we are like this only

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 tu...

Gardens I never realised I enjoy gardens and green spaces until I had a home of my own. Quite a pity when you consider the kind of un-used opportunities that my past is littered with. Years ago, we lived in a tiny government house in Pandara road - A-39. The front looked out onto a green strip between two rows of houses, but the back of the house was really cool. Each house had a small garden - maybe 8 feet by 20 feet - okay, not so small if you look at an average Indian city now. And two rows of backgardens were adjacent, with a narrow ditch for drainage in between the two gardens. The gardens weren't very sophisticated, since most people who lived there were strictly middle class, with little money to spare for a gardener. There was a grass patch in the center, maybe some canna lily bushes on one side and jasmines/ mogra on another. The gardens made a long alley, through the row of 20 houses on each street. What made this green alley exciting was the trees which grew thickly ove...

India has to be one of the countries with the most venal politicians and corporates. I'm not sayng all of them are greedy or venal but those that are are capable of going to any lengths. I live in Gurgaon, supposedly the hip, happening suburb of Delhi. We live in one of the few housing societies which aren't high rise and actually have little patches of garden in front of each house. Some time ago, we became alarmed at the growth of high rise office complexes all around us, which were leaving no green space anywhere, and one of my neighbours went down to the municipal office to check if they could do anything about greening the area. Imagine our lack of surprise at being informed that the office complexes had come up in an area formerly earmarked for residential and green areas. This, when the municipal coding had restricted homes within our colony to 2 floors, claiming environmental concerns. Of course, an office building of 15 floors height at a minimum would pose less of an ...

I notice that my food or travel blogs are going much better than this one - maybe I have fewer opinions than I thought? Anyway, today I thought I'd write about books and reading. I truly believe that reading is a gift and I feel sorry for people who never discover the joys of reading - there's just so much they are missing out on. My favourite activity is to curl up with a good book and a mug of tea. Mind you, the definition of a good book is pretty elastic, and I have been known to curl up with a cup of tea and the back of a cereal box for lack of anything else to read. I love shopping for books too - bookshops are magical because they carry so many hidden worlds inside them, and then you look at the back blurb and flick through the pages of each one that you consider, wondering which one you're most likely to feel at home in... I love going into second hand bookstores – almost more than first hand ones, because there’s such a feeling of discovery over the process of shopp...

I've been going round the bend trying to think of products which failed because of poor design for a work project. I googled, yahooed and hailed cubicle-mates and SLOC, to no avail. I came up with lots of information on products that failed due to lots of other reasons - misreading the consumer, mistiming the market, screwing up at the back office, but rarely were there mentions of poor design, except for a couple of Apple flops - the first laptop they came up with weighed 15 kilos! And their puckmouse apparently actually hurt your hand. Why is that? Are there so few products out there that have poor design? Do we live in a world where most products are intuitively and brilliantly designed? I wish! I think the real reason is that we as consumers don't protest enough. We see a poorly designed product and accept it, either 'for the time being' or because 'no one has anything better'. Come on, people, it's about time we took our consuming power with us when we ...

India's service sector has been the engine of growth for its economy over the past several years and now constitutes over 50% of the GDP. Strange then, that actual service to the customer is so poor, so mismanaged and so far from what one would expect. I had an amazingly weird experience with American express last year. They called up and offered me a credit card, assuring me that I was pre-approved and that the card would be free for the first year. I agreed, only to find myself jumping through hoops to provide all sorts of documentation proving my income level. On what basis were they pre-approving me then? Anyway, finally got a letter saying the application was approved (!) etc. and several letters informing me of all the advantages accruing from an amex card. Strangely enough, the card never arrived at my home. I kept getting letters from the customer service department asking me to transfer my balance, informing me of offers but never the card. I also got several calls from th...

I'm scarily aware that I have started sounding like an old person, who keeps talking about how lovely things were in his or her childhood. But I do have lots of questions and issues with young kids today. The end of fantasy - My four year old is a fairly innocent kids, for this day and age, and still believes in Santa and Mickey mouse. He watches Mickey Mouse Playhouse on TV and believes that "Mickey tells me everything'. He even believes he knows how to skate because he saw Mickey do so on the program. Shockingly, no less than three of his classmates and friends have been at him, telling him that mickey is not real. How do they know? Is that what their parents or siblings have been telling them? And why? Why take away magic and fantasy and imagination at such a young age? The realisation of what is real and what is not comes soon enough. Why take that power away from a four year old? Boredom - I remember when I was a kid (many moons ago), we used to travel down to the sou...