penuryofthought

Sivaji - The Boss?

2007-07-24T11:47:00.000+05:30

The hype around this movie called Sivaji eludes me. I think it is one of Rajnikanth's worst movies. It is three long boring hours with a total half-hour of funny bits stuck in here and there. But this movie seems to be doing phenomenal business all over the place and seems to have introduced Rajnikanth the superhero to the rest of India. I really hope Tamil movies or for that matter even Rajnikanth are being judged by this silly movie. It is regressive, boring and unbelievable. I actually like Padiappa or Arunachalam better!!

So much for the Shankar, Rajni combination.

Surreal Conversations

2007-02-28T11:52:00.000+05:30

I don't know if it is something about me or what. But I seem to get into these surreal conversations with the unlikeliest of beings. Like customer care, admin guys, HR of course, my maid, sometimes my boss.... Where, oh where would I be, but for this interesting human interludes.

This is a specific conversation I had with the admin department head of the company I work for. The background is that one fine day I wake up to discover that my phone connection is dead and I have to be on a conference call with some important dudes calling from the US. Frantically, I call Airtel customer care. For once in this lifetime, I manage to have a straightforward conversation with customer care, who gleefully informs me that my corporate connection has been disconnected on the instructions of my admin department and no they cannot forward calls and no they cannot temporarily activate it unless admin permits.

Ok, this ought to be easy, I thought, taking a deep breath. After all, I was in the right. I had actually paid bills regularly. So there is no reason for my phone connection to be cut. I had severly underestimated the capacity of Shri.Adminji.

Me : ``Hallo,hallo (falsely cheerful)!! Sir, apparently my phone connection has been disconnected by admin yesterday.''

Adminji : No, no. How can that be? Your phone has not been disconnected.

Me : Actually, I spoke to Airtel. My phone was disconnected on your department's instructions.

Adminji: No, no. They don't know what they are saying. Check your phone, it is on.

Me : Right. I checked my phone - from all angles, switched it on and off. took out sim card and put it in again. took out battery and put it in again. No connection. Nothing. And Airtel confirms they have disconnected me.

Adminji : If you do all those things to your phone, no wonder it is off. Thatz why Airtel must have disconnected.

Me (slightly desparate): Actually, Airtel disconnected because you told them to.

Adminji : I did not tell them anything. LEt them prove I talked to them. I haven't talk at all.

Me : Ok, so it is someone from your department.

Adminji : No, nobody from my department spoke to them.

Me : Ok, so they sent out a mail.

Adminji : Ah, that may be true. They sent some mail yesterday. Some connections were disconnected. But I am sure yours was not.

Me : Mine was too (loudly and firmly)

Adminji : Ok, so what do you want me to do now?

Me : You can ask them to reconnect me, for instance.

Adminji : (All sarcasm lost on him) Ok, I will do that.

Me: When? I have an important call in two hours.

Adminji : Two hours, no? no problem, I will go to office. I need to arrange for some lunch to be served. Then I have to look at some problems with some hotel bookings for our CEO. After that I should be able to do this. No problem.

Me(shouting now): I have a business call with people from the US in two hours. Surely this is more important that hotel bookings. Can you please call Airtel??????

Adminji : Why are you shouting? Are you bigger than the CEO? Why don't you call the US, instead of shouting at me?

Me: (sarcastically) And you will, of course, pay the bills for the US call

Adminji : (Sarcasm completely lost) Why are you so cheap? You cannot pay phone bills, is it? If you cannot pay, I will pay them from my salary. Don't shout.

Me (completely losing my head): Right, you disconnect my phone for no reason and you won't even make an effort to correct that and you want me to call people around the world to explain that my phone is not working and then you call me a cheapo.

Adminji : (interrupting my impassioned speech) You know what is the problem with you? you are a negative person. you cannot take anything positively.I gave you all possible options. You don't want to consider them. You just want to shout at me.

Me : (in what I think is a dangerous tone) Ah, I see. Could you, with your brilliant analysis, point out what exactly I need to consider positively, when I am going to be fired for missing an important call.

Adminji : See,see. You are again thinking negatively. All you people, think you are so important. Always shouting, always negative.

Me : Mr Admin. I have had enough of this - apart from being so incompetent that you cannot even understand what I am saying, you are also being insulting.

Adminji : (suddenly) Do you believe in God?

Me : (thrown off track) What does that have to do with this conversation

Adminji : If I have insulted you, God will punish me. And I am fearful of God. So I don't do wrong. So I have not insulted you.

Me : BANG PHONE DOWN!! (LATE REACTION)

Later, sanity prevailed. And I did manage a Machiavellian response to Adminji. I sent him my telephone bill, which he so kindly offered to pay from his salary. Airtel is now chasing him. I love my life. and such cheap thrills.

Play Review : Kanchanaseetha

2007-02-26T11:10:00.000+05:30

A play after a long,long time... That itself leaves me predisposed to review it well. But that would be unfair to the theatre group, so have tried to be as objective as possible.

Kanchana Seetha is a play originally written by Sreekantan Nair and translated into English. The core subject deals with the conflict Rama faces after he decides to leave Seetha behind in the forest, proclaiming her to be `unchaste'. The play portrays Rama conflicted between his position as a King (Caesar's wife must be above suspicion) and Rama, the man. However, it is not so straightforward. There are several subtle nuances which are thrown up which seem to suggest that the conflict is actually Rama's inability to believe in Seetha's chastity and how the state becomes an excuse for Rama to mask his own indecision. In between are also thrown in the issues of the class hierarchy and conflicts arising from that system and so on.

The script was really very good, building up pace very well to culminate in Seetha being ultimately swallowed by the Earth. And the performances were also very,very good - bringing up the nuances suggested by the script aptly. The players were all very natural, especially the children who played Lava and Kusha, and yet came across convincingly in their portrayals of their respective characters. The sets and props were minimally used, the entire play being dependent on the strength of the script and the performances and here the director came up trumps.

The one question that I had was that is such a play still relevant in today's contemporary world? But I think the answer is that we do still carry the baggage of our culture which believes in the `chastity' of Seetha. Even in today's world where women are supposedly better off than before, we still do grapple with issues of societal expectations and so on. And therein lies the relevance of the play. As a friend pointed out, Shakespeare is still relevant because the interpretation is with respect to contemporary society. I agree with her and kudos to the Tejaswi Theatre group for their excellent performance.

Review : Babel

2007-02-24T11:29:00.000+05:30

Babel is a movie where four vignettes are linked together: An American tourist and his wife who gets accidentally shot while on vacation in Morocco, the children's nanny who is an illegal Mexican immigrant, the Moroccan family whose kids accidentally shoot the American tourist and a Japanese teenager in Tokyo.

While three are directly connected (The Americans, the nanny and the Moroccan shooter), the Japanese connection is a bit tenuous, which is a bit ironical since that is the most appealing part of the movie.

The vignette of the Japanese teenager dealing with the trauma of her mother's death and her own emerging identity while coping with being disabled, is brilliant. The urban loneliness in Tokyo, portrayed throught the experiments of the teenagers and more brilliantly throught the bleak, concrete skyline view from her balcony, is the best part of the movie.

The nanny's story of how she takes the children to Mexico for her son's marriage and on the way back gets into trouble with the police and finally gets deported is also an interesting as well as touching story about the situation of immigrants to theUS - especially the illegal ones.

The other two are fairly straight stories - while the insight into Moroccos's rural settlements, confused political situation is good, it doesn't leave an imprint because it is so connected to the story of the Americans, which is the least appealing bit of the movie.

The format, the coherence and the handling are really superb and so is the camera which brings out the sense of desolation and loneliness so very eloquently. If this movie has been nominated for Best Cameraman, it just deserves to win. The movie is also rather intense and leaves you with a feeling of isolation and depression which is characteristic of today's existence. I just can't understand the significance of the title or the Hollywoodified American family. For the most part definitely good. Must watch.

Review : The Queen

2007-02-24T11:07:00.000+05:30

We normal mortals are always fascinated by royalty. This is a movie which questions that fascinating institution in the backdrop of the death of Princess Diana.

To put the storyline simply, the movie details out the reaction of the British royal family to Diana's death in a car crash in 2000 and how they are forced to accept public reaction. In the course of this stream of events, a series of issues are highlighted -

the hypocrisy of the royals : it is OK for Charles to have an affair, but not OK for his wife to be upset about it. The stiff royal upper lip and silences need to be preserved. The Queen's husband takes the children out stag hunting to stop them from learning of Diana's death.
the relevance of royalty : when Cherie Blair questions the role of the monarchy versus the privileges they have. The government is elected by the people but reports to the queen.
The pressures of privilege : the queen is forced to react when she is severely criticised by her people for not sharing their grief!!
What defines a royal : When Charles time and again asserts that he is a `modern' man while his parents are from the `old school'.

There are also the interesting sidelights when a Labour Prime Minister (Tony Blair) has to report to the entity he sees no value in - The Monarchy - and how he changes his opinion about the Queen. The interesting play between the royals and the elected government - who is the custodian of the people and their interests, the `Queen bends knees to the Prime Minister' headlines when he forces her to react to the public outpouring of grief for Diana.

But as I said, all these are just highlighted/touched upon in the movie. There is no attempt to explore any of these ideas or focus upon them. While from one point of view it is commendable that there is no attempt to judge and the judgement is left to the viewer, from another point of view the movies comes through as lacking depth.

I would believe it is definitely worth a watch but wouldn't rate it brilliant, because finally this movie is about an interesting side issue in the UK but has no relevance to the greater part of the world. I am also not sure that Elizabeth Mirren's portrayal of the Queen deserves an Oscar.

Forcible Conversions

2007-02-24T10:24:00.000+05:30

First of all, let me clarify that I am not talking about relegious conversions here. This is about this new trend of improving Average Revenue per Customer followed by practically every product or service you use from a TV to a mobile phone to Google.

I am sure that this must have been a common experience many of us share - you have a simple mobile phone which has excellent voice quality but doesn't have all that advantages of talking address books and synchronised calendars et al. (Well, frankly only a miniscule population in this world needs a synchronised calendar). But if you try walking into a store to buy that phone, the guy at the counter looks at you like you are this uneducated alien (cheapo & moron are the words which feature heavily on this thought bubble) and tells you that that model is no longer available. At a similar price (which actually means Rs 3 K more than the original) he recites this long list of additional features, which sound alien to you. You try being firm with him, doesn't work.And you can't repair your old mobile, it cost more than the new phone. So you walk out of the store with an upgraded phone you dont want for Rs 3 K more.

Or the bank which keeps trying to upgrade you from an ATM card to a debit card. Or Google which forces you to keep `upgrading' your blog. Or Windows which keeps upgrading its office suite and forces you to go higher and pay more. Or laptops which come up with vague features. Or ipods which offer you more and more storage for which you need to pay that online music site more and more to download more and more songs. In none of this does any customer inconvenience get addressed; all of them are meant to upgrade the pockets of the companies which put out those services.

For instance, take Google. I have been forcibly upgraded to use this new version of blogger. My templates remain the same. I have the same problems of editing text. It takes me the same amount of time to organise the blog and I still can't do an automatic email of updates to friends who read my blog(or who are forced to read my blog). So I see no `upgrade' value, but Google doesn't give me a choice. Worse, I am wondering what I am losing to this upgrade - is it privacy? IS some anonymous person sitting out there analysing my online usage patterns and drawing conclusions as to my mental health? It is scary, especially when I see a flash of `Google analytics' when I click on something. And in all probability, I have signed something which says Google can access all this when I opted to become a blogger. The problem is one never understands what it means when you sign on that `Terms and Conditions' till you actually use it.

If I opt not to go in for the upgrade, I pay a premium for that too either in actual cash terms or productivity terms. For examples, banks just automatically convert your ATM cards to debit cards and then charge you for the debit cards. If you insist on retaining the ATM card, you are charged more. Similarly for the upgraded mobiles or TVs or Windows suite.

I wonder what implications all this has from a customer protection side. Can I by law seek to protect my status to remain static - not go for upgrades - without paying through my nose? I don't know and I am supposedly a well-educated, rights aware consumer!!

Movie Review : 28 Days

2007-02-23T17:07:00.000+05:30

Returning from a mind numbing number of meetings, the idea of being a couch potato for the rest of the evening (er...... this was 9.50 p.m) seemed extremely attractive, so I plonked myself in front of the T.V and by accident watched this very funny movie called 28 Days. I probably am the only idiot in the world who is writing a review of an ancient movie, but I really loved it.

Sandra Bullock is a writer-who has never written a word in her life-alcoholic-drug user. She and her boyfriend turn up completely high at her sister's wedding, whe she proposes this wonderful toast ``Everyone has to make some compromise in life. My sister made an intelligent one. She looked at Andrew and said is this a guy I want to spend the rest of my life with and came up with the answer Oh,why not! He is making pots of money. She is smart.'' (This is line which got me interested in the movie.) And then she wrecks the wedding cake, trips out of her bridesmaid's clothes, drives around in her underclothes in a drunken, hallucinative stupor and crashes into someone's house. And gets sent to a rehab centre. And gets rehabilitated.

The movie makes fun of all the stereotypes. Sandra Bullock's co-inmates at the rehab centre are a baseball star addicted to sleeping around with every woman he sees - including his best friend's ( since fourth grade) wife, a teenager hooked to drugs and a sleazy soap opera aka Santa Barbara, a stressed out alcoholic executive, a ageing beauty queen whose husband walked out on her, a black mother, a gay alcoholic who keeps crying all the time and losing his partners. The place is run by an ex-drunk. They poke fun at everything that happens there - the handholding, chanting sessions, group therapy, the focus on `expression' and what not. And under this is the pathos - all the others have been thru several rehabs and keep coming back . As the teenager puts it - faster and faster each time. And so she kills herself. The reality of life is there. But still it is a funny movie.

The movie has some great dialogues : like the sister's wedding toast and my personal favourite which is written below.
Scene : Sandra's boyfriend is proposing to her while she is at rehab.
``But Jasper, I am in rehab''
``Thatz because you got a nasty judge.''
``You know Jasper, I've been going downhill all my life.''
``Of course not. You are damn funny,especially when you get high. You are great.''
``Stop it,Jasper. I can see I have been on this path to kill myself and I didn't even know it.''
``Are you talking about the accident? it wasn't that serious''.
``There are so many normal people out there who don't drink, who don't wreck their sister's wedding, who don't land up in rehab and do chanting.''
``You are normal.''
``No, I'm not and it is dawning on me relentlessly''.
``Listen. When you become an adult, you stop being normal and this is true of all people. You wake up one day and have to figure out what to do with your life. Some get married and make babies, some get a job and make money and then there are some like us who have fun. All of us are adult and all of us are normal.'' I just loved that!

So even though Rotten Tomatoes rates it at 29%, I enjoyed that bit of dialogue too much and have to say, I loved it.

Discrimination of the Singles

2007-02-15T18:55:00.000+05:30

It is rather amazing the different forms discrimination takes. I was just buying a mobile connection, for heaven's sake. And there was this first innocuous question as to who all lived in my house. Once I said I stayed with my brother, there was this prolonged whispering conversation about his marital status. Just as I was wondering whether the customer care execs (both women) were thinking about the possibility of being romantically linked to my brother (the thought afforded me considerable amusement, of course), they asked me directly if he was married. No, I replied, striving for a straight face. Then, they tell me, ``you need to pay an additional deposit of Rs 750, madam, since you are a bachelor''. I thought this was some sort of joke and tried passing it off lightly. But it was not to be - apparently mobile phone companies charge an extra deposit from ``bachelors''. The sad thing was that the people who glibly made these statements to me did not even know that it was discriminatory and were very puzzled when I made a fuss.

This is the second time I have personally faced such discrimination, the first time was when I tried getting a housing loan from ICICI and was told as a single woman I needed a guarantor. It was ironical that they did not accept my Government University Professor mom as a good guarantor but were perfectly OK with my student, non-earning brother signing up as a guarantor. By virtue of screaming non-stop for 45 minutes and threatening discrimination lawsuits, I finally got a loan with no guarantor. This was about four years ago and I don't know if this has changed at all.

These are only two personal instances - once I mention this to people, there are other stories which come up about such blatant as well as subtle forms of discrimination. Singles don't get houses to stay in or if they do, they pay a premium on rent, they are asked to assume more work since they don't have any spouse waiting for them, employers telling them that they are not reliable since they are single and of course, the intense interest everyone has in the life of a single.

I just don't understand how your marital status can influence your bankability, your employability or your credibility. Suppose I was married and defaulted on my loan, what exactly does the bank propose to do - catch hold of the husband dear's collar and demand honourable repayment? What will the mobile company do if a married man defaults on his bills - demand his wife's jewellery ? And how often have we heard the same employer complain that his married employee who is perenially absent because of his `family demands'.

But nevertheless, there is this subtle reinforcement that tells you, if you have a family it is OK if you default or don't turn up for work or be inefficient. So much for being that heartwhole, fancyfree, irresponsible, decadent single. The world around you is screaming at you to get married so that you can pay your bills, pay your bank and SETTLE DOWN!

Dravidians Vs Devanagri

2007-01-31T13:31:00.000+05:30

Is Tamil Nadu against Hindi? This is a very old debate, older than me in fact, so I was a tad bit surprised when it resurfaced among contemporary people. I am no advocate of insularity or `cultural preservation'. But I do think that insularity is a rather unfair charge being laid on Chennai today; it may have been true some thirty years ago.

The English always claim that the French are insular in protecting their language and indeed I have faced immigration officials or airline people insisting on speaking in French, which made me feel rather indignant. Even in admittedly insular France, I have come across friendly people who spoke English (This might have been a reaction to my French, but nevertheless...) But I don't think that is what Chennai is. I haven't seen people insisting that others speak in Tamil; if they don't speak in English or Hindi, it is because of a lack in education rather than any insularity.

So we come back to the point that if only Hindi was taught in schools in Tamil Nadu, this situation wouldn't arise. Well, in reality all private schools across the state offer Hindi, Sanskrit,French or Tamil as a second language . Most students prefer Sanskrit or French where it is easy to score marks, in fact Tamil is the least preferred language. When it comes to Government schools, however, Tamil is the only second language. But is that very different from say Gujarat or Karnataka? It is only the city schools which teach Hindi in Karnataka. I do know that Gujarat Government schools have Gujarati as the primary language with Hindi as the second language, whereas TN and Karnataka opt for English as the second language. If TN were to opt for Tamil and Hindi as the two languages of learning, there would be a huge hue and cry about its global insularity in excluding English!!!

Similarly as far as communication goes, one needs to learn the native tongue of a place be it Chennai or Ahmedabad, if one were to live there for a significant length of time. Besides being useful to communicate with people such as vendors, maids, milkmen etc, the local language is also a part of the culture of the place. If a UP-ite were to live in the US, would he/she baulk against learning English or would they not learn German living in Germany. So why is it so objectionable to learn Tamil living in Tamil Nadu? And vice-versa, Tamilians living in the North or West do not insist on speaking in English or Tamil, they do learn Hindi.

In practical terms, I have seen more Hindi being spoken in offices in Chennai (non-government ones) than in Mumbai. In fact, it is cool to know Hindi in Chennai, but not so in Ahmedabad or Bangalore or Mumbai. The government offices on the other hand, still have this age-old practice of learning one Hindi word a day and one can see this right from banks to registrar offices to railway stations. So where is Hindi being excluded?

Just because auto drivers and maids do not respond to Hindi, to brand Chennai as insular is rather unfair. Chennai is as insular as London or Frankfurt or Colombo and less insular than Paris. The crib about Dravidians being against Devanagri is outdated. So people, please realise that when you crib that Chennai-ites do not speak Hindi, it is you who are being insular and not the other way around.

Transience of Greatness

2007-01-16T12:03:00.000+05:30

I've always wondered how it is that greatness doesn't spawn greatness? This is true of all great leaders or visionaries, irrespective of their fields - Buddha, Confucius, Alexander, Harsha, Gandhi, Mandela, Churchill, Da Vinci, Michaelangelo,Einstein, Newton, Spielberg, Hitchcock,Jack Welch, Rockefeller......Is it because brilliance is a gift, vision is personal? Or is it because vision and brilliance are transient, changing with the times?

Movie REview : Guru

2007-01-16T10:48:00.000+05:30

As usual Mani Ratnam has taken up a controversial and interesting theme and as usual, he stops short on the depth. The sad thing though is that as Mani Ratnam's presentation gets slicker, his miniscule content tends to get rather lost.

The movie is about Gurukant Desai, failed student turned petrol worker for Shell in Istanbul turned mega industrialist. Combine this with the cotton trading on floor, spat with a Parsi blue-blood industrialist, friendship with a socialist newspaperman which later turns into a long running feud, the questionable ethics versus shareholder friendliness - the connection to Dhirubhai Ambani is rather pronounced but vehemently denied. Again signature Mani Ratnam - Iruvar, Nayagan style.

The story can be summed up in one line - it is a rags to riches story of a petrol attendant who becomes India's largest industrialist. Obviously Mani Ratnam went into the story attracted by the shades of grey of the character of the protagonist - a visionary, a person who fights all odds, who allows nothing to stall him - not relationships (like his brother-in-law Jignesh) nor setbacks nor criticism,who corrupts on the same mega scale as he creates. But as usual, Mani Ratnam does not delve the depths of this character. Abhishek ends up looking like a hero, despite all the greys and he is not the one to portray the different shades of the personality he plays.

The shades are brought out by several points in the movie -

1)Guru marries Sujatha for the dowry but is not bothered by the fact that she is older by a year, has tried to elope with someone else. They have a great relationship -Is it the dowry alone ? Then how does he manage a good relationship with her?

2) Jignesh, his brother-in-law, is an equal partner in his business but Guru is unquestionably the able one, the one who makes the decisions. When Jignesh questions it, Guru as well as his cronies are taken aback.

3) As Madhavan remarks - Guru has grown by 400% but the corruption he spreads has grown at twice the rate.

4) As Vidya Balan puts it - Whatever the route he is chosen he is successful and he has made a lot of ordinary people successful through the stockmarket.

But sadly the shades are only hinted at, the filmaker does not explore them at all. And hence while Guru becomes a watchable movie due to its lucid storytelling, good perfomances, good music and great locales, it can never be called a brilliant movie.

Abhishek has put in a good performance, but his is a one dimensional character - more the hero than a man, that sadly was the lack of vision on the part of the director.

Aishwarya is as usual the glamour element, but thankfully is less coy, cloying and irritating in this movie.

Madhavan and Mithun Chakraborty, the two newspapermen, idealistic but intensely human walk away with the best characters, followed by Vidya Balan who represents the balance in this all. These three characters prove to be so much more interesting than the main characters.In real life, Dhirubhai always maintained centre-stage but somehow, in the movie version that is not what Gurubhai does.

New Year Debut

2007-01-03T11:52:00.000+05:30

Ah, A grand title! Basically this just means this is my first post in the New Year and indeed after a long time. So with New Year here, I did what the whole world (of advertising) tells you to do - took a good look at myself. It is perhaps not the best thing to do if you are looking for a cheerful beginning, but then looking at yourself at anytime other than those times when you are smug and complacent or happy and at peace with the world, is not too good. If that very long sentence has confused you, never mind. Anyways, to go back to the beginning, I was taking stock and did not want to dwell too long on myself, but since that is the point of the exercise, one can't very well ruminate on George Clooney.

So anyways, I was trying to figure out something,and was struck by the fact that I had stopped resenting living in Madras or Chennai, for some time. That was rather surprising and also inconvenient - one thing less for me to crib about. But I can't shirk facts, I am comfortable living in Chennai; I even like it here.

Much of this sense of well-being is because of the past few months - there has been a lot happening in Chennai. For some reason, Hindu Friday Review has taken it upon itself to create events such as the Theatre Festival and the November Music Fest(which is more about Hindustani and fusion music as opposed to the December `Season'). I don't know that the quality of reviews on the Friday Review has seen any improvement but the fests have certainly done a lot for the social scene. While theatre is still not comparable to the variety of Mumbai, there is something happening and music-wise, the last year was really good - Indian Ocean, Shakthi, instrumental fusion and of course the regular sabha kutcheri's - a lovely variety.

Also,I think Madras is a great place to make good friends and the pace of life allows enough time for friends and friendships.

Of course, this year may turn out to be different and maybe at the end of it I will go back to cribbing about living here. There are all these problems of moral policing, collapsing infrastructure and of course, the bad weather. But at the moment, it does feel nice to feel at home, here in Chennai.

Gandhi-ism Vs Gandhigiri

2006-11-06T08:16:00.000+05:30

One of the debates that the latest Munnabhai flick (Lage Raho Munnabhai) has started off is this debate of Gandhi-ism Vs Gandhigiri. Basically, what is means is that the people who favour Gandhi-ism believe that Munnabhai has sort of cheapened and commercialised Gandhi's teachings in the form of Gandhigiri. And those in favour of Gandhigiri, defend themselves saying that Gandhigiri is not about commercialism but making Gandhi accessible to the masses by simplifying his ideals.

Personally, I have no opinions on either Gandhi-ism or Gandhigiri. I believe that Gandhi is one of the most relevant leaders of our times - simply from the perspective that he believed in bringing out the best in most people. War, anger, terrorism on the other hand bring out the worst in most people and the best in a few. And to add to that he was in favour of widespread wealth creation - hence his strong views on agriculture, small industries etc. That is also the better form of socialism.

Actually, I think he was not against the hierarchy of wealth - i.e there is a chain, where a few people are fabulously rich, a larger number is well-off, the next rung of larger numbers is a comfortable middle class and then there is the working class which, while not comfortable or well off, is not dying of poverty either. I am basing this on the fact that he was on excellent terms with most industrialists, who were in fact in the legion of the fabulously wealthy.

Gandhi-ism vs Gandhigiri follows the same chain - people who can afford to and are able to think/reflect follow Gandhi-ism, which is in the form of greater understanding, while Gandhigiri, while sticking to the basic spirit of Gandhi-ism, applies it as a simple formula in daily life. To me, both are equally important. And if there are a few more forms of it like Gandhi-dadha's vs Gandhi-thathas, it will still be welcome.

Interesting WSJ article

2006-11-01T16:05:00.000+05:30

Direct Deposits - Migrants' Money Is Imperfect Cure For Poor Nations
Earnings Sent Home From U.S. Fuel Increased Spending But Not Much Investment
Thugs Extort Cash by Phone
By BOB DAVIS
November 1, 2006; Page A1

CIUDAD BARRIOS, El Salvador -- This lively mountain town survives on money sent from its sons and daughters living in the U.S. On days payments arrive, lines at the local credit union can reach 150 deep. The crowds then hail motorcycle taxis and head for the town's open-air market to stock up on food and clothing, or browse tiny appliance stores stuffed with blaring televisions and stereos.

It's the sort of scene that many development economists believe could transform some of the world's most impoverished regions, by putting cash directly in the pockets of the poor. With tens of millions of migrants around the globe sending remittances home, the flood of money has grown immense -- $167 billion last year, according to the World Bank.
[Chart]

But Ciudad Barrios also demonstrates why reliance on remittances may turn out to be the latest development fad that fails to live up to its hype. The downside: a cycle of continued poverty, as dependence on remittances turns the town into a kind of ward of the U.S. Those with entrepreneurial ambition head north, emptying out the town of its talent. Only a tiny fraction of the money they send home is invested in industry or agriculture that could produce jobs. And with the breadwinners away, organized thugs pounce on a place where money pours in from outside. All of that leaves little opportunity for the next generation except to follow their predecessors north, if they can.

"As soon as people go home and see what their salaries are [there], they come back to the U.S. again," says Israel Hern�ndez, 38 years old, who left Ciudad Barrios in 1998 and has been cleaning houses in Washington, D.C. He has sent enough cash home to his grandmother for her to buy a house. She misses him, she says, but urges him to stay up north.

For countries to reduce poverty on a sustained basis and to create a middle class, they need to grow rapidly over years. Though remittances fuel some spending, there isn't much evidence they have added to sustained growth. Instead, the infusions of outside cash often distort the local economy and may diminish the long-term prospects for gains.

The flood of money from abroad can raise the value of local currencies, making it harder for exporters to compete because the effective price of their goods goes up. Meanwhile, about 85% of the money goes to pay the daily bills of the people left behind, with little left over for savings and investment. Migrants eventually return to retire in their home nations, not to help build their economies.

"Remittances are a band-aid on fundamental development problems," says Dean Yang, a public-policy professor at the University of Michigan. "Labor export and remittances won't turn El Salvador, the Philippines and other poor countries into the next development tigers." Even the World Bank, which has pushed the development potential of remittances, is having second thoughts. In a report on Latin America released yesterday, the bank says that remittances are "neither 'manna from heaven,' nor a substitute for sound development policies."

Remittances have received increasingly widespread attention in recent years as a way to boost aid without spending government money, as other formulas for growth have failed to produce widespread gains. In the 1970s and early 1980s, many nations tried closing their borders to protect their local industries from competition, which boosted growth for a while but led to high prices and monopoly control. Then they tried the opposite approach, free trade and market liberalization, with limited effect so far except in Asia. Meanwhile, foreign aid has been too small and inefficient to make much of a difference, while private investment has been targeted at a limited number of countries and industries.

Remittances do directly help many poor families feed themselves and educate their children. Money sent home from abroad accounts for about 60% of the income of the poorest households in Guatemala, and has helped reduce the number of people living in poverty by 11 percentage points in Uganda and six percentage points in Bangladesh, according to World Bank studies.

Nevertheless, a look at El Salvador shows the ways in which the cash also can hinder impoverished nations. The nation of seven million has revamped its economy since the civil war ended in 1992 in a so-far elusive effort to spur rapid growth. El Salvador abolished price controls, privatized industries, slashed tariffs that were as high as 290% and adopted the dollar as its currency in 2001 to limit inflation. Earlier this year, it joined a regional free-trade bloc with the U.S.

Salvadorans started to flee the country in great numbers in the 1980s as the civil war there intensified. Now one in six Salvadorans -- 1.5 million people -- live abroad, many of them illegally in the U.S . They send home nearly $3 billion annually, equal to about 16% of the country's gross domestic product.
[Jose Edhardo Diaz Cordero]

Ciudad Barrios, a remote town 100 miles east of San Salvador, ping-ponged between guerrilla and government control during the civil war. Jos� Edgardo D�az Cordero worked in the town's hospital pharmacy in 1990 when guerrillas demanded that he give them medicines to treat their wounded. Then, he says, he received an anonymous message from a right-wing death squad accusing him of being a guerrilla ally and warning him to leave the country.

Mr. D�az made his way to the Washington, D.C., area where many others from his town had settled, attracted by a booming construction industry. He started sending home several hundred dollars a month to his wife to care for their five children. He has been home just once, for about a year in 1995, but wages were too low to make a go of it, says Mr. D�az, who is now 54. He returned to the U.S. and was later joined by two sons who became his partners in a flooring business. Another burst of Ciudad Barrios natives, who worked in the region's coffee fields, headed for the U.S. starting in 2000 when coffee prices plummeted.

Francisco Membre�o, once a Ciudad Barrios coffee farmer, left his pregnant wife in 2000, worried that he wouldn't be able to support his newborn. He hasn't ever been back to meet their son, Ronald, who's now 6 years old. Mr. Membre�o works two jobs cleaning offices in Washington, D.C., making $575 on a good week, and sharing an apartment with another Salvadoran.

Each month he sends home about $300 to his wife, Ernestina Argueta, who moved with Ronald to her parents' sweltering concrete house lit by a single light bulb. The money goes for food and medicine mostly, says Ms. Argueta, with a little left over to save to expand a tiny plot of land her husband purchased and hopes someday to cultivate. Though her elderly mother dreams of a new sewing machine, Ms. Argueta says, "For now, we're not buying anything, until he comes back."
[Francisco Membreno]

About one-third of the 40,000 residents of Ciudad Barrios and surrounding hamlets receive remittances, estimates Claudia Rodr�guez-Alas, an American University researcher who has studied the town. Salvadorans abroad typically share apartments, keep each other current on job openings and lend relatives at home the $5,000 or so necessary to pay "coyotes" to guide them illicitly across Mexico to the U.S.

In Ciudad Barrios, monthly remittances average about $157 a household, according to Ms. Rodr�guez-Alas. That's slightly more than the government calculates is enough to feed a family of four. But it often doesn't pull families above the official poverty line of $275 a month. Essentially, remittances are sufficient to push families out of extreme poverty, but not much higher.

The extra cash does have beneficial effects. It gives even the most destitute families the means to pay for food at the town's markets, and is extra disposable income for those who work. Salvadoran families that receive remittances are more likely to keep their children in school than other families, according to a study by two economists, Alejandra Cox of California State University, Long Beach, and Manuelita Ureta of Texas A&M.

Better-off Salvadorans abroad often send two checks a month -- one for their family's daily expenses, and another to save up to buy small homes with luxuries such as glass windows, electricity in every room, steel gratings on the doors and windows, and tile floors.

A small consumption boom fed by the checks has doubled the number of businesses registered with the Ciudad Barrios City Hall to 220 since 2000, and even helped prompt the opening of a "cyber cafe." Around the town's central square are five financial institutions that handle remittances, including Western Union, which also advertises on highway overpasses on the way to town.

One hardware store, Agro Ferreteria Rivera, has carved out an unusual niche: The couple that owns the store travels monthly to Maryland to take orders for homes sketched out by migrants, who wire payments to their families. A separate appliance store takes orders by cellphone from abroad, while a city council member sells solar panels for homes built in fields that lack electricity hook-ups. Some of the new homeowners also get their fences electrified for extra security.

The gains in consumption financed from abroad could fuel the economy. But paradoxically, the easy money from remittances leads to a fall, rather than a rise, in domestic savings as a percentage of gross domestic product. The investment rate as a percentage of GDP stagnates as well.
[Top Receivers]

The result: The country makes little progress. Between 1999 and 2005, remittances doubled to $2.8 billion, but the country limped along at an annual growth rate of just 2.4% -- far too low for a poor country to advance much. The tide of money from abroad boosted the value of its currency compared with that of its neighbors by nearly 50% between 1992 and 2001, which damaged exports. El Salvador has since adopted the dollar as its currency, but competition from China has intensified and other Central American nations have kept their currencies undervalued, so Salvadoran exporters haven't recovered.

Soaring remittances have boosted real-estate prices to levels that locals without outside help can't afford, while reducing the incentive of remittance recipients to work at home -- since wages are a pittance compared with what their relatives make in the U.S. In Ciudad Barrios, the coffee-growing cooperative recruits Nicaraguans and Hondurans to work the fields, because they can't find enough Salvadorans to fill jobs that pay between $5.50 and $8 a day.

Elsewhere, the same pattern occurs. Examining Mexican labor data, economists Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes of San Diego State University and Susan Pozo of Western Michigan University say that a boost in remittances prompts men to cut back their hours at salaried jobs and fill in with informal work.

Groups of Salvadorans abroad do form associations to help finance municipal improvements back home. In Chinameca, a town near Ciudad Barrios, for instance, migrants have helped to pay for the town's water tower and for the roof on a local church. But the efforts have fallen well far short of the need.

Economists say that El Salvador and other remittance-receiving nations must figure out ways to route money from abroad into domestic investments. The Salvadoran government, for instance, wants to create investment vehicles for Salvadorans abroad to bankroll domestic projects or industries.

In that vein, Salvadoran developers are holding fairs around the U.S. to try to make it easier for migrants to buy real estate. A Washington, D.C., financial company, Microfinance International Corp., is starting to offer Salvadorans transnational loans, which they can use to make investments in El Salvador and make payments in the U.S. -- and avoid having to pay fees on money wired home. Since many Salvadorans don't use banks or credit cards, the company's customers can use their remittance history to prove their creditworthiness.

In Ciudad Barrios, Lorena Romero, the acting manager of a local credit union, says only a tiny percentage of remittance receivers take out business loans. Even those often use the proceeds to pay coyotes to take them to the U.S. instead of opening businesses locally. Another credit union called AMC, which does business throughout eastern El Salvador in conjunction with Microfinance International, says just 1% of its remittance customers take out loans for businesses.

Wilson Salmer�n, AMC's general manager, says many migrants don't invest in El Salvador because they're afraid their families will become targets of gang violence. One of the reasons that many nations have come to depend so heavily on remittances -- Haiti, Bosnia, Serbia, Honduras, Nicaragua -- is because people were frightened away by war, and their nations are still torn by violence.

In Ciudad Barrios, many remittance recipients try to avoid calling attention to themselves. Some pick up their cash in neighboring towns where they aren't known. Others pace their purchases of appliances, so their neighbors don't notice. The latest gang tactic is to call remittance receivers on their cellphones and extort cash instead of doing it in person. Some in Ciudad Barrios won't answer calls from numbers they don't know.

The fear damps local investment, too. Mr. Salmer�n says his credit managers are afraid to travel into the countryside where gang influence is strong. A number of migrants say they wouldn't start a business in Ciudad Barrios for fear they'll draw unwanted attention. "You'll be robbed," says Dora Ruiz, a cook at a Washington, D.C., McDonald's restaurant, who wires $200 a month to care for her four children who live with her sister-in-law. "People will come in through the windows if need be."

At Ciudad Barrios' sole high school, students recognize one important benefit of remittances: They aren't forced to drop out of school to work, as their parents were. The senior class this year is triple the size of a decade ago, says the school's assistant principal, Lex Marvin. But some now leave early to join parents abroad, and few see much opportunity in El Salvador after graduation. Jos� Ines Aguilar Osorio is a shy, slender senior whose father works as a mason in the U.S. "If I don't find work here," he says, "I'm leaving."

--John Lyons in Mexico City contributed to this article

Of Designer Burqas.....

2006-10-29T12:14:00.000+05:30

For two weeks in the same month, The Hindu's Sunday magazine has written about this trend in fashionable burqua and how young Muslim women are taking to it because it is stylish while still conforming to the tradition which requires them to wear it!

The first article was about an Aghan book, being made into a film with six women talking about their relationship with the burqas and the second is about designer burqas making a `Stylish Comeback'. The common thread was that younger women find it acceptable to wear these fashionable, designer burqas which are apparently colourful, decorated with heavy embroidery and in some cases, form-fitting and more like a salwar, whereas older women feel that designer or black, a burqa is a symbol of oppression for women.

I find myself more in sync with the opinions of the older women than the younger. Of course, it may be a sign that I am moving closer to senility, but on the other hand, I think they at least have a point to make. If you have to wear a burqa which is almost a salwar but not quite, why don't you just wear a salwar? Or a jeans, or a shorts, or a skirt, for that matter. To me too, wearing burqas is not about being fashionable but about modesty being more applicable to women than to men. On the one hand, there is this whole thing about how women are getting bolder in looking for men and how men are becoming conscious of their appearance, so as to attract the maximum attention. And on the other, we talk about wearing burqas for modesty. Really, that is too much of a polarisation!

I know that there is this argument which states that a burqa is immensely liberating as it lends anonymity to the woman wearing it. And today's article in The Hindu, actually begins with that statement too. But I find that a hollow argument. Why can't a woman be anonymous, dressed in normal clothes? Why do they have to resort to a burqa to feel that anonymityand the consequent liberation? Considering it is only women who wear a burqa as a symbol of liberation, it still speaks a lot about the state of the society we live in and the excuses we can drum up to make a double standard acceptable.

Book Review: How to be Good

2006-10-29T11:40:00.000+05:30

Yes, that is the title of the book and no, it is not what the kindergarten teacher or a harassed parent wrote! My favourite movie is About a Boy, based on a novel by Nick Hornby and I was actually hunting for that book when I saw this one. The title was a bit intriguing, as it did seem quite the stuff of juvenile earnestness, but the blurb read interesting and so I got it and how I loved it!!

Actually, as the title suggests, the book is about how all of us do try to be good. But being good is quite tiring, not to mention boring and sanctimonious. And thatz what Hornby has given to us packaged with humour and wit. The protagonist is Katie Carr, a GP who chose her profession because she wanted to be good. She is now in her forties, married to a guy who is `The Angriest Man in Holloway' and has two children. She is tired of being good, being married to a cynical and bitter guy and tired of being a mother. But at the same time, she is criminally uninclined, not to say inept. She tries to divorce her husband, who patently ignores it and she is too scared to tell the children. She tries adultery and finds it too complicated and mundane and not at all fun and sinful.So really she doesn't know what to do.

And then her husband, this angry cynical guy, suddenly decides to turn good, with the help of a character who calls himself GoodNews. Katie can't decide now who she hates more - her sanctimonious husband who tries to get homes for the homeless and to improve the world through noble thoughts/deeds or the bitter, angry man he was before. She sometimes prefers the latter, simply because that is normal!!

True Brit style ( I always have been honest about being an Anglophile) of great humour, this is really a very contemporary story of how we want to be good, but find it difficult to without being abnormal! I really loved it when Katie goes to church and then finds the vicar(ess actually) turn up at her hospital to be treated for stress and the origin of the stress is the preaching.

The end finally makes it back to Katie's husband David dropping his `goodness' and he returns to normal - minus the bitterness and anger. And so life goes on....

The book is very insightful in the sense that if one is deeply unhappy or angry or bitter, it is easy to turn a leaf and become `GOOD'. But if you a decent person normally, wanting to do that bit of good for the world without wanting to reform it, life can be uncomfortable and confusing sometimes.

The best bit is of course, all this is said in a thoughtful, self-deprecating, humourous style which makes for absolutely great reading, but still leaves you thinking about it.

Contemporary, funny and amazing.I love Nick Hornby, (sigh but he is 50!!)

The God with 360 brides!!

2006-10-18T13:44:00.000+05:30

For some reason, I have recently been visiting quite a few temples. Not that I am complaining - I love temples, especially ones with some story behind them. This is about one of them with an interesting and entertaining story. The temple is called the Nithya Kalyana Perumal temple and is located in a place called Thiruvidandhai, on the ECR, 3 kms past Kovalam as you drive from Madras. Historical references to this temple apparently date back to the 10th century A.D.

The story goes as follows : A celestial damsel who was cursed to mortality approached Sage Kalava for redemption - if he married her, she would be redeemed. The sage obliged, but as it turned out, she was admitted back to heaven but the sage was not. So she stayed back for a while and the couple had 360 daughters and she returned to heaven leaving the sage to grapple with the offspring! The eldest daughter was called Komalavalli and she was intent on marrying Lord Narayana and prayed to Him everyday asking Him to accept her as His bride. Since Komalavalli wouldn't marry anyone other than the Lord and she being the eldest daughter, the other daughters also could not be married off. The sage was a very worried man. One day he met this bright young man with whom he was very impressed and asked him if he would marry his daughter. Komalavalli, though, was not interested in anyone other than Narayana Himself. Subsequently, the young man is revealed as Narayana and Komalavalli accepts him. Now that the sage knew who his son-in-law-to-be was, he asked him to marry all his daughters which the Lord did. So for one full year, Lord Narayana married the sage's daughters one a day and the sage found his way to heaven!!!

Since the Lord marries everyday, the temple is called Nithya Kalaya Perumal Temple. The main deity is Lakshmi Varaha Perumal (Narayana in the form of a boar) with - Akhilavalli Thayar as the consort (all the daughter finally collapse into one consort). There is a separate shrine for Komalavalli Thayar. The site is supposed to be the ashram of the sage.

I read the story in a newspaper and went to the temple with huge curiosity. There are several unanswered questions - why the form of a boar? why was the sage refused admittance to heaven in the first place? why 360 daughters? why does the Lord marry all of them?

While I haven't found any answers to the above questions, I did find this interesting piece in Chennai Online : `Vaishnavite lore has it that all of us are females and the Lord Narayana is the only male - Purushothama. For ultimate salvation we have to seek eternal union with him. It is only in this context that Thirumangai Alwar offers 10 hymnal endearments (pasurams) to the Lord yearning for merger in him. The ‘Nayika’ (bride) seeks merger in the ‘Nayaka’ (bridegroom). This is, in essence, bridal mysticism. It is against this background that Thiruvidanthai assumes special significance when we pray to the Lord for marriage - wish fulfillment in an earthly way but with a sublime connotation. We must understand and appreciate the spirit and significance behind a reverential pilgrimage to this temple.'

The temple though is very earthy in its operations. The temple is famous for the fact that unmarried people who come here and complete 9 pradakshanas will quickly find the spouse of their dreams!

Review : The Devil Wears Prada

2006-10-18T12:10:00.000+05:30

Hah! This must be the first time that a review is being written after the movie has long vanished from the cinema halls of Chennai. What to do? When the movie was playing I wasn't exactly in blooming health and the thought of going all the way to Satyam Cinemas was quite daunting, even though I really wanted to see the movie.So finally I did watch it on DVD and to put it simply - it was very disappointing.

To give a brief outline of the story - Meryl Streep is the powerful and ruthless(???) editor of a leading fashion magazine and Anne Hathway, who comes to New York with dreams of becoming a journalist, lands up as her assistant. Everyone around her keeps telling her how a million girls would love to be where she is, but initially she is not convinced. Well, how can she be, considering she is nothing better than a valet - having to get coffee for her boss, hang up her coat, get stuff organised for her boss' children etc and being in the middle of a shallow world focussing purely on making a dress!! Well, the shallow world is worth billions and employs thousands of people, she is told (and this is true and why is fashion the only target, while there are cosmetics and cosmetic surgery as well as health clubs etc., doing pretty much the same?) and somewhere down the script she flips - for no plausible reason, except for a severe lecture from a colleague - and towards the end of the movies flips back again. There are a lot of characters who float in and out to help her make this point, but since none of them are memorable, I am not going to make the effort.

I had expected a witty, razor sharp movie on the ruthless fashion world but Devil .... is sentimental!! What more can you say?? Everybody, including Meryl Streep looked nice, dressed nice but were terribly unfleshed out characters. I still can't make out Anne Hathway's character - she initially loathes the world, then actually believes in it and then filmy style gets out of it!! I believe the book is much better. I should've just stuck with it! Sigh!

Madras Musings ...

2006-10-17T18:00:00.000+05:30

Well, after the tour of Mumbai, I also wanted to do the Madras city round-up with places to visit etc. But somehow, I could never write it well and after several aborted attempts, I finally decided to give it up. I can probably just list out the places I was going to include, just for ready reference - Chennai Museum (with Museum Theatre and Connemara Library also thrown in), Marina, Elliots, Valmiki Nagar and Neelankarai Beaches, Kapaleeshwarar Koil, Parthasarathy Koil, St Thomas Mount and Santhome Church, Madras Music College, Theosophical Society, Kalakshetra, Dakshin Chitra and Cholamandalam Artists village for culture and Rippon Building, Chennai Central and Egmore just as reference for colonial architecture. I was going to throw in T.Nagar for city experience too!!! But, you see(this is such a typical Tamil expression), unlike Mumbai where I have wandered around to heart's content, each of the above places means you go there with some purpose. So I can't find that comfortable wandering spirit, but I just love most of the above mentioned places (yes even the Museum and the stations!)

But I did want to mention Parthasarathy Temple for a special reason. Tho' I've been there before, this time I paid attention to what was around me and found something curious. The main deity, i.e Vishu as the charioteer (hence Parthasarathy), has a distinctly Dravidian look, with a big meesai(moustache) and rolling eyes. For some reason this rather thrilled me. So far, Vishnu in any of his avatars, has always sported this clean-shaven look which is associated with Aryans.I found this Meesai look, look very true to the local interpretation(it closely resembles some of the village statues!) and I wanted to mention that specifically.

Further online search, as well as some columns of S.Muthiah, put the origins of this temple sometime in 800 A.D which is around the time of the Pallavas. The basic architecture is supposed to be similar to the Pallava style, though there are some extensions and modifications. And here is a bit of trivia - the main deity, whose looks I was so thrilled about, is supposed to resemble Mamallan or Narasimha Pallava!! I am really curious, why would the Pallavas build a temple, in honour of one of their greatest kings, in the obscure Chennapatnam rather than in Poompuhar or in Mahabalipuram? It is a mystery, so any historical background or interesting stories in response are very welcome.

Incidentally, the temple also played an important role during the Indian Independence movement and is said to have been the location of the Youth cell of the Congress. There is a small commemorative stone outside marking the place from which the Southern equivalent of the Dandi March to Vedaranyam started. Very Indian style, this bit of monument is ignored completely and you see a lot of chappals propped around it. Triplicane itself, which was considered a hot-bed of fervent rebels at the time of the independence movement is now a rather sad and bourgeoise neighbourhood!

Humour - A Serious Issue!

2006-10-17T15:20:00.000+05:30

Have you noticed how, as we evolve into a more capitalist society, we are losing our sense of humour? We tend to take ourselves terribly seriously and get very annoyed at small examples of our unimportance. Like when the road in front does not clear automatically as one drives, and even after furious honking there are all those cars, bikes and, dash it all even cycles, in front of you. Or when at the supermarket, just as you quickly rush down the aisles towards the billing counter there is this one person who steps in front of you. Or when you are rushing off to this extremely important meeting, the security insists on you following the visitors procedure. Not only do all these people willfully ignore your importance, they even have the effrontery to imitate your actions. You, of course, are in no mood to accept `a taste of one’s own medicine’ with good grace and a grin.

But the bigger and, in my humble opinion, scarier scenario is one in which one you begin to talk in four syllable words and sentences so obscure in meaning that if you are ever called to really and truly explain yourself, you would be at a loss. This begins to happen at that point when you are so materialistic, that you begin to sound spiritual about it. Somewhat like when you hear about this couple who chartered a plane to rough it out at an ashram in the Himalayas to `synergise our spiritual self to the great one-ness of that central metaphysical being who is beyond the realization limits of the whole.’ There, the fact that I have been completely unable to formulate one sentence which will elevate you to a different `plane of existence’ shows that I am one of those idiots who have not arrived. But I pride myself on the fact that I have actually constructed a sentence which has no meaning, so I still have hope! (The eternal optimist!)

Now I find this a tad bit strange. I would have believed that it is socialists with their lofty ideals, about which they are terribly intense and passionate and earnest, would be the creators of a humourless society. Why? Simply because they have a noble goal (my opinion, but I acknowledge this is contestable) and nobility for some reason breeds righteousness and righteousness is a serious humour impediment. But, maybe this is an irony of existence, that society has a fantastic brand of humour – cynical, witty, intelligent and lastingly hilarious. That is perhaps a reaction to all the earnestness around and a reflection of the intelligence which tends to gravitate towards the left.

On the other hand, I would’ve tended to believe that life in a capitalist society is about prosperity and prosperous people would normally have more reason to smile and hence perhaps have a better sense of humour – basically, anyone who loves to laugh would appreciate great humour. But I have noticed that this is not the case. I think a capitalist society is driven by achievers and hence generally everybody is racing to achieve or whining about not being able to achieve. The achievers tend to look for appreciation of their efforts and don’t like being made fun of, and anyways in the course of busily achieving, they get very earnest and self-important. And of the remaining, there is one lot which makes enough for a good living and is content and complacent and complacence is right there alongside righteousness as a humour-murder-weapon. The other lot is the one which is branded as `losers’ in the current societal parlance and is basically too bitter about it or is perhaps in no mood to be funny.

I think the time has come to define exactly what I mean by humour – I don’t mean jokes or one-liners or stand-up comedy. This you actually find in plenty in a capitalist society. I am talking about that brand of humour which essentially is directed as much at yourself as it is at others. This is that brand of humour which springs from intelligence and awareness.

I do not mean to say that humour cannot exist at all in a capitalist society. Bill Waterson and Scott Adams are but two singular examples who can quickly prove me wrong. This more towards defining the general. The point I am trying to really make is that material societies are full of smart people whereas socialist societies are full of intellectuals. But we all know that both societies have their disadvantages. I have in this context used humour as a barometer of values. Because an ability to laugh at yourself is a rather delightful way of staying humble. And also when you don't take yourself seriously, it is very difficult to take others or other things very seriously and thereby there are no Holy Cows in existence and therefore, you have nothing that you will wage a war for.

Sillunnu Oru Kaadhal

2006-10-05T18:01:00.000+05:30

Missing the woods for the trees

A Surya-Jyothika starrer, a few days before they tied the knot in real life. The build-up to the movie release was immense and the title song `Jillunnu oru kaadhal...' ably aided the efforts. But the movie....?

It is actually an interesting plot which begins with a young Jyothika (Jo from now on) who has dreams of a love marriage, getting into an arranged marriage with Surya. Six years later, they are deliriously happy and have a precocious kid too. And in the middle of this smooth life, Jo discovers Surya's old diary which tells her that Surya loved and actually tied the knot with another girl Ishu (The same name as his daughter's) during his college days. But the girl's MP father bashes up the newly married Surya and whisks his daughter away to an unknown place. A series of events and Surya weds Jo. Jo now goes off in search of Ishu, the lover girl and brings her back into her husband's life for one day! And then the movie ends somehow.

An interesting plot, which could've explored how the knowledge of bigamy affects the family- Does Jo feel threatened even if Ishu has never surfaced in Surya's life after the ill-fated wedding? Does she feel differently about her husband? Or alternately, the movie could have explored how Surya and Bhoomika (who plays Ishu) feel when they meet years later and their personalities are very different.

Instead we have a wife talking about how she wants her husband to `enjoy one day of his life with the girl he loved' because she understands what love is!!! And then turns the entire plot into some sentimental mish-mash, which is even more difficult to understand. I really cannot understand how a scriptwriter can so completely miss the point of the story and talk such unadulterated rot!!

Vadivelu's comedy is cheap, dirty and vulgar, not to mention unlaughable. Surya has managed to portray the two different personalities (carefree and irresponsible college rowdy to happy, responsible and caring family man) quite well, but with a pointless story the effort also becomes pointless. Jo looks really nice, her costumes are great and does a decent job as the wife but ditto as above. Bhoomika is puzzling and I can't even figure out if she acted well or not.

Music- loved the title song and Kummi Adi. Machhakari is Ok. The rest exist.

I went to the movie with less than zero expectations, but still came away irritated by the entire pointlessness of it all. Come on Tamil Cinema, make intelligent movies!

My Morning Adventure

2006-10-04T14:57:00.000+05:30

I think my life is definitely taking an adventurous turn. Otherwise, why would I have strange encounters with jungle inmates within the walls of my home?

Time 6.00 a.m; I have just stepped off a formula 1 morning auto-rickshaw ride from the station. Feeling rather dazed I stepped into my house, dumped my bags in the hall and rushed off to make my morning cup of filter coffee. Mission accomplished,changed and a bit less bleary, I step back into the hall where I have left my precious cuppa and I am confronted by King Kong. I rub my eyes a bit and stare - well, it is not King Kong, but there definitely is this very large monkey sitting in the middle of my hall. I wish I had taken my coffee inside while I changed; now the monkey will probably drink it and wander hyperactively all around my house while I cower in my bedroom and try to think of someone to rescue me. I realised then the importance of having Blue Cross number on my mobile list. And I also think of what will happen when my brother walks in and confronts the monkey. I would give a monkey to see his face, but dash it if I am going to get out of my bedroom.

10 minutes pass and there is no sound. Cursing myself for leaving my balcony door wide open for all sorts of creatures to come wandering in, I cautiously peer out hoping that the monkey has gone away through the same balcony. No such luck, the monkey is still sitting in the hall with a wondering look on its face. At least, it doesn't seem to have touched my coffee. I felt slightly indignant, I really make very good coffee and here is this monkey sitting there, not even attempting to reach for a nice strong cuppa, conveniently placed right there.

I was slowly backing off and realised that the monkey was doing the same. We had eye contact and it seemed to me that the monkey was as uncertain of my intentions as I was of its. Well, it went off into my brother's bedroom. I quickly grabbed my coffee and dashed back into my bedroom. I really am obsessed with coffee the first thing in the morning and it was just about the right temperature now. Fortified, I peek back to look for the monkey. It had by then finished its inspection of the bedroom and was back in position in the hall,looking none too impressed. Ha,ha! I just loved the thought of saying this to my brother.

Meanwhile, monkeybhai(we were now very familiar and calling it `the monkey' somehow seemed strange) was now meandering in the direction of the kitchen. I followed at a cautious distance, racking my brains to figure out a way of opening the door between the kitchen and the balcony for monkeybhai's exit, without being attacked myself of course. But evidently monkeybhai was unimpressed by my kitchen also. He(I assume it is a he) had rattled my dustbin and seemed disgusted with the silence. I felt like defending myself - really I hadn't been in town or else the bin would've been full of....ummm...junk. What was I saying? That I junk the dustbin? Or that I manage to generate masses of trash when I cook? I felt both defensive and indignant.

And meanwhile monkeybhai had got into the spare room. In a flash, I rushed and closed the door behind him. I realised there was no latch outside and all the monkey had to do was to rattle the doorhandle and he could get out. But anyways, I felt slightly braver, dashed into the kitchen balcony and shouted for the watchman.

``Yes,madam''.

``Watchman,zara upar aao. Ghar ke andar bandar hai'' (Watchman, come upstairs, there is a monkey in the house).

``Woh,kaise?'' (Howz that?)

I thought it was a singularly stupid question but since he was to be my rescuer,contented myself with ``Upar aake dekho'' (Come upstairs and see)

I peered through the window into the spare room. The monkey was sitting there with a bewildered look. It probably was one of those unfortunate creatures that had ventured out of the trees of Kalakshetra into the residential area behind and was as much at a loss being confronted by strange human beings.

The bell rang - two watchmen had come up. I couldn't suppress a slight grin. One of them stayed back to lecture me on the eating habits of monkeys, while the other more practical one cautiously opened the spare room door. The monkey dashed back to the hall and attempted to resume its post at the middle, but the watchman wasn't having any. Shoo,shoo and he managed to get the poor creature out at the balcony. It sat there on the parapet for a moment, watching with sad eyes and then jumped down. Thankful it had disappeared from my house, I quickly bolted the balcony and said encouragingly to the other watchman ``The monkey is probably in the house downstairs now. Why don't you check?'' Both of them went off downstairs to see but apparently ours was the only home to be graced with monkeybhai's visit.

My brother just then walked in and I told him about my morning adventure, slightly embellished to make me look much braver than I had been - till I realised I was actually narrating conversations between me and the monkey and my brother was grinning as I came to the last part. ``So the monkey came to visit you, is it?'' He was highly amused as was anyone else whom I narrated this story to.

Well, all I can say is that my life is taking an adventurous turn. Otherwise, why would I have strange encounters with jungle inmates within the walls of my home?

Doctors!

2006-09-27T17:22:00.000+05:30

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...

2006-09-14T14:52:00.000+05:30

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

2006-09-12T11:19:00.000+05:30

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

2006-09-08T14:29:00.000+05:30

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.

2006-09-03T12:27:00.000+05:30

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.

2006-09-03T11:19:00.000+05:30

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.

2006-09-03T11:16:00.000+05:30

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.

2006-08-26T16:38:00.000+05:30

Book Review :Swimming in the Monsoon Sea by Shyam Selvadorai

When I saw the name `Shyam Selvadorai' at a bookstore, I squealed with delight and so did my mom. We just rushed and picked up a copy. Afterall, we had been dying to read another book by this guy who had written `Funny Boy' and `Cinnamon Gardens'.

My friend Neetu, who is as enthusiastic about Selvadorai as my Mom and me, was a bit hesitant. `This book has been classified under the young adult genre' she said doubtfully. Momentarily stunned, my mom and I looked at the book a bit suspiciously, but finally as Selvadorai was too much to resist we picked it up.

Swimming.... is the story of a young Sri Lankan boy discovering his sexuality. Till the advent of his cousin into his life, Amrith, our 14-year-old protagonist is just a teenager with a chip on his shoulder because of his past. He has been lovingly adopted into Aunty Bundle's family following his mother's death. All of them (Aunty Bundle, her husband and two daughters) love him as their own, but Amrith refuses to belong to the family. But life brightens up for him with the advent of his Canadian cousin Niresh and the rest of the story is about how he falls in love with Niresh and through that process comes to terms with his past and with his sexuality.

The story is fairly simple, straight and well-told. There are the glimpses of Sri Lankan society as well as references to racism in Canada and how settlers deal with it. It is therefore by no standards a bad book.

However, it doesn't draw one as did Funny Boy and Cinnamon Gardens. In fact, I thought Funny Boy was particularly brilliant weaving the tumultous times of Sri Lankan society with its civil unrest into the story to a young boy discovering his homosexuality.

The evocative social commentary, depth of characterisation as well as the humour lacing his previous two books was missing in Swimming....and thereby made for a disappointing read. We had definitely hoped for more... Well, until the next book perhaps.

2006-08-24T11:30:00.000+05:30

I recently read the Chetan Bhagat book `One Night @ Call Centre' which inspired me to create this blog(especially the title) and of course, once you have a blog, you have to write something on it. So this is an article dedicated to the `Thinking' Indians and the `Dumb' Americans of Chetan Bhagat fame.

The book of course, unabashedly declares itself as a pop fiction, not to be mistaken for literature. Excellent and truthful positioning (a bit of a rarity these days). Uh-oh, that was a pot-shot, the idea is not to review the book, but just review one of the thoughts in there.

Many times in the book Chetan Bhagat (this is too long for me to keep repeating, so henceforth he shall be known as CB) makes the statement that Americans are dumb and somewhere he says that we Indians are an intelligent species capable of `thinking'. I, being the random secularist that I am, find this kind of generalisation rather racist. But considering this is an opinion voiced by several others, I wondered if there was any reality in it.

Considering I have never lived outside of this country, I thought I would start with examining the `Thinking' Indian angle. I sauntered along thinking (?), for what is more conducive to thought than a walk along the Indian roads. I had chosen a rather unfortunate time when a maximum number of vehicles seemed to invade the roads of Besant Nagar(where I live). Horns roared as vehicles competed in overtaking each other, practically all headlights were on high beam making the road a sound and light nightmare to traverse. And then of course, all vehicles have the self-important objective of `me -first' and all pedestrians believe in `do or die' methodology of sauntering casually across the road impeding the maximum number of vehicles, creating a small traffic jam, when none was needed. Of course, consideration for others is not necessarily linked to brilliance of thought. Au contraire, it indicates an ingenuous ability on our part to create drama in real life without having to resort to props or productions.

So I proceeded to ponder and walk ahead. A disagreeable smell, terrible enough to choke breath, reminded me that the bus depot was closeby. It must indeed be a thoughtful variety of Indians who mark out useful public places like railway stations or bus depots by way of emptying their bladders.

OK, so real life is not working for me. Lets get intellectual. Idle conversations with colleagues led to justification of Godhra, the Mumbai bomb blasts meant India should unleash a terror attack on Muslims (vaguely defined as Pakistan).Just look at Israel said one, how brave they are to destroy enemies and we as a country just stand by and let ourselves be terrorised. Right!

Shift focus a little bit more and you realise India's largest selling newspaper is propelled by Page 3, television channels are full of `family' soaps much along the lines of the Bold and Beautiful, except for the costumes of course. Maybe the costume designer is the Thinking Indian.

We have had a history of class,caste,race wars over the past few years and we have even banned films because our politicians take objection to some actors. We are indeed a thoughtful democracy!

Ok, I am getting a bit tired here and I bet so are you. So, the point I am driving at is that when I look around me (or at me for that matter) I do not see any signs of thought. So where is this breed of Thinking Indians that CB is so proud of?

Or maybe, what exactly is Thinking? Does it denote our ability to quickly memorise? Does it refer to the massive problem solving skills? Do we define intelligent thinking by way of skills? What kind of thinking people are we then?

On the other hand, our output in terms of sheer genius has been limited. Our corporates traditionally have thrived on reverse engineering rather than original thinking. We haven't made any great strides in fundamental thinking on science, maths or for that matter history,arts or literature. Our day-to-day philosophies are hollow one-liners so there is no `thought leadership'. So where exactly is our pride coming from?

It is really a depressing thought to admit that we, as a race, are thoughtless, which is as bad as or maybe worse than dumb, because it implies that we are capable of thought but we choose not to make use of that capability. And as long as we let such hollow superiority dominate us, we will never be able to think - wholistically.