A tale of a few cities

Those of you on my Google Talk may have noticed oft-changing city names in my status over the last 10-12 days. Such is consulting life, and my brush with early morning flights and hotel-airport hopping has been tiring, but work-apart, also insightful in a few ways.

Delhi and Mumbai are both "home" now (yeah, I'm gonna give Mumbai-whining a break, this city has grown on me that much :) ) but Ludhiana, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad were refreshingly fun, even in the brief city. Ahmedabad felt good, modern and developing after all these years, even though my cab driver talked about the invisible parts of the city where poverty and discrimination were collected. Still, there was an energetic air in the city and in the people, in the smiling kids and buzzing households. Ludhiana was a completely different experience. The city has a lot of money, probably more than Ahmedabad, and definitely more per capita than Delhi (if you include "actual" and not "stated" income). Every home houses entrepreneurs, but sadly enough, the infrastructure is crumbling and governance seems to have fallen short on so mnay grounds it's sad. Education is a priority so low that an outsider will be surprised. 15-16 year olds in every home have taken to alcohol - the official figure for last year was 29 cr scotch/whisky bottles, up by 10 cr, not including Chandigarh (where it is duty-free) and only counting bottles actually bought offiially in Punjab. Even that, is almost 2 bottles a month per person. Holy shit. Over more conversations, I discovered most women in the city aspire to get married to an "NRI" and virtually very neighbourhood boasts of a few Amreeka, Canaida, London, Greece and etcetras. Marriage - sine it's easier if you have a degree - is the sole objective of most of the women who study, and the rest tend to move to other towns. The men run businesses, drink and make merry. It is a larger than life lifestyle for most of the happy, kind people of the town, and let, feels another country, another era altogether, in a few ways.

Hyderabad is a far more complicated place to make generalised comments about, even at a caveated opinionated level. I loved most of what I saw - it is no longer the sleepy town of the 80s, the infrastructure is pretty Goddamn good (awesome airport and love the roads, mostly!) and the people are nice, learned, hardwoorking and speak Hindi easily :) ! I was stuck in the curfew though, over the Telengana agitation, and heard mixed opinions while trying to find a way out of the city. It was almost painful, to see what I saw, but I admit I don't understand and appreciatew the full complexity of it yet.

Travellogues can be boring more often that not, but I was still amazed at the perspective I found in brief visits to three of the most important Indian cities the coming decade. Would love to know more.

Despite 530 am wakeups, some things are fun about this job.

Bewildered Jumpy Party aka BJP

Indian politics is a funny, dramatic space. Political news has never stopped being entertaining, and games of scams, allegations, counter-allegations, hysteria, white lies and short-term-memory-loss are regularly played out in front of a nation now used to it. Afterall, if they stopped, won't the newstertainment industry go into a recession!

But still, the ongoing drama in the BJP is at an entirely new level. The way the party is falling apart is both amusing as well as worrying. And the apparent reasons are even more bewildering. Sacked for writing a book? Boy, was Jaswant Singh ever this popular, even during the notorious times of Kandahar. And while on Kandahar, the revelations by Jaswant Singh over the hidden truths of that episode are disgraceful to India, and BJP and Advani in particular. They prove that the "strong leader" Advani, who only a few months ago was hoping to become the PM, is a liar. And funnily enough, the ghost of Kandahar came to haunt him in the campaign only because of their now-oft-questioned strategy (of personally attacking Dr Manmohan Singh and his weakness). Now, it threatens to erode most of the residual faith people of India had in the Leader of Opposition, esp because even Arun Shourie, someone widely respected for his intellect, has supported the revealed 'truth'.

Ostensibly Jaswant Singh has been sacked for praising Jinnah and criticising Sardar Patel (a Congressman who BJP revers!). Outrageous as the intolerance and narrow-mindedness sounds, other than being disrespectful of freedom of speech and thought (as Modi's ban shows), here are a few excerpts from the book that must be read because what they indicate is, that Jinnah was a personality so strong that he needed a country of his own to run to satisfy himself. He wasn't necessarily anti-Hindu, regarded Muslim League as an extension of "himself" and just used the religious issues to get Pakistan carved, because within India and with the INC leadership, he'd never have fulfilled his personal ambitions. That is my reading, and that is not very reverential of a man whose ambition led to so much bloodshed and hatred in the last 60+years!

Again, I'm no expert, and I don't know enough to argue. Greatbong does it better. I probably don't even care about history that much, in these difficult times of the present and uncertainties of the future! Why does BJP care so much?

The drama, as it unfolds, raises serious questions for the BJP. It appears to be a party in serious crisis, with no clear direction on what it stands for and where it wants to go. It is a crisis of leadership, as Vir Sanghvi has brilliantly elucidated. The Hindutva line already appears to give diminishing returns, and Gujarat 2002 have permanently given it a blot it cannot erase or abandon, and anything else makes them sound too much like the Congress and takes away not just their novelty but also the RSS Ashirwad. After Vajpayee, the party has constantly been struggling, and the recent revelations about how Vajpayee wanted to sack Modi, or how Advani stopped him from a number of progressive things casts Advani more and more in the grey, and adds weight to those voices that long held that Vajpayee was a great man, but in the wrong party. Advani maintains his usual stoic silence-of-crisis, and that is worrying.

I'm don't know whether Rajnath Singh should stay or go, or whether there's a better way to enforce party discipline than washing dirty linen in public, or whether the party will split in two. All I know is watching the rebel list grow - from Jaswant to Yashwant to Shourie to Vasundhara Raje to even Sudheer Kulkarni, the principal Opposition party is fast losing credibility and is distracted enough to forget its job of keeping the govt in checks and balances, esp in the absence of Left in the political biosphere these days who did the opposition's job regularly while in Govt in UPA-1. That, worries me.


I know I'm attracting the fanatic bashers brigade to my site to grow offended and abusive, but what the hell, not everybody has stopped believing in "freedom of speech" yet!

India, Bharat or Hindustan?

It's an interesting question: which country do you belong to: India, Bharat or Hindustan, because each of these three popular names have, irrespective of their historical origin, a semantic meaning attached, so your choice indicates your own position and view of the country. Officially of course, India and Bharat are the two chosen names in the two official languages respectively, but Hindustan is widely used in popular usage as well. The difference between India and Bharat in today's times is of the kind Arvind Adiga demonstrates well in The White Tiger as the bright vs dark India, the India Shining vs the India of the poor and the forgotten. Hindustan maybe saare jahan se achha in many eyes, but it has the unmistakable majoritarian "hindu" flavor, not all in sync with the secular, varied flavor of this country. It is also the contrast of choice with Pakistan, by people on both sides of the border.

So for its divisive air Hindustan is not my favorite, and though there exists opinions such as this numerological view why India is a better choice, India vs Bharat is still an open bet.

The semantics of language are the most accentuating part of this contrast, the difference between English, Hindi and the dialectic. It is the difference in the way sections of our nation debate on national, social and cultural issues, from voting to reservation to homosexuality. The nation lives on despite this, among many such, differences, but identifying ourselves on either side of the divide is a disturbing idea.

Because the question still remains, by belonging to a shiny, pacy India, am I alienated from real Bharat?

Healthcare: Unhealthy, uncared for

As a kid whenever I was asked the staple question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?", my answer was always anything but a doctor. I've wanted to be everything from a dancer to an advertising professional to an astronaut and a teacher, but never a doctor, much to my parents' dismay, who always wanted a doctor in the family. (I detested engineering too in the beginning, simply because it was so cliched to become an engineer, but well...) I don't know why I felt that way, though I have a lot of respect for doctors, to me hospitals have always been a repulsive place. I'm not scared of blood or pain or anything like that - indeed I happily did dissections of cockroaches in biology labs in XII std., but I don't like the atmosphere, the gloomy, smelly, damp place, the all-pervasive negative energy, the despair. My parents made peace with my choice, and I chuckled silently watching friends slog out for years incessantly studying to become doctors.

But apart from a personal choice, there is a why to be answered here that I never thought so much about earlier. All my life I, like most of us, have heard politicians speak about health as a priority, read and watched people dying because of lack of medical facilities and/or irresponsible/absent doctors, debated about why healthcare for all is still such a distant goal in India, and of late heard plenty of noises coming from US about universal healthcare etc

And then there was this story in HT a couple of days back as part of an ongoing series about my locality, that got me thinking. Hospitals repel me the way they are; they shouldn't be this way. Why do I hate Max at Saket less than my local private hospital, because for all its exorbitance, it at least does not look so gloomy? But does it need to be exorbitant to be dignified? Why can't our hospitals, esp govt hospitals (the ones that exist) look like the facility in House or Grey's Anatomy? Okay, that maybe a stupid question, when our country doesn't look remotely the same, but the point is, why can't we care a little more? Why are doctors looked upon so widely as fleecers, unethical and careless in a country where we, at the same time, equate doctors with Gods (and with the same fervour of faith!)? This story, also in HT, couple of weeks back, sounded like a positive step. However, the why goes deep, and remains unanswered.

We are heavily criticial of the lack of healthcare facitilites, particularly in villages and poorer parts. We morally look down upon the city-educated doctors who refuse to go work with poor patients in parts of the country that need it most. We are proud of our super-speciality surgeons who perform challenging surgeries on patients from all over the world at a low cost. We want the doctors to be sympathetic, kind, helpful and always right. The smallest mistake is unpardonable because somebody's life is at stake. It is their duty to care. But do we, collectively, ever care about the doctor, the individual under stress? Hear me out here.

What kind of students go on to become doctors? Mostly, not the extremely rich ones - unless they belong to a family of doctors - at least they don't practice/study in India. Really bright students then, mostly from the middle class and the poor. But the poor, in most cases, cannot afford to study for so many years, assuming they do complete school in the first place. They do not have the awareness and the resources needed more often than not, which leaves the crux on the middle class, also bereft of resources. Do you know what a medical education costs?

The competition is deadly just to get an MBBS seat in a profession where "just an MBBS" is so not enough! Students kill themselves slogging to get admission in a handful of institutes, among which most of the private and small-town ones are a joke. But they're all we have. In a country with acute shortage of doctors, where IITs are being carved every month and engineers churned out in lakhs, why is medicine so ignored? And the situation is almost horrific in PG level courses. Less than 1000 seats nationwide, and most of the private colleges demand exorbitant amounts of "donation" for a seat. To meritorious candidates only. A friend of mine who just finished BDS has been asked to shell out 36 lacs for an MDS seat in a college no one has heard of. Over and above all the regular expenditure. Another paid 51 lacs + 10 as fees last yr for some other speciality course.

These people are regular middle class folk. Where do they get all the money from? Why?
And once they finally get a degree and work some more years to establish a practice, having put in ten yrs of hardwork, assets and savings of their parents, govt jobs that pay 25-30k a month are not enough. They cannot clear off that debt ever if they were always doing social work, working in a village and treating poor for free, while not overcharging the rich. It's difficult to be moral for the average 28 yr old.

I'm not making a case for quacks and evil, irresponsible doctors here. I'm saying, at the first step, we NEED more colleges for doctors, subsidised education and high vigilance to curb corruption. We need more PG seats desperately. We need to incentivise and monitor functioning of hospitals, dispensaries etc. We need to incentivise hospitals that adhere to quality stds. We need to involve citizens and get their feedback to give each area what it needs.
We need to care.

The 2009 verdict: a hope, a challenge

In adverse circumstances, when you do not have power to misuse, staying holy isn't too difficult. It may not be the only option, but is the most reasonable one. The mark of character, however, is what you choose to do with power when you have it. In a lot of ways, the verdict of Elections 2009 throws up exactly this challenge to Congress and its trio-at-the-top to establish its character. Every newspaper and news channel, indeed every drawing room discussion across the country, has drawn up theories for why India voted the way it did. For once, the Indian voter has thrown up a surprise to be proud of, a definitive result when everybody anticipated uncertainty and gloom worse than 2004. I believe more than anything it was this fear and anticipation of gloom, horse-trading and a rift-ridden myopic government unable to lead the country in the current global environment that drove people to vote for stability, and the most likely candidate to provide that. For that, at least, we need to thank our political pundits and news commentators who have incessantly , even if irritatingly, driven down our throats the last three months or so the likelihood of post-election scenarios ,and the rise of Third , Fourth, Fifth front which made both Mayawati being PM/re-elections in two years seem dangerously real. In the current scenario, Manmohan Singh was the best choice we had, given not just the inability for NDA to raise the numbers without too much importance to pain-in-the-ass outfits that Left and SP proved to be in the last term but also the fact that the country really needs to avoid communal divisive agendas from dominating the mainstream at the moment, but even Manmohan really has work on his hand now to put the country on fast track of reform, growth and social welfare. In a lot of ways, it is the coming five years rather than the last five that would define for history who Manmohan Singh was, and what his legacy would be.

And now that Congress (almost) has the mandate to independently and assertively work for national good, now that Left has happily been decimated and BSP's rise stinted, now that it's obvious to national and regional players alike that good governance and development will get you votes no matter where and social engineering has limited relevance, I, just like the rest of the nation, fervently hope that our politicians collectively rise to the challenge. Clearly the victory of Nitish Kumar and Naveen Patnaik, and the poor showing of Left, Maya and BJP in Rajasthan show the importance of good governance and its translation into electoral gains, and hence it is a historical intertwining of people's (development) and politicians' interest(power) that is finally evident (one that should have been logical and always present, but that's another matter) and I hope the political class of the country regroups and puts that at their top agenda. For once, I hope it's not too much to expect. Imagine if all our politicians spent all their energy competing to provide development and social welfare, where would our country be!

Maybe, it's just wishful thinking on my part. But if nothing else, the 2009 verdict has provided a hope to citizens like me, and a challenge to the politicos. The times they are a changin'...

Old is Gold

First up, apologies to anyone who wondered about this huge absence from the blogosphere. No I didn't die, run off, or forget writing. In fact, for the most part, the blame lies with the recent power and internet crisis in the campus. For more than a week, life has been affected by absence of power (no working in the lab :) no net in the campus :( ) in a manner more severe than anything I remember in five years. Newspapers blame it on the ongoing elections (hell, does anything happen these days that cannot be blamed on elections?) because of which all states are apparently overdrawing from the Northern grid causing the grid itself to trip repeatedly. Tch tch.
Moving on though, plenty of interesting things have happened, not all of which can be shared here, primarily in friends lives. The title refers to the concurrent theme in most of these. Old friends suddenly connected, met up, shared a nice evening and rekindled memories. Events at campus continually glorified the past w.r.t the present (Hamare zamaane mein...) IPL-II started with a frenzy nowhere near the first edition, so far, and most of the stars till now have been the older legendary players...Sachin, Hayden, Gilchrist, Kumble, even Gayle and Ganguly, and of course Dravid. :D
And finally as the last few weeks at IIT approach and the weariness of old age (in campus) slows down the drag of the end even further down, the picture, the story, the chapter of college life is almost complete in the head.
:) Will be back, take care.

And happy bday Sachin! :)

Lead India, Bleed India

With elections round the corner, political fervor has caught the virtual world with as much fervor as the real one, or at least as much as the TV/print media. Obama-style online campaigning may still be a few years away in India at least so far as effectiveness is concerned, and really, 'active' Indian bloggers alone is a relatively small 50k-ish community, at least so far as readership and impact is concerned. Still, the chatter is almost relentless, and hopefully, a percentage would get converted into real action too. The efforts of Janagraha through the Jaago Re! One Billion Votes Campaign to get people to register for voting has found a mention earlier on my blog and it is good to see that the Election Commission has done its bit by parallel campaigning of its own as well as co-operation with efforts such as these. Activity is bound to get more frentic in the month to come, meanwhile, it was amusing to look at two new related websites, both finding some advertising space on billboards on Delhi roads. One is the Times group's Lead India'09, and the other is a sorta-reply in a rather pessimistic, funny yet utterly non-constructive way: Bleed India. The former appears to be one of many such forums with limited membership/ideas that keep cropping up these days, not forgetting Advaniji's own site (which doesn't tell you too many constructive things except a complete biography either) while the latter appears to be a manifestation of a lot of energy vent out in frustration. The ringtones section is cool though.
If there's one thing really free, that's opinion, and in a free, democratic country with whatsoever ills, there maybe, each one deserves to be aired and respected.

What's yours?

The foreign hand

The 2008-09 season of shock, destruction and devastation appears to be absolutely unending. There has been few good things this past year, and while I'm thankful for the silver lining, there seems to be a grim and morose tinge in the air all round. The world continues to sink deeper and deeper into recession, and anger and frustration in people find more dangerous outlets each day. No doubt terrorism appears to be so damn recession-proof.
And for every fallacy, every blunder, there is a quick and easy tendency to find someone to blame for, someone to target all anger and frustration at, even if that is an elusive someone like the CDSs of insurance or the secret intelligence wing of the enemy country. Even when disputes in IIT boiled over around trivial things like trophies and competition to the point where things reached the lowest point ever, every single person involved continues to hurl the blame at the other side. Not my fault honey, "the all-powerful foreign hand" did it!
The finance industry shook and tumbled and took economies of several nations apart, and while banking and insurance industry as a whole will never escape the blame for it, people who got hefty performance bonuses during the mad boom will never be held accountable or imposed fines on. Afterall, who can say that the individuals did it? The blame will keep rotating until somehow some industries find a way out and a newer world order takes over in a few years. But that was just the beginning right? Inflation coupled with gloomy global forecasts gave everyone in India the license to impose high prices based on heavy margins, and when that scared away consumers, to take away jobs in bulk. And it's neither their fault, nor their prerogative to take proactive action to contain damage and work for greatest good of everyone. That just doesn't happen on Earth 2009. Greed is one of those things necessary in small amounts to enable self-preservation, but it goes out of hand too easy, and leads to scenarios where the real estate sector wants more and more rate cuts and sops, but will not cut down margins any lower from 40-50%, or when airlines will cartel to play with the masses, the govt will play with sops and policies to maximize election impact, and the rest of the politicians will be busy playing the blame game and earning brownie points as opposed to contributing anything constructive. The thing is, it's not anybody's fault, it's entirely US-imported (foreign hand) and it's convenient to all be victims.
Terrorism on the other hand seems to have grown by leaps and bounds of late, and the World War wisdom of War stimulates economy has found more and more takers, apparently, with the way the world, esp the subcontinent is burning. I wonder how much cash is stashed with these groups to continue funding terror in these times. Anyhow, Pakistan is the victim of its own friendliness with Taliban and encouragement to terror and the future looks really really grim. Yesterday's attack on cricketers was ghastly, devastating, horrific and absobloodylutely shocking. It's almost as painful as Mumbai 26/11 was, and is bound to kill cricket in Pak for a while. But just like India immediately blamed the foreign hand or Mumbai before investigating enough in her home, Pak has given the knee-jerk it's India, it's RAW reaction already. I don't know whodunnit, and whoever did has to be cruel, heartless jerks, but the only unbelievable thing about the RAW blame is that since when did RAW start doing anything, anything at all, including its job? I hope the perpetrators are caught and killed, I hope Taliban and LeT and LTTE etc etc is destroyed and peace returns everywhere, but I know this is wishful thinking, at least in the near future. The Lahore attack cannot happen without local support at the very least, and in a country half overtaken by Taliban and where nobody still got justice for publicly killing Benazir Bhutto, it's not even an iota unbelievable just like the Mumbai attack too, definitely had some degree of local support. But despite that, there will be more war-cries, Pak will make similar statements against India as India did with or without any evidence to nullify the diplomatic offensive on Mumbai and hope that there is an Indo-Pak war that will make the Taliban unite with them, stop killing them and start hurting India instead. Don't believe it?
It's all sad, and sickening, this world we have made for ourselves. What's really shameful though, is how people overlook the need for introspection entirely, and in their aim for self-preservation and greed for enemy-destruction, together become the victims as well as the perpetrators of wrong at the same time.

Phir bhi dil hai hindustani!

No adjective, opinion or judgment could ever be a honest summary for a billion plus people, but there are some characteristics nevertheless that unify the diversity of the people of my country to a large extent into that peculiar thing called Indian-ness. And if one just steps back and critically tries to observe oneself and the world around, one can't help chuckling with one part amusement, one part pride, a little shame and a lot of wonder, although I do agree that one thing we must learn quickly as a society is to laugh at ourselves more often, because until then we wouldn't quit being so defensive and often dismissive of our follies. I quite like the fact that we are mostly vociferous about feelings and sentiments, though a lot of our political class stands erect on just that specialization. We love our democracy like crazy, yet we want the biggest pie of it for ourselves. And of course, as a touchy post by Johann revealed, nothing worth saying is inoffensive to everyone.

So we fight ourselves, kill each other, pull the neighbour down, but also magically manage to unite in face of external threat, perceived or otherwise, warfield or crickefield. Well, well. We are probably one of the most racist societies in the world, priding the brown skin over the black, and worshiping the white, while letting our own kind not touch our food, enter our homes etc. Eccentric. And we are so damn eager to claim ownership on what interests in. So Sonia Gandhi cannot be the Prime Minister of India because of her "foreign origin", but we celebrate the victory of Bobby Jindal or an Indian-origin PM in a little known country with the full pride of belonging. We weep for Kalpana Chawla, but someone living in our country wanting to render his sporting excellence for the service of India is disowned because of his birth documentation. Slumdog Millionaire is only slightly more an Indian film as Forrest Gump or one of those war movies was Vietnamese. Yet we rejoice and cry in happiness when a mostly mediocre film wins the Oscar, mostly due to lobbying. SM was an entertainer made for the American audiences, winning their awards. We never rejoiced so much when Traffic Signal or Chandni Bar showed the gruesome reality of India in a much more realistic fashion. It's almost as if both our pride in Bollywood, and the starkness of the truth of our poverty needs an approval from the West to really start meaning something for us.

Oh well, so long as India wins the upcoming cricket series against New Zealand, I'm proud of us.

Parking: the invincible monster

This is a long overdue story of the famous five who wished one day, to explore the streets of the ancient city of Delhi and undertake a voyage to see glimpses of its heritage, despite all the perils that lay on their way, primarily the monsters of traffic. This is a story of the L, the Doc, the Kiddo, the Psycho and the Munna, and their ever-trustworthy, beautiful Taani partner, aka this. It was a wonderful Saturday morning, and we wished to spend the day merrily around the city, in particular exploring the delights of the Walled City.
It didn't begin so well, and we started an hour later than we intended to, yet we made up for it by treating ourselves to Wimpy's burgers, arguably the best fast-food joint burgers in Delhi, and sang our way along to Red Fort. We braved the nuisance of afternoon traffic monsters with the strength provided to us by the aroma of the Dilli-6, and managed to reach our destination, but then we were faced by a monster so mammoth, fear crept inside our spine.
Parking.
We searched and searched, through the bylanes of Red Fort and Chandni Chowk parking, mindlessly cutting right across 4 lanes from left-most to U-turns, but in vain. The only spot we saw was immediately occupied by an industrious clever entrepeneur cutting down his floor area cost and setting shop there. Then we decided to get to the Chandni Chowk metro parking lot, but when we finally reached the gates of that heaven, we found ourselves caught in a queue outside the gate, for Heaven was full! We couldn't go front or back, and the queue moved very slowly, allowing inflow only when there was some outflow. We waited, and to our utter joy, 15 minutes later, we were allowed in. We celebrated in delight, but before we knew it, Heaven turned into hell. All we could see was darkness all around. Darkness and metal. Rows of cars lined in every possible space everywhere one could see. We got lost in the maze, trying to find beloved Taani a place to wait a few hours, but all in vain. 30 minutes later, we gave up and decided to exit. The exit, just like the entry was a 45 degree slope with cars parked on both sides on the slope of what was originaly a three lane exit from the basement.
As we were trying to make the accent, two cars ahead of us, someone had prized a spot on the slope and was trying to park it in, when he suddenly stopped and walked out, with the car half inside both lanes. On being called, he said, "Aap log 5 minute ruko, main chai pi ke aata hoon".
!!!!!!!
A part of us died there.
Somehow, he was persuaded, we got out and ran for life. We went all the way to Old Delhi Railway station, but the parking was full there as well. The last hope had died. We just made our way back, seeing Red Fort for the third time from the windows of the car in the last two hours.
It was just not meant to be.
The retreat was easier, and Doc was just being helpful when he yelled out at the top of his voice to the motorists struck in a jam on the opposite side of the road, "There IS no parking. Go back!"
We stopped at Darya Ganj to nurture a beaten soul and stomach, then made our way to CP, where to find ourselves some solace, a brilliant idea and some more outrageous lane manoeuvering led us to Jantar Mantar. When we finally parked, Doc with the parking ticketin his hand said with tears of joy: Finally!
So we saw a different beautiful red building, and original destinations have been left as hurdles for another day. Food and drink at CP healed us for the day.

But there was more on that day to follow. Doc took us to watch ek kutte ki emotional kahani, Marley and Me. (Jennifer Aniston is OLD now). While we were pulling our hair in frustration, Doc insisted he loved the movie, and I suspect it was because of the really hot chick sitting right next to him. For the rest of us, the movie sucked out whatever spirit the afternoon had left behind.
And so we retired to the abode, armed with fresh spirits, and even as other comrades joined us for what tured out to be an eventually entertaining night courtesy couple of my really drunk and really funny co-warriors, the day left us with leassons to learn and memories never to forget.

PS If you ever wanna go to Red fort or old delhi, park at a metro station, and take the tube. That is THE only way.
PPS Wenger's at CP is awesome, if you already didn't know.
PPPS If you find a better burger than Wimpy's, let me know.
PPPPS Please do not ask NMG or L their drunk and partially censored adventures of the night. They really don't remember.

An intricate world

Lying at home these wintry days switching channels with the remote, I cannot help but wonder the amazingly intricate system that we live in, curse and live in still, and how because of it and despite it, we keep surviving. :-) Everyday the newspapers are full of people contradicting themselves many times over, from the Pakistani establishment to our own Home Minister and dear Leader of Opposition. And last night, as I was just wondering aloud to my mother, if both sides accepted LOC as as international border, called it the end of the Kasmir dispute, and with that the bulk of all things malign between India and hamara padosi desh, when my mom was like, imagine the number of people who'd suddenly be unemployed, the amount of money defence would no longer legally need, and the absolute disappearance of purpose it would mean for so many in Pakistan. And I am still stuck in that reflection. For a nation founded on the vision of hatred against Hindus, on an "us" vs "them", wouldn't the snatching away of a cause in focus cause them to disintegrate, especially when they look at the mess their rulers have put them in, for even in the worst case, Muslims this side of the border are on a whole better off. Whats the fault of common, innocent people, forever victims?!

And while on victims, as condolences, praise, sympathy and all sorts of emotions vent all across India and the world for the victims of Mumbai, and politicians and mediamen alike scamper to justify themselves and find a blamegoat, find something to hide against, the drama of Indian democracy goes on. It all makes for funny television, and sad reality. Sachin Tendulkar's stoic match-winning century and Viru'd blaze was more pleasant television, but then again, only an illusory joy. What an intricate world!

Job-hunting-II

General Observational Expertise Pvt Ltd has temporarily outsourced its primary services to Random Funde Inc, thanks to cost-cutting necessitated by recession.
Latest report attempts to give random recruitment season gyaan and details the businesses that seem to have done considerably well in 2008. Let's have a look at the top 5:

• Law Firms: Bankruptcies, mergers, takeovers, mass pink-slips, law suites, increased stress/hate/passion crimes, cost-cutting, contract breaches and what not. Everything is in a turmoil, and the legal department is busy!
  
• Mental Health Industry: At number 4 , the people selling advice, solace and anti-depressant drugs have had a good year. Everything from rising prices to disappearing jobs to sinking stocks to rising crime and terror is driving the blood pressure up, happiness low and stress to the sky. As relationships rock, as MBAs kidnap for money, as people ask for divorce because of stock market losses, as someone loses a lifetime of saving...somebody is still making money! Sad :(
  
• News Channels and agencies: More masala than ever. A new crash, a new headline. Another bomb blast, another breaking news. More the recession, more the number of people needed to cover it. The less said the better here, for everyone knows how bad news makes better "copy" anyway!
• Politics: The runners-up, and an eternal bull of the market. The US elections and its coverage seem to have dragged on and on forever till more people across the world heard of Barack Obama than the heads of state of their own country. The world voted for a Black American president, almost. And now, India has its own political season red hot with elections in states on, and general not too far away. The pitch has been rising all year, with each party crying themselves hoarse. Madam Maya wants a bigger pie, Congress is afraid of doing too much lest something backfires to combine with anti-incumbency, and Mr Advani knows it is his last shot at the top job. It's business out there, folks, and rising prices and falling jobs, is actually good for business!
• Terror: A winner by a fair margin! Bombs have put up a consistent show all over India this year. They invented a new brand of Hindu terror to compete with the mature Islamic terror so that the brand war killed peace and logic and helped the market grow further. Special Saturdays were introduced and unprecedented production levels achieved so even 26 defused bombs in one city in a day did not mar the show. People dying was a regular efficient event capturing new markets including North-east. And now they have pulled off the mother of them all, attaching the heart and soul of India, openly firing at innocent people and forever tarnishing a city, a people and a hope. Way to go!
  

:( :( :(

Being PM

I was just reminded of the times when we were young and had to write those essays on "If I were the Prime Minister of India", or something to that effect. I don't know if they still have those kind of homework exercises, but if they did, this would be one of the apt answers:

If I were the Prime Minister of India right now, I'd be really confused and flipping a coin to decide what I should concentrate on.
Whether the alarming terror situation in the country with recent flurry of blasts in the cities, or the alarming external security situation, with Pakistan and Nepal growing more volatile by the day.
Or, the global economic meltdown and focus on minimizing its loss to India, its stock market, its industry and its banks.
Or, controlling the surging inflation in the country.
Or, about the grave floods in Bihar affecting over a 2.5 million people.
Or in Gujarat and Orissa.
Or, the farmers in Vidarbha.
Or, the drought-like situation in many states where water-sharing is an issue.
Or, work for restoring peace and harmony in Jammu and Kashmir. Heal a wounded part of the country.
Or, control insurgency and bring back peace in the North-east.
Or, focus on the rising crime rate in metropolitan cities.
Or, act against the heinous communal acts and forced conversions and reconversions in Orissa. Bring back peace between the Hindu and Christian communities.
Or, work to preserve the GDP growth rate which looks like slipping below 7%
Or, work to establish a fundamentally strong economy.
Or, work to promote education at the grass-roots of the society by ensuring free primary education, a bill that hasnt been cleared in four yrs because the States dont want to foot the cost.
Or, build more higher education institutes and medical colleges(IITs??)
Or, bring nuclear power to India and setup the reqd infrastructure so India can meet its energy needs.
Or....
.....
.....
.....
....

Dream job, anyone????

This isn't a critique on anyone's performance, just a sentiment that comes through grabbing the headlines every morning.
India, such a marvellous country!

Jaago Re!

Here's an issue really close to my heart, something I've repeatedly talked about in previous posts on this blog. We need to vote. All of us. Every single person eligible, must vote. It's much more our national duty than a national right. If we do not vote, we have no right to celebrate or curse our democracy, no right to complain about the "system" and no right to wish things would change for the better. Every single vote counts, and in this respect, the Jaago Re! One Billion votes initiative is something I think each and every one of us must support.
And act on.

India needs ten minutes of your time. Spend five minutes today, register, and help spread the word. And five on the day of the election. Make a responsible choice. Trust me, every drop makes a difference. Do you have ten minutes for your country?

Let's stop making excuses. It is not cumbersome (check the website to bust some common myths about registration and voting) and it is not futile. Please.

Reality Bites: Zara Nach Ke Dikha

In this age of reality television, with so many shows on air it appears almost unrealistic that they still survive;from "Big Boss" to "Bathroom singer", each one faces immense competition to be more entertaining, more fun, more dramatic and more hatke than the rest of the crowd, giving rise to hypes, controversies, drama and what not, along with a quantum loss in sensitivity and sensibility. One among many in the dancing segment was StarOne's Zara Nach Ke Dikha! that had its Grand Finale last night. The concept of the show was an age old battle of the sexes with a TV star studded team of seven and a half boys versus seven and a half girls, judged by Malaika Arora and Chunky Pandey (remember him?). I saw two or three episodes in the preceding weeks, and they were just fine, with a few good dance performances. To its credit the show was mostly entertaining, always a passe, and the unique point betting system kinda made it fun. That essentially meant that every team put a certain number of points from its kitty as a bet before each round and whoever won the round as per the judges got that many points while the loser lost that many from their tally. With that in place, an additional judge (Saroj Khan) and the Girls and Boys teams nicely pitted at a mere one cumulative point difference, the Grand Finale yesterday seemed interesting enough to watch, and for the next four hours featured decent performances by the participants as well as guest performances by the host and Malaika herself.

The drama element was always high, without doubt. In the first round, the boys bet 300 points of their 870 odd and lost in a close but fair judgement, at least IMO., and in the second again they bet 161 and lost in what was truly a spectacular performance of shadow dance by the girls team. The girls chose to play safe all along, betting (and winning too) smaller totals. The third was a couples round in which the boys clearly had an upper edge over the girls and managed to win back 300 points again, while the girls lost 75. But it was the fourth that was the clincher. It was a Face-off round with a medley performed by one dancer from each team one after the other and mostly simultaneously, and was one of the best dance performances of the show, by both teams. It is hard to choose who was better than the other, and to be honest I enjoyed Bakhtiyar's energy as much as the intricacy and variety of Ashita Singh's steps, but as it turned out, the judges chose to award it to the Girls. They claimed it was close and they probably examined the technicalities better than we did, but it was at least hard to say that one of them had done a bad job. However, the Boys team felt the decision wasn't fair and chose to walkout in frustration, although they were back in some time. That was where things turned ugly. Probably the quality of judgement wasn't upto the mark, and since when is Chunky Pandey (drooling on women) a judge anyway. I did not see all of the series, but I gather that girls won more frequently than guys and there were couple of brilliant people on both sides. Still, even if the boys thought they were short-changed, what they did next in the final round was a complete shocker. As it turned out later, they had lost 250 points in their penultimate round and hence had no chance of winning after that, so they claimed they had lost all motivation because of flawed judging standards and came out lip-syncing on the stage their final performance instead of dancing. What followed was judges expressing outrage, Chunky Pandey wanting a sex change operation and the Girls winning, among other things. Other details here.

Now the point is, I understand if the boys feel unhappy and frustrated, but what they did was in really bad taste. Their gestures, the way each of them bowed in front of the girls teams' desk during that final performance and the manner in which they behaved on national television was plain humiliating and immature. It was unfair on the girls team who put up the hardwork to put a decent show in their turn in that round, and just totally against sportsmanship. There ought to be a more decent way of complaining, or protesting ,but this looked too much like a spoilt kid's act who cannot handle failure. Or maybe just another case of bruised male ego. To express angst against the judges because they thought they should have won when they didn't is one thing, but they went to the extent of disrespecting the opposition by their behavior which was entirely uncalled for. They were the ones who decided to bet so high, and once their risks backfired, they were always going to be on the backfoot. To their bad luck, the girls did a more than decent job consistently, but even if they had lost I do not think that Delnaaz and her girls would have chosen to act so immature and frivolous on TV, rather than just being graceful losers.

Albeit in our times, nothing is increasingly shocking, (even bomb blasts are fast losing newsworthiness) sometimes the new lows of Indian television and celebrity behavior in public manage to shock nevertheless. Full credit.

What's terrorism without terror?

"So, the terrorists struck again? Which city today? Ah, Delhi. Okay."

Sounds like a familiar fragment of conversation. Too familiar an event?? Tell me, if terror attacks are this routine, do they even manage to terrorise? It's just become an everyday event for the fatigues indifferent people of India, just as used to the recurrent news of Blueline accidents, BMW runovers, horrifying rapes and devastating famines. They happen everyday. We are sorry they happen. And then we move on.

But nobody wastes colossal amounts of funds, risks lives, months of meticulous planning and training on planning a famine and a road accident. Terrorists, by God, are in a profession noone increasingly cares about. No governments fall, no wars happen, nobody almost even makes a point and intelligence gets a few curses and a lot more work to do. Cynics guess that terrorists do it either to show to the powers-that-be who fund them where the money is going much like MCD occassionally builds a road or two to show where the budget disappeared, strictly audit purposes. Or else, it is just some kinda corporate competition between various terrorist groups that they fight over board room meetings and power point presentations that highlight their achievements of the year.

It's almost algorithmic these days how these attacks happen. Multiple blasts in a short duration of time, few people die, city goes on high alert for 24 hours, and people get on with life as police tries and finds someone responsible. News channels have a field day and govts. condemn attacks and distribute compensation. The only people who are directly affected and wounded are the dead and the injured, and their families. Their lives change forever for the worse, but sadly enough, in a country of 1.1 billion, the number is too few for anyone to remember for long, and for the society to bleed as a whole. More people have probably died in the Bihar floods than in a decade of terrorism across the country, and the collective apathy of this society has failed to move us even then. For our generation that has virtually grown up on news headlines of bomb blasts, train sabotage, hijacks and kidnappings, terrorism has, fortunately or unfortunately, become a part of our lives we are used to living with. And if this is the case with people like me, it's not hard to imagine how someone my age in Kashmir feels about it.

Saturday evening when the blasts struck Delhi, I was out with few of my very close friends. We had booked tickets for a 735 movie at PVR Priya less than an hour ago when at 645 we heard that there were bombings across Delhi. At that time we'd returned from a late lunch and were safely in IIT campus, but ten minutes later after a brief discussion we decided to go to the movie anyway. Somehow, the blasts didn't scare me at all. The people I cared about were all safe, and somehow it wasn't worth cancelling the plan and wasting 800 bucks for the 'risk'. We were safe inside the movie halll anyway, we reasoned. So four of us went anyway, and Priya was yet unruffled when we reached at 720. Not surprisingly a lotof peoplendid not turun up for the show, and when we got out at 945 after the movie, everything was shut down and deserted, which meant we hunted quite a bit around the city to find a place for dinner. And then we caught on the news to know how many bombs and how many dead. That's it.

Joke of the day was how Indian Mujahideen isn't even a scary enough name. And why call themselves Indian when they hate India? Organized crime has poor aesthetics, and purpose. Our police and intelligence may not be competent enough, our govt. not sensible enough to setup a federal Counter terrorist agency or something, but I have a feeling terrorism will still die out in India eventually, because our people do not care any more.

Cheers to the spirit of India!

Questions this week

One for the techies: Is Cuil the next big thing in search, competing with Google, with thrice as many web pages and former Google brains behind it? It doesn't impress a LOT yet though, even if it's slicker, because of a greater upload time and an apparently special aversion to "google" pages, e.g. Blogspot, which almost do not show up in results at all...Interestingly, it openly criticizes Google's "personal" information collection snooping policies by claiming "We believe that analyzing the Web rather than our users is a more useful approach". Also, what do you think, will Google's Knol manage to be bigger, better than wikipedia, eventually??

On stuff considering lesser mortals next, are we really that stupid, that naive a country that while thousands die in terror attacks every year, we spend the days after 23 blasts spanning two major cities blaming Govt and opposition parties and claiming political conspiracies to unsettle state govts. (do they have a sane head on their head? any of them?) instead of reassuring people, preventing fear and rumor and taking strict action. Seriously, every time something so tragic happens, it makes me think about the heartlessness and the mindlessness with which some people do these things. And about the inefficacy of the politicos, though seeing PM walking with the Gujarat CM to the victims was a reassuring glimpse of sanity. But frankly, what doI expect from a country where someone like Mayawati actually has a real chance today to become Prime Minister of India on some frail stitched regional support. How tragic will that be!!! Scares me to death. For good or for worse, the rgional parties in India have gained a lot of muscle at a national stage in the past couple of decades and one of the worst things that has done is creation of divisive ideologies in India, Hindu vs Muslim, Gujjar vs Meena, General vs OBC, Dalit vs Manuwadi, and endless such crap. Shameful.

On another note, this Sunday I was in CP with an hour to kill, so ended up at Oxford bookstore and chanced upon this small but interesting book "Games Indians Play" by V. Ragunathan that basically uses Game theory to find an insight into why are we, the Indians, the way we are? Quite simply, adding a why to "hum aise hi hain". It says a lot of interesting things, including that Indians suffer from a lack of regulation as well as self-regulations, are privately smart and publicly dumb, and are extremely akin to the situation in the Prisoner's Dilemma where everyone rationally chooses a non-cooperation strategy for personal gain and community loss, except without realizing it is a dilemma at all. It attempts to explain why we tend to jump queues or red lights, have poor public hygiene, take short cuts and tend not to keep our part of the bargain fairly in one-off deals. It also hints on half a solution, or half a strategy that makes a lot of sense to me, hence here it goes: The strategy is called Tit for Tat. It says, never defect, that is never not-cooperate, or be unfair to someone, or cheat a rule etc, until the other party cheats on you, and defects first. Then at the next time, you defect, but see if it co-operates. If it does, co-operate again the next time. In short, remember only the previous behavior of the system you interact with and act accordingly, but never defect first. So, each time someone you say hello to someone who ignores you, do not go into the "never again" revenge modes...just avoid until other person decisively greets or and act on this reaction from the next time.

But all this theory apart, you tell me, what do you think, why are we the way we are?

The Great Indian Drama: What's the big DEAL about?

Let's face it: there're plenty of disadvantages of omniscient omnipotent media, not the least being the persistence with which it serves you Dirty filthy politics Live 24X7 day in and day out. It's making me sick in the stomach, the open mud-slinging and disgust on display ever since the drama began on the Nuclear Deal. And even though the Govt continues to stay in power for now, the only victor today has been Mayawati, with an enhanced stature and a real chance at becoming India's PM (yuck yuck, I swear)
Recap, early July: The Left withdrew support as the UPA refused to back out of the 1-2-3 agreement with the US and thus began the numbers game. Frankly, the Indian public has come to expect much of what transpired, and so nobody was surprised. If anything, Left leaving was slightly relieving as it brought hopes that maybe, if the Govt survived, some reforms would go ahead without the political compulsions that Left's persistent threats gave rise to. Afterall, the last four years India has hardly seen an Opposition, with the NDA mostly asleep, and the Govt had to keep fighting tooth n nail within itself thanks to the communist parties. So, in the first part of the July, when political scene heated up with BJP finally seeming to wake up a little, SP abandoning its Congress hatred and coming to the Govt's rescue (for a price much greater than renaming Lucknow Airport, I'm sure) and a third front seeming to re-emerge, nobody was shocked.
If at all, I was amused, watching the constant debates on newstertainment channels. Nobody has a clear stand. Nobody really opposed the nuclear deal as well. NDA would have supported it had it been in Govt, for sure, but as Opposition they must prevent UPA staking credit and hence wanted a "re-negotiation" with US. SP swore by Kalam's word on the greatness of the 1-2-3 and made that their excuse of seeking shelter with Congress, though the political realities of UP and the SP's dire need of survival is hidden from none. And BSP launched daily attacks on SP, UPA and everybody under the roof, with Behenji going to the extent of saying that the Nuclear deal is anti-Islamic and that US will attack Iran the day the deal is through. Wtf, I say. The Left stuck to their anti-deal position, and stuck to the pro-China lobby with heavy anti US criticism, meanwhile throwing the "secular-forces-unity" out of the window. And Congress came out as the hapless appeasement messiah running helter-skelter to garner support. All this while media channels had a field day running contests on the guessing game of numbers and analysing every single analysis.
And even all that at the end of the day failed to shock the common Indian man, mere spectator in the deals behind the Deal. But the last two days, just watching Lok Sabha proceedings on TV fills me with a deep sense of shame. So much, that I really hope we stop calling our inter and intra college debates as Parliamentary debates, because the Parliamentary behavior on display was deeply disgusting. More than once my heart went out to the Speaker, surrounded in no less media controversy of late owing to his CPM origins, for the amount of patience he had to exercise and watch the house make a mess of itself over and over and over again. Are these people fit for representing us internationally?
90% of the time the debate on the house, when someone was allowed to speak and so there was one, concerned everything but the deal. Blames flew in all directions and there was so much mud-slinging that eventually everyone was neck-deep in mud. You could hear everything from Kandahar to 1976 to Pokhran-I to inflation to Rajiv Gandhi's assassination on the floor. When Lalu sounded like he was herding cattle, it ironically felt apt. When Mr. V.K. Malhotra, aspiring Delhi CM (?), went on from the offensive to the abusive, you wanted to cry. There were a few gems, notably Omar Abdullah's and Rahul Gandhi's speech, as well as the seizing of opportunity of North-east and small party MPs to voice regional issues when they had the mike for a change. But fact remains that the PM wasn't even allowed a reply speech at the end in all the mindless yelling and indiscipline.
But the darkest moment of the day came when BJP came up with 1 crore cash inside Parliament alleging bribery. Did the Congress/SP bribe? Did the BJP plant the money as they were losing anyway? I'm sure the media is going to debate this for a long long time, and this is not the last we've heard of all that transpired, but for now, for tonight, I've one question for every single Indian citizen: Do you really care about the answer to that question? Whether this money was given or planted, you know already money's traded all sides by all parties, don't you? You know nobody's clean, not even the holier-than-thou Dr. Manmohan Singh could claim unimpeachable honesty and alienation from what his party does. You know about the trades, whether or not this one is true and whether or not anything is proved. All parties are dirty.Do you really care about one versus another over the money? Whoever gets it, it's our money that should be used to build our houses and fill our stomachs, not of those on-sale commodities they call ministers.
I guess nobody really cares about whose hands on the money, but anyone would be disgusted by the lack of respect for Indian Constitution and Indian Parliament shown today by our leaders. Such a shame for democracy. Such a shame for a "rising superpower" that they want us to believe India is.
I have an appeal too: Waving your head in disgust alone is not going to solve anything. Let us all, every single one of us, people educated and mature enough to understand what's best for the country, let us all vote next elections. Most students I know don't, a majority of India's middle class does not, and I'm not saying this alone will solve all problems, but it could be a start. It could, at least, turn a few collections awry in a few constituencies if all the students turned up to vote. How tough is it to do? After all, it's our future at stake, and I'm sorry to say, it doesn't look good.

Dedicated to HRD Minister

Mr. Arjun Singh, you seriously need a brain transplant.
Now the HRD minister wants quota for IIT faculty!!! For heaven's sake!!
This is the height of ridicule. There's already reservation for all staff and now students in IIT. And as of the latter wasn't already going to diminish the standards and brand of this place, you now want faculty to get the caste flag. How divisive politics can be! This makes me so angry I want to kill him. And it's absolutely senseless too. Already we do not have the 'best' faculty owing to the low salary bars the govt fixes for IIT professors. Now, everything will be destroyed. Seriously, is this the British Empire days in disguise, divide India, rule India???
And this time, I can't see which vote bank he's trying to pander to, either. The number of people who potentially benefit from this move would be abysmally low, and the OBC community is enough appeased by whatever has already happened. But just the thought of something so outrageous in his head is disgusting for every single person with an ounce of brain in his head. It's like buying sub standard machinery to make guns during war time.

This govt, powerless enough to control inflation and powerless enough to go through with probably the only good thing they have brought up, the nuclear deal, has it now sold out the country too?!?!

IPL :: Bad move??

IPL is great entertainment, an addictive timepass despite its long duration and vociferous publicity and support by BCCI, Bollywood, India Inc et al have translated in a success dazzling enough that nobody probably remembers the older poorer cousin, ICL, now. Yet, with its gripping power over the masses, it looks like its doing some serious damage with its regional philosophies.

I'm sure some marketing strategist would've advocated it, and maybe it pumps up the moolah by some skewed complicated equation too, but IMHO it's a bad move in the greater scheme of things to have regionally identified teams...we might as well have had SuperKings playing Royal Challengers, but instead it's a Chennai vs Bangalore clash, and unfortunately not just on the field but also in the stadium and on the streets. And hence a crucial Delhi DareDevils vs Mumbai Indians clash brings Dilliwallahs at odds with Mumbaikars, and the regional pride and self-esteem of parts of our country dips and rises with the IPL point tally. It couldn't have been incidental either, since the first promos of IPL itself focussed on bitter rivalry between supporters of different teams, identifiably natives of those regions.

There is definitely a section of people, me included, who care for the team, the players and cricket only to decide their loyalties (damn Mumbai the chokers, they're a better team than people to throw away 3 on 3 matches in the last over) but then, I love test matches as much as T20, perhaps more, and the glamour and glitz was never targetted at me in the first place(for the record the Lahore XI in ICL is an awesome team). It does make a difference, however, for the masses who burn effigies at world cup losses, celebrate Diwali at Dada centuries and pray for Sachin's back to heal faster. They count, I don't, and it is them who're being manipulated in a dirty way. What surprise then that the Mumbai crowd chooses to boo the Mohali players defeating "their" team, even if it means cursing their favorite Yuvraj Singh.

Encashing on feverish patriotism was a bad enough exercise when India played an ODI with Pakistan and gunshells boomed on the LOC depending on who won, but taking the rifts deeper inside home seems like a very bad move at a broader level for a country already struggling to hold up despite differences (and mindless Gujjar agitations).