The scales of justice are lopsided

What I saw Wednesday

It's funny how so many things come together and make you ponder about an allied topic that perhaps ties them all together. This may sound all twisted and weird, but here's the deal. If we were to watch the news today, there is tremendous hue and cry on how there has been a total miscarriage of justice (a very trendy word, it appears for the media, who have been using the term from Jessica Lall, through Ruchika and now to the Bhopal Gas disaster). Anyway, the issue being talked about is our legal system and the way in which, people cringe at the mention of the word 'sue'. Not defendants, but rather complainants themselves who many-a-time choose not to opt for the legal route because of the slow churning wheels of the law and the high associated costs!

People died in the hundreds that night, when India was still a fledgling democracy. It's wrong to view a 1984 case through the lenses of today! Union Carbide has been taken over by Dow. The CEO is 90 years old! What punishment can you give a 90 year old man??? 20 years in jail?

Some points they mention in the case are rather sad though. That Union Carbide compensated the Government back then on the basis of the number of casualties they reported back then. But that was Bhopal, a small town in pre-liberalized India! An India that 6 years later would teeter on the brink of bankruptcy. How can you expect such a Government to provide veracious data? Statistics and data were not strong. Obviously they wouldn't be, since 1984 was still an age of Doordarshan and no computers, let alone spreadsheets and internet. And what about the millions suffering birth defects today? But then again, what happened to those who brought about the disaster at Hiroshima and Nagasaki? War time crimes do not classify as comparable cases, you say? Well, a human life is a human life, and prolonged, chronic, perpetual harm as an underlying thread is decidedly comparable!

Along similar lines of negligence, but on a smaller scale is the loss of life through negligent driving. Over the past 2 weeks, I've seen news of some top notch politician's kid ramming a suave car into a cab, an auto rickshaw, people, snatching away the ballast of a family in one rude jolt. A young mother of 3 kids, the eldest of which is 4? The sole earning member of a family of 5 young girls? And the perpetrators walk off on bail. And you truly wonder whether India is a country of numbers alone. A rather sad fact. Whether the anchor of a family dies as a result of a chemical leakage, or as a result of a road accident caused by rash driving by a rich kid, a family is devastated. A tragedy occurred in 1984, and almost 26 years later an apology of justice is being meted out. Several tragedies occur on Indian roads today, and 26 years later, I doubt whether anyone would even remember the incident!

Maximum City - an urban nightmare

Mondays in Mumbai

Annoying horns, crackling firecrackers, the annoying digging noise of a digger somewhere, dust flying all over the place. Seems like a scene straight out of a day in Mumbai? Yes. What happens when you try to fill a water balloon and keep pouring water in beyond what the balloon can carry? That is exactly what is happening to Mumbai. Maximum city is bursting at its seams. Despite being a Mumbaiphile, despite how much it hurts me to write this piece, it is the truth!

To keep up with the urbanization spree, the infrastructure needs to grow. So everyone needs bigger roads and more buildings. And now, India is a growth story with Mumbai as one of its central characters. So, people are getting more affluent. As the standard of living increases, people grow aware of heretofore unknown entities like status symbols and so on. So, in a new phenomenon that is gripping Mumbai, people buy 4 cars per household! 2 small cars, and 2 SUVs, all for a family of maybe 4! Given the affluence, people hire a driver for a small sum a month and absolve themselves of the sorrows of driving in Mumbai. The result - the ever burgeoning need for more flyovers and even bigger roads! As the number of rich people grows, room at the bottom and the middle of the pyramid is let up and more poor people migrate into the city. This puts a pressure on public transport, the buses and trains in Mumbai, which till date have been hailed as the best in India! But even these have a set capacity which cannot be overshot.

The result - the balloon bursts. Crowds have become unimaginably huge such that traveling by public transport is literally painful. Augmented crowds lead to discomfort and whole lot of rage in an already stressed out city! Fine, so one could choose to travel in his own vehicle. But what will you do when someone chooses to take his SUV through rush hour traffic? He probably wouldn't realize the agony he is causing by choking up an arterial road in peak traffic, since he is perhaps being driven! And everybody else on the road has to put up with the ordeal of having to traverse a 20 minute distance in 2 hours. Add to the mess the pain of incessant honking, which adds on to the noise and unbeknownst to us augments our stress levels. Another major problem is the noise pollution that people in houses need to bear. An arterial road goes past their apartment building and they have to bear the noise of vehicles, sirens and honks all day and all night. This is a slow poison which has the capacity to increase stress levels and cause a whole slew of physiological as well as psychological problems!

What can be done? Well thankfully, a lot. In terms of urbanization, Mumbai is not the pioneer, nor is India, for that matter. So we have loads of precedents to fall back on. So, for the public transport infrastructure, decidedly we need wider roads, although not at the expense of trees and mangroves. We need more trains and more buses, or even more double decker buses! As far as road congestion goes, we can adopt rationing on the basis of number plates, as has been done in Brazil, which has the world's worst traffic congestion record. Or even adopt a penalty system for vehicles with single occupancy during peak hours, as has been done in Singapore. Another idea could be imposition of a prohibitively high tax on the third vehicle entering a household - a modification of the high purchase tax regime of Hong Kong. And as for the noise, well, putting up sound barriers or noise absorbent boards along arterial roads and expressways is a practice followed all over the developed world, to shield residential areas from road traffic noise. Surprisingly that mechanism is totally absent in India. Provincial parks and anointed green zones are essential in Mumbai, to check pollution levels as well.

All in all, strong and immediate steps need to be taken to preserve Mumbai's sanity. Or the very things that attract people to Mumbai and keep them there could turn to haunt them and perhaps even shoo them away!

Cell phone providers and me - the story gets more interesting...

Call centers and I are actually jinxed. But of late, I have realized that I have turned into some sort of a call center junkie! I really seem to dig calling up all these customer service 'exectives'. No.. No spelling error, this is how they say the word executive!

Now, if you really thought I was some kind of whacko like the kid who made some 25-odd calls to a Mumbai IT firm talking about a terror threat, I AM NOTHING LIKE THAT. Given a choice I'd prefer curling up with a book and a coffee, and maybe put in an occasional piece of writing, but to obtain that kind of an idyllic lifestyle, some basic gnawing issues need to be sorted out. One would have to be completion of pending tasks and the other would have to be smoothing out things that impact our daily life!

As profound as these may sound (I choose to call these 'discoveries' profound, since of late my life has lost all semblance of profundity, as my life now revolves around the mundane. So I wish to extract the most out of whatever it is that presents itself to me!). So, as profound as my discoveries may sound, for me to get to my end goal of an idle lifestyle, I figured I needed to interact with the highly annoying IVR of everyone who has anything to do with my life.

So, it all began with a cellular service provider heretofore referred to as the thought guys. The other day, as I sat cheering Mumbai Indians, I got a message on my cellphone that I had just finished interacting with a certain XYZ. All is ok with that, except that I had no clue who XYZ was. Suddenly the theme music of Karthik calling Karthik came into my head. Was I turning into a schizophrenic? Or was I suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder? Two of me using that one cell phone of mine? Intense! And then I started the hunt for the other me.

As usual, I called our friend 'Customer Service'. As before, several attempts met with the dead end. Multilingual repetitive messages later, all the while wondering who XYZ was, and worse, who XYZ's friend was who managed to talk to XYZ through my number, I hit the dead tone. Again and again and again. The reason behind my paranoia, was the fact that earlier, with the wind guys, I had had an experience ,as you perhaps might remember, with someone else answering when my number was called. So, I persevered. Tried over and over again, till finally, someone answered.

I explained my issue, and the person there said, "Madam, you got that message because you interacted with XYZ".

"But I don't know an XYZ"

"I understand madam, but you interacted with XYZ"

"I was watching the match and taking a nap before that. So how could I have called someone I didn't know?"

"No madam, that message is because you interacted with XYZ"

At this point, I got exasperated and demanded to speak to the floor manager.

"Madam, no use. He will also say the same thing!"

I was sincerely stumped. I was tempted to say, "Let him tell me the same thing himself!!!" But instead, I kept my temper in check and asked again to talk to his manager. The poor chap was pissed, but he put me through nonetheless.

This chap, thankfully knew his stuff and then the mystery was solved. This happened in a characteristic whodunnit manner. The floor manager, after the customary apologies that looked more rehearsed than ever, said that the message had come as a missed call alert. XYZ was the customer care person who had tried calling me a while back to try and disconnect my connection that I had spoken about previously.

At the end of this whole roundabout, convoluted story, though I was nowhere close to disconnecting that connection, I was relieved that I was at least proven to not be schizophrenic!!! See everything has a happy ending!!!!!

Me and cellphone providers -a saga of frustration

A while back I'd put up a post on a super annoying incident I once had with my lost sim card. I had tried to make a joke out of it since I was done being angry about it and clearly being angry about the incident did nothing for me. I found no redemption whatsoever. That account, for those who perhaps missed it is here - 'My run in with the wind guys'.

I would perhaps have let it go, except for the fact that this time around, I was again at the receiving end of painful customer service from another cellular services provider. So the wind guys frustrated me and made me swear never to use them again. (Ages ago, when I first started using cellular services hidden costs of the 'wind' guys cost me 3 months' pocket money. Yet, wiser and with a keener eye for fine print, I adopted them again only to be made to run and beg and scream when I lost my phone.) Nevertheless, now we talk of the 'thought' guys. So on a rebound from the 'wind' guys I ran into the open arms of the 'thought' guy. Thinking newer entrants would be more keen to provide sterling service.

Things were good for a while, till soon I realized that though business functions at the speed of thought, thought itself is rather sluggish. Other providers, at least the 'wind' guys, all else notwithstanding switched to international networks instantaneously. Yeah, a call would cost a bomb, but at least the service was available. But the thought guys were not like that. While in an alien country with sky-rocketing crime rates, when people back home were anxious over the safety of my life and limbs, here I was desperately trying to get through to them and the mystic 3 lines signifying a network were absent. Yeah I had been spoilt by the 'wind' guys, and that was perhaps my folly. But they never said that that service would not be available. But then again, they never said that that service would be available either. Note to self - absence of a negation of something does not necessarily imply positivity of the same. Sound profound, right? Well, at least profundity is the outcome of my flustered moments!

Then came part 2. I had to discontinue a connection with the 'thought' guys. I looked up their site. No link. I called up a local call center. A highly annoying IVR yaps into my ear asking me to choose my language of preference. I do. But not before listening to the same statement being translated into the various languages. Other IVRs usually move to the next level as soon as you choose your option without making you wait to hear all the options. Makes life easy if you know the options or if your option comes earlier on. But here, no. I had to hear 'Hindi ke liye do dabayein' and 'Marathi saathi teen daaba' despite me ferociously hitting 1 for English. Then I navigated to all the other menus, chose my options went all the way till finally the IVR said that my call may be recorded for training. And then the line got cut. So 20 minutes and an annoying IVR voice later, nothing. Period. And I did the whole thing again, went the distance only to end up at the dead end again. And again. And again. I mailed the guys - No response. So though technology may be advanced, face-to-face screaming is an absolute necessity to get things done in India!

So the net result is - I guess I am jinxed with cellphone companies and customer service. So all my thoughts were blown away and starting tomorrow, I need to start trudging towards the physical thought place to get my job done. I wonder what howlarious account this is going to produce. Perhaps No, Na, Nein, Non - part 3??? Watch this space for more...

The answer is out there...

When something begins to consume you, the best option is to let it all out. If you are consumed by anger, bury your head in a pillow and scream your head out. If you are consumed by the hurt of a betrayal, you have two options, confront the person who betrayed you and let it go, or bury your head in a pillow and cry your heart out. If you are consumed by self-doubt, as I am right now, tell someone, and if there is no one around to listen, just put it out there, the cosmic energy will take it somewhere.

I saw the movie Julie and Julia last night, and I loved it. A simple story of a lady in the early 1940s, the wife of a diplomat, moving countries and continents, searching for something to do that would define her. She falls in love with Paris and French food. She wants to write a cook book, taking French cooking to the American world. Her part of the story traces her travails trying to get published. A young woman in the early 2000s, with a lackluster career and a half-written novel without a publisher, wants to find a definition of her own life, something that she can wake up to happily in the morning and decides to embark on a Julie/ Julia project. She starts a blog, that runs for a year, as she cooks every recipe in Julia Child's 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking'. Her blog is an instant success and she is covered by the NY Times, gets multiple calls from agents who want to work with her on a book. And everything ends happily ever after.

So it's got writing a book, blogging and following your dreams. And I wonder, what is the point of writing here, unless I know someone is reading it. Like Julia Child says in the movie, when her first publisher chooses not to publish her book, " 8 years of my life wasted. Of what use is writing, if no one wants to publish it". I dream of writing one day, soon enough. For me, my blog is a means of testing the waters, if I may, to see whether I do indeed have it in me to make what others may want to read. And many-a-time, the absence of any sign tells me that I don't have it in me. I try to avoid the bellowing sound that resounds in my head telling me that I am perhaps wasting my time, and I would be better off doing something else, because I do not want to hear that response.

And then I wonder, what if one's virtual writings are liked primarily by people who know and like what one is in real life, the content of what you write, notwithstanding. Is it worth changing who you are, just so that people encourage what you like doing? The fiercely independent person in me, may perhaps want to vociferously declare - NO! But the fiercely passionate about writing person inside me may squeak - maybe yes. And that, whoever is listening out there, is the gist of 'drowning in self doubt'. Do I have the right answer? No. But when consumed with the question of 'whether all of this makes sense', I just float the question out there, hoping somehow, somewhere I will find an answer, an answer either one I want to hear, or an answer for which I develop the courage to hear.....

Bliss supreme - the evening after exams!!

Exams, exams, exams. I remember a time a couple of terms ago, when I sat melancholy on one of the 'kattas' of ISB and thought (as usual, a day before a deadly exam) - about the pathetic life I was leading. I left home and work and came here to study and ended up being examined every two weeks. Trust me, exams are worse than tooth exams or even the dreaded root canal! And I did some math. Given the number of subjects and given that almost every subject I took had a mid term and an end term, I would have on average given all of 64 EXAMS by the time I got out of here!!! And when I was thinking along those lines, I realized that I had only just crossed exam number 10!

And today, having finished 50% of term 6 at ISB, I do feel lighter, happier, that in the beam balance of exams, the pan of completed exams weighs more than the unfinished ones. Exams are tough. They are stressful. To the extent that many of my colleagues nowadays choose elective subjects that do not have exams at all! The email that used to come in a few terms ago stating that the Rec would be closed for exams used to send many of us into a 'dukhi tailspin'. And the thought used to be - 'Lo aa gaya aur ek torture'.

So much for the sad part of exams. There has to be a good side too, right? Well, if you expect me to speak about how exams nurture competition and help to separate the quality from the quantity and how exams are by and far the best things to happen to humanity since penicillin, WELL, YOU GOT ME WRONG! The best part about exams is the time when they end! Yes, the end of exams is the best part about exams. Just as we were walking home from exams today, a friend of mine mentioned the supreme bliss one experiences when an exam is over. I couldn't agree more with her. It almost is as though the pressure valve on a vessel were allowed to let out steam. The wind seems crisper, afternoons go from being sweltering to mellow and sunny. All of a sudden the chirping of birds is musical, even the crowing of an occasional crow! Task lists look prettier, with tasks like rent movie, order pizza, party, figuring multiple times on the list. Hours don't seem long any more, as you watch 3 movies back to back till the wee hours of the morning! And why? Well, we've worked hard - (or so we claim) and once the 2 hours of testing are done, the feeling is exhilarating.

'How the exam went' is an inconsequential question. We are only bothered about the fact that the exam is over. You may ask me about my motivation behind this post after terms and terms of painful exams. And my answer is - I really don't know. Perhaps bottled sentiments, after so long are getting an expression out here. There is another event tied to exams that demands mention. And that is the day before the last exam! I still remember my days at school where I'd plan more and study less on the day before the last exam. I'd plan where I'd go, what I'd do after getting home from the exam, what movie I'd watch, where I'd go out with a friend, etc etc, you get the picture. Poor old Geography exam - always the last, cared for the least. But one thing is for certain. I sure as hell will miss this supreme bliss and joy once I am out of academics, since the emotions before and after a last exam are practically unparalleled in every other walk of life!!!

So much for the blog, now back to some merrymaking!!

25 years in pursuit of justice - Bhopal

'Aapka Khoon Khoon Aur Hamara Khoon Paani!' - This is an old Hindi proverb and it literally translates to 'your blood is blood and our blood is water'. In many ways, this aptly describes the likely thoughts of the survivors and sufferers of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. 25 years ago noxious methyl isocyante fumes from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal escaped the plant in the dead of the night, exposing over half a million people who were asleep unaware of the disaster. According to the MP government, a total of 3,787 people lost their lives. This was just the instantaneous death toll. Lingering effects of the poison in peoples' systems went on to kill many many more with some estimates even running close to 20-25 thousand fatalities. Innocent human lives - women and children notwithstanding, were lost. And 25 years since then, it seems like nobody cares.

Well, this one disaster was by and far the single largest chemical disaster India has faced. And this one disaster actually contains instances and examples of almost everything that can be wrong with the system, with everything wrong stemming from greed and a gross lack of respect for human lives. A complete, credible investigation never really happened, and even now theories and conspiracy theories abound on why the MIC escaped the plant. But some fundamentally wrong aspects do snap out at you. Like why use MIC, a known hazardous chemical in the first place? When almost all over the world, technology had improved incorporating the use of more inoccuous chemicals. I am sure the hazmat controls in OECD countries would surely not have allowed such potentially hazardous plants to set up shop on their soil. Secondly, the chase of the bottomline made the plant managers not pay attention towards the upkeep of the safety system. Yet again, I wonder whether Indian human life is indeed so inexpensive. Whether cost benefit analysis valued Indian human life at close to 0? I am tempted to wonder why human life is not uniformly valuable across countries?

25 years on, the survivors still grapple with acute health disorders. There are also some reports of abandoned chemicals seeping into ground water reserves - I don't know how credible these reports are, but if they are, then the nightmares for the afflicted seem to never end. More than the physical damage, the psychological damage is heavier. Having a city mercilessly wiped out by perpetrators of a crime is painful. Knowing the motives behind the crime - in this case greed - hurts even more. Knowing further that several who were indeed trusted were complicit in this crime - through their sheer oversight and lack of caution, hurts all the more. And finally after all these years, when the none of the perpetrators, in fact, not even one of the accused is prosecuted, one feels cheated and perhaps absolutely worthless. So it has been 25 years spent in the pursuit of justice and though the sufferers have suffered enough, they see no light at the end of the tunnel, much like the darkness that enveloped them 25 years ago!

26/11 one year on...

26/11 - One year ago, Maximum City was ripped apart by terrorists who took India's commercial capital hostage. Terrorists who hurt Mumbai's elite core. One year ago, a few people valiantly fought the terrorists, in spite of being ill-equipped. A few lost their lives trying to protect the rest of us. We watched terror TV sitting in our living rooms, getting angry at the way the city was being plundered. We watched as news channels left security and the efforts of the security forces to the wind in the rage to capture the 'juiciest' footage. We saw the smirking face of terror. We read horror stories of differential treatment meted out to the injured at the Taj versus the injured at CST (not sure how much of that was true and how much was journalistic justice) . We saw a visibly shaken and battered Ratan Tata at the Taj premises. We heard stories of brave Taj staff, who put duty ahead of themselves while saving the lives of their guests. We heard poignant stories of an orphaned 2 year old and his brave nanny. We watched in horror the terror attack on Mumbai that lasted for days that seemed like it lasted forever. What has happened since then?

One year on - the tears have dried up, the blood stains washed away, the cries for justice have been muted. The Taj opened on 21st December last year - a sign of true resilience. Trains plied from CST the very next day.The 2 year old orphan makes an appearance in some papers. The smiling assassin is still languishing in prison, though most Mumbaikars wanted him dead a year ago. The masterminds are still at large. Security has been beefed up. Terror bills have been passed.

What remains is hope. A Satyagraha of sorts is on against Pakistan, in the hope that Pakistan takes steps to rein in the reign of terror. (Although as we speak, Pakistan has graver issues of her own). Hoping for a proper culmination of the anti-terror efforts, the incumbent government has been elected at the center and the state. Hope, as usual, still exists. Hope of a safer tomorrow and more balanced justice. Hope that the lives lost have not been lost in vain...

Thierry Henry - Hand of God

Hand of God. Again. The debate on whether the ends justify the means has come up. Again. A smirking Thierry Henry has now made way for a remorseful Henry. But like Arsene Wenger has said - sport is actually full of examples of people who have committed some form or another of foul, just to get to that end goal (pun intended). (Pic courtesy Sky News). Now France has qualified for the World Cup, but how many would remember the team for the qualifier? If France were to proceed strongly in the World Cup, would people observe the sport or still talk about Henry's hand goal? Do the ends truly justify the means?

But as instances throughout this year have shown, there really is no simple distinction between right and wrong in sport. This year alone has seen enough and more of such cases. Take F1. From the ignoble Lewis Hamilton scandal to the permanent expulsion of Flavio Briatore. The examples are plenty. People allude to the 2002 season, where Schumi passed Barrichello at Austria and then returned the favor at USA allowing Barri to win by 0.011 seconds! People say that such 'fixes' run contrary to the free spirit of sport. I argued then and I do even now that at least those moves were within a team and geared towards the greater good of the team. But in case of Henry, this is a clear violation of rules and I can draw a parallel with another rule in F1 where a driver is not allowed to make up positions by driving off a track around a bend. And if he does that he is penalized. Here, didn't Henry mould the decider goal by unfair means? Had that hand goal not happened, could we have seen a French victory? I doubt it very much.

And after the game, Henry very blatantly blamed the referee. Now whatever happened to integrity? Everyone extols Adam Gilchrist, for 'walking' in the 2003 World Cup in the semi final against Sri Lanka, after having hit just 22. Now, he could very well have stood his ground, since the umpire showed no reaction. But his action not only brought glory to him, but to the sport as well. All of a sudden meintions of cricket being the gentleman's sport started surfacing again. Scores of youngsters found a role model, again. So granted, there was a slip-up by the referee in the France-Ireland match, but the biggest referee of all, Henry himself knew that he was cheating. Shouldn't that have been grounds enough to admit to a fault and do something about it? Again, FIFA quotes the rule book saying an outcome cannot be changed. Now, what is the use of an archaic rule book if the rules do not allow fair outcomes? Isn't it time the rule book was amended then? By example?

All in all this is not just an unfair moment for Ireland. I guess it surely is a sad moment for France and a sadder one for World Cup Football. Roberto Baggio perhaps kicks himself still for that missed penalty. But Thierry Henry would be answerable to himself for the rest of his life if France goes on to win the World Cup. Given that repercussion, I guess the ends do not under any circumstance justify the means.

Marketing in your face!

I still vividly remember a chap who used to sell rat poisons. Not for any other reason, but the fact that his advertizing techniques looked absolutely awe striking back then. This chap used to walk around with a huge banner stuck to a stick, that had a small wheel on it. So this guy would wheel it around, and the banner had a clipart description of what the poison would do. I don't know whether anyone bought anything from him, but as far as advertizing goes - hats off to him indeed.

The other day, I saw another piece of advertizing that caught my attention. I forget the firm, but there was an ad for a financial service, along with a number you're supposed to call. And this data was printed on a sheet of paper that actually was the centerpiece of... hold your breath.... the headrest on an airplane seat!!! So imagine, this firm had actually captured one and a half hours of undivided eyeball attention. So much for in-flight entertainment. As though that were not enough, later, I saw another piece of advertizing by Vodafone, if I remember correctly, touting their pay-per-second plan on the back of a bus seat! They sure as hell have Mumbai traffic to thank for making me completely aware of the nitty-gritty details of their proposed plan. In your face adveritizing? Absolutely!!

This is the age of hoardings on top of skyscrapers, mobile advertizing vans parked at strategic locations, ads on lamp-posts, bridges, buses, whole local trains, and so on. I wonder what can be next. Perhaps we can extrapolate rat-poison-man to the next level and redefine a field sales person. Looking at the degree of in-your-face advertizing, the next time someone says that she or he is a field salesperson, do ensure you ask for the person's exact job description. Given our current status of advertizing, I wouldn't be surprised if the person walked the streets with a banner dangling from his/her neck, detailing the features of the newest electronic gadget to hit the street! And if a prospective consumer were to walk up to the salesperson and show sufficient interest, the consumer could even get to see a demo of the product! Sounds interesting? Well, let's wait a couple of years, this type of advertizing might just become the norm of the season...

A CHILDHOOD LOST

The other day, I happened to hear Jagjit Singh’s ‘Who Kaagaz Ki Kashti’, a beautiful ghazal whose essence is a reminiscence of one’s childhood. The first few lines of the song go thus

Ye Daulat Bhi Le Lo,
Ye Shohrat Bhi Le Lo
Bhale Cheen Lo Mujhse Meri Jawaani
Magar Mujhko Lauta Do Bachchpan Ka Saawan
Wo Kaagaz Ki Kashti Wo Baarish Ka Paani

And I was transported back in time to the good old days where the only worry in life was to figure out how to get the first turn on the swing in the evening at the park! Memories of childhood are made for those rainy days where you sit by the window and watch the water cascade down the panes. And far off in the distance you hear the squeals of laughter as kids of various shapes, sizes and colors, run outside in the pouring rain, and get wet, unmindful of their mothers who literally scream themselves hoarse trying to get their kids back to shelter. That sweet aroma of wet mud, the fun in jumping in those puddles and splashing water on the kids nearby… those good old days…. The monsoon then had a totally different meaning. Every morning we’d wake up and look at the sky. If it looked grey and cloudy, we’d all be happy and cheerful. If mom would tell us that it had been raining all night, all the better. We’d go to school, clean and neat, and get back home in an hour all soiled and murky. School’s closed, let the party begin!!!!

The song goes on to describe an old lady in the area, a grand motherly person for all the kids.

Mohalle Ki Sabse Nishaani Purani
Wo Budhiya Jise Bachche Kehte The Naani
Wo Naani Kee Baaton Mein Pariyon Ka Dera
Wo Chehre Ke Jhuriyon Mein Sadiyon Ka Phera
Bhulaaye Nahin Bhool Saqta Hai Koi
Wo Choti See Raaten Wo Lambi Kahaani

Well, we had our own ‘Ba’ too. She was a grumpy old lady who lived on the ground floor of our apartment building. She never liked kids, since they made too much noise and always broke her windows. And somehow, as kids, we followed Gandhian laws, Gandhigiri, much before Munnabhai could teach us how it’s done. We believed in ‘Love thy enemy’. And somehow, Ba and we had an unending love affair! She’d hate us peeking into her house, and we would ensure that we do just that. Once when she got so angry and walked up to the window in a huff, we very meekly pointed to the clock and said, “Time dekh rahe they auntie. Homework karne jaana hai na” and scampered off laughing. But mind you, this was not a one sided hate game. She had totally destroyed our effort of making our building premises environmentally rich! She had heartlessly pulled out the seed of the plant that we had tried to grow. It is a different thing that we had planted a mango seed in her pot, without her knowledge, and poured too much water in it. So when she saw two heads bobbing up and down outside her house and came to investigate, we were busy throwing away the excess water. Now who had expected her to stand in the path of the water’s projectile motion???!!!????

And just as these memories were streaming through my head; I remembered the morbid pictures of the Virginia shootout, the news piece about a certain twelve year old ‘terrorist’ beheading a captive! At 12 years of age, I didn’t even know who a terrorist was! That won’t hold true in today’s world anyway, since today every toddler, never mind whether he knows how to say ‘mamma’ certainly knows how to say Osama and Al Qaeda! Kids are killing other kids, other people. Such violence, hatred, qualities so uncharacteristic of children!

All of us would have seen the commercial on television that showed a poor child peeping through the fence as two kids fought for a ‘scholarship-bearing’ soiled cloth. What most of us didn’t see is the fact that those longing eyes find a place on practically every child at the traffic signal. Every child that is made to carry its smaller sibling and beg for money using the infant as an object of pity. What most of us fail to notice are the dreams of the children who work as hired help in houses, tea stalls, and small restaurants.

Most of us at least get a smile on our faces as we think of the time years ago when we were kids. By the time these children can begin to think of playing in the rainwater, they have been robbed of their worriless innocent existence. Many of them reconcile to the fact that their life will always remain on this side of the fence, while some others pick up a weapon, as a means to vent out their anguish. There is a very thin line that separates the oppressed from the violent. The sapping point is seldom, if ever noticed by anyone. And more often than not, it takes a Bastille for people to stand up and take notice…..

A WALK TO REMEMBER

They say scents or smells are the most evocative in nature. But on that front I beg to differ, because according to me, the juxtaposition of a place and a certain kind of weather have the propensity to throw the mind so heavily into a retrograde that it is difficult to shake away the wave of emotion that overpowers one at the time. I say this as I had the good fortune of experiencing a similar emotion just yesterday. I was to go to Bandra, Hill Road to be precise in order to pick up a receipt. That such a trifling incident would trigger such a reaction as to provide me the opportunity to experience unalloyed joy for the remainder of the evening was something I had not expected as I boarded the train that was to take me from my workplace to Bandra. But the moment I saw the diamond-shaped board that read BANDRA, I was reminded of a friend who once told me that that I could lose weight if I managed to cover the distance from my college to Bandra station in 7 minutes flat. I was tempted to try the 7 minute exercise again, but refrained from doing so as my goals were different today. I stepped out of the station only to cross the booking counter, where I saw a girl standing with a college bag slung across her shoulder, glancing fervently at her watch and at the exit point of the station. It looked like time had frozen for me. The same scene 4 years ago, the same cloudy sky, the same fervent look, the same crowd billowing out of the rather narrow exit arches at Bandra station; just the person was different as I was then waiting for one of my friends who was to accompany me on the then 15 minute walk to college.

I walked across the road, heading towards Hill road, crossed the familiar Bandra bus depot and saw the ever crowded 505 bus stop, as crowded as ever. Some things never change! I finished my task and came back to the road, to find the clouds intact, yet not a drop of rain. The sunlight permeated through the grey clouds and lent an orange hue to the environs. My heart was in ecstasy looking at the mellow appearance of the surroundings as I started walking back towards the station to get home. I reached the cross roads near the most important landmark of our time, more crucial than even the Gateway of India, the point of Journal and Assignment exchange…. Lucky restaurant. I waited a good 2 minutes there and ultimately decided to take the 7 minute joyride! I started walking along the all-so-familiar road, that all-so-frequently-traversed road, that oh-how-I-wish-I-could-come-back-here road, that led to the one place that will remain etched in my memory forever…. Thadomal Shahani Engg College….. MY COLLEGE!!!

I crossed the familiar yellow boards with black writing that declared ‘XEROX’ in different spellings and 3 different languages, and I went back to the time when my team mates and I went from pleading to threatening one of those shopkeepers to insert a missed page in our project report 12 hours before submission!!! I then crossed the lane that led to yet another of our favorite hangouts, the lane that led to the G7 multiplex. I had lost count of the number of crappy and good movies I had seen there. The multiplex was still there, one of the screens was showing the Da Vinci Code today, but that squabbling over which movie to go to till 20 minutes before the show, ditching the idea of walking for want of time and then hurriedly dividing ourselves into groups of 3, squeezing into a rickshaw like sardines, exhorting the driver to go fast through bumper-to-bumper traffic and ultimately encountering a ‘house-full’ board…. Those times were gone! And all of a sudden, I could hear myself humming Aqua’s ‘turn back time’. Heaving a sigh I walked on. I then crossed over to Linking road, and came across the towering edifice of Shopper’s Stop. People who were walking by might have laughed looking at a girl staring and smiling at a tall building! Little did they know that one monsoon, in pouring rains, I had trooped to the same mall with a bunch of friends curious to know what was happening at an ‘Ethnic India’ festival! And what did I take back from there? Around 20 miniature unbaked pots, made by own hands and scores of memories of how we got drenched but prevented the pots from getting wet, taking turns at holding them and covering them with our wind-cheaters, laughing and giggling all the way back, thoroughly unmindful of the surroundings. ‘If only I could turn back time… If only I could…..’

I was nearing the place that served as my mainstay for a good 20% of my life till date, when to my left was the Barista of Linking Road. This was the place that made me fall in love with coffee places, (though I had been initiated into the scintillating world of coffee long before Barista burst into the urban Indian scene, thanks to my being a south Indian who loves my home brewed filter coffee). This was where we hung out. This was where we completed our assignments. This was where a bunch of 7 of us had spent an hour and a half talking about nothing and everything across two rather distant tables, (much to the chagrin and discreet disapproval of the amiable staff there). This was where our previously planned project group disbanded over a solemn cuppa and this was the exact same spot where the new one was formed. Again over another hot cuppa. This was where my sister waited as I went in to college to hear the result of my first campus recruitment interview and this was where we celebrated soon after. As I crossed the road that took me into the lane that led to TSEC, I was rather surprised at the flutter I felt within. I entered the college building and saw the plinth against the far wall, the Katta as we used to call it. It still had a couple of crumpled note-sheet papers. There was still the one empty coke bottle lying on its side. There was still the odd paper cup in a corner. But what was not there was something that could never come back the way it was. It came back to me morphed into something different and started peeking through the vitreous edifice of my mind. I remembered the time I had hugged my friend upon seeing our first year, first semester result. I remembered the time when I had consoled a distressed friend who was sad that she had lost a year on account of the folly of someone else. The paper ribbons and vibrant balloons, remnants of the year’s festival were still dangling precariously on a thin strand of cello tape. Somewhere in the distance, I heard the typical TSEC cry, ‘TEE….SEC…TSEC…’ and three claps. I heard the roars of joy that used to go up when we used to see our college team up on stage dancing or walking the ‘ramp’ for our fashion show. And somewhere, Bryan Adams screamed ‘Those were the best days of my life!!’ and I heard the auditorium scream with him.

I gazed into the distance and saw the grey clouds still there, yet not a drop of rain. I suddenly started to feel extremely happy, the memories were flitting in and out like butterflies and each memory added that bit of color to my thoughts! I stepped out of the college verandah and started my walk back, determined that this time I will complete the walk to the station in 7 minutes, and not in the 45 minutes I had taken while coming here. As I started walking back, I noticed the grey clouds turn even more dark, and the sudden silent raindrop came gently down. And I was left thinking, ‘ Is this a walk to remember or is this a walk to remember’………

Human Resource (Anything but) Development

Countless instances in history have shown the number 13 to be an unlucky number. Starting right from the Last Supper to even the Friday the 13th virus!!! But whoever thought that 13 would render such a mortal blow to India's future? And even more saddening is the fact that this monster is being bred by our very own HRD minister. Well, in this case, the 13 is a 13-letter anathema that has the potency of wiping away the very existence of meritocracy, a 13-letter word that has the power of sending a nation into frustration, a 13-letter word that has the strength to spread a cloak of darkness over the future of the Indian youth! This 13-letter curse goes by the name of 'Mandalization' - splitting the youth on the basis of caste! The name Mandal brings back gory images of protests and self-immolation. And today 16 years after having walked through the coal-bed, it looks like we are treading the hot bed again.

There was a time, close to the 'cave-man' era, it seems today, when people belonging to the higher castes enjoyed certain privileges in life. The very initial demarkation, came about on account of the occupation and way of life of the higher castes, on account of a cultured conduct that the higer castes used to adhere to. Situations did get out of hand after a time and the lower castes began to be treated worse than dirt. Fair enough! By the law of means, society needs to put a severly tipped balance back on plane. Granted! But has anyone ever thought that by pushing any measure too far, we are just tipping the scales the other way round? Reservations were initially brought in to instill a degree of confidence in the youth of the then-called 'lower castes' to be unafraid in seeking education, to try and send a message across that they too could boldly come forth and take a seat in the same class as a Brahmin boy and be assured of of the same treatment. Now, because a certain ABC's great great great grandfather was treated like an untouchable by Brahmin PQR's great great great grandfather, should PQR be refused a seat at AIIMS after scoring 95%? According to Mr. Arjun Singh, YES! they say that in the Kalyug, the controlling God - Kali, will exact atonement for a sin in the person's lifetime itself. He doesn't even wait for the same person's next birth. But our very own Human Resource Decimation minister wants to go a step further than Kali. He wants to make the 'higher classes' suffer through the ages, for generations to come, only making way for a similar movement say 30 years down the line, when a certain Suryanarayanan Sivramakrishnan will fight for the rights of OFCs - Other Forward Castes! Who are we kidding here?

The constitution of India, gives a human being freedom of speech. one can voice his protest and be assured of an ear at the other end. But i guess that is the definition of Freedom of Speech in a Utopia, not India, because here, our Government elected to address OUR issues and think of OUR development, can assure us of lathis, water cannons and tear gar over and above a deaf ear at the other end. And this kind of oppression was what we learned about in our history books about the kind of ill-treatment meted out to the Indians, by the British. But today, such atrocities are being dealt out on the youth, the rising sun of India. This is not only the asphyxiation of the future of the Indian youth, it is pure murder of democracy at a point where it is to be nurtured.

A question to be asked here is, do we need reservations at all? the answer is Yes, we do. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, we saw Blacks die, we saw Blacks fight within the Louisiana Superdome, we saw blacks, poor blacks, who were stuck in their homes , waiting for their welfare checks from the government, traumatized with nowhere to go. Reason, racial discrimination. By ensuring reservations at the primary level, we have ensured that the backward classes are not denied a chance to uplift themselves. We have taken one step towards ensuring a uniform social system. This is like adding salt to a dish to ensure a balance in the culinary requirements. If a dish lacks salt, we add a pinch to make it palatable. But that does not mean that salt is the only panacea, and therefore 10 cups of it will make any dish great to taste. It will not only ruin the dish, but also kill the eater. the current decision of the government to introduce higher level of reservation is a case in point. We are simply ensuring the annihilation of the Indian youth. So what if they want to introduce more number of general category seats? that is not goiong to palliate all the aspiring indian masses. The number of candidiates for the general category is far far more than the number of OBCs, and the distance between their cup and their lip is longer than that in the case of the OBCs. So a few more seats is not going to be the solution, instead it is like a slap on the face, wherein, the government wants to try and shut the protesting mouths with a gag, and the students are left vigorously trying to scream out, but are unable to do so!

Deprived of opportunities, the blacks in the west take to crime. Transpose that here; devoid of opportunity, a member of the higher class youth will soon be a petty thief, while his OBC doctor colleague will be busy cutting off a person's pancreas, because the patient had appendicitis. the fortunate few, will board the first flight out to the US, where Indians are still looked upon with respect, still considered over-achievers, where hailing from the same land as Lakshmi Mittal is something to be proud of.

Our beloved Human Resource Division minister has assured an increase in the number of general category seats. But will it assure Ramesh Trivedi from Benaras, a poor priest's sone, with do Jodi kapda and a torn shoe, a seat in AIIMS with 95.7% in Std 12? No, but Ramesh Kardak, a poor OBC with 55% in std 12 can definitely fly first class to Delhi from Mumbai, to pick up his admit letter. Incidentally he got dropped by his chauffer in his personal yellow Mercedes from his home at Peddar Road!

The most important question to be asked here is whether reservation was necessary to be picked up right now, when there are many more glaring issues at hand, and when there are myriad other ways to ensure social upliftment? This is so cleaarly a case wherein the Government wants to make a huge deposit into its OBC-rich vote-bank. Ironically, the Mandal Commission report also deals with many other issues other than reservation. Whether this particular move by the HRD minister will bring about an egalitarian society, is for all to see. but one thing it will surely augment is the firm faith in the minds of the youth that voting is most definitely not going to bring about a change, and so no matter what we can expect in the years to come, we can definitely expect a wave of disillusion in the young minds accompanied by a whole tsunami of brain drain!