Her presence in my house at this time may prove to be a blessing in disguise because I've been having low blood pressure and she sure does her best to raise it every single day!

The army of contractors, builders, carpenters, electricians and plumbers is even worse - most of them are half-trained but think they are experts, proving that 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing'. We constantly have a problem of 'air-lock' in one of the cisterns, leading to ghost-like moaning and groaning SFX and an inability to flush. The plumber's inevitable answer: "Change the ball-cock". He claims this piece of equipment wears out in a year's time at best. Which is funny because in 6 years in this house we haven't changed any of the other ball-cocks. The toilet seat has some funny mechanism which ensures that unless you drop down on the seat at a precisely measured angle and degree of force, the seat will slide right out of the clamps and fall on the floor, sometimes bringing you down with it. It's been fun being a pregnant lady with an ever-shrinking bladder around this one!

Contractors rarely stick to the committed deadlines and even more rarely do they commit to a budget so you are always likely to be surprised by the amount you end up spending on what you thought was a simple repair. We've had to change all the locks in the house twice, because each time, the carpenters did a funny job which either meant the doors and the locks had to be aligned at a precise angle involving much straining of muscle and bodily lifting of said doors, or the doors would jam once shut. Our front door has two locks installed for safety - but we can use only one at a time, because for one you have to push the door forward and for another you have to push it back!

The builders who constructed the house were trained in experimental, new-wave geometry - not a single doorway actually consists of straight or parallel lines. Most of the walls meet the ceilings at different angles. The floors all slope inwards so if any water starts flowing in, it will helpfully collect indoors, thus flooding the house rather than running off into the various verandahs and garden. All the pipes in the house have had to be broken down and replaced as the workmen figured once they were done with the cement, stone and other such material that the leftovers should be stuffed down the nearest water pipe - why would they be needed to actually take water out of the house, right? The drainage holes on the terrace are vertical, not horizontal - which means water only starts to flow out of the terrace once a certain height of water has built up, and God forbid that you have one leaf or piece of fluff blocking the grating; then you're just asking to be flooded, aren't you? For some reason, the pipes leading down from the terrace open out onto the first floor balcony, so each time there is a washing down or downpour on the terrace, the first floor balcony is awash in mud and muck.

Despite the so-called low cost that we pay this array of domestic help, the real cost in terms of management time spent supervising and planning the work ourselves, to ensure it gets done properly, the time spent in chasing after the workmen to ensure timely delivery and the cost of constantly repeating the processes and the repairs adds up to much more. In fact, this low cost labour is much more expensive than the high-cost labour of developed countries who come to work with a plan, a schedule and a budget and stick to all three, thus freeing up your mindspace for more important things. If India does not address the problem of providing a good basic education to its citizens fast, it's going to crash and burn!

Wake up, Rip Van Winkle...

2008-07-24T23:09:00.000-07:00

Have been wanting to put in my two cents on this for ages now - I'm so glad the Left finally got its comeuppance, after 4 years of causing nothing but trouble and preventing any and all development from happening. Am also glad to note that Manmohan Singh's spine is intact and straight - had started doubting it after all the 'accomodations' to the Left in the last few years.

Ok, here's the deal. Anyone who doesn't believe in communism/ socialism while they are in college is bereft of any shred of idealism. I mean, the ideal is so beautiful - everybody is equal, everyone will share everything...their anthem should be John Lennon's Imagine! But the point is, at some stage you outgrow it, because you realise it's an impractical dream, much like Nehru's Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai. There's a wonderful story in one of the William books ( for more info on William, read The Hungry Bookworm) about how William's brother and his friends all decide to found a socialist society...Only catch is William and his friends decide to found one too, and to help themselves to their brothers' goods so as to be equal...and that's the weak spot.

Quite apart from the impratical nature of it, India's commies haven't realised that just because Karl Marx wanted to liberate the factory workers in an industrializing Germany, there is no reason to apply the same narrow definition of 'worker' to an agrarian society like India. The only thing the Left parties have ever done is promote unionism, while being oblivious to the plight of India's real workers - the millions who eke out a precarious living in the cities or on the farms. Every reform that could address this teeming mass has been turned down by the Left in order to favour the factory worker who comparatively is doing ok. Be it the airport privatisation or modern retail, the Left rabidly objects to anything that might actually result in livelihoods or greater convenience for millions of people, choosing instead to focus on a select few.

Meanwhile, thanks to Union troubles, private industry has been leaving the Left-controlled state in droves. The agrarian economy of West Bengal is amongst the poorest, prompting thousands of poor people from the state to migrate in search of a basic living. If the Left really cared about the poor, wouldn't you think West Bengal and Kerala would be more prosperous? If the Left really cared about the people, how did Nandigram happen on land controlled by them?

And then there's the whole rabid fear of America which the Left not only fails to realise is not reflected in the minds of the average Indian, but which is a relic of a past in which the world was bi-polar. Russia today is busy sucking up to America, and China is eager to be friends with them while our anachronistic jhola-wala friends sit wringing their hands at India's friendship with 'the Great Satan'. It's an attitude that has more in common with that of the jihadis in Afghanistan or Iraq.

The problem is that the Left parties haven't grown up. They haven't woken up and smelled the coffee. It's as if Rip Van Winkle went to sleep in the '50s and woke up in the noughties and preserved the same attitudes and way of thinking that he had gone to sleep with. I for one am not a complete capitalist and would be happy if Capitalism could be made to temper its goals with humanism, and it is in that sphere that the role of the Left could become useful to society. There needs to be a system of checks and balances which ensures that everybody gets a share of the pie, and that is the area in which the Left could provide the necessary arguments. But unfortunately the party seems so steeped in Stalinist-era rhetoric and its narrow definition of the 'proletariat' that it has ended up being insignificant even to the very people it claims to represent.

Indian Airports

2008-06-16T03:52:00.000-07:00

Flying was once upon a time a status symbol, only to be indulged in by the rich and privileged, while the rest of us drones contented ourselves with creeping along, hugging Mother earth like worms...until the Air Ministry or whoever it is went mad. Now you have a flight a minute to any destination in India...if you can find a spare runway or ATC, that is.

Flying has become an absolute form of purgatory in India today. If we just got all the criminals consigned to Tihar to do a coast-to-coast round trip of India by air, I'm pretty sure most of them would reform on the spot. I've had an excruciating three weeks of constant travel and I'm surprised to note that I lived to tell the tale. Aged by a few years in those few days, but still alive.

Last week, I reached the airport an hour and fifteen minutes before the flight was due to leave, but had just about managed to complete checking in by the time they announced boarding for the flight. Also, the airlines really like to watch out for your fitness - the luggage trolleys are stacked way over at the far corner at the Kingfisher terminal, so you have to make a mad dash there and back by which time the policeman has threateningly waved your car and driver on so then you chase after them...

Recently, I was forced to visit the ladies room at Delhi airport immediately upon landing, only because I'm pregnant and bladder control has become a thing of the past. Otherwise, I've been known to hold it in for 5-6 hours rather than risk going to a public loo, that too in an Indian airport. So here we are in Delhi. Yes, yes, we know GMR is still WIP and the new airport is yet to come up. But is there any reason why they can't start improving the small stuff right now?

The lighting inside is strictly from solitary confinement cells in some gulag. The grey and pink mottled counters are always soaking wet, so you don't have any place to put down a bag or a bawling infant. The floor is usually damp with some suspicious looking liquid. The toilet I used had no seat, so I had to hold position in mid-air over the ceramic fitting, which hovering may be easy for aircraft but is tough on a 12-month pregnant woman who was no sylph to start with. There was no toilet paper in the loo but plenty on the counter, half soggy already, for the purpose of drying hands. There was no air dryer or paper towel dispenser. The flush barely worked. The place stank and I thanked God I'd been swimming all week and improved lung power so I could hold my breath through the entire ordeal. Crowds of 'safai karamcharis' ( cleaning crew) were hanging around, taking up all available space in front of the sinks but clearly not being as efficient at their main job.

The Hubli airport, a tiny little one that gets barely 2 flights a day, did much better in terms of general cleanliness and loo cleanliness - dry, clean floors, TP - check; flush working - check; smell of disinfectant - check. And no, the argument that it gets less people doesn't work for me - I'm sure the delhi airport has thrice the cleaning staff that Hubli does.

Even the new airport in Bombay has horrendous loos for women - and what's with the lighting? Has anyone bothered to do any research with womnen and found out that apart from bodily functions, we also use the loo to put our faces back on after a journey? Making us look like vampires at the get-go DOES NOT HELP.

And while on Bombay airport, getting from one terminal to the other is a nightmare. I had to change flights, and first of all, there were no signposts anywhere, so if I hadn't been relatively familiar with the layout, wouldn't have known where to go. No ground staff from the airline I flew in on was visible. I had to lug the trolley out the terminal into the hot, blistering sun and all the way across the road crammed with taxis, weaving in and out of the traffic as dexterously as I could to get into the other terminal. Another bonus at Bombay - the Kingfisher boarding gates floor only has one loo meant for the handicapped. So if you're not handicapped, you have to climb back up a floor ( no escalator, thanks very much) and use the loo on the upper floor. The lounge for people with whatever credit cards from Mastercard - is down a staircase, which is surely helpful to those of us in the habit of carrying hand baggage.

And of course Goa airport - can't believe it's meant to be an international departure terminal. There's no space outside for people seeing other people off, so the seers-off come right inside along with the see-es, creating a pandemonic entryway, where those of us traveling have to literally shove people aside to move in. the announcements are made in some foreign language, maybe Aramaic...or maybe that was just the quality of the loudspeaker. The little food they had available at the terminal was probably cooked around the time India liberated Goa from the Portuguese. After check-in, a process that takes forever, you are confusingly asked to get in line for a passport check and immigration, which is panic-inducing when you're an Indian citizen and haven't lugged the required documents along...Oh, wait, way over to the side, hidden by some pillars, is a little sign saying Security check, so maybe that's where you're supposed to go...

I have another set of flights to board this week, to Bengaluru, where the new airport is said to be an hour - or three - away from the city and a Rs. 1500 ride away...Someone find me a portable loo that's clean and fits into my handbag!!!

Reviews of Films - Naya Daur, Guru, From Here To Eternity

2008-06-06T02:54:00.000-07:00

Quite a mixed bag, this, but that's all of what we got to watch during our holiday in Goa after the kids fell asleep. From Here To Eternity has been widely written about for the kissing scene on the beach between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr. It started off quite interestingly - a movie about an assortment of characters - Prewitt, an army recruit who refuses to box any more because he blinded one of his opponents in a match, the leader of the platoon who's a womanizer and insistent on making the reluctant recruit box as he hopes to get a promotion on the strength of that, and the leader's second-in-command Burt Lancaster, the guy who actually runs the unit, a nice guy in love with the commander's wife. And Frank Sinatra, a fun guy who looks out for the new recruit. All of them in Hawaii just before Pearl Harbour. A highly atmospheric film and an interesting character study, it examines the various differences and conflicts that exist within characters themselves.

Burt Lancaster, the upstanding second-in-command sets out with the purpose of seducing his commander's wife, ends up falling in love with her but in the end not enough to stay committed to her. The wife, the cast-against-type Deborah Kerr, is a woman about town but becomes serious about this affair. Prewitt falls in love with a prostitute who turns out to have the proverbial heart of gold but again, not enough to fight against his dark side which comes out after Frank Sinatra dies from being mistreated by the Sergeant in charge of the stockade. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour comes at the end, almost as an excuse to tie up all the events and people. The much-talked about scene on the beach honestly was a let-down and I didn't understand the title of the film and its relevance to context.

We saw Guru for the second time - we'd caught it on big screen last year - and again thought that unfortunately due to a combination of timing ( it came out in the first half last year) and politics, i.e. the general anti-Bachchan sentiment in the industry, the film had not gotten its due in terms of awards. Admittedly hagiographed, it still tells a powerful story of a man who came out from nowhere with a big dream and forced it to come true against all the odds. Abhishek Bachchan gave the performance of a lifetime, transforming himself from a young, callow boy to one who starts seeing dreams and eventually to a Grand Old Man imbued with a sense of destiny and power. Aishwarya Rai too did a terrific job matching him step for step, from the fiery village belle to the woman who becomes his ardhangini, maturing from a firebrand into a family matriarch. Her portrayal was far more nuanced and demanded more of an actor than Kareena Kapoor's Geet in Jab We Met, which was a reprise of many roles Kareena has played before. Mithun and Madhavan both turned in fine cameos, though Vidya Balan was irritatingly false as the MS patient, especially in the chirpier moments. The music of course was fabulous as was the photography. The dialogue crackled...Definitely a keeper and if merit had its rights, Abhishek should have gotten Best Actor for this, apart from the film winning at least a couple of Best Film/ director awards.

Naya Daur was a film I had read a lot about, primarily due to the controversial dropping out of Madhubala from the cast leading to the famous court case against her. Directed by BR Chopra, it tells the story of man versus machine and, as we realised sometime into the film, is akin to Lagaan in the nature of that competition and all that befalls during it. I haven't seen too many films of Dilip Kumar, except ones where he played the urbane hero ( Madhumati and Andaz) so this was a revelation as to how easily he could transition into the villager, how naturally it came to him. He was flawless in his performance while Vyjayanthi Mala couldn't quite hide her city roots at times. Ajit played the second hero role in the film and floored me with his acting, not to mention his hunky good looks! Of course, the character of Dilip Kumar's sister was irritating, to say the least, having caused multiple problems for everyone but the film turned out to have a happy ending. I love the way movies made in those days have a certain sincerity of purpose and innocence of motive behind them. I do wish the colorisation had been less garish though, but them's small potatoes compared to the overall feel-good nature of the film.

Delhi and the BRT

2008-04-29T21:35:00.001-07:00

I'm getting more than a little tired of the media witch-hunt and feeding frenzy on the BRT. Delhi is probably the only one of India's cities where the government is even trying to improve the infrastructure, between all the new roads, flyovers, new airport and the BRT. But since the day the corridor opened, we haven't heard a single bouquet, only brickbats. Yes, there are problems and they do need to be sorted out, but let's not negate the good stuff entirely.

And for all the virulent headlines in the media and the snarky comments by the citizens, I'd like an answer to a simple question : What do you do to make things a little better? Do you, as pedestrians, use the zebra crossings and wait for the signal or do you act like Moses and hope the Red Sea will part wherever you happen to want to saunter across the road? Do you as motorists driving any kind of vehicle follow the rules of land and sane driving? Do you stick to the lanes in which you are supposed to drive on the BRT route or do you just weave in and out pretending life is the same chaotic mess as always and then get your nuts off vowing vengeance at the poor Government? Do cars and cabs obey the rules about their lane in the BRT or do they insist on getting into the bus lane, causing problems for themselves and the buses?

I remember when the toll road opened, the media was full of critical reports on how much havoc was being caused and how long it took for people to get through the toll plaza alone. But later when the toll plaza management got their act together and turned it around so that they actually promise you - only 5 mts waiting - nobody bothered to report that. It now takes my husband an hour and 10 minutes instead of close to 2 hours, to go from Gurgaon to Noida while it takes me half hour to traverse the 1 km distance to my office within Gurgaon. Is anyone reporting on how life has become better since the toll plaza opened?

Today's HT carries a front page item about how a pedestrian was dashing across the BRT corridor at random and how in an attempt to avoid hitting him, the blueline swerved and hit the railings and one piece of railing went through the bus and impaled a passenger. Yes, the story's horrific and very sad. But instead of blaming the BRT, why not blame the ass who was jaywalking? Had the Blueline not swerved to avoid the fool but run him over, that would have been the next finger of blame at the Bluelines.

Of course, the Delhi government has handled things badly - not the BRT itself but in its PR. As always, the Government thought it could be autocratic instead of democratic and just ploughed ahead with its plans. A 'mai-baap' sarkar doesn't work anymore, especially in a city as confident and opinionated as Delhi - you need to be open and transparent to the public. A better way to handle the situation would have been to have a PR campaign a month in advance, telling the citizens the details of how the BRT corridor was planned and how it was meant to work.

They should have circulated flyers to nearby colonies and had people directing pedestrians for the first week, right from the start, instead of waiting till the doody hit the fan. They should have released ads in the papers, FM and television explaining which lanes were meant for whom. Having uniformed people guiding motorists and pedestrians would have added a huge measure of reassurance and sanity to the proceedings. They should take a leaf out of Delhi Metro's book - those guys have been real gentlemen. Any time they have to divert traffic, they put up big, lit-up signboards and have people stationed night and day to guide motorists and pedestrians.

The Delhi government could also have kept the public in the loop, as well as the media, about a period of confusion that was inevitable with any change and a timeline of how long they thought it would take for the situation to stabilise. And rather than their kneejerk reaction saying that they would not proceed with the rest of the BRT until this situation was sorted out, I would have thought they would plan it that way. Whenever you introduce something new, especially something that needs behaviour modification on the parts of aggressive Delhiites, isn't it a good idea to do it step-wise? all marketers know that new categories need to be test-marketed first to iron out the problems. Surely something as big as the BRT could have planned on it that way to start with? Even the Delhi Metro did that and look at how that is flying!

On the other hand, the media needs to be more balanced in its coverage, instead of sensationalist. Yes, there are problems but why is it that all the coverage of the reasons why, especially those reflecting poorly on the citizenry are buried inside the paper instead of being on the front page? Why are quotes from the people saying it is teething trouble in the middle of long-winded write-ups about all the gore the BRT is causing? Why are there no positive stories about what the government was trying to do and how successfully this has worked in other countries and why? Why was today's headline yet another finger of blame towards the BRT instead of the unruly citizens? The media has a huge amount of influence on people's opinions and needs to be more balanced - let's not have tabloid journalism!

Come on, people. A city's systems will only work when the citizens cooperate and let the systems work. And the citizens will only cooperate if they are made to feel that the systems will eventually improve life for them. If we just take a look at any other city in India and compare it with Delhi, we will see how much better life is becoming here on a daily basis ( Ok, let's not talk about the power crisis - that's the subject of another rant altogether). In fact, even if we look back a few years and look at life today in Delhi, we will see how how things have improved. So let's all work together and be responsible citizens, mediapeople and yes, responsive government officials and politicians.

What the Media's Role Should Be

2008-04-01T00:05:00.000-07:00

I'm posting an article written by a family friend, outraged at the kind of coverage post the rape of British teenager, Scarlett, in Goa. While I do believe that the teenager's mother showed remarkably poor judgement in leaving a 15-year-old on her own in the care of someone they had known for only a few weeks, that does not make Scarlett culpable in what happened to her. In typical fashion, the politicians and bureaucracy are not only busy covering up matters but also trying to victimise the victim. And media, in particular journalists who are known to be influential and should highlight the objective facts, are too busy making interesting shows that get higher ratings out of it.

For Decency’s Sake…………

Dear Barkha,
This evening, when I got up after seeing your TV Show, “We, The People” on NDTV, I felt very sad. Not merely because of the fact that, as a parent, I went through the agony and pain which Scarlett’s mother must have felt when the whole abominable event took place but, because of the manner in which, by way of a conclusion, you could not separate the chaff from the grain. Indeed, I felt sorry that you failed your profession and if you would permit me to say, failed your good sense, to allow long minutes of discussion and analysis of issues like, the behaviour of foreigners in Goa, whether Bikinis should be worn on beaches or not, and most surprisingly, issues of “We Goans against They”.

Mind you, I was not expecting you to behave as a ring master in conducting this kind of program (although I have an observation that you do behave like one when dealing with the spokesmen of a particular political party), all I am asking you to do is not to mistake the wood for the trees. As a journalist gifted with a razor sharp mind, you could have skillfully guided the discussion in order to chop off the superfluous from the essential. And because you did not do this, the moron politician masquerading as a representative of the Goa administration went on to make all kinds of atrocious statements which, when viewers overseas see your program, would render us Indians to an undeserved ridicule.

When you initiated the discussion by trying to put balm over the wounds of Scarlett’s mother, you were at your usual best. When you invited audience views on the situation of law & order on Goa’s beaches, you were bang on the right track. Then when people gave specific instances of policemen being helpful or not being helpful towards tourists, we were really making progress, and I said to myself, “This is my Barkha, she is going to rip apart the bluff put up by the authorities”.

And then, lo and behold, you suddenly permitted the discussion to be hijacked by people who said Goa was a beautiful place and foreigners were coming and spoiling it, and then somebody said, what the hell, I am a foreigner & staying here for umpteen years and nobody has ever said this to me. In between, when a British lady tourist, who happened to be a policewoman back in UK very politely said that she had seen Goa police going around demanding bribes from tourists, the Goan politician ferociously attacks her by saying all kinds of not-so-polite things, and finally demands to know if there was no corruption in British police.

Earlier, this gentleman (if I am not making an overstatement) even tried to suggest that all that happened to Scarlett was right because it was with her consent. ( Jesus, does this lawmaker bloke not know the basics of Indian Criminal Law that a minor’s consent does not render a rape legal?).And to cap the aimlessness of the discussion, people even discussed whether foreign tourists could buy land in Goa and, at this, the very senior official from Goa (not to be left behind by the politician) intervened to make an utter fool of himself by saying, “Yes, provided he has an indefinite business visa!”

You see, Barkha, with you as the anchor, we expected to go right at the bottom of the phenomenon. While conflicting and irrelevant views are bound to be aired in a discussion of this type, surely, the anchor can at least keep it going towards a meaningful direction, discouraging totally unproductive diversions. What would I have adored your interventions to be like? Something as follows: Listen folks, so what if Scarlett was on drugs, what if she was going steady with one of the rapists, what if, in her utterly blind and youthful passion, she landed into the arms of rapists and murderers? Do any of these factors make her “deserve” what she received, including the police attempts to hush up the matter? Is this the way any one of the parents would like their own daughter to be treated?

No? Then why the whole unashamed show of hypocrisy by those members of the audience whom you allowed to speak for long about the golden culture of Goa, and how it is being ruined by foreigners, and even more revoltingly, by the Goan politician who had the cheek to ask the British policewoman in the audience whether or not there was corruption in British police?
Barkha, the truth of the matter is that the incident is just one of the many which shows the utterly inadequate manner in which our governments are responding to the sudden and powerful burst of consumerism resulting out of liberalization and globalization.

Our legal and law enforcement systems led by corrupt politicians, and operated by insensitive bureaucrats, are just falling apart. This is generating one tragedy after another, and instead of realising the need for a basic overhaul, we all beat our chests for a while, and then forget the whole thing, till such time that another tragedy jerks us out of our forty winks. And a society which savours the legality or otherwise of the marriage of actor Sanjay Dutt with Manyata ( or feasts upon the controversy over the kiss which Richard Gere planted on actress Shilpa Shetty in public) rather than concern itself with more urgent matters, is perhaps doomed anyway.

--- By S.M.Singru, written on 16th March, 2008 after viewing the Sunday “We, The People” on NDTV

Race

2008-03-31T01:47:00.000-07:00

Saw this movie last weekend - and was floored. The Indian film industry has really come of age - such an amazing variety of films on a varied lot of subjects, the cinematography and stunts are truly international class now. Abbas-Mastaan have always been known for their thrillers, and race is the latest in the line-up and just right for 2008. It's chock-full of thrills, stunts, BMW cars, horse races, twists and turns, crosses and double-crosses that leave one gasping. Obviously, since it's a thriller, the focus is not on character exploration but on the plot itself, and the movie literally leaves no twist unturned to confound and confute you.

Saif was awesome - he's so sexy - and Akshaye made a lovely, dapper, cheerful villain - not one of the usual broody, uproarious laugh kinds but one who reacts ever-so-casually to each new twist. Sameera Reddy was a total waste of time, and the interaction between her and Anil kapoor would have been better left to one of the new breed of sex comedies - it actually slowed things down. Bipasha should sue her dress designer, who concentrated all her attention on Katrina and left Bips looking strangely unsexy a lot of the time. It's time Katrina stopped taking acting lessons from Salman - she brings little or no conviction to her role, which is weird given she did a halfway decent job in Namastey London.

But watch Race if you like fast-paced action thrillers which don't give you a minute to pause and think. And PS. It's about time Khalid Mohammed retired as a critic. He gave Race 2 stars, claiming he couldn't understand the plot and it was too complicated - he's clearly not the TA of the movie and certainly much over the average age of the new young Indian, who's into gaming, Orkutting and a variety of other activities which certainly move faster than the plots of Khalid's films. And I'm a little sick of the whole rhyming sentences in each review - an attempt to appear hip and young but only sounding dated and pretentious!

Quizzing

2008-03-18T01:07:00.001-07:00

Last night, A and I went to the Brand Equity Quiz, amongst the largest quizzes held in India. It felt bitter-sweet to be there, since I wasn't participating this year due to lack of a partner. A and I were quizzing partners for years when we worked for the same company, and we never failed to qualify to be one of the 6 teams that competes to represent the city at the national finals.

I still remember when my love for quizzing first started, way back in school. I was at the International school in Bangkok and our history teacher, Dr. Griffiths, had a way of livening up his classes by having an open quiz every couple of weeks. We had to answer questions turn by turn as we sat, and questions passed on if the previous person hadn't answered correctly. The prize used to be a collection of secondhand paperbacks that you could choose one book from, and I used to win quite often ( this was before I learned that knowing the answers makes you a nerd). I still have the copy of Jaws by Peter Benchley that I won from one such quiz.

Many years later, when I was at the Alliance Francaise, they announced a quiz and my friend Tara egged me on to sign up with her as a team. Much to everyone's surprise, including our own, we won the general knowledge quiz by several points, and won the grand prize of book vouchers worth Rs. 250 each from Teksons. That was considered an astronomical sum of money in those days ( the average monthly pocket money hovered between 50 and 100 rupees), so we were as thrilled as if we had come into a few millions.

A friend at the Alliance knew the Teksons owner, so he volunteered to go with us and negotiate further discounts on the books we wanted. I remember picking out A Book of English Essays, which had essays by Bacon, GK Chesterton, Edward Lear and Charles Lamb, among others, a hardcover book of Modern English poetry, which had poems by Rupert Brooke etc and my first William book ever ( that I bought, I mean). I still have the book of essays and poetry, though I'm now not sure which William book it was.

Yesterday's quiz was interesting - the written score I got was close enough to the score that the qualifying teams got and I was kicking myself for not having corralled a partner sooner. I won lots of audience prizes including movie tickets which I'm looking forward to using up this very weekend. But I missed that adrenaline rush that comes with quizzing, the Eureka moments when you work out an answer, the nail-biting when you know the answer and hope the team before you doesn't get it before your turn. One important lifeskill that quizzing teaches you is to listen to your instinct. There are times when you will come up with an instinctive answer to a question, but if you wait to think about it, it'll seem like the wrong answer.

The best thing about quizzing is that the prizes and winning are just the icing on the cake ( though we have furnished half the house from quiz winnings). The real joy of it lies in the mental puzzles it makes you work through, the arcane pieces of information you dig out of recesses you didn't know you had, and the pure pitting of your brain cells against someone else's. Of course, bizarrely enough, it is destressing, though one would think it'd be stressful to get into a competitive activity like this. Next year, I'm going to make sure I pick out a partner in plenty of time for the BrandEq. Meanwhile - anyone know of any general quizzes around Delhi that one could participate in?

Barack vs. MCCain - Does it make a difference?

2008-03-05T04:00:00.000-08:00

Last week in the latest burst of sniping, McCain apparently wanted to inform Obama that Al Qaeda is in Iraq, in response to Obama's statement that he would support more troops in Iraq if Al Qaeda were there. To which Obama shot back that Al Qaeda had not been in Iraq 4 years ago when it was invaded by the US.

I've long maintained that Al Qaeda's biggest recruiting agent is George Bush (what does he, get a commission for every convert to the cause?) especially after the terribly wrong-headed invasion of Iraq on the flimsiest of excuses. It has only resulted in more fear and resentment of America among Muslims and Muslim countries everywhere, and has turned a relatively secular country into a hardline religiously oriented one, and in neither Afghanistan nor Iraq has democracy been credibly established. Moreover, Vietnam should be proof that an organised army cannot win against guerilla tactics - there's simply no point to continuing the war in Iraq except as a 'save face' exercise by the Republicans.

Despite all of this, neither democrats nor republicans are publicly willing to call off the war due to the extremely jingoistic atmosphere that Bush successfully managed to create in which 'If you're not for us, you're against us' became the war cry. As a result, Obama is willing to send out 10000 more troops to Afghanistan to 'win' back whatever territory they have now lost to the Al Qaeda side. And nobody is seriously discussing pulling out of Iraq, which now has become one of those hideously quick-sand type situations - is it more dangerous to stay in or pull out? Either way, the world has become a much more dangerous, insecure and polarized place since the day Dubya started war-mongering.

Does India have a Future?

2008-02-28T03:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I spend one of the most frustrating half days of my life, and came out tearing my hair and wondering about the answer to the above question. If the future is in the hands of India's youth - Lord help us! I was invited to be a panelist on the admissions panel to a business school in Delhi. While not one of the top schools, it has a decent reputation, and many of the students we met were toppers at their reputed colleges and had high scores in the CAT exam too.

It was a dismaying experience. In the group discussion, very few of the students were able to put coherent words together to express a thought. And few of the thoughts that did get expressed were original. The topic was quite germane and one would have thought these kids would have some ideas, some opinions on the issue since it would have affected all of their lives - that of creating 50% reservations in higher education institutions like IITs and IIMs for OBCs. Some of the candidates didn't even bother to open their mouth so the faculty members on the panel actually stopped the discussion to let these less vociferous types have their moment in the sun. Nothing doing - nothing but cliches and platitudes.

Then we did the actual interviews - and those were worse than the GD. there was a girl from my alma mater, LSR, a topper in BCom who couldn't even explain the difference between incremental and variable cost. Heck that's something even I know and I'm neither good at accounts nor a practicing finance manager. Not even one student could define what the commonweath was or who its head was. One student vaguely guessed that it was some kind of international organisation and that all Asian countries were definitely members , "that I'm sure of", as he said. These boys and girls had lived and studied in Delhi, visited its monuments various times but did not know who built the Qutab Minar or why the pillars there were famous - which is something you can even learn by watching Fanaa. The former president of India was a mysterious individual called Dr. Abdul Kalam Azaad. The controversy about Jodhaa Akbar was apparently that Rajputs weren't shown as fighting the Mughals. Did you know the Rani of Jhansi married the Peshwa of Jhansi? I wonder when he shifted from Pune! One boy claimed to have read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and the message he understood from the book - "I learned about the peoples and the qualities I must imbibe and the valoos I must learn and the people." A girl who had read The Diary of Anne Frank thought the Holocaust referred to the two World Wars. Sir is now a title we use just to show our respect to anybody, as is Lady, as in Lady Shriram College. She was called that because people were polite. Holi is a festival we celebrate, because...

It is amazing that these are the so-called talent pool that awaits India in its next few years, as it struggles to become a developed country. People who know little or nothing about their own country. People who don't even know their own culture, their history or anything outside of Bollywood. Who don't bring an enquiring mind to work because the whole focus is on mugging things that can be regurgitated without change in an exam paper. People who have never learned to think, to debate, to argue or to question. How can we even expect these people to be able to make decisions in a corporate set-up or even their own lives? They were like a bunch of tame sheep, meekly awaiting the ritual shearing. I wanted to walk up to each one of them and slap them or otherwise jolt them out of their stupor and ask them where they hid whatever brains God gave them. The mission of life is not to pass a damn exam or get admission into a damn school but to learn how to think and reason for yourself and become a human being, not a passive farm animal who lets someone herd them. How can we ever expect any change in the way things are run, in society, in anything really, when we have before us a talent pool that has never learned how to think and is as passive as a bunch of zombies...theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die?

Movie reviews

2008-02-26T20:31:00.001-08:00

I've been meaning to review a couple of movies for ages but been really caught up at work. We saw Jodhaa Akbar last weekend, and honestly - a good effort but somewhere there was a lack of coherence. I feel the movie would have done better to be named Akbar and focussed on the rise of Emperor Akbar, with the Jodha love story as just a part of it, rather than supposedly the focus. The film meanders here and there from the love story and somewhere I feel the director got confused about what it was that he was trying to showcase.
Aishwarya actually acted better than Hrithik who just didn't manage the regal aura in many of the scenes. I have a theory about Aishwarya that whenever she wears brown contact lenses her acting abilities are praised, like in Guru or even in the song Kajra Re, and it certainly proves to be true here. The supporting cast was mostly terrible apart from Sonu Sood. Ila Arun glowered her way through most scenes. Poonam Sinha never vacated her vacant smile throughout the movie. And many of the so-called villains lisped - I mean, it cost Rs. 40 crore, right, so there had to have been a budget for a character actor who didn't lisp? The sets and costumes are spectacular, and the battle scenes beautifully shot so one actually feels like one is in the thick of it. The music I found quite ordinary apart from the Sufi song - and that was beautifully done with the Turkish dervishes...The cinematography, Khalid Mohammed's review to the contrary, was breath-taking and really brought the mood of each scene alive, with its wide angle shots as well as the close-ups in the intimate scenes. Aish and Hrithik have terrific chemistry, which is a boon to this film.

Overall, I feel it could have been better scripted if the writer and director had been clear about what the story should cover - as it is, the story starts with Akbar's regency period and goes on long after he and Jodha have fallen in love and done the deed. Worth one watch, if only for the spectacle.

Johnny Gaddaar
A fabulous, fabulous noir film, with a tight script, brilliant editing and shot-framing and terrific acting by everyone. It brought the world of James Hadley Chase - who was the inspiration for the film - to life, with the seedy 'hero' whom you root for even while he's doing the wrong things. Dharmendra was brilliant as the small-time villain who yet says to his protege that "you've chosen a very wrong path" - proof of honour among thieves. Songs delighted by being absent, except in snatches. The script was so taut that one could feel the adrenalin zooming...Really, really enjoyable!

The weather

2008-02-08T00:43:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I think the weather God is a malicious little imp who just waits to see what the Indian met department will come up with before doing just the opposite. We in India have had an inkling of this over the years, so, for instance whenever the met bureau predicts rain we know to leave our umbrellas and raincoats at home and whenever they predict a cold wave, we dig out our bikinis and dust off the sun-beds.

But in the last week, they have made even bigger fools of themselves than ever before. It started last week with the Beeb, of all channels, predicting that the current temperature on Tuesday evening was 2.4 degrees C and that it would hit zero within the week. All the Indian media were all over it and the Met bureau issued all kinds of cold front warnings. All schools in NCR declared holidays on Thursday and Friday - only to be greeted with the kind of sunny, warm weather which makes it a delight to be out and about in the winter.

The cold wave warnings done with, once Sunday showed a warm face, the Met Bureau had to put their feet in it again by declaring that Winter was now over and no more cold waves would be seen. People could pack away their sweaters...Lo and behold - this week has been full of snow and icy winds up in the hills and naturally Delhi has been at the receiving end of such a cold front and fog that it could put the Cold War to shame.

Promptly the day after this unholy, unseasonal cold wave began in February, the Met bureau tries to scrape some of the egg off its face by saying - Well, winter's not really over so of course one should expect chilly weather and fog. The day after they say that - yesterday - was an absolutely clear day and sunny during the day to boot!

I have a couple of questions for the Met Bureau:
1. How come you guys always, but always get it wrong? Consistency's not a bad thing, but I'm just saying...
2. How come you always predict it right post-facto?
3. Why do you even bother?

Millennium City

2008-01-28T20:15:00.000-08:00

Gurgaon has been fancifully named Millennium city, but craftily, politicians have not specified which Millennium. I was thinking about it yesterday, and it's a toss-up between the 18th and 19th, but certainly no later than that.

We start with the premise that electricity has not yet been invented or is in its infancy as a concept. So our day begins with a powercut between 6 and 7 am, then the power goes off any time after 8 and comes back between 1:30 and 2:30 in the afternoon. It goes around 3:30 and comes by 5. It's then off again between 7 and 8 pm at night and makes a brief appearance before going off yet again between 8:30 and 9:30 pm. Since the nights are too cold to permit any staying up, we don't know for how many hours it's gone at night.

Then of course, paved roads were neither invented nor necessary in the 18th/ 19th century since people commuted on foot or by horse-carriage/ bullock cart. So the roads in GG have been made fit for those forms of transport; by first of all, the complete absence of public transport, and secondly the abysmal quality of roads, full of potholes and ruts.

Many years ago, when we had just moved here, we saw an episode of KBC, wherein a contestant, when asked by AB as to where he was from, stuck out his buck teeth and nasally intoned Gud Gaawan. The new, would-be-hip spelling and pronounciation of Gurgaon is not really suitable for the place we live in. I propose a shift back to the rural-sounding Gud Gaawan, as more reflective of its character.

Notes from a Delhi weekend

2008-01-27T20:21:00.000-08:00

We had a wonderful weekend which was a sampling of the many Delhis which co-exist and blend seamlessly into one another. Saturday, we decided to be mall-rats post a heavy South Indian breakfast chez my parents. Ambi Mall, one of the newest and largest is walking distance, only you can't walk there because of the lack of footpaths and crazy traffic. We spent the morning hanging out there, visiting any one of dozens of international brand stores which have now learnt to stock the latest merchandise rather than dated stuff. Upstairs at the Barista in Debenhams, resting our tired feet over a hot cappucino, we gazed out at the Toll Plaza which was doing brisk business, scores of gleaming cars parked in orderly lines on each side. The wide, 16 laned approach to the toll plaza was sparkling clean and looked completely international, with high-speed traffic whizzing past.

We had also visited Select Citywalk a couple weekends ago and were truly impressed by the international ambience of the mall, the way it was laid out and most of all by the parking facilities. Someone had really thought about Indians and how they behave, how we orefer people to guide us, rather than looking at maps or road-signs. The parking was incredibly well-lit and had hordes of uniformed women who smartly pointed us in the right direction for turns, entries, exits and available parking spaces. The security personnel were politely guiding people towards the many banks of lifts and even helping couples struggling with strollers.

Sunday paved the way for one of the many delights of Delhi living in winter - a picnic. We'd been planning this out for a while but never with any definite date in mind so when our friend Ravi finally sms-ed that he had planned his annual picnic for this weekend, we were quite relieved. It was a pot-luck picnic at Lodi Gardens.

Picnics at Lodi Garden always bring back a hilarious memory from the pre-cellphone days. A whole bunch of us from grad school were in Delhi and one bright and energetic one organised a picnic at Lodi Garden 'near the big monument'. Now, if anyone has ever been to Lodi, they know the place has a historic momument every couple of feet or so. The entire gang arrived at the gardens separately, by any one of the eight or so different gates and then proceeded to spend an entire morning and afternoon engaged in a fruitless search for the rest of the gang. Yesterday, after we'd got there and found parking, I rang Ravi on his cell who told me where they were - the other end from where we had parked, so I counted the long walk as my treadmill stint for the day - and then we kept ringing back and forth to find the place. A and I wondered how people had managed before cellphones were invented!

Lodi is a wonderful place to go with the kids. Despite it being a lovely, sunny morning, the gardens weren't crowded and there were any number of sunny knolls in the midst of pine trees, with a picturesque historic monument a few feet away, to serve as idyllic picnic spots. The kids loved running about in the free space, tumbling in the grass, picking up miniature pine cones, watching the squirrels, hoopoes and mynahs which strutted all over the lawns...The warmth of the sun felt like a benison on the otherwise chilly day. Delhi is really blessed to have so many such gardens in the heart of the city, painstakingly and imaginatively managed by the MCD gardeners. If it had been Gurgaon, the garden would long ago have been razed to make way for a mall or office complex with no parking...

The List

2008-01-25T00:42:00.000-08:00

Y'all know what list...Madmomma asked us to name ours, and mine was:

George Clooney
Denzel Washington
Colin Firth
Pierce Brosnan
Cary Grant - who got Xed out for Saif, since live people are definitely more available than dead ones and Saif is drool-worthy + suave

I do notice a certain pattern in the list - either they're the suave but sense-of-humour types or intense and intelligent.

Back at home, asked A for his list. First some intense squirming and denial of any such list and how he hates talking about such a thing, then, within about 2 seconds, names are spilling out as if he spent his days doing a SWOT analysis of this - and for all I know, now that we don't work together anymore, he actually does spend his day doing this. Such hypocrisy ( she sniffs).

A's list:
Catherine Zeta Jones
Monica Bellucci
Halle Berry
Bipasha Basu
Priyanka Chopra

Aaja Nachle

2008-01-20T23:03:00.000-08:00

Just saw this movie on VCD on my laptop while waiting for an endless connection from Ahmedabad back to Delhi. I didn't have any expectations one way or the other, but Madhuri Dixit in the movie made me want to see it. I was agreeably surprised, because going by the reviews and the poor box office response, I thought it might turn out to be a little incoherent.

The story was different, particularly from the Indian audience's perspective. A single mother who comes back to revive a theatre school in a small town...possibly didn't quite strike a chord with the viewers. That apart, the story was good, a typical bad girl/ boy makes good which is quite common in the West but not here. The cast of supporting characters all had their own mini-stories which were brought to life well without getting in the way of the main story.

The acting level was quite high. Madhuri easily played herself, as the NRI returned to her roots, and her daughter was a pleasant young girl with none of the turn-off characteristics of the typical hindi movie child. Like any America born kid, her constant refrain was - can we go home now, which rings quite true. Akshaye Khanna was charming and suave in a cameo-type role, as was Kunal Kapoor. Konkona as always, shone by getting thoroughly into her character of a tomboy-ish girl from a small town, and despite the need to be giggly and hyper-energetic was always in control of her performance - typical Bollywood types, please note. Irrfan Khan was good but I thought a little stereotyped in the way that he played his character. Ranvir Sheorey turned in a sensitive and likeable performance as the jilted suitor with the proverbial heart of gold, and it was a delight to watch Sushmita Mukherjee after such a long time.

The dancing was superb. The title song, Aaja Nachle, and the way Mad-Dix danced to it, showed why the movie was just made for her. Incredibly supple and fluid movements, the expressions on her face and in her eyes, the joy of dancing which was evident in each step, all brought the character to life. The music was something I enjoyed much more through the movie than before, especially the title song and the 'show me your khoobiyan' song which is very catchy and has a wonderful beat.

I think if a couple of things about the film had been changed, it would have worked its magic at the box office. First of all, Dia, the heroine, is a divorced single mom who doesn't seem at all apologetic about her status or unhappy with anything in life. While we feminists may applaud that attitude, for the movie to be a success, it may have worked better to have portrayed her as a widow. Then too, she comes home after ten years and makes no attempt to locate her estranged parents. While secondary to the main story, had that emotional angle been woven in, the movie might have tugged at the heartstrings more. As of now, it is a little difficult to understand why she flies halfway across the world for a dying guru but doesn't seem to make the slightest attempt to find her parents who had to move out of town after she ran away on the eve of her wedding. And lastly, of course, completely to pander to the box office would have been a proper romance for La Dix, though I am quite happy that it was only hinted at and never the focus of attention.

I think this film, along with a host of others last year, was a boon for the movie-going public. A different story, not the stake old boy-meets girl, with good production values and a great ensemble cast. Pity it didn't do better.

Weird convictions

2008-01-09T20:05:00.000-08:00

Just read the cover article of the latest Economist - the one that talks about the world's most dangerous place - Pakistan - and I wondered what the columnist was smoking - or whether he had recycled an article circa 1950.

First of all, he starts by saying that Pakistan has always been a country of tolerance and acceptance. Really? Why don't they try asking the Hindus and Sikhs who remained there at Partition time how they feel about this statement - or even the Muslims who migrated from India at Partition time and who are still called Mohajirs -refugees?

Second, he says that they had never expected Pakistan to become Islamicised the way the Taliban had done to Afghanistan. Have they perhaps not heard of a certain America-supported Zia Ul Haq who reintroduced the sharia as the pre-eminent rule of law in the country?

Then they sound all surprised about the schisms - the religious and regional conflicts, the fact that Baluchistan is pretty much out of control of the government etc - and lament the fact that the army can't help. Are they unaware that traditionally in Pakistan, the army has always operated as a quasi-governmental body which is a law unto itself? Musharraf has now lost control of the army, the same way that Nawaz Sharif had lost control over Musharraf around Kargil time and so it goes. The NWFP has always been a law unto itself with a feudal culture of 'warlords' much like those operating in Afghanistan. The religious schisms between the Shias and Sunnis has always simmered barely beneath the surface, as have the regional rivalries.

It's all very well to have a point of view as a publication, but to ignore blatant facts which have been staring one in the face is like the reaction of a schoolboy who says 'don't confuse me with the facts, my mind is already made up'. I honestly have no feeling one way or another towards Pakistan, apart from the fact that it is a bad neighbour. I have several good friends and a few relatives-through-marriage from Pakistan, and they'd be among the first to agree that the above facts are true and to lament those facts. Pakistan's politicians have systematically followed a policy of diversionary tactics - Kashmir, fomenting war with India etc - in the hope that the populace forgets the misery and troubles at home. Even for a partisan journal like the Economist, to wear blinders and refuse to see facts which don't fit with their worldview is precisely the kind of muddled 'thinking', if one can call it that, which leads to historic blunders like the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions. Proof that history is a story written by the winning side.

Harassment of women

2008-01-08T00:52:00.000-08:00

I'm still pained by the Bombay incident of New Year's Eve, and wondering what is going on in our 'shining' country. What makes matters worse is people like the Police Commissioner who say, "Oh, my wife and daughters know not to step out of the house in the evening." Is that what it has come to, that women should be imprisoned, because you can't trust the men to behave like civilized human beings? That women should be confined, controlled and restrained because the men can't control their baser instincts? What's the difference between the advocates of the burqa and these people? What the difference between the Police Commissioner in Bombay and the magnanimous king of Saudi Arabia who pardons the woman who was raped and then sentenced to being punished for it by stone throwing because she was in a car with a man who was not her husband/ brother/ father, and says that "She has learned her lesson"?

Sadly, somewhere in our women's genes, we too end up holding ourselves responsible a lot of the time for the things that we suffer. I remember when we moved back to India from South East Asia and I started college, dad would always ask me to wear dull clothes and not wear even artificial jewellery. He was trying to keep me safe, because he knew all about what typically goes on in the streets of our cities. Not that that helped in any case, but somewhere the lesson stayed in my brain.

Many years later, I was at an office party, our annual party which I and A used to organise. I had just had my hair cut stylishly short and was wearing a chic red dress with long sleeves but off the shoulder. My mom had just bought these gorgeous crystal earrings for me and I felt incredibly glamourous and got loads of compliments from friends and colleagues. The invitees at the party used to be company employees and their families as well as associates - photographers, film makers etc. While enjoying myself on the crowded dance floor, I suddenly felt someone grabbing hold of my face and pulling me towards them. I couldn't see who it was in the fog that nightclubs send out and struggled but the guy was too strong. A couldn't even see what was going on so he didn't come to my rescue. I flailed and pushed and kicked but the hands inexorably pulled my face towards the guy's face to try and kiss me. With a giant effort, I managed to twist my head around so the slimy kiss landed on my cheek rather than my lips, and just at that moment the fog started lifting. I wriggled out of the guy's grasp and tried to get a look at him but he melted away into the crowd. I just stood there feeling so violated, so unclean, just wiping that horrible ick off my face and imagining it was like a brand burnt onto my face...

For ages afterward, I stood and shivered in the loo and argued with the mirror about how I had 'invited' it on myself by being dressed up, by wearing make-up, by wearing a certain type of attire. I couldn't bear to even face myself in the mirror for a long time. I kept thinking...if only I had worn ordinary clothes...if I hadn't had my hair cut in a flattering way...if I hadn't worn make-up...if I hadn't worn those earrings...It took me a while to stop thinking of myself as being at fault and to pin the blame squarely where it belonged.

Somehow, be it in conservative India or even the West, the blame for such a thing is always first sought to be pinned to the woman who is the victim. Even in the US, until recently when it was outlawed, rape cases spent most of their time focussing on the character of the woman in question. In which other crime does this happen, that the victim is considered responsible for being the victim? Does anyone try the character of the corpse in a murder? In which other crime is the victim supposed to bow his head down in 'shame' - does a robbery victim feel 'ashamed' of being robbed?

Culture indeed

2008-01-02T20:52:00.001-08:00

In a recent global survey, it turned out that Indians are the proudest of their country's unique culture. Sometimes I wonder which culture we are talking about.

The culture which has us worshipping goddesses in the puja ghar and trying to rip the clothes off two girls on New year's eve, as it happened in Mumbai just yesterday?

The culture which thinks it's okay to scan foetuses and abort the girls or smother them to death as infants while continuing the religion of 'boy-is-king'?

The culture which thinks a women ought to be grateful to her husband who 'lets her work' as long as she ensures everything within the home is taken care of?

The culture which thinks it correct to let the woman earn but gives her no right over her own income?

The culture which takes upon itself the role of moral police and tells our youth, in particular young women, to stay within 'the bounds' as defined by the police?

The culture which has the time to chase young couples out of parks on Valentine's Day but not to chase after and book sexual molestors who are openly harassing women in public?

The culture which spends its time whining about how women wearing jeans are against our national culture, but does not protest that scores of Dalit women are raped in a caste war?

The culture which enables the Police commissioner in Kolkata to tell Priyanka Todi to break her marriage and go back to her parents whom she is 'shaming' by marrying out of her own choice?

The culture which empowers the police chief in Bombay to not register a complaint against the hooligans who molested the girls yesterday, but merely chase them away and then waste a whole day in bellyaching about jurisdiction?

The culture which always, but always, holds women responsible for whatever ills befall them, be it rape or molestation, being beaten by their husbands or parents and brothers, sexually harassed at work, being called 'baanjh' for not bearing children...

The culture which holds women accountable for ensuring their own safety while not lifting a finger to either help them or pursue the attackers?

The culture which simultaneously enables the victimising of women and holds women to be the wrong-doer for being a victim?

Taare Zameen Par

2007-12-30T21:09:00.000-08:00

We finally managed to go see TZP this weekend - our outing to the movie last weekend was foiled by some wannabe-famous who planted a bomb threat about the Gurgaon malls...And I have to admit, I had some doubts in my mind about the film and how it would do and what it would be like - apart from many other reasons, because AK is my favourite actor and I wanted it to succeed - but also because the theme of the film was different and I wanted to see how it was handled. Kids in Bollywood films are usually obnoxious ( remember 'Sexy' in Cheeni Kum?) and this film revolved around a child, that too one with a learning disability. Would it be OTT emotional? Would it be OTT melodramatic a la Black (Yeesh!)?

Refreshingly and reassuringly, it was none of the above. It was a simple story, simply told. No OD of glycerine. But quietly emotional and so genuinely moving...I had never understood Dyslexia in so much detail before, and realised how harrowing it must be only when I saw the film - I had earlier thought it was merely a difficulty with reading and writing. The acting level was amazing - quiet yet genuine, subtle...the scene when the parents are driving off from the boarding school is haunting. I defy anyone to stay dry-eyed through it. The hero of the film - Darsheel Safary - was incredible. He turned in a very mature performance, without any false notes. And the credit goes as much to the director as the actor.

Initially we thought that some of the teachers became stock characters. Yet later, after the movie, A and I were both remembering teachers in our schools who behaved in similar ways. And certainly, to most people, the only way to deal with what seems like either a stupid child or one who is deliberately rebelling is through sarcasm or scolding. I wish out teachers were educated more, not about maths and English but about child psychology, how to teach, how to help children bring out their innate potential...

I hadn't really gotten into the music when I bought the album, but after watching the film, it resonated much more. The 'Maa' song is haunting, again. The title song is beautiful. But the 2nd song on the album, "Tu dhoop hai..." is rousing, like an anthem. The lyrics are incredibly powerful and the music has been designed with a light touch - just enough, not a note more or less. I was amazed by Vishal Dadlani's singing - the variation between a rock-ey sound and a ghazal...

Most of all, I was thrilled by Aamir Khan's performance as director and actor. He was so true to the story and its need to be unfolded in a certain way. Which other actor could you imagine, in a home production, not appearing until the intermission? Aamir was just one of the characters in the film, like the parents of the boy or the other teachers, and generously gave the centrestage to Darsheel. The was a spareness to the story-telling not often seen in Bollywood - no unnecessary romantic angle to Aamir's character, no melodrama...just a quiet, sensitive film that touches the heart of anyone who happens to be a parent.

And such a simple little message really. To celebrate each individual, each child for who he or she is. To celebrate the differences which, after all, is what makes life interesting. To love children and show that love openly, regardless of how they fare in the face of all the competition and expectations they face...I am a touchy-feely parent but hugged my kids even more all weekend after the movie...

If there is one film you watch at the beginning of the new year, which will give you some insights about life and about being a parent or a teacher, let it be this one...

Winter in Delhi

2007-12-27T21:10:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons that I love living in Delhi - all right, NCR - despite all its many shortcomings and hassles is the glorious change of seasons. I am a person who likes and revels in change - if things stay the same for too long, I get restless. I'd hate to live in a place where the weather is the same, so you don't know if you're in March or May. Delhi with its four definite seasons and a different mood for every month just suits me.

In the winter, Delhi is a different city to the dun-coloured, dust-ridden one it is in the summer. You wake up to an intensely cold morning, and despite having gotten a good nine hours of sleep, it feels like you just went to bed. You burrow into your many layers of thick razais some more, wanting to snatch yet another twenty winks. It's gray outside and so foggy you can barely see the ship building which in summer is like the lighthouse marker to your home. You can see the fluffy angora fog sitting on its haunches on your terrace as you step out of your warm bedroom. You shiver, wrap the shawl around you one more fold and ask for more hot ginger chai, its steam mingling with the steam issuing from your mouth.

The bathroom feels icy-cold, despite the rod heater that has been on since morning to try and warm it up. The water is like ice, instantly freezing your hands into claws useless for so much as holding a toothbrush. As the blood thaws after a while, you rediscover the joys of opposable thumbs. Undressing to have your bath or change clothes is a form of exquisite torture, as the cold air delights in springing at your icy back. Goosebumps appear all over you, in the mere instant it takes for you to jump into the tub and hurl a mug of hot water at yourself. The dry cold of Delhi necessitates copious anointing of moisturiser but the prospect of staying bare for the time it takes you to smoothen some on is daunting.

Food cools in seconds, so in the time between your first and second bites of breakfast, you have moved from having a hot meal to a cold one. You layer on a warm vest and a thick sweater, followed by a jacket or coat. Make-up actually stays on your face in this weather, so you take a few minutes to slather it on. You discover you do have a face, after all.

The temperature slowly drops lower and lower as the year draws to a close. I remember college days when we had to take the college special bus. A whole gang of us would congregate at the bus stop, looking like mummies in our multiple layers of clothing. Gloves, wool socks and caps or scarves would be brought out. We would stamp out feet up and down and snuggle deeper into our jackets or shawls waiting for the bus. The bus never had a door which could close, and the windows never shut fully. So once the bus started, blasts of icy-cold wind would come in, making us shiver all the more.

One winter evening, we were invited to some cultural performance. My uncle and cousin, both unused to Delhi winter, were visiting and we decided to go and see the performance. We spent a sum total of about 2 minutes at the show, since it was held outdoors. It took us more time to come and go from there. Later we discovered the temperature had touched a new low of 0.25 degrees that evening!

Traffic seems thicker and more congested in winter, for some reason. The warm blast of the car heater pointed at your frozen toes is like a benison. You peer anxiously through the swirls of traffic to discern traffic signals and other vehicles. The Delhi fog has only grown worse over the years...

The fog can be so thick that you completely lose your bearings. One winter, we had gone out to a friend's home for Christmas dinner. The place was barely fifteen minutes away but by the time we emerged at 10:30 pm, the roads were blanketed with fog. Nothing was visible, not even the car which was parked right outside the front door. Those were the days when Delhi had no night life, so by this time the roads were completely deserted. Dad had to walk by the road divider, holding on to it with one hand and to the car with the other to guide us back home, while Sohan Singh, our beloved driver, drove at about 5 kmph all the way home. One morning, during my sister's pre-board exams, Dad had to drop her off to school - about 5 km away. The fog was so thick, even at 9 in the morning, that the two of them got completely lost and reached a good one hour late for her 10 am exam. Once when A and I had stepped out for a New Year's Eve party, we were driving from Vasant Vihar to Saket. Suddenly we saw that the lights of nearby houses were below us rather than on the same level - we were on a flyover. That's how we realised we had wound up near GK II, thanks to the fog.

Winter afternoons were chunks of time stolen from a magical place. Back when we lived in Pandara Road, all the neighbours would pull their charpoys into the common garden in between two rows of houses. They would busily knit - those were the days before readymade sweaters - and gossip together, exchanging sweater patterns and news while munching on puffed lotus seeds, chikki and revadi. All the kids would sprawl in the warm sunshine which was still cool because of the breeze that blew in from snow-laden Shimla, apple-cheeked and drowsy from the sun. Later, we had a house with a front verandah all glassed in, which caught a wonderful amount of sun in winters. We put a couple of comfy divans and a hammock into this porch and it became the family room through the winter, as it would stay warm till about 5 in the evening.

It gets dark early in Delhi winters, by 5 o'clock, and home seems all the more cozy. We used to light ineffective blowers or rod heaters to warm our chilly feet, and the family would huddle all the closer in the raw evenings. We would fight at the dinner table to sit closer to the blower. Now we have oil-filled radiators which keep the home nice and warm. But the first leap into bed, after drawing back the quilts, is still exquisite agony as you are greeted by the cold sheets which only gradually warm up. Mom had a good way of escaping this torture - when she came into the bedroom, usually a good half hour after everyone else had gotten into bed since she'd be busy preparing for the next morning, she'd ask dad to move to the other side of the bed!

Dad used to help us warm our beds by heating up water at night and pouring it into flat glass bottles which we used instead of the rubber hot water bottles which never made much impact. These would stay hot for ages. Even earlier, way back in the 70's, dad would get brick halves which would be heated on the gas range and wrapped up in soft cloth, and insert these into each bed a good hour before we went to bed so the bed would be all toasty. In the evenings, he would brew up a posset of hot rum, with honey, lemon, cinnamon and cloves and some hot water, to warm us from the inside. Every so often, mom would find that this made her too tipsy to get dinner ready, so dad would take over the kitchen for the evening.

Late evenings, the neighbourhood would frequently gather around a bonfire or an angeethi, particularly around New Year's Eve. We would throw in peanuts and corn kernels to roast them in the fire, and eat them, carefully raked out and blown upon, still hot from the fire. One winter, while I was still in college, dad who used to be rather strict had not let me go out to attend any parties. We had a dinner party at home with family friends etc. My friends promised to come over after the party. We had laid the makings of a bonfire near the house. The gang vroomed up on mobikes and cars around 2 am. I had been lying awake waiting for them. I ran out, armed with cake and my guitar. We struggled with the bonfire and eventually got it alight. My singer friend, after conspicuously blowing upon his chilled hands to warm them up, tuned up the guitar. We all curled up around the hot bonfire which was shooting sparks up towards the sky, the notes of the music lingering in the still, dark night...

Reflections on a 7-year Marriage

2007-12-26T02:55:00.001-08:00

Our marriage turned seven over the weekend. I have to admit - it hasn't turned out as I expected. Over the years, as you grow up, through the books you read, the movies and the marriages that you observe around you, you come up with a picture of what you think marriage is all about. Well, life has a way of surprising you.

When A and I finally got married - after years of waiting around for a variety of reasons - our friends heaved a sigh of relief. At long last and all that. Someday I'm going to put our wedding invitation card up here - if I can find it, our camera can work and we can upload the picture ( don't hold your breath). I'm sure, somewhere in that statement lies a comment about our marriage and the way it works, but I can't find it.

I also can't find a lot of other things - bills, credit card statements, insurance papers...In fact, one of the things that I was sure would cause some major meltdown moments in our marriage was my ability to effortlessly lose any important piece of paper within seconds of it reaching me, including our marriage certificate. That I haven't lost it yet is because I have never been permitted to so much as hold it in my hands ( same as our kids' birth certificates). A and I are very different in the area of organisation and tidiness. I believe less is more and he is firmly on the more is more side. In myriad ways, we are like chalk and cheese.

I expected a lot of little things to matter or come in the way more. Things like which side of the bed, who gets to read the paper first, the amount of milk or sugar in the tea. All the tiny little minutiae of life which one would never expect to so much as register and yet, when you look at failed relationships around you, seem to loom like mountains. I expected us to turn into mom and pop - people who would ask each other searching questions about whether the other had had his lunch and the state of each other's digestions and other health matters. I thought we'd spend a lot more time asking the other to put on - or take off - sweaters or jackets because it was too cold/ too hot. I thought after some years together, we'd get bored and need time apart - girls nights out or boys nights out or whatever. I thought we'd change and we'd change each other and was all set to resist the process, because after years of trying on a too-tight or too-loose skin, I'd finally got it to fit me.

Much to my surprise, 7 years down the line, I'm still much the same. I still have a loud voice and a loud laugh. I'm still messy and disorganized and he's still pained by it. In fact, at our place we have set aside the room with the most closets to contain the disorder, and named it the 'Messing Room'. And it is one, too, no honorific titles here. I'm still vegetarian, much to the confoundment of A's family doctor who persists in asking me this question every year. I'm still quick to fly off the handle.

A is still non-veg. He's still Muslim, I'm still Hindu. He's still ultra-organized and hates it if he can't find something he needs. He can still tick me off by getting up in the middle of a conversation to return the teacups to the kitchen. He still handles my tempests by staying calm and cool. He hasn't learnt any kannada and I haven't learnt any urdu. We don't ask each other whether the other had lunch or tea - we assume the other is old enough to know to come in out of the rain. We don't spend too long quizzing each other about our healths or minor illnesses, apart from A's periodically goading me to visit the dentist which I have been successfully putting off for 8 years.

We still think whatever time we get to spend together is too little. He still makes me laugh like no one can. We don't care which side of the bed who sleeps on, and like the same amount of milk ( 1 tbsp) and sugar ( 1 tsp) in our tea. Tea is the preferred panacea for both of us, not coffee and not one of the many wines and liqueurs we have collected over the years. We both love to travel and have our holidays for the next several years pre-blocked for destinations. We love reading and continue to read and to buy books with a passion that will soon see our home stocked with more books than a public library. We find the same things funny.

The big changes that have happened are more to do with larger circumstances - the birth of our children and therefore our realisation of our own mortality. My learning to be a mother ( he was already a father waiting to come into being). The ageing of both sets of parents. The need to save and invest and plan for the future. The natural process of ageing and maturing and coming to realise that you'd rather spend a quiet evening in the company of close friends than a noisy evening with a bunch of strangers in a pub.

Otherwise, we have changed very little in the past 7 years. We have remained, he and I, two very good friends who, over the course of a conversation, thought what a good idea it would be if they continued the dialogue forever and began walking down a path hand in hand. We know neither one of us is perfect. But the good thing is, we don't need each other to be. The way we are - slightly kinked, somewhat flawed, a bit blemished...is quite perfect.

Touch Wood!

The Mask comes off

2007-12-21T23:23:00.000-08:00

In the past few days, finally the mask of encouragement and racial equality has come off the faces of various white peoples. The Jaguar dealers in the US and the board of the Orient Express hotels have both reverted with open revulsion to the Tata's proposal to buy each of these brands. According to these commentators on the issue, the US consumers and the potential guests of the Orient Express Hotels will not take kindly to Indian ownership. Regardless of the fact that their thus far predominantly white managements have made no great strides in getting either of the firms to perform profitably. Arcelor had announced similar reservations about a year back when the Mittals bid for the firm.

In a way, it's good to see that the mask is off. It's much more tricky and painful to fight a battle against guerillas. When the enemy is out in the open, the fight is much more clean. And what's more, in the new India, proud of her culture and self-confident about herself and her abilities, no one is going to lie back and take such comments and turn the other cheek. Especially not the Tatas, who in any case have been among the nation builders of India. The Tatas are fighting back and have asked the Orient Express chain to take back their words, and have taken the battle public. Good for them, and good for India!

I do realise that not all 'white people' feel this way and that there are plenty of inclusive Americans and Europeans, and I have numerous friends amongst them. And it's not a rant against 'white people' which would be racist of me. I just find it an incredibly arrogant and outdated attitude in a day and age when India and China are amongst the fastest growing nations, followed by Brazil. And when iconic firms like Citibank and Pepsi have Indians at their helms. Not to mention the growth of technology and innovation in Silicon Valley fuelled by - you guessed it - Indians.

Recently, Fareed Zakaria wrote a Newsweek editorial about America's growingly bizarre position as a global superpower which is afraid of the rest of the globe. This kind of Xenophobia and superiority complex was the attitude that China and Japan had during the 17th and 18th centuries, and we all know what happened to them before and after they wised up. Unless America - a country that notoriously lives in the present - learns to take a few lessons from history, in the words of the sage, it may unfortunately be condemned to repeat it!

Age is just a number...

2007-12-11T23:45:00.001-08:00

A colleague of mine recently turned 30. We were away in Bombay so all of us rang in to wish her, and I noticed she sounded a little depressed, not her usual cheerful self. "Come on, you're in the best phase of your life", I told her, but I don't think she believed me.

For some reason, between my 26th and 30th birthday, every year, on my birthday I found that I was a bit out of sorts, a little depressed, somewhat out of it. I never figured out why. My career was rocking. I had a wonderful, loving boyfriend ( now my husband). I had terrific friends, we had fun together. yet, somewhere, something about the day made me sad.

That changed dramatically after I turned 30. Nothing else in my life had changed - I was still with the boyfriend, we were still unmarried, I still had the same friends and job etc etc...But some transformation had happened in my outlook on life, or in the way I felt about myself that gave everything a different spin. I told my BFF about it and of course, being a year younger, she didn't agree with me at the time, but after she turned 30, we were on the same page.

It's something only those of us over 30 are qualified to comment on. The 20s are a period of great change, many triumphs and heartaches, a lot of trial and error, taking chances...The 30s are quieter, more settled. And where, in your 20s, you are still trying to become the person you want to be, still struggling to fit into your own skin, in the 30s, that skin becomes your home. Finally, you fit in well into yourself. Of course you will change, continue to grow and learn and try out new things, but you'll never again have to search for the place called home.

I certainly don't feel like I'm over 30 - if there is a prescribed way to feel at that age. Older generations - my mom, for instance - they were taught to behave in a certain way at each age and lifestage. But first of all, I'm a late bloomer - got married late, had kids late, understood the principle of double-entry accounting about 10 years after I first studied it...Then, the kids keep me young. Most of all, we are lucky that our generation doesn't believe in age as a barrier to anything. So if I want to wear fuchsia, only the fear of 'does-my-butt-look-fat-in-this' can keep me from doing so. Or if I want to go bungee-jumping, only my fear of heights and a justifiable fear that the cable will snap at my weight will keep me away. On the other hand, I don't have to prove I'm cool by not admitting to my fear. I can say, "I'm petrified" out loud, in front of other people, and the heck with what they think.

I really like the 30s so far. My embarrassment gene is now in recession ( of course, that could also be a result of the two kids I've had since). I'm pretty clear on who I am and what I believe in, and so don't have to waste too much time and effort on being things I'm not. I don't have all the answers, but I do know which ones will and which ones won't work for me. I think the biggest change is that I don't have to justify myself and the things I do, to myself, the way I did in my 20s.

Most of all, in my 30s, I'm perfectly happy to be imperfect me.

Grrr...!

2007-12-02T20:36:00.000-08:00

I haven't ranted here for quite a while, but the experience of the last few days has been too much. I wrote on this blog earlier about how DLF had subverted residential zoming to make a giant commercial complex of the area we live in.

Well, it started much before that. The colony we live in is a very unlike Gurgaon, high rise place, with row houses and little gardens and lots of parks - ideal for people with kids or older people. DLF apparently found this tiny little space bang in the middle of DLF's land very irksome. So they tried to buy it out, including putting all sorts of pressure. Thankfully, the Coop society which had bought the land originally, was one of media people, so they were able to resist the pressure.

So now DLF has created a new commercial road right behind the colony, and unluckily, that's what our house back on to. Further down the road are several new office buildings, made of glass and cement randomly thrown together in the hope that they stick together - seriously, never saw such an ugly bunch and frankly, so unsuited for Indian conditions. The colony is clogged with the dust raised by so much construction, not to mention the wonderful fragrance of many construction workers doing their thang out in the open.

And then the noise. The new road ( what's a main road with trucks on it doing in the middle of a residential colony anyway) is full of trucks, revving their engines and whine-screeching away half the night. The cvonstruction sites have their cranes and other equipment providing accompaniment by grinding gears and cranking equipment and dropping bricks, iron rods and steel clamps at regular intervals. A giant, unauthorised parking lot has sprung up behind our colony, to host the cars from all those DLF buildings, since the builder doesn't want to provide parking, preferring to think that the employees working in those buildings will fly in on broomsticks. All night, the sounds of arguments between drivers and parking lot attendants, not to mention their choice of raucous music and the irritating sounds cars make while reversing ( jingle bells, jingle bells), keep us up and away from a restful night's sleep.

And this is what India calls develeopment and progress.

The Night of the Cat

2007-11-14T01:52:00.000-08:00

This is a funny but real story of an incident that happened many years ago. I just happened to think of it because we spotted a cat ( or bandicoot) last night while we were out for a walk. Bizarrely, it has nothing to do with a cat, but we have always called it The Night of the Cat!

This was way back when I was in first year college. My cousin, who is the same age as me, had come for a visit, and she shared the bedroom with my sister and I. We stayed in a government rowhouse on the ground floor, and it was summer, so we used to leave the windows open. We had a pet cat, Sphinx, who used to come and go at will, in and out of the house.

My sister, who was 12 at the time, always had a great talent for nightmares. I can remember countless incidents of her having a scary dream and crawling into my bed to escape. Anyhow, one night while we were all sleeping the sleep of the just, madame elected to have one of her nightmares. And she didn't react by crawling into my bed. Oh no, she began screaming at the top of her voice. Normally blessed with a sweet voice, when having a nightmare her voice used to soar to unearthly and bloodcurling realms, and it did so that night. My cousin and I, startled out of sleep awoke. Of course, far be it from us to do anything sensible like switch on the light, which was located right at the foot of my bed. No, the two of us also got frightened and began letting out bloodcurdling yells in our turn.

Poor dad was fast asleep when all this drama began, but promptly woke up and decided to rush to the rescue of his girls. For some reason, he got it into his head that the cat had gotten into the house and had walked onto one of us. Since we did not welcome nocturnal visits by felines, he started saying 'Shoo' , 'Shoo' and waving his arms about even before tumbling out of bed. Having rushed out of bed, he was so disoriented and befuddled by the darkness and his own drowsiness that he ran about blundering into doors and cupboards for a while, all the time 'Shoo'ing the cat away. He finally made it into our room and dramatically switched on the light after what seemed like eons to the petrified three. We stopped mid-scream, mouths open, gaping at dad who was still 'shoo'ing away.

'Yaaaaaaaaaaaaah'

'Shoo'

'Aieeeeeee'

'Shoo, shoo'

Mom, meanwhile, with her fine motherly intuition had guessed that it would turn out to be a nightmare, and had gotten out of bed and come to our room. One look at this screamshoo drama and she started laughing. Her laughter set the rest of us off, and at some 2 am in the morning, the five of us sat around whooping with laughter.

Eventually we recovered and tottered weakly back to our respective beds. My cousin and I continued giggling madly at intervals for quite a while, and then finally tapered off. Just as we had almost fallen back asleep, we heard a faint noise coming from my sister's bed. Intrigued, we tiptoed over and listened intently. My sister was singing in her SLEEP!!!That set us off again, and we started giggling out loud. My sister, disturbed in her serenade, paused, stood up, grabbed the bedsheets and flung them around her shoulder, announced, "I'm going to Mom!", and stalked off, all the while with her eyes closed. The rest of the night was a blur of giggles, fits of laughter and tiny bits of sleep.

Even today, so many years later, when my cousin, my sister and I are together, we have to re-narrate this incident, and each time we're ROTFL!

Is marriage still an institution?

2007-10-31T01:12:00.001-07:00

Over the last few years, even back here in India which one would consider more conservative than the West in the area of marriage, one hears so many stories about marriages breaking up, people having affairs, people leaving their spouses after 12 or 20 years of marriage...Everyone I know knows at least 5 marriages in trouble, and it's something that's distressing and scary for all of us married people.

Most of us think we're in happy marriages and yet you never know what's around the corner. A friend of mine made a highly percipient remark some time back. She said, "I always thought my marriage was special. But suddenly I have realised that it isn't, that it is the same as any other marriage." It's true. Most of us who consider ourselves happily married think that we have something special, that we know a secret other couples don't know. And it's a highly dangerous misconception to labour under.

I was thinking back about the time when marriage was probably invented - just post the caveman era or something like that. And if you connect it with Maslow's heirarchy of needs, it makes sense.

The caveman lived at a time when he was worried about basic things - food, water, not getting eaten by dinosaurs and stuff like that. Marriage probably became a part of society when farming was discovered. Farming led to a little more sustained security than hunting, certainly. Farming also needed living in communities, and therefore rules, institutions and precedents built up. Farmers probably needed the security of knowing who was going to till the land when they were old, and who was going to inherit the farm. Marriage made perfect sense.

If we think back to our grandparents and in some cases our parents' marriages, we would find that many of them were based on a place in society and affection rather than love, esteem or any of the higher order needs. The thing is, today we're a lot farther on. We've moved on to needing love and wanting esteem, not only from society at large but from the people we live our lives with. Many of us have moved to a stage where we want self-actualization - we want to discover who we are as people and realise all our potentials. What creates conflict is when the two people in a marriage aren't at the same need stage. Further, what we often see happening around us in India is that the parents of the bride and groom are at a different need-stage and are trying to find a partner suited to their need-stage rather than their child's.

I think the biggest problem is that most of us still think of marriage as a 'forever' institution. It's not an institution, it's a live and sometimes fragile and tenuous connection between two individuals. Unlike the ties of blood that bind us to our parents or our children, there is nothing but an emotional bond in a marriage. There is no society, no safety net, nothing but what the two individuals choose to put into a marriage that holds it together. That is what marriage is today - a bond that should lead to esteem and self actualisation for both individuals. We need to start treating it as such, and recognising its intrinsically delicate nature in today's scenario as well as its ability to become what we want it to be, free of society's restrictions and rules and roles.

That's a little frightening, but at the same time, isn't it liberating and empowering?

Lawyers or hucksters

2007-10-22T03:31:00.001-07:00

I love legal shows on TV - Boston Legal, Ally mc Beal, The Practice, LA Law, Street Legal and the lot. I always wondered why there seemed to be so much negative energy aimed at the profession of lawyers, especially when I idealistically thought, since my grandfather was a lawyer, that they helped even out the score between the common man and those well connected.

Well, this piece of idealism went the way of the birds thanks to a recent incident. About a month ago, my husband was coming home from work around 10:30 pm. He was in the back seat, chatting with his mom on the cellphone when all of a sudden another car hit his car from behind. He dropped the cellphone, still on, which worried his parents no end because they'd heard the crash, and the impact caused him to bang against the front seat, resulting in aching ribs and a muscular pain which is yet to subside. When he got out, he saw a Skoda Octavia behind his car, with a crumpled fender. His car's boot had been badly smashed up too. Before he could say anything, four men got out of the Skoda, and the driver of the other car started beating up our driver.

By this time I had heard about the accident and managed to message him asking him not to get into an argument, because Delhi is full of horrifying road rage murders and beatings. The three men from the Skoda turned out to be lawyers from a well-known corporate law firm known as Fox Mandal Little. One of the guys was a partner in the firm. They said that my husband's driver was at fault and that whatever part of their damages was not covered by their insurance would have to be paid by my husband. Not to worry, his insurance firm would pay third party insurance. Then they compelled my husband to hand over the registration certificate of his car.

When my husband and I discussed the incident at home, we realised that it could not have been his driver's fault, if the other car came and hit our car from behind. If our driver had braked or served suddenly, my husband would have noticed. In any case, in no way is the car in front responsible for what happens to the car behind, particularly on a well-lit road with little traffic and ample space for keeping a distance.

The legal firm asked for a meeting the next day. My husband went, along with a colleague from the legal department of his firm, and explained the facts to them, and said that we were not responsible for the accident and therefore would not be asking our insurance firm to pay them anything. At this, the lawyers got very upset and aggressive, and started throwing threats around, saying they had filed a police report, and that they would launch a legal case to get their money. They mentioned that a legal case could take several years to resolve in which time our car would be in the custody of the court, and did we really want to make it a legal matter. They also refused to discuss the issue of the registration certificate. Moreover, when my husband was out of the room for a few minutes, they actually had the gall to tell his legal dept. friend that in case the firm my husband works for agrees to put them on its legal panel, they will drop their demands.

The amount of money they did all this for? Rs. 50,000 was the total amount not covered by their insurance, and in the course of the same meeting, they dropped their demand from the full amount to half, to Rs. 10,000!
Frankly, everyone's advice was to just settle rather than get embroiled in India's courts which have a huge backlog, and in India's justice system where evidence can be bought and sold for peanuts. My blood boils at the principle of it - that a lawyer whose job is to uphold the law can stand there and use his knowledge of the legal system and the courts to threaten a law-abiding citizen and extort money. Rs. 10,000 is the price of his conscience - and he a partner who must earn nothing less than Rs. 50 lakh ( Rs. 5 million) a year. If even the law turns to the dark side, who does the common man have, besides himself, in his corner?

Gardens

2007-10-17T01:59:00.001-07:00

When A and I moved into our first marital home, it was a teeny, tiny flat in Fontainebleau. We had a lot of fun and started off our marriage just right, but it wasn't quite what I envisioned as a home. I guess I watch too many Hindi movies. I've always wanted a home which had a big expanse of garden - big enough for a shade-giving tree like Gulmohur, to be planted in one corner. Lots of lawn area. A bedroom that opened out onto a green expanse. We should have moved back to Jhumritalaiya instead of Gurgaon!

The flat we rent here is inside a rather nice, very un-Gurgaon-highrise colony. It has row-houses with adobe colours, rather Hispanic in style, and each little house comes with a backyard and a pocket-sized front lawn. We rented space on the first and second floors of a house, as the ground floor was already occupied. The second floor came with a marble floored terrace and two large rooms, and the first floor had 3 bedrooms and one drawing room, no space for a dining table. Where and how could we get my garden up now?

It's rather ironic that I should have thirsted after a garden so much, when, during all my growing years, I had never paid much attention to or spent much time in the gardens of all the homes we lived in. My dad worked for the government. We used to live in row houses in the heart of Delhi, where the houses were back to back in succeeding lanes. Their back gardens overlooked each other, and a thin naali ran through the middle of this set of gardens. There was no garden in front, but each row of houses had a large lawn in the middle of the street. No one could afford a gardener so apart from the CPWD maali who mowed the lawn, the gardens tended to be overgrown. For us kids, it was a great adventure to walk from the beginning of the row of gardens to the end, the green tunnel rather eerie looking in the dim sunlight which came through. A throng of cats used to haunt the place, each more ferocious and unprepossessing than the other, to add to our feelings of courageousness. Later, we lived in 'Lutyens' Delhi', in a bungalow set on a half acre plot with 100 trees around the perimeter. I was too busy working or dating my now husband to spend much time at home, though I did love the fact that my bedroom windows opened into a neem tree.

I was determined to have a garden at our house in Gurgaon too, so we set up a slightly bizarre home plan. We moved the master bedroom and guest room up to the second floor, half of which was a terrace. And I started investing in potted plants. All the usual suspects at first - palms, dracaenas etc. Then I got more adventurous. How about trying out some trees? Frangipanis came in. I got a silver oak potted. And surprisingly, despite quite a few failures, over all the garden started looking good.

Now we're about 5 years on. The garden is flourishing, though we still have the marble floor. Sometimes when I sit amidst all the greenery, I actually forget that and imagine there is grass underfoot. The frangipanis are full of flowers as are the almonda, the jasmine, the tecomas and the Har shringar.

None of the neighbours use their terrace so when we're up in our garden, it feels like we're isolated in a place of great beauty. All we can see from the garden is the Jacaranda tree from the garden below and the blue sky above. Lungspace - it's a space where the kids can pull out their inflatable pool, a space to have a quiet cup of tea in the morning before the madness that is our day begins, a place to enjoy a good book or to stop and smell the roses. The gulmohur tree is going to be a stretch...for now I have bonsaied one and plan to move my reading chair under it for the shade!

Why, but why?

2007-10-09T04:04:00.000-07:00

We had to get a new RC (registration certificate) for our car, having lost the old one under circs which I shall indignantly blog about soon. In order to do that, you have to get a certificate from the Transport Department that there are no unpaid challans or tickets against your car. Yesterday, I and A being crazy-busy, my husband despatched our driver to get the certificate. The driver had a good time. First he went to an office of the transport department near Teen Murti. From there he was asked to go somewhere in old Delhi. From there he was further shunted on to an office near the Hyatt ( which is the other end of town). Having left at 10 am, he finally got a piece of paper at 4:30 p.m. When he at long last came back with it triumphantly to my husband, the paper read, "This car has not been reported to be stolen"!

Why in a so-called IT superpower, are these documents and records not maintained online, so that any transport department can access them and print them out?

Why in a country with so many people, does the government not appoint HR professionals who can tell every clerk what his or her job is?

Why do each department's officials believe the work is to be done by some other department which is always far away and on a tea break/ about to close when you reach it?

Today my husband had to go file for a new RC. First he made me sign endless duplicates of all kinds of papers - my signing arm is now numb, and I wouldn't have known if I was signing away the property rights to the Taj Mahal by the end of the process. Then when he reached the transport office, it turned out he needed to have an affidavit signed by me and verified by a notary public. For the benefit of those lucky sods who've never had to deal with them, a notary public is some kind of legal person who hangs around near courts and government offices and gets paid for signing on papers which could say anything, from the fact that you're the President of the country to the fact that China has now been annexed by India - they never even look at what they're signing.

Luckily I had a meeting which was close to the Transport office so my husband did not have to chase any wild geese halfway across Delhi.

Why an affidavit when we have a signed police report of the missing RC?

Why a notary public who doesn't know us from Adam?

Why???

The reluctant fundamentalist

2007-10-08T00:29:00.000-07:00

Just read this engrossing book by Mohsin Hamid. He tells the story of how a boy from Pakistan, seduced by the US and its jobs, people, comforts etc, then turns to the other side, starting to identify with the feelings of fundamentalists even though he doesn't end up by becoming one. It was un putdownable. One of the most interesting things about the book is how the worm turns, gradually becoming more Pakistani/ Islamic, from a character who was on the fast track to success in America.

One of the things that has really annoyed me over the years is the simplistic analysis of Islamic fundamentalism by the West, in particular America, as the discontent of the have-nots against the haves. If that was indeed the sole argument, there are any number of have-nots in india or Africa or South America, all of whom should be turning towards terrorism.

In my opinion, one of the things that is leading to growing terrorism and fundamentalism is the readiness of the Western mind to consider the things it does or believes in righteous, and the only true way. When further powered by economic might, this becomes a force which sweeps other peoples' feelings and emotions away in its desire to pursue what it considers the best for everyone. The west always believes it knows best and this is the attitude which galls the rest of the world. In particular, the Arab part of the world and Afghanistan/Pakistan have been particularly badly treated, allies one minute, enemies the next, dictated to the third.

Islam feels like a religion under siege, and one that is not being allowed its due place in the world. Be it the EU, which is ignoring one of the best opportunities to defuse the Clash of civilizations by not allowing Turkey into the Union or the Catholic church which, last year, issued a warning against Islamic people, or the Bush administration which should be on Osama Bin Laden's recruitment team for the sterling work they have done in furthering Osama's argument, everywhere Muslims look, they find themselves being vilified and having to justify their stance, be they moderate or hardline. They find themselves pushed to the sidelines even in their own countries, as they become pawns in the West's Weltanschaung. The conflict dates back all the way to the Crusades and even before that, when Christianity and Islam termed each other as infidels.

The only way to defuse this is to have a genuine dialogue, to have a mind open to other peoples' ways of thinking and their priorities which may not be the same as those of the West. And to listen honestly rather than condescendingly nod just before sending a few more bombers in. To accept the people's choice of governments in their own countries even if that is not what the west would like ( remember the outraged reaction last year when Hamas won in Palestine?). I don't recall seeing anyone threatening to send in their troops when Dubya got elected?

Free Burma

2007-10-04T00:11:00.000-07:00

KANK

2007-09-14T01:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I watched this movie for the second time, and was moved by it all over again. I remember when it was released last year, it got a lot of criticism from the mass audience, and probably scared KJo right back into KKKG mode all over again (help!). I think it does a good job of explaining all the things that are going on in modern marriages today, whether people want to accept it or not.

I remember when I was a kid, there was one Kashmiri girl who lived in the house opposite us who was divorced. All of us kids and probably many of our moms used to be intensely curious about this strange creature - a 'divorce'. On Ran Navami, when all the girls in the neighbourhood were invited to go over for the puja and the puri-halwa, we used to keep staring at the poor girl, probably making her highly uncomfortable, because finding a divorce was such an unusual thing in a middle class neighbourhood.

Today, au contraire, divorces and broken marriages are becoming more and more common among the middle class. Most people would know at least one or two people who are divorced, and for many of the reasons that KJo's movie portrayed.

What was interesting about KANK was the way KJo stuck his neck out in the portrayals of the characters. The people who had an extramarital affair weren't the stylish career woman or the party-hopping PR man but the school teacher and the football coach. The career woman was probably amongst the most sympathetic portrayals of career women that I have ever seen in a Hindi film. Here was someone who was shown as being in touch with her son, considerate of her mother in law and in love with and faithful to her husband despite his constant ill-treatment of her. Unlike the usual vamp-career woman who loses sight of everything else but a promotion or a job. At one point, Preity Zinta even asks the million dollar question, "How come no one asks a man who is out working, why he doesn't have time to spend with his child? Why does everyone always ask the career woman that?"

The mother-in-law and father-in-law were interesting too. Here was an MIL who didn't approve of what her son did, chose to stay neutral and actually stayed back with the DIL, so she could look after her grandson. The FIL, far from flinging grandiose rhetoric about the 'maryada of the family' actually gave his DIL sane advise about leaving his son free to find love, and following her own heart. Both these characters weren't the white/ shawl wearing stereotypical patriarch and matriarch who had become fossils after their spouses died, but vibrant, fun people who still took an active interest in living and enjoying life to the full.

The marriages didn't break up because of ill-treatment, harassment or any of the usual reasons cited in Hindi movies. They broke up for a far more contemporary reason - the two people in the marriage had grown apart and had nothing to share. They loved their partners but weren't 'in love' with them - at least, not anymore. While it's scary for all of us married couples to admit that people can fall out of love or grow apart, it's the truth today. And a fact that each of us has to work at our marriage, at preserving the relationship that we have with our spouses rather than turn simply into 'mummy' and 'papa', easy as that is.

I did wish that Preity Zinta too found a partner by the end of the film, but I recognise that's the sappy romance freak in me. And it's kind of nice that the movie showed a woman who felt content being by herself, managing her job and her child without need for a masculine helping hand.

I just had a few cribs with the movie per se - like: the romance between Shah Rukh and Rani didn't come alive with the same passion they have managed to portray in many other movies - even a Chalte chalte or a Paheli. And I never understood why Rani kept calling Abhishek a 'baccha' and why he came and apologised for being one at the end of the movie. And wasn't Rani's wardrobe a bit too sexy for a school teacher/ vacuuming the floor? And why did she try to wear S&M clothing and seduce Abhishek ( though it made for a funny moment) - he wasn't the one with the sex drive problem, she was.

Winter's on its way

2007-09-13T01:45:00.000-07:00

Human memory is such a funny thing. In the dog days of the summer, when the temperature climbs to over 42 degrees centigrade, one finds it so difficult to imagine a world which is not searingly hot, in which one can take an evening walk without getting reduced to a little grease spot on the floor, and just looking at a sweater while packing for an overseas trip is enough to bring on an attack of heat rash.

During the winters, we get reverse amnesia - one can't remember a day when some body part or other was not frozen, days when we would long to eat ice straight out of the freezer. You can't look at a swimming pool without shivering, particularly during December-January which are unfortunately the only two months of real winter left in Delhi.

The weather has slowly started turning cooler now. The daytime temperature is still at 36 degrees, but at night it falls to 24 and in Gurgaon, even lower. Since our bedroom is adjacent to our rooftop garden, it's all the cooler there, and early mornings are already nippy. A grey wash is on the sky in the early morning ( note - my definition of early is 7 am), and in the evenings, dusk falls quickly. It's dark by seven pm and you can smell the smoke from a hundred bonfires when you walk at night.

One of the things I love about Delhi is the change of seasons. I hate to live in a constant state of anything for too long, so a city with four seasons is ideal for me. There is an air of expectancy to the change of seasons, as if nature and the city are both dying to wear their new wardrobe. Change is interesting - to some people, it is threatening. Me - I like it. The air is laden with possibilities. Boots. Overcoats. Soups. Salads. Come on winter, I'm waiting!

Cloud Eight?

2007-09-13T00:47:00.000-07:00

Right after posting on railway travel, I had to do a painful Delhi-Bombay day trip yesterday. Painful because it seems to be one of Murphy's laws that if you have to get up at an unearthly hour to catch a flight, you will either end up going to bed late or get poor sleep when you do. I didn't sleep well at all, and A ( who was also going to Bombay) and I were tired and grumpy when we set out, not helped by the cabbie being late.

Anyway, at the end of a long day, I was back on the flight. I hadn't carried anything to read, for a change and hadn't had time at the airport to so much as buy a magazine. The flight was packed and my knees were jammed into my armpits - or that's what it felt like - due to the limited leg space. I didn't have the inclination to contort myself and dig out my laptop to read one of the books I had downloaded. Since I'm one of those people who find it hard to sleep anywhere, I turned to the only entertainment option - looking out of the window.

As we flew over Bombay, one could see the waves and rippled lines of the sea stretching far into the distance. Silvery rivers, gleaming in the early evening sun, wound in snaky coils as they made their way across the green landscape into the Arabian sea. The landscape was soon a distant blur as we entered the realm of the clouds.

It seemed there were three levels of clouds - big, fat, puffy ones like chunks of whipped cream sat by themselves like little islands popping up in the sea. Breezy, wraithlike ones drifted aimlessly, now enveloping our plane, now blowing past at high speed, now floating dreamily, like different types of fish. Grey monsoon clouds loomed overhead, menacingly large, like killer whales.

At one point, we came into a bank of clouds that was so thick it looked like it would never end. As we flew on through it, it was revealed as a bizarre 'tunnel' of thick fluffy clouds, in the centre of which a clear space was visible and you could see all the way to far off ground. I've been rereading my Biggles collection of late and in one of the WWI books, he describes a wall of cloud. This must have been what that was like, I thought.

The sunlight streamed in through the window in different patterns depending on which clouds it was filtered through. Much later, the Delhi landscape came into view, all busy roads with traffic plying in both directions. I have to say, I don't know how pilots navigate, maybe their eyes are different - I couldn't identify a single landmark while looking down. There was a lush, large, green space that I could see, with trees overhanding the narrow road. One single car was driving down the road as we flew over it, and I wondered where this green space was - I'd love to go there with my kids for a picnic.

The lights of the city glowed like jewels against the late evening sky, with that peculiar radiance that colours seem to have at twilight. The landing was ok, with that rushing sound of the wind as the flaps on the wings pop open that always makes me feel that the pilot is stomping with both feet on the brakes because we're going too fast. I unfolded my knees from my armpits and retrieved my laptop and bag from under the seat with all the grace of a 'boneless wonder'. Air travel does have its compensations after all: 1. No one can call or expect you to check email for the duration (Yaaay!) 2. You get home quick.

The Romance of the Railways

2007-09-11T02:08:00.001-07:00

I visited the National Rail Museum today on work, and as always was delighted to be there. It's an amazing place with a wonderful display of trains and engines, and brought back fond memories of traveling by train. I love train journeys and always have. Every summer, when we were kids, mom, I and my sister would pack ourselves off to the south for a two month holiday, with dad typically joining in around the half way mark. Earlier, the journey used to be in the good old GT or grand Trunk Express, which used to go from Delhi to Madras, where we had a 7 hour stopover before a new engine was attached which took the train up to Bangalore. Later, of course, the KK express - Karnataka Kerala express - took over, which used to take about 2 days to get there and was considered a vast improvement. Weirdly, I always used to start my asthma attacks at Jolarpet station before we got into Bangalore, and they would last the duration, finally relieving me when we passed Jolarpet station on our way out.

There was no AC in those days, just hard wooden seats and ineffective ceiling fans. We used to travel with holdalls crammed with a variety of bedding so as to make ourselves comfortable. At times, we would even bathe during the Madras stopover, or at other stations if the weather was too hot. Later, when second-hand AC bogies came in, life became much more comfortable. Dad used to get out at various stations to refill the cooler with cold water and I was always afraid that he'd get left behind. I used to peer anxiously through the crowds to spot him and be ready to pull the chain in case he was left behind. Both to my relief and chagrin, I never got to pull the chain.

The 3 day journey by train was sheer pleasure for all of us. The swaying movement of the train was the soothing rocking of the cradle when we lay down to sleep. And an intriguing obstacle course when we wanted to walk through the train. Going from one bogie to another through the coupling area was another adventure and thrill in itself - the swaying action always seemed to intensify there, and the noise level multiplied, and we were always a little scared that it would come apart. We looked forward to each bridge the train passed over, counted each tunnel and hung out of the windows to see the whole length of the train whenever it went on a curving track. I used to love clambering into the top bunk with a thick stack of books, or fight with my sister over who would get to sit next to the window. We would make up stories about the people we saw on stations or towns that we passed. I shuddered when the train went through the Chambal forest, fearing an attack by dacoits who were notorious in that area, and evaluated far-off hills as to whether they looked climb-able or not. We really saw all of India as we traveled through the countryside, from farmers in fields with tiny, red-roofed huts to small, crowded looking towns where whole families precariously perched onto one small luna, forests - mysterious and uninhabited, streams rushing busily from one place to the other, small, simple little temples and mosques...You could see the terrain changing as you went from one state to another, from the arid-looking Southern Maharashtra to lush, coconut-tree dotted Tamil Nadu and Andhra, the rocky, boulder-strewn western Ghats to the flat lands of Madhya Pradesh. The Krishna, the Godavari, the Narmada and the Yamuna, Kaveri, Tungabhadra, all became our friends in the process of crossing them to reach our destination.

Delicious food and train journeys are also intertwined in my mind. We would pack food from home when we set out - typically puliyogare or tamarind rice, mosaru anna or curd rice made with a spoon of dahi and lots of milk because it would turn sour through the hot journey. Puris and aloo sabzi. Fresh cucumbers, tomatoes and onions to cut up and have with each meal. The big brass tiffin carrier was ceremoniously brought out from the store room and cleaned up for this journey. Small steel tiffin plates and spoons, as well as a knife for cutting the veggies would be packed. Fruit would be bought - bananas, mosambi and apples. Bread and Jam for breakfast. All kinds of thindi - snacks - would be made for the journey - south Indian style fried avalakki, banana chips, masala peanuts, chakli, coconut barfi, besan laadu...Sometimes it seemed like a race between the food and the journey - which would finish first. Each station we passed through had its own food specialties as well. Aloo-puri at Agra. Mangoes and oranges at Nagpur. Maddur Vadai at Maddur ( between Bangalore and Mysore. My sister and I used to insist on traveling by train between the two cities, rather than by car or bus just so we could have the vadas). At every station, boys selling tea or coffee would pass by. Vendors would hawk petha at Agra, pedas at Mathura, and Amul chocolates and unbranded chips everywhere. Early morning, the waiters would wake us up with hot tea or coffee in flasks. Often, I'd get up to drain a flask-ful while everyone else was still sleeping and then go back to sleep. We rarely bought food on the train unless what we had brought with us had gotten spoilt, so I used to longingly eye the idli-upma-vada breakfasts and even the cold omlettes that our neighbours would be having.

Train journeys are communal affairs. When you spend two days with a group of people, particularly when the group is Indian, one tends to exchange so much personal information that everyone is soon on friendly terms. Meals and snacks were liberally shared, and I used to enjoy the oily parathas and pickles of Punjabi neighbours or the theplas and khakhras of the Gujjus. Marwaris too tended to travel with a compediment of fried snacks which were uniformly delicious. All the kids on the train would make friends after a couple of hours, and we'd dare each other to go from top bunk to top bunk across the compartment, wander through the length of the train or play cards for hours together.

Each family has train stories to narrate. Marriages get fixed, strangers become friends, or long-lost friends find each other by chance. Once we were traveling from Bangalore to Delhi by KK express. We saw the name SR Rao posted at the next compartment, which is my grandfather's name, and out of sheer curiosity went to check. Only to discover my uncle, dad's brother, who is also SR Rao, traveling by the same train. My dad has lost an expensive Citizen watch on the train - he had placed it on the soap-dish of the bathroom while washing his face, and as the train's swaying increased in intensity, it tumbled off the shelf into the WC!

Many of our movies too capitalise on the romance of train travel. Who can forget "Mere sapnon ki Rani kan aayegi tu...", with the whistling of the Darjeeling Toy train as the background music, or Half ticket, the madcap movie in which Kishore Kumar pretends to be under-age so he can buy a half ticket for the train? There are countless Hindi film romances which begin on trains, and of course a whole movie dedicated to the "Burning Train".

Plane travel, by contrast, is such a boringly functional affair. The only excitement for me in an airplane journey is that of the destination I'm traveling to, if it's someplace exotic, and the various names on the signboard - Tashkent, Sarajevo, Istanbul, Buenos Aires...When you travel by train, the journey itself is part of the pleasure. Some day, my dream is to undertake all the famous train journeys of the world - the Orient Express, the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Blue train, the Peru Rail, the Colorado Express...Next year, A and I have actually resolved to take our kids south by train, so that they can discover the pleasures of train travel for themselves, and in the process, discover what India is all about.

Eye-what?

2007-09-11T01:48:00.000-07:00

I'm no expert on politics and could have possibly biased views about the purported clash of civilizations. But my ears are constantly lacerated by the mangling of the names of other countries on CNN. I know Dubya and friends like to talk about nucular devices rather than nuclear weapons. And it may not stem terrorism. But would it really be that hard for Dubya and friends, or CNN and other American media to start saying I-Raq - I as in shIp, and Raq as in 'Rock' with a southern American accent; and I-Ran - I as in shIp, and Ran as in Obi Wan Kenobi? Seriously, how would Americans like to be called Amoricans or Amreekans?

Aman

2007-09-07T01:34:00.000-07:00

When I first found out I was having a baby I didn’t feel very much besides nausea. I had never been overly maternal or felt any ticking from the old body clock. Over the months of gestation, the nausea receded but though various worries kept manifesting themselves, I didn’t feel any special bond with the baby. I worried about that too.

After my son was born, since I was woozy and passed out from the sedation, everyone else in the immediate family saw him before I did. And even when I saw him I didn’t feel what I expected – a gush of love so strong and powerful that nothing else would compare. My husband seemed to have bonded much faster than I did. Through the first couple of months of endless feeding and cleaning I guess my son and I took our first tentative steps (obviously metaphoric in his case) towards understanding each other and maybe liking.

My son is six months old now. And today as I watch him, I am touched by myriad emotions. At times his air of fragility and vulnerability annoy me, make me angry. Nobody should be so weak, so defenceless. How will I protect him, not just from the rest of the world but even from me and my moods?

I watch him reach for a toy and fail to grab it – it is beyond his reach. He struggles, screwing up his forehead in concentration, wriggling his little body this way and that. His tiny rump sticks up in the air – he has just taught himself to start crawling backwards. Sometimes his forehead bangs down on the mat in weariness or frustration. Finally he figures out a short cut – he pulls at the mat till it folds up, bringing the toy within his grasp. I am amazed at his ingenuity.

As I massage his body, I feel the softness of his skin - softer than cream or butter or down, smoother than silk or satin. I can’t help myself - I kiss his tiny dimples at the elbow, the almost invisible one on his left cheek. I kiss the deep lines in his thighs and the little indentations in his feet. His curling eyelashes almost touching his eyebrows. His chubby fists. His rosebud mouth, down the pale nipples to plant a raspberry into his belly. His rounded rump. His wispy hair, flying in the breeze. I try and imprint a visceral memory of his body as it is right now since none of his photographs or videos seem to capture him the way my eyes see him. And my eyes will not be able to recall this moment of his life like my body can.

His smiles light up not just his face but my day. He laughs with his whole body and I can feel the knots in mine loosen up. I love the confidence he has that if he cries in a particular way or makes a certain noise, someone will not only hear but interpret the sounds and be there instantly to supply his needs and wants. I wish he could always have that certainty. I marvel that his perfect body came from my imperfect one, that half of his intelligence and his genes came from me.

He is like the long vertical stroke of the letter ‘I’, which joins up the two short parallel lines. Before he came along, my husband and I were the two parallel lines going in the same direction but still independent. Now he has taken a part of me, a part of my husband and his own particular magic. And joined the three of us into an interdependent unit. He has made us a family.

Karwa Chauth Etc.

2007-08-30T21:29:00.000-07:00

I don't know whether I'm tipping far over the side of bra-burning feminism but Karwa Chauth has always made me see red, for a variety of reasons. Firstly, I find it completely senseless that anyone should believe that God would grant a longer life to someone based on whether his wife fasted for him on one day in a year. I have always believed that God doesn't make bargains of that sort. In any case, if that were true, people whose wives fasted would never die, or at least not before the ripe old age of 80 or so, right? So any man who dies young - do we just assume that their wives didn't keep the fast or at least not with the requisite spirit?

Secondly, if wives are supposed to be so fired up about preserving their husband's life, how about a little quid pro quo? Where is the fast that husbands are supposed to keep to ensure a long life for their wives?

I always get pissed at this 'festival', as does my husband, and my mother and sister take the opposite side and argue that anyone who wants to keep the fast is justified in doing so. Not that either of them do ( we're South indian and this thing does not exist for us). What really riles me is the countless women who keep the fast 'because it is the done thing', not out of a sincere belief in its potency. I guess, being the liberal that I am, I should shrug and say chacun a son gout - to each his own.

The Talent Crunch

2007-08-27T00:51:00.000-07:00

India has been busy patting itself on the back and talking big numbers at international fora for the last couple of years. But those of us who live and work here can testify to the fact that attaining these numbers is going to get harder and harder if something is not done about the talent crunch. There is a crying need for talent right from the bottom-level of management to the top level. At least at the top levels, since the need for numbers is lower, companies can make do by poaching or hiring external talent. But where are the people who are going to come into the talent pool at the bottom of the ladder?

The Government and its idiotically politically motivated HRD minister and blinkered MPs running after vote banks have been mooing and creating about reservations of jobs and higher education seats. What they are trying to do by creating this unnecessary furore is to cover their tracks in the matter of the colossal failure of successive state and central governments in the matter of schooling. Most government schools lack teachers, funds and equipment. Many of them lack classrooms, roof to classrooms and elementary facilities like toilets for children and staff. Passing from one class to another at most government schools is like going through a toll bridge - pay the relevant teacher, that's all. There are any number of teaching posts lying vacant because they have been reserved for SC/ ST or some other special type of candidate who cannot be found, and who cares if the poor students don't get the education they need? Even appointed teachers treat their schools like banks wherein they only have to show up once in a while to collect their salaries rather than attending on a daily basis. Cases of sexual harassment and molestation as well as physical abuse by teachers abound in government schools. After a child has passed through this appalling excuse for an education, he or she would be rendered incapable of being able to learn anything, rather than fit for higher education.

Why doesn't the government actually use its time and money to put in a superlative system of primary and secondary school education, which is so comprehensive and so good that students who emerge will be genuinely capable of participating in a competitive scenario and taking their rightful place through merit? Why can't we as a country invest in more vocational training and other employment-generating programs rather than pushing people blindly towards graduation degrees which will be of as much use and relevance to earning a living as a sick headache? Why can't the government take a policy decision to keep its greasy nose out of higher education and in primary and secondary school education, like many other countries? Because it will take effort, whereas mandating reservation or announcing grandiose plans to create more IIMs or IITs is easier and more visible. As always politicians have put the short-term, low hanging fruit before the longterm, higher value yielding proposition.

Until and unless large corporates like the Tatas, Birlas and Ambanis realise that their long term future lies in a well-educated, prosperous country and themselves invest in schooling across the country, nothing much will happen to benefit the vast majority of the country, because India as a rule has done well despite and not because of its government.

Chak De India

2007-08-26T21:50:00.000-07:00

Just caught this movie yesterday. I have to admit, when I saw the long-winded promos with a seemingly endless litany of girls who were going to form the Indian hockey team, I wasn't sure how the film would turn out and whether I would even want to watch it. But having heard nothing but good things from everyone we know, we decided to park kiddos at home and catch this one yesterday.

I am a Shah Rukh fan but not blindly - for that my hero is Aamir Khan. Shah Rukh can make my knees turn weak in a romantic film, because he has a way of bringing a touch of authenticity to those roles, and in at least one or two scenes can make my heart go pitter-pat. But this film? Shah Rukh hasn't had too much success of late in his experimental roles, though you have to give him credit for trying out new things. But after he began part of KJo's candy-floss brigade, those have been the only types of films of his that have pleased the box office. How much would he be able to contain his inner-Raj, I wondered, and how would a film work in which his charm had little opportunity to surface? I thought KANK was a bold, brave choice for him and KJo, since they broke many of the stereotypes and myths, but the film didn't do well at all, though in my opinion it's a refreshing look at marriages. Perhaps it hit too close to home and people did not want the badshahs of romance bringing them the bad news that happily is not necessarily ever after.

Anyway, Chak de was a bold, brave move for both ShahRukh and Aditya Chopra whose candy-floss romances have not done as well as expected of late. Shimit Amin's film looked a far cry from the glamorous swiss locales and chiffon-saris of a typical Yash-raj film. The characters actually looked real. Shah Rukh lived the role completely, back to his glory days of DDLJ, so much so that you started to think of him as Kabir Khan, instead of Shah Rukh Khan. The girls were real, and their emotions believable. The film is a typical sports film, with a disgraced/ uncreditable coach, an underdog team and players who are fractious and operating on personal agendas. But this is a new genre in India, and Aditya Chopra has taken a risk by focussing on women's sports, which otherwise are a non-starter in India. In fact, apart from Lagaan, I can't think of any other sports movie which has been a success here. The evolution of the team was realistic and modern - no hyperbole and overflow of love and reconciliation between the coach and the disgruntled team members. And the finale, even though one knows what is going to happen, was goose-bumpy enough for me to leave nail marks on poor A's arm as I clutched it in my tension.

A totally rousing, feel-good film, and one which also lives up to the spirit of the times. India right now is at a great place in its evolution, because at least in the cities, more and more people are beginning to see increasing opportunities, an ability to follow their passion and a high level of patriotic fervour. And Shah Rukh has moved back up on my list of favourite heroes.

Cheeni Kum - still a bit over-spiced

2007-08-21T00:46:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, A and I finally got to watch Cheeni Kum. Our average hit rate with movies has taken a drastic plunge since we decided: a. to have 2 kids; b. to spend their waking hours with them on weekends; and c. that we were too old for night shows any more. We waited weeks for the DVD/ VCD to release and promptly invested in the same.

Having heard lots of good reviews and having worked with Balki, the writer-director, in our previous avatars in Lintas, we were anticipating a fun, hip, urban-slick movie. CK does not disappoint for the most part, but there are bits that are quite out-of-whack with the basic premise. Balki was famous for saying, "Say only one thing in any ad" as CD, so we were surprised to find so many parallel tracks in the movie.

The whole backstage at the restaurant with the numerous jokes about the buck-toothed waiter were repetitive and started to pall after a bit. The interminable last scene with Paresh Rawal was the stuff of high-melodrama, compared to the rest of the movie and quite incoherent. Plus it really strained our credulity to spot Zohra Sehgal sitting in a cab in front of the house and being able to hear every word of the rant. I didn't even spot hearing aids on her!

What really pained ( and I mean literally) us was the child with leukemia. First of all, the character was totally unnecessary - what did she add to the film that couldn't have been taken away with a dramatic improvement in the story? Second, her manner and conversation made me want to smack her, leukemia or not. Any kid who addresses someone that much older than her as tu and speaks in that familiar a manner deserves some serious disciplining. Not to mention her references to the relationship in a romantic light. There was absolutely nothing endearing about that child and she really brought the mood down.

The romance between AB and Tabu was lovely and quite believable, and the lightness of the interplay was refreshing. It was still a bit of a stretch when he suddenly popped the question, but that was forgivable - it is a Hindi film, after all! Sadly, while the dialogues were funny, there was no chemistry between Zohra and AB!

Overall, a rating of 3 ( and please fast forward all the sequences with swiny). High marks for effort but could do with improvement in final delivery!

Hum Hindustani

2007-08-21T00:33:00.000-07:00

I have quite a few blogs cribbing about the state of affairs in Good ol' Hindustan. For a change, I thought I'd look at the bright side - and boy is there ever a bright side, even ignoring the economy and all that good stuff. So here goes:

A and I have recently been hooked onto watching the various musical reality shows on indian channels - Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, Voice of India and Indian Idol. And each season when one watches, one gets blown away by the sheer quantum of talent and general musicality of Indians. There's got to be some deep soul in anyone who enjoys music, and we Indians surely do enjoy music. I can't think of another country which has a party game dedicated to music ( Antaakshari), or in which people routinely know the words and tunes of literally thousands of songs.

Another thing - recently on sa re ga ma pa, there was a controversy because there were media allegations that the Pakistani candidates had refused to sing Indian patriotic songs. Frankly, who could blame them - how many Indians would agree to go on national TV in Pakistan and sing Pakistani patriotic songs? Anyhow that's beside the point. The candidates refuted these allegations and said that they had been so at home since they came to India that they had forgotten this was a foreign country, and that after the controversy, for the first time in 4 months, they had started missing home. There was not a dry eye in the audience. Men, women, other contestants, us watching at home - everyone's eyes welled up with tears, and some of the other participants openly boo-hooed. I think that a country where most people, male and female, are not afraid to cry in public has to have something fundamentally decent and honest at its heart.

Third thing - during the same controversy - various members of the studio audience stood up and said that everyone in India was as much behind the Pakistani participants as the Indian ones, and that there should be no elimination round based on the controversial episode. Large-hearted or what?

So, tell me what is making you happy to be an Indian just now?

Driving me crazy

2007-08-08T01:27:00.000-07:00

I live in what the politicians call, in a fit of hyperbole, the 'Millennium City', Gurgaon. Well, they didn't define what millennium they are talking about, so if they meant the last one, they are right on the money, because it certainly is not the present millennium, going by living conditions here. First of all, there is no public transport, apart from an appallingly maintained and run bus service that one can't count on. And of course, Gurgaon is full of yuppies like me who want to look at least presentable while going in to office so the buses are out anyway. Leaving us with no option but to own our own car - one for each individual in the house, unless they are recluses or kids in which case they don't get out much. (Actually, maybe the Gurgaon government should be given an award by the Yuppies Association of India - imagine having a legit excuse to splurge all that money on a separate car all for yourself. Maybe the Gurgaon government is sponsored by the Automobile Manufacturers Association of India? Maybe I should get back to the blog before my conspiracy theories run away with me!)

Following the lack of public transport, there is the lack of roads on which to drive our expensive cars. There are very few paved roads in Gurgaon, even in highly inhabited and high-traffic areas. There is a stretch of road where my office is located that would have you mistake the locale for Manhattan or Seattle or something, so full is it of glass and steel modern monoliths, aggressively bristling with logos from the world's leading multinationals. But the minute you set one wheel of your car on the road that drives up to these swanky palaces, you know you're in good ol' Gud gawa(n) as one nasal KBC contestant pronounced it. The road is pitted with holes - or should I say the holes are punctuated by miniature strips of tar. You can churn butter from cream just driving through this 2 km stretch! The poor car certainly gets a run for its money trying to remain upright and undamaged in this territory.

And then of course, we have the traffic jams from poorly planned office complexes, which start from the In gate of the building and stretch all the way to the road and beyond. I live 5 minutes from the office and would walk if there were such a thing as a sidewalk ( Oh, but I forgot, this is Millennium City, walking is so last Millennium!) or better weather. It takes me 45 minutes to get the car from below the office building to the out gate, and another 5 minutes to reach home.

One of these days, I'm just going to have to start flapping my wings and hoping to fly!

Municipal Corporations

2007-08-02T20:15:00.000-07:00

It's all over the front pages of newspapers in Delhi today. One big monsoon type rain and the kind of havoc it created in the 'National Capital'. This is a city where more has happened to improve living conditions in the last few years than in any other city in India. the metro is up and running, there is a series of fly-overs to move traffic along faster than before, there is an expressway...New buildings are coming up at the speed of light. And yet, at the first instance of the kind of thing that is supposed to be a daily occurrence during the monsoons, the city comes to a grinding halt.

Why this has to happen year after year I have no idea. Surely the municipality knows that rains are a feature of the monsoon, and that therefore they have to get the drains cleaned out and compleet whatever perishing digging-up the roads works they have taken up before it comes pouring down. But why should they bother? They are more concerned with fighting with other departments or pointing fingers of blame elsewhere while as usual the hapless citizens lost time and money stuck in traffic. Even today, the MCD is claiming to have completed all the desilting and is busy pointing the finger at other PWD people, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

On Wednesday when the rains had barely started, it took a young colleague of mine 5 hours to get home - a 40 km drive that she usually does in an hour on other days. On Thursday scores of people spent most of the day on the road, without either being able to reach their workplace or turn back home. Does the government even know or care how much productive time is getting wasted? Is there any assessment of the monetary loss of this kind of thing? Given that most of the salaried class pays their taxes willy-nilly, which one could arguably peg as an investment into the future of the country, this is a really poor return on their investment. Any corporate house performing at this level of efficiency would soon have been rewarded by having investors pull out all their money, and I only wish we could do the same to the government!

Bangalore

2007-07-31T00:28:00.000-07:00

I was in Bangalore on work last week, and a couple of things made me realise, "Toto, we're not in Delhi anymore!"

1. When the cabbie got lost, he actually stopped by a cop to ask him for directions

2. The cop actually replied, and politely too

3. I couldn't breathe as we wove through traffic because of the pollution

Name Trends

2007-07-20T01:47:00.000-07:00

Of late, parents in India have become more and more interested in finding unique names for their children. In olden days, a name was very much the grandparents' prerogative to choose, and indicative of either the qualities one wished the child to have or a person the grandparents wished the child to emulate or please. Or of course, there were all the names of the 5000 gods and goddesses from the Hindu pantheon.

Choosing the name was as much a rite of passage as the mundan or thread ceremonies. A south Indian child, even today, is named on the 11th day after his or her birth - the Namakarna ceremony. The first name chosen is a 'fake' name, symbolising various qualities of strength and logevity, essentially meant to hoodwink evil spirits. The second name is based on the star of the child and the initials connected to that. My daughter's initial came out to be 'SH' - the harsher sound, not the softer one in Sharada or Shraddha - in which we were really hard put to it to think of a name at all. The third name is the one meant for daily use, and is typically picked out by the grandparents.

In this day and age, few new parents are willing to hand over this privilege to the grandparents, though their agreement may be sought. I have heard some pretty unique names for children in the last 5-6 years. No mere 'Ashish' or 'Neha', no 'Lakshmi' or 'Shiv'. The names either go right back into our heritage and frankly some of them sound a little weird in a contemporary setting - I know someone named Ajatashatru! - or they borrow from other cultures or countries - our daughter's name is Alena, Greek for Helen. I have heard Vihastika, Zoya, Atyantika, Yuvna, Miraya, Rujula, Baruni, Suhana and more. The quest for uniqueness for our kids starts as soon as they are born!

I heard a funny story years ago about a girl whose parents were hippies and wanted her to pick out her own name. When she was about 5 and able to read, they parked her in front of the directory and asked her to choose any name she liked - and she did. She chose Area!

I wonder how much difference our names make to who we are and how we think about ourselves. Would Aishwarya (of Rai and little B fame) have sounded as alluring if her name was Suman? Would Writhik (sorry but that's the way I think of him thanks to his dance movements) sound as hip if his name was Gopal? I know someone who's now the hip, happening CEO of a telecom major who almost got called Nemichand - how right would it sound to hear ICE industry trends by Nemichand?

Monsoon magic

2007-07-16T02:02:00.000-07:00

As I've said on my other blog, the monsoon is one of my favourite seasons. There really is something amazing about it, and the monsoon touches the extremes of moods, from the dramatic (torrents of rain) to the awe-inspiring (thunder, lightning, winds and rain) to the bathetic (trickly, drippy rain - as if the cistern is leaking again). India being a largely pastoral society and that too, one with subsistence farms and lack of sophisticated farming methods, the rain is truly the farmer's friend, if it comes at the right time. And rain has always been celebrated here, from classical music - Raaga Malhar - to a number of folk and movie songs. There is even a famous story about how Akbar's beloved court singer Tansen was challenged by jealous rivals to sing a Raaga which would result in him being surrounded by flames if he sang correctly, and how he taught his daughter to sing Raaga Malhar which of course brought down life-giving rain at the right moment.

I suppose it isn't surprising that people living in damper climates (England?) dislike the rain, but even when I was in France for the most water-logged year of my life, I still enjoyed the rain. Rain in India is traditionally also held to be 'lover's weather' and many mythological stories and even film stories are based on this mood created by the monsoon. It is the feeling of being shut off from the whole world and ensconced in your own private one, cut off from sight and sound of others by the volume ( in both ways) of the water pouring down that does it. Some of Hindi films' most romantic songs and most romantic interludes (Aradhana - Roop tera mastana) are set in the rain:

Rimjhim gire saawan

Zindagi bhar nahin bhulegi

Ab ke sajan saawan main

Barso re megha

naino mein badraa chaaye

And of course, Shubha Mudgal's exuberant Ab ke saawan ...

I find myself in a mood of exhileration whenever there are grey, water-bearing clouds covering the sky, be it summer or winter. I love the damp chill of winter morn ings when it has just rained, and everything is lit with a more dramatic effect because of the looming clouds. And during the summer, Delhi's hailstorms are all the more loved for their brief intensity and the respite they provide from the searing heat. But during the monsoons...I find myself cursing the need to go out to work and earn a living, preferring instead to go for a drenching walk in the pouring rain, jumping in and out of puddles and coming to rest for a steaming cup of coffee or tea and a good murder mystery, eating a freshly roasted bhutta with lashings of lemon, salt and chilli on it, driving through the slick city streets, watching the rain come down through my bedroom screen door...what are your favourite things to do in the rain?

India - the time is now!

2007-07-11T04:25:00.000-07:00

It seems like a new discovery ( or is that tautology) that the West has made of China and India. Lately there has been tremendous media and political coverage and comment about the vast markets of the East, i.e. India and China, and a genuine undercurrent of fear about what the tilt of economic power might spell for the West.

Within India we have read and heard debates over the last couple of years about the India vs China scenario and which one wins/ will win, with statistics about the length of paved highways and number of airports and ports being quoted ad nauseum. It certainly makes a refreshing change from the former India-Pakistan comparisons and jingoistic comment.

However what we are forgetting is that this ‘discovery’ of the East is nothing new. This happened many centuries ago. Most of the great geographical discoveries of the world happened because someone was setting off to look for the mythical riches of the East, right from Ancient Greek times. Interestingly, most of those stories start with the intrepid explorer wanting to find a route to India, not China.

India has always had a strong pull on the global imagination and be it Marco Polo, Vasco da Gama or Francois Bernier, everyone wanted to find this land of jewels and silks, spices, perfumes and tigers. China in many ways was an accidental discovery. Further, China was a country that did not care to trade or indeed associate with the rest of the world, since it considered itself far superior, the Middle Kingdom between the rest of the World and heaven. It was India that always connected with the world through trade, spirituality and knowledge.

Artifacts of roman and Greek trade, including coins, shards of pottery etc have been found at archaeological sites along India’s sea frontiers. There is a legend that the origin of the Coorgi community is one of Alexander’s generals whom he left behind to administer some of the conquered territory and who later decided to venture south. Angkor Wat and the Borobodur temple are legatees of Indian export of culture and religion. Chinese spiritualists came here seeking for greater enlightenment and knowledge, be it Hiuen Tsang or Fa Hsien. Ambassadors from the English and the French courts to those of the Mughals were substantially awe-struck by the magnificence that they saw.

When we debate India and China, it is interesting to trace the ancient discovery of India and contrast it with today’s picture. While China is the manufacturer for the world and undoubtedly a fast-growing economic power, India is the world’s brain reserve, with its service industry. Not only that, India is beginning to occupy a significant chunk of mindspace with its culture – be it music, films, yoga or spiritualism – which is an area that China never has occupied in its entire history.

One of the reasons for the supra-presence of the United States and its ultimate victory over its former rival, the Soviet Union, was the larger than life share it managed to carve out in the global imagination. From Tokyo to Bangkok, Rio to Paris, American music and movies became America’s brand ambassadors, helping them win hearts and minds much before America’s businesses.

India today has the same opportunity, through its rich, vibrant and inclusive culture to influence hearts and minds around the world. When a country’s products not only occupy functional space in the lives of people from other countries but also heart and mind-space, then it truly has the ability to become a global super power. Signs of this are evident in the degree to which Indian characters, names and even celebrities are finding mentions in global media, be it the latest Stephen Colbert commentary on the purported Amitabh-Shah Rukh feud, or Indian characters on popular sit-coms like Friends and Hollywood movies. Now is the time for Indian industry - manufacturing or service – to take this one step further and build brands that people around the world come to use, adopt and love the way they do an Ipod or an MTV.

Music - the food of the Gods

2007-07-10T21:37:00.000-07:00

I think most Indians are amazingly musical. They may not always be able to carry a tune or remember all the words, but almost every one of us billion souls rocks to music. My 1 year old daughter starts swinging her hips as soon as she hears music from almost anywhere - me singing, an ad on TV, the music system...

That's probably among the reasons which contribute to the popularity of music-related programming on television. Many of the top-rated shows today (apart from the saas-bahus) are reality shows featuring musical competitions, not only on the Hindi but also the regional channels. And what's amazing is that all of them are doing well. What blows my mind away, of course, is the sheer amount of talent people have - so many, undiscovered, hitherto bathroom singers who turn out to have amazing voices.

I used to get really bored with the song and dance routines in Hindi movies, and wish more people would be like RGV, making films without the music. But now I have changed my tune - I wish more people would integrate the songs with the action in the film rather than pelvic-thrusty dance sequences featuring hundreds of dancers who just spring out of nowhere in the deserts of the Sahara or the wilds of Alaska...but I couldn't do without film music. Without songs like 'Pyaar deewana hota hai...' , 'Mitwa..', 'Ru ba ru...' and hundreds of others.

When I was studying in France, a whole group of Indian students got together at a friend's house to celebrate Diwali. After the mandatory feast, we began playing antakshari, and naturally, most people knew most of the songs that were sung, even if only bits and pieces of the words, and sang along. It had been going on for a couple of hours when the host's Swedish housemate finally asked in astonishment, "How many Indian songs are there? And how do all of you know them?" He was even more astounded when we told him that the antakshari had only been going on in one language, and there were at least 16 more languages in which we could all choose to sing.

Recently, one of my friends had another of his music parties. He has a friend who plays the guitar and works in Chennai. Every time this guy is in town, my friend and his wife host a music party at which the rule is that everyone has to sing at least one song. We sing a mix of English and Hindi songs - Billy Joel, Queen, Cliff Richards, Beetles, Simon and Garfunkel... - cheek by jowl with Manna Dey, Kishore Kumar, Geeta Dutt and others. I guess I pretty much gave away the age of the group by listing the singer that I have. I find it interesting though that even when I've played Antakshari with a younger group, it veers towards old Hindi songs...

It makes for an amazingly soul-satisfying evening. People who have never met each other before come together over a rendition of Hemant Kumar's 'Na tum hame jaano', Kishore da's 'Pal pal dil ke paas' or Geeta Dutt's 'Jaane kya tune kahi'. The whole group sings along the bridge over troubled waters, laments the going away of Cecilia or wants to break free. The guitar helps smoothen out the rough edges and sets the right pitch for the music. And the strains of the melodies hang over the night and leak their soothing, haunting, joyful vibes into the next several days as we limp back to a workaday life.