Doctors!

The whole of Chennai seems to be down with some kind of fever of the other (well, fine`whole' is probably an exaggeration). The names doing the rounds include the famous chikungunya, usual viral fever, malaria, typhoid,dengue,para-malaria, para-typhoid,multiple-viral fever, etc.etc. I know because I was among the stricken and everyone I spoke to had either just gone through some fever or knew of someone who did.

The first conclusion I drew from the varied moanings of the sick or the friends of the sick is that the more medicines you create, the viruses or the bacteria seem to effortlessly just change their forms and come back to haunt you. So while one can talk about polio eradication or leprosy eradication, fever eradication doesn't seem to be that possible. But if one were to believe the newspapers/media, some of the fevers seem to be fatal and because they are so widepsread and quickly propogated the number of fatalities is quite significant.

On the other hand, medical science still works on the trial and error methodology of the Louis Pasteur days. Symptoms don't seem to be uniform and hence doctors also experiment with you like a guinea pig. Well, I do guess life is tough for the doctors with the varieties and sub-varieties of the bugs (bacteria/virus) increasing everyday. But is not very comfortable for the patient when the doctor says Oh, you have a viral fever and promptly prescribes a long list of antibiotics. The fever goes away for the week when the antibiotics are working in the body and the next week it is back and this time you get a new list.... By laws of probability and the action of antibiotics, it is likely that within three attempts a lasting cure is effected, but this is more by accident than by design. And of course, you feel exhausted with all that medicine in your body.

I think this is going the same way as plants and pesticides - the pesticides intially protected plants from pests, but the pests just changed or became immune and hence the pesticides got stronger and stronger and the plants got weaker and weaker and the final output was that yield was anyways affected. And now there is the return to organic farming, which is essentially the same kind of farming that our forefathers practised, except that now it is stylised and jargonised.

So is it with people and drugs I guess. The best cure is anyways rest and limited food and I guess we will soon be deriving catchy terms for decoctions and concoctions from grandma's home remedies. So if you soon see Fortified Basil juice, make sure you recognise it for what it is - thulasi kashayam with preservatives for shelf-life!

Reading...

There was an article in the Sunday supplement of The Hindu a couple of weeks ago about how reading as a habit is making a comeback. The author's point, I think, was the advent of books like Harry Potter had made reading more interesting for the teenagers and hence the reading habit had revived.

I don't know about the teenagers, but I certainly think there is a great variety from Harry Potter to Artemis Fowl available, much better than the restricted list of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys I grew up with. And whatz more there is this entire genre called `Young Adult' books which have even serious writers in there.

Anyways the point I was trying to make is that the author perhaps assumed that the books for teenagers and their sales figures probably points to a trend of increasing readership among the young. While I have no statistics to either prove or disprove the point, I do know that a lot of adults also buy the `young adult' fiction these days.

The second point which came to my mind is that most of the larger bookstores these days be it Landmark, Oxford, Odessey, Crossword etc, are all evolving into `lifestyle' stores. Which means they sell books, music, video, gifts and a lot of such things. Except for The Strand bookstore that firmly is a bookish nook, I sometimes find visits to other bookstores a bit tedious as the crowd is quite like a mall or a department store. Strand in Mumbai, which I used to haunt while I lived in Mumbai was that shop which made browsing a different kind of experience, since here books were arranged in some haphazard logic. But nevertheless it was clearly a place for the booklover, full of the lovely smell of new books in a small space further cramped by stacks of books on the floor. They also had some nice editions which separated them from the crowd.I also miss the nice ambience of the Mahalakshmi Crossword; the new store on Kemps Corner is one of the lifestyle variety.

As for the reading habit, I think those who loved books always kept buying them, never mind if reading was fashionable or not. The good trend that I did notice is that the variety of books and writers that are today available in India are much higher. Perhaps it is this increased variety that is driving up book sales rather than any `return of the reading habit' trend.Maybe people earlier bought all these kind of books abroad and are today buying them in India.

But having said that, I must also state my pet grouse - books are expensive in India. The Amar Chitra Kathas and Tinkle that I used to buy for Rs 2, now cost Rs 30. That actually puts them out of the reach of some of the middle class children and definitely out of the lower middle and other lower income groups.

So, reading public, here is my submission - there are a lot of books to read, a greater variety of them and probably a lot more people can afford to buy books these days. But the prices are high and the selling ambience not particularly friendly which is contrary to the theory of increasing buying patterns.If the publishing industry has grown in value, it probably is on account of increased prices and not because of volume increases.

Lage Raho Munnabhai - Review

Good comedy, great packaging of Gandhi, a coherent narrative, a cast which obviously enjoyed itself tremendously and works well together as a team - all the ingredients of a good movie and that is what Lage Raho... is. And the best thing is that this is a movie which does not attempt to take off where the earlier Munnabhai left off. This is a separate story, with just the same set of main characters.

Ok, now to the story. Sanjay Dutt is Munna the dada and Arshad Warsi his sidekick Circuit (pronounced SirKit) who work for real estate `shady' dealer Boman Irani. Munna is in love with Janvi (Vidya Balan), a radio DJ and in a bid to meet and impress her, impersonates a history professor (Murli Shankar Sharma) and by his usual dubious means wins a quiz on Gandhi. Impressed by Murli-Munna's native gyan on Gandhi, Janvi invites him to her home-cum-old-age-home-for-homeless-elderly-people to give a talk on Gandhi. Munna spends long sleepless hours mugging up on the life and works of Gandhi and the result is that he starts hallucinating about Bapu. However, he believes that the hallucination is all for the best in facing Janvi and her troops and then of course romance blooms. Meanwhile, Boman Irani needs Janvi's bungalow as a gift for his daughter's wedding and tricks Circuit into helping him get the bungalow while Munna and Janvi are away in Goa. Munna comes back and enlists Gandhi's help in getting back his lady love's home and heart.

Sanjay Dutt and Arshad Warsi do a great job as usual, though I thought that Boman Irani did not have too much scope here. He does do the role of the flashy Sard pretty well, but hey, Boman is a great actor. Vidya Balan does a good job too, though I did find the Goood Mornnnnnnnnnnnnnnning Mumbai a bit irritating. All the oldies are super cute. And Gandhi,of course, was very very chweet.

But I found it a tad bit sentimental in places (eg:Munna says sorry to Circuit).For instance, a movie like `Love Actually' deals with a cheesy subject like love and doesn't dip into sentimentalism. But Munna has liberal doses of it which makes it that much more predictable and very-Bollywoodish.

To sum up, it is a good fun movie, definitely worth a watch, but keep your expectations low.

To Sir, With Love

I think one of the privileges in my life has been to have very good mentors and teachers. I am writing this specifically to mention one such teacher who inspired and continues to inspire me.

Prof.G.P. Rao, or Geeps as we called him behind his back, was a special teacher who made management education very interesting to me and I think my classmates would agree whole heartedly. His classes were always interactive, unexpected and interesting. He was very kanjoos with his ratings, but if we got an A, believe me, we would float in a cloud of happiness for the rest of the week. He was a professor who inspired his students to excellence and always pushed us to think for ourselves, as he did in an interactive session last week. Sir, I loved this class too!

I am going to sum up here some of his tenets which I found very interesting in class and that have proved to be of immense practical use to me.

1. Think Basic :
One of the problems with being a management student is this continuous need to spout high sounding stuff and I have heard many friends say `These MBA types, na! They love jargon'. But Geeps' class was entirely based on `Think Basic'. What he meant was to state the basic problem or premise and then build the layers of complexity on it. If the basic is not identified properly, the rest of the layers are pointless. This is universally true, in all situations. This sounds basic, but often it is not very easy. And of course, it isn't conducive to building attitude! But it works very well, as I have found from experience.

2. Professional attachment,emotional detachment
This is the one topic I would have argued the most against in my student days. Obviously, Geeps would not agree and would just leave with an enigmatic smile which was very,very infuriating. But experience is not as kind and has taught me the meaning of this statement fully. My earlier argument was that passion leads to commitment leading to performance. So if you are emotionally detached, it means you are dispassionate and thereby would limit your performance. What I understand now is that passion is equal to professional attachment, it is the need to achieve, the need to perform, the need to excel in whatever you are doing. Emotional detachment is equal to reasoning and objectivity. The two co-exist and are not in conflict with each other, as I earlier believed them to be.

3. Aim for Perfection and Achieve the Optimum
As an idealist, this is the best maxim for practical success that I have ever come across. In any situation or decision, imagine the perfect result and aim for it. But don't forget that there are other variables as well as other people and their interests involved. Wholistically, the best you can hope for is an optimal result. Narrow the gap between the perfect and the optimal continuously. Curiously, perfection is not completely achievable since that is a changing target as well as a relative value. Hence you can achieve the highest level of optimisation which is closest to perfection. But the basic assumption here is that you set the highest standards for the perfect goal and keep improving your achievement optimisation. But NEVER compromise on the quality of perfection. Then the whole system collapses as there is no more impetus to excel. The second assumption is that your perfection is a target that is significantly out of reach at the moment and hence you stretch yourself to reach it. But NEVER set yourself a goal that is outlandish and ridiculously out of reach. Then you are bound to fail.

This what he taught in class and these are teachings which apply both to life as well as work situations. But there are also lessons I learnt from him by example

1) He never gave us an answer, because he believed that there is no one best answer. The best answer changes from one person to another depending on his circumstances, values and needs. But he gave the tools which are above based on which you can make a judgement of what is the best answer.

2) He was open to suggestion and discussion. But he was always focussed on the outcome. One class was dedicated to a particular result. It had to be achieved within that time.

3) He was able to raise the bar of quality,he pushed all his students equally and was patient but relentless.

It has been 10 years since I passed out of his class and I lost touch with him. But recently he came to Chennai and met his students for a short interactive session and I found that I still enjoyed his class as much. He is a teacher I am proud of and one day I hope he will be proud of having taught me.

Wandering around South Bombay

Today I will start from Churchgate Station. Lets assume that we start there at around 10.30 a.m. Anytime before you'd have been crushed by the peak time crowd of about a million people pouring out of the station. I would start the day with some exotic tea at Cha Bar in the Oxford Bookstore. From there I would cross the green CCI cricket maidan and head to the Prince of Wales Museum. This should complete the first half of my day.

After lunch at again any of the faboulous restaurants in this area, I would make my way towards Navy Nagar. A beautiful Navy Colony area, as the name suggests, this is again a fantastic place to just walk away the lunch. And in this can be thrown in a visit to the fabulous Afghan Church, built as a memorial to soldiers who fought in Afghanistan!!!

From here walk back towards Nariman Point, the commercial headquarters of Mumbai, and land up at the Oberoi's (Hilton today) from where the Queen's necklace as Marine Drive is described starts. Across Oberoi is the NCPA & Tata Theatre, the first experimental and the second commercial theatre. There is no beach in Mumbai, just a small patch at Chowpatty, which is 2 kms or so down the road. This I guess more or less covers the beautiful haunts of South Mumbai. I would have in some part of the day found time for tea at the very feudal Tea Centre near Churchgate station, sampled the Bhelwala opposite the station and tucked in chilly ice cream or fresh fruit and cream at Bachelor's opposite Chowpatty.

The sights left would be the very posh Malabar Hills & Kemps Corner localities where the famous Hanging Gardens are located and they do warrant a half a day walk around. Then there is the famous Mahalakshmi temple on the sea shore, the Haji Ali mosque at Haji Ali, the beautiful Worli Race course and the Planetorium at Worli and of course the Siddhivinayak temple at Prabhadevi. All these provide a slice of life from Mumbai rather that being places of tourist interest. Dadar is the best area to find outlets for authentic Maharastrian and Konkani cuisine and also offers crowded roadside shopping experiences.

Bandra has the Mount Mary Church and the lovely sea promenade at Carter Road. Bandra and Khar are also the shopping areas and Linking Road is the primary shopping centre.

Mumbai offers great night life in South Mumbai as well as in Bandra and Andheri West localities which have some famous pubs.

South Central Mumbai which is also a part of town, is an area which has textile mills converted to Mall complexes as well as trading markets (textile, gold and others) which I don't find interesting but maybe of interest to others.

And here,my dear friends, we draw to the close of `Sights of Mumbai', my virtual tour of my favourite city.

A Tourist in an Indian metro - Part II
Yeh Hai Mumbai Meri Jaan.

Immortal lines those.... Mumbai Meri Jaan. Ok, before I get maudlin with nostalgia, let's start our tour. From my point of view, the interesting point of Mumbai is what is referred to as `Town'. This is equivalent to downtown in the Western context and in Mumbai, means South Bombay and geographically refers to the area lying between the Docks to Dadar. Dadar onwards, including Matunga & the western,central and harbour areas, constitute the suburbs. Incidentally, I don't think the whole of Town is interesting, but well, most of it is.

I am going to start at the Gateway of India. A monument of our colonial past, built by the serving British as a point of welcome to their reigning monarchs, the Gateway of India is from the very Indian point of view no architectural wonder. But the monument itself is quite beautiful - tall and set right on the waters of the blue Arabian stretching behind. There is a small green park front(optimistically termed garden) and there are several small boats moored on the side, which take you to the Elephanta caves. The area within the arch is quite cool even during the hottest points of the day, when there is no sea breeze. There is always a crowd of people hanging around these places and it looks quite happy at all times.

Facing this is the Taj Mahal Hotel which also looks like a colonial structure and is really beautiful to behold. The Gateway and the Taj are lit at nights and it really looks very,very beautiful then too. An important point I would like to make is that the Gateway presents the best Photo location. Somehow all photographs in this place look beautiful and romantic.

The road here is called the Colaba Causeway and there are some of the jhatkas (horse-drawn carriages)which take you around for a spin. All this adds to the feudal, colonial air which is a rather lovely experience.

Behind the Taj is Colaba and this is are area with a myriad of lanes which have lovely shops, bars, restaurants and old colonial buildings plus the quaint Colaba market, where your street bargaining starts. This is a great place to walk around just like that. You will land at a junction of the Regal Theatre, an old colonial theatre building which has now been converted into a cinema hall. It was here that I first heard of the term `Dress Circle'. This refers to a special set of seats which are between Balcony and the normal classes and they are normally the centre seats offering the best view of the screen (and in earlier days the stage, from where this term derives its name).

Leading from there, is the road which will take you to further areas of Colaba on the left, Kala Ghoda and then Nariman Point (with Mantralaya in between) straight on and Fort on the right.

Kala Ghoda has the famous Jehangir Art Gallery which has a different painting display everytime you go and also has the delightful Samovar Cafe inside where you can get the most amazing parathas and chai. Very simple but excellent food in a nice intellectual atmosphere. Opposite Jehangir is Rhythm House - which is one of Mumbai's oldest music stores.

I would now take the right, past the Mumbai University buildings getting to Flora Fountain. This is nothing but a fountain as the name suggests - a European sort of fountain, behind which lies the delightful Fort area with its myriad little lanes. Fort is a place to just walk around - you will find offices, big and small including the Reserve Bank and Bombay House (Tata HQ), the lovely Horniman Circle (with a garden), the huge Asiatic library, the stock exchange building and colonial and modern structures co-existing. Fort consists of alleyways which are densely populated as is the state with Mumbai everywhere and walking here is the jostling crowds is an experience by itself. My earlier office was in Brady House which was a heritage building by itself and I used to walk around Fort everyday and I love the area. Right next to the Stock exchange is a khao gulley , eating lane if translated literally where you find street chinese food, which is a beet red in colour!!

In these lanes will you discover The Bombay Store, a lifestyle store, (it was a great favourite with me and has caused several dents in my wallet) and The Strand - a quaint bookstore which has different books which are piled on the floor at many places. You get lovely hardbound books at a steep discount and I just loved going to this store to browse through.

This side ends at the Victoria Terminus (which is Grand Central equivalent in Mumbai) a beautiful architectural sight, especially in the evening with the lights on. This of course, is only on the outside. The insides are crowded, dirty and smelly. But it still is a wonderful sight. Opposite this is the Times of India building which is also a beautiful colonial building and the famous JJ School of Arts, which in my point of view is housed in a rather drab and droopy campus. From Victoria Terminus, I would just cross the road and explore some more of the Fort Area before landing up on the M.G Road which is a lovely road to walk on. On the right is the Bombay Gymkhana, on the left is VSNL HQ, on the opposite side is Fashion Street which is a road shopping paradise for the college students. At the end of the road on the right is the historic Metro theatre. And behind Fashion street across the Circus Grounds is the Churchgate station.

I will end my first day here. And through all these (which are really within a 2-3 km radius) I would have thrown in `vada pav' at CTO (opp.Flora Fountain), Brun Muska chai(crisp bun and tea) at Irani Cafe in Fort and bhel puri at Vittal (opp Sterling cinema) as a part of my day experience. Ideally I would trace my route back to Colaba through the lovely M G Road and the high court building this time and get back to Colaba. hangout can be bars like Cafe Mondegar(which serves warm beer and great music),Leos or Athena for the more upmarket, which will complete the first day Mumbai experience. Colaba has many great restaurants too.Near VT is also the Crawford Market and Chor Bazaar(literally translated as the Thieves Market), which offer phoren (Indian for foreign) goods to Indian fruits at the cheapest bargains

Ok, so the next post will be day two.

A Tourist at an Indian Metro - Part I

Last weekend I had an emergency call from a friend ``Hey Anu, we have a friend visiting us from Germany. This is his first visit to Chennai and he wants to see the town. What do we do? D'u have any suggestions?''

I'm sure all of us Indian city-dwellers have had this sort of a traumatic experience at least once in our lives. We have favourite haunts in a city and this is the place where we live. We do all the regular things like eating out, movies etc for entertainment and our weekend haunts are usually located away from the city anywhere between a two-hour drive to an overnight trip. But how do you show a friend or a visitor, how interesting the place you live is. Obviously there are selfish motivations, you don't want them to go back to wherever they come from and say ``You know what? Poor so & so... living in a dead place like that. I'm sure (S)he is bored to death.'' Even if you do live in a place like that, admitting it is a different cup of tea altogether.

I remember clearly, when I was living in Mumbai and a friend came to visit me. I am in love with Mumbai (even now long distance) and that was when I was still in the throes of thrill of actually living in Mumbaiite. I think I had told the world and its brothers,sisters and friends about how great a place Mumbai is and how interesting,blah,blah. But when my friend asked me what we were doing, let me tell you I was stumped.... Ummmm Gateway of India, Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Marine Drive,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,DUH!

I had no idea about city tours, country bumpkin that I am. And never having been anywhere outside the country or dumping myself on a friend to be taken around, I really had no experience of coming up with quick responses like `Oh, this city is not historical or cultural, you know! The interest is in living here, you know...'' sort of stuff. Not that I believe any friend who spouts the lines above. Well, yes, you come to know and like a city after you've lived in it for sometime or sometimes you go to a place with great expectations and find out that life is not in the least bit colourful as you expected it to be (as was the case with me and Ahmedabad). Most often than not, India's cities have something of architectural value like monuments, temples,churches, mosques et al. While we may be familiar with monuments and their history, we very often do not consider religious monuments (temples,churches, mosques) as places to visit, because somewhere in our minds, this is entangled with places of worship and relegion and hence we can't go, don't go,etc., etc.

On the other hand, if you go to Europe, cathedrals and churches are considered places of tourist interest. They usually have to do with period of construction and the then prevalent architectural style, stained glass windows as well as paintings and murals in the Church/cathedral. There are other spots of interest like museums and flea markets and monuments and beaches and many more.

I did take my friend to Siddivinayak and Mahalakshmi in Mumbai, but contented myself with intros like `This the famous Siddivinayak, you know'' kind of statements.Obviously he did not know and at the end of the tour remarked that he did not know Mumbai was also a pilgrim centre. The trauma of that remark still exists, let me tell you. But then he was a lifelong resident of Chennai and having grown up with a lot of temples around, I guess this was not of interest to him at all.

Anyways,to somehow end this introduction, which is rambling a lot without too much point, I decided that I will mark out a list of places of interest in some of the places I have lived - namely Mumbai,Chennai, Ahmedabad and if I still feel upto it and nobody is throwing rotten eggs at me, Madurai.

So amigos....here ends the intros and the next post is about the different places in my beloved city of Mumbai.