The Immigrant Song

I was listening to the 'Immigrant Song' by Led Zeppelin the other day, one of his better songs according to me, as I am not really a huge fan of Jimmy Page's voice. But along the long drive that had been kick started by this song, I got to thinking, about the past month. This one month alone has been witness to two bomb attacks - one in Mumbai (tell me something new) and one in Oslo (seriously, Norway? Isn't it too cold there for people to be able to think evil?)

The initial reports, soon after the attacks in Oslo pointed to Islamic fundamentalists and the authorities were quick to correct themselves once they found out that the perpetrator was a native right wing fundamentalist. The attacks in Mumbai though, were typical acts of terror - a bomb on a stolen scooter in a bustling marketplace of old Mumbai. While we don't have a definitive finger on the perpetrator yet, the story remains the same. At such times, it is quite interesting to note the 'tapri-wallah' conversations - talks between people in corner tea stalls in Mumbai. I still remember one such remark after a similar incident in 2006, where a train was bombed in Mumbai, where one gentleman remarked to another, 'I wonder why these people come from across the border, live here and kill our people, or worse still, force our own to kill their own. Why can't all like minded people just move bag and baggage to the land where they can live in peace and practise whatever it is that can lead them to salvation?'

The key issue here then is immigration. That wizened gentleman had perhaps seen so many such acts of terror that he, like most Mumbaikars, was disgusted by the meaningless loss of valuable lives in the achievement of a mythical, goal. He perhaps believed that the asylum India gave, and has been unintentionally giving to illegal immigrants was being exploited. Just as most native French citizens believed that increased terror levels were tied to immigration from Algeria. Or citizens in UK ghettoized pockets of Islamic immigrants in the wake of the 2005 London bombings. So the finger verily pointed to Islamic immigrants in Oslo, who were assumed to have retaliated to the detaining of a cleric. While they were vindicated in this one instance, usually though, rather unfortunately, before the whole of the worldwide immigrant community manages to get away with a puppy, innocent face, something like the attack in Mumbai, forces them back into the spotlight of doubt and suspicion!  

The question then is, why do native citizens not embrace immigrants willingly everywhere? It is not difficult being an immigrant in a developed society like say US or Canada. Natives of these countries themselves are some subsequent generation of immigrants. India, and most of Europe on the other hand are a bit too tight-fisted when it comes to sharing land space with those not born there. Being an Indian with a few non-Indian friends, I do know that people with a foreign skin (sorry if I sound racist), do not find it easy to settle down and work in India. People may claim that an open arm policy has resulted in the arm being blown off much too often, but perhaps it is time we stopped victimizing immigrants and started looking into what makes them huddle up under the cloak of religion or country of origin, as against country of current residence!

Dev D and Gunda - the movie spectrum!

Movies are like perfumes. They draw you into a separate realm altogether. And based on how your brain wishes to interpret the scent, it's either a feast to your senses or an assault on them! And Dior might perhaps agree with me when I say that one woman's scent is another one's poison - pure poison at that! This week I decided to treat my sensibilities to some cinematographic brilliance. And the ingredients used for this recipe were - Dev D, Delhi Belly and the icing being Gunda, altogether forming a deadly concoction to say the least. Having seen all but Delhi Belly once before, the stories were never the issue. I spent most of my time analyzing the sheer brilliance of it all!

So, on one end of the spectrum, I started with Dev D, which is a modern take on Devdas. While I am aware of every character in the novel, the beauty of the movie lies in realizing that every character in Dev D is perhaps the exact opposite in characterization to the original characters. For instance, Devdas' father is portrayed as cruel and opposed to Devdas marrying Paro. In Dev D, a sad father remarks why Dev is so stupid as to not want to marry Paro! Paro herself in the original is a simple, shy girl madly in love with Devdas. Paro in Dev D is wild, violent and pretty vindictive in places! Apart from the antithesis, the way the movie is shot, using music as an antithetical undercurrent to the events on screen is a very Kubrick-esque technique! So for talking about Leni's (Chandramukhi equivalent) story, which is based on the Delhi MMS scandal, a very sunshine bright, happy, cheerful song is used, while the events unfold telling a very dark, sad story! Abrupt camera movements, and the abrupt ending just add on to the sheer brilliance!

Move on to Delhi Belly - it's in the middle of the spectrum. A plain story, with typical people-next-door characters and supremely profane dialogues. A minor assault on the senses, when it comes to gore. And for the poor uninitiated souls who have no clue what the profane words and dialogues mean, it's just another movie, where you want to look away and maybe wrinkle up your nose each time 'shit happens' as the tagline says!

And then I topped up my weekend with Gunda. Or should I say as Bulla would, Gundaaaaaaaa?! Breaking the ice with men who've lived in hostels, or away from home 101 - Talk Gunda! I must admit that Gunda is like the sacred potion one needs to ingest as part of an initiation ritual into Indian hostels! If thou hath lived away from home, thou shalt have seen Gunda - is the eleventh commandment. I was just extolling this masterpiece to a friend this morning, and she said, "Gunda?? What the heck is that and why????" The question amounted to sacrilege! A total breach of the hostel code! Gunda is sooooo bad that it's soooooooooooo good! Simple story of simple, poor hero v/s weird villains, with weirder names, and weirdest rhyming tag lines, so terrible I can't repeat them. The hero - a coolie at an airport, who is the son of a constable, so poor, but yet can afford jackets and matching scarves! The opening sequence which moves from airports to deserts to ports, all with a pot-bellied rotund guy running with a sword stuck in his belly! Fight sequences that involve a dozen Ambassador cars and another with a zillion auto rickshaws that make sounds of an F1 car and are oblivious to hits by a rocket launcher! Humane, moving scenes with the hero, Shankar, distraught after the death of his father finding an abandoned girl infant in a dustbin and deciding to adopt her! A whorehouse where the women swing on charpoys in a supposed seductive manner, but a look at their expressions is enough to make you want to roll over in laughter! And the final sequence where Shankar faces off with the evilest of evil Bulla, where every dialogue rhymes! If this is not Pure Poison, then what is?

All in all, if you've not seen the movies at either ends of the spectrum - all movies that define the spectrum are of no use. So, go watch Gunda to see some serious, unintentional rib-tickling cinema!

Memory lane

Nostalgia! A supremely abused concept in my opinion! We have movies, songs, poems, stories and what not revolving around this topic. Why, even Ol man Yanni has a song that goes by that name. It is an awesome song, no doubt, but the concept? Quite suspect indeed!

Now, I am not writing this piece just to prove how 'against the flow' I can be. Most people love dwelling in the past. Why, even I loved my photowalk in the random gullies of Mumbai, when I knew a separation was imminent! (spoils of the photowalk still scream out to be shared and they shall meet their due soon). But through the photowalk, I began to wonder why exactly I was getting a thrill out of that walk. Why was I feeling cosy while being engulfed in memories? Why did I see a younger me in some shop, at the ticket window of a theater, on the katta alongside the sea, at an ice cream place, and why did I feel all warm fuzzy happy?

Luckily for me, I got into a bus that took a circuitous route around town to get back and I got myself some time to think. And think I did! Only to realize that maybe I was scared and a tad apprehensive! And nostalgia was my way out of the pressures of the present and the future! This might sound bizarre but I felt it made sense! Too afraid of the imminent uncertainties that the future held, I tried my level best to hold on to the pleasures of the past! We all write in B school essays that we love and relish change and challenges. I think somewhere, we all lie! The very fact that we smile each time we walk down memory lane, perhaps shows how change-averse we are, that we prefer holding tightly to the certainties of the past!

I know I loved the clothes I bought at that shop or the movie I saw that day or the conversation I had with a friend on that katta and how I loved the fact that on that very brick wall, we had buried our differences and fortified our friendship! Those moments were truly pleasurable! I wondered whether the future would bring even a handful of such events!

But then again I thought back about the moments that preceded the memorable ones. I know I was apprehensive about going to a shop I'd never tried and I was worried about wasting toooooooo much of my time. I did not want to see 'Dhamaal'. I was too worried about hurting my own self prestige and ego to want to go and mend fences with my friend by the seaside. In short, in the moments preceding the ones that now line my memory lane, I was worried about the future.

And by the time I reached my bus stop, I decided that it was time I limited my dwelling on the comforts of the past to just a bunch of pictures and focused more on the challenges and excitements of the future!

The Bai Chronicles - II : Itna paisa mein itnaich milenga!

Bai chronicles is back! And this time, I'll talk about a very touchy subject - Pagaar, as in pay. Now, all of employed India, indeed all of the employed world operates on an overworked yet underpaid model. (Is someone somewhere listening?) Even members of the mafia might perhaps believe that they need to be paid more for all that 'conscience killing', 'mental trauma', 'haunting nightmares', 'additional risk of hanging out with super mean boss' etc etc. Well in reality, if that last point did indeed have a yardstick for measuring proposed compensation, 'Is anyone listening again??? Please?'

But while all of us may have serious pay scale issues, most of us are not in that super enviable position that goes with bargaining capabilities. In my humble experience, negotiating one's pay and achieving the life, work and pay one wants is stuff dreams are made of, and only the high and mighty, who perhaps have a core competence anyone would kill for can hope to achieve that enviable state! But as it turns out, our Bais almost always have bargaining power. Especially the awesome ones! And while us pitching a 10% upgrade in pay would perhaps meet with a 'It was nice talking to you, but we'll get back if we have a spot vacant for you', vis-a-vis the maids in Mumbai, they manage to easily wrest out at least a 30% increment per job!

Now, there was this lady who came to work for us once. She came with an awesome recommendation from this lady in a neighboring building. Why did this lady send me this maid, well, once I wept out my 'dukh-bhari-bin-baai-kahaani' to this lady at a shop, and she commiserated with me over a tetra pak of milk. So this maid came over, and I explained all her tasks to her. She listened carefully. And then I asked her the all-important, pain inducing question. 'Kitna legi'? 'Hazaar rupya'. I was over the moon! A thousand bucks! Wow! a true bargain indeed. Given that this lady was trying to find her bearings in the 'baai market' and get herself some 'kaayam ka kaam... (permanent employment), I felt that I had found my very own 'Ramu Kaki'. I imagined myself several years down the line, in horn-rimmed glasses, a streak of gray hair on my well maintained tresses, sitting on my porch with a news paper, saying 'Mandaaaa, ek chaai lana zara' (Manda, can you get me a tea please). And I saw this lady, a few wrinkles on her face walking over with my tea in clean polished China, setting it down, and informing me that the grandkids have left for school and.... 'Total chaar kaam ke liye chaar hazaar maheene ka'. (For 4 tasks, 4000 bucks a month).

'What?' I screamed, almost. 'But we're two people in the house! And both of us leave for work early in the morning. Given Mumbai's sterling real estate scene, I honestly don't live in a palace! We both eat out. So why exactly did she want a thousand bucks to wash four and a half utensils and another 1000 bucks to wash 5 pieces of clothes? Most of my clothes go to the dry-cleaners anyway (thanks to the new fashion trend of jewel encrusted necklines! Bah). And since when did sweeping and swabbing, the legendary, hyphenated jhaadu-patta become two tasks? I gulped in horror, as she stood steadfast, unrelenting. I explained all this to her and all she said was, 'Itna paisa lagega itne kaam ke liye'. When I asked her to be reasonable, all she said was, 'Bhabhi, yeh address mein aake kaam karne ka paisa toh lagega na? Parvadega nahin toh aisa area mein rehne ka nahin. Mere ko bhi bhaada dena padta hai na mere ghar ka? (If you want to live in such an address, you must be willing to pay. If you can't afford the maids of this area, perhaps you must live elsewhere. I need to pay my house rent too, right?) "Chalega toh bolo. Baaki bahut log waiting mein hai." (Lemme know if it works, or else I have a long list of prospective customers!)

I accepted my relative poverty and thanked the lady for her time, as I trudged back to the kitchen and sadly looked at my 4.5 utensils waiting for redemption. I, for sure was not willing to give up a part of my salary so that Manda Baai could pay her house rent. I was not willing to over pay for what I believe is a highway robbery and a plain play on my weaknesses! After doing the dishes, as I sat with a cup of tea and the newspaper, I saw this piece that said that Prince William and Kate Middleton are having trouble keeping a maid, as no one is willing to do all that work for a mere 20,000 pounds a year! Suddenly I felt like a princess!!!

Saudi Arabia - A drivethrough!

This week, most people have been talking about how the 17 of June marked a turning point in the lives of repressed Saudi women! Given how almost all of the Middle East of late has been showing impressive implementations of the legendary domino/ snowballing effect, it cones as no surprise that one bold woman taking to the streets in a car sparked off a whole revolution which finally culminated in a law allowing women to drive in Saudi Arabia. People in places like India may ask, what's the big deal? I was speaking to this gentleman who lives in my apartment complex when he was discussing an episode where his SUV gave way just before his rather large family was to go on a Rojas trip, and he was describing to me his frantic attempts at finding another driver as he had to split the family into two cars and he had already declared 'vacation time' to his regular chauffeur ( known as driver in India) "doesn't your wife drive?" I asked innocently. "Of course not. Why should she?" came the reply. "But don't you ever wish to drive?" I asked looking at the wife. " I choose not to! Driver hai na? And when we go as a family, Jignesh drives", she said referring to her husband.

Therein lies the difference.

A greater part of female urban India around middle age, doesn't drive. One, because when they were younger at licensable age, they were lower down the economic spectrum and a car never crossed their minds. Now, they're on the opposite end, and not having a chauffeur is demeaning on the 'log-kya-kahenge' arena! Secondly, the women had a choice. Never were they prevented by law, from anything, driving included. But for Saudi women, they were prevented by a weird law, which for some inexplicable reason prevented them from driving. The minute there is a denial, a rebellious urge to have that which is denied, springs up. Much like a child's tantrum or a diabetic craving for sweets. The issue, though, has been more symbolic, than anything else. Unreasonable repression of all kinds needs to go. Restricting women from driving has no logical basis other than blatantly declaring that some men want to prove ascendancy in a lame, almost desperate manner. Otherwise, how can it explain closeted driving skills? How exactly did the women learn to drive in the first place? Clearly they and their fathers, brothers and husbands care a jot about the law and it is perhaps the regressive cleric alone who holds on to his view! If anything, the women take the allowance to drive as a symbol that they may one day, finally find their own voice in all aspects of daily human life.

As an aside, though, my sympathies to Saudi society. There lay a society with lesser idiocy on roads. Even yesterday, I hurled a bunch of silent expletives at a 'late-evening sunglasses touting', 'make-up clad yet not-so-PYT' who clearly bribed her way to get a license! No, I am not being judgmental. I am a female driver myself with scant regard for my clan, although my sterling skills behind the wheel have been certified by my 0 crash record, and also by scores of my darker sex friends who strongly believe that I am an exception to the lady-driver category! But what the offending female driver did and why I was half in a mind to screech past her car, stop abruptly in complete filmy style, step out in stilettos, grab the woman's hair and slap her face real hard, I will leave to 'driving me crazy -ii' But till then, Saudis can now enjoy the phenomenon of abrupt lane cutting, left indicators before a right turn, indicators with no turns, terrible parking skills, middle of the road stopping and many other such wonderful antics of the fairer sex behind the wheel!

Risky business!

Old man Newton once upon a time said that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Given the number of engineers who end up becoming fin geeks, it is no doubt that such a dictum forms the basis of the whole finance industry. For every risk averse guy out there, there is an equal risk-loving guy out there too! You make your profits by expending effort in looking that dude up. Which is why, the episode of a Chinese entrepreneur hurling abuses at Morgan for purposefully underpricing their IPO looks bizarre!

Now the story caught my eye not just because it involved Chinese, IPOs and Morgan. But because it was an out and out war on.... TWITTER! Speak about suits in wall street putting their BBs to good use. The issue was more like the Chinese entrepreneur of an e-commerce company called Dangdang (I know!!! wonder how bankers managed to go past the name in the first place) was disappointed when his IPO was priced at $16, but opened and settled at $29. Close to $240 million apparently was 'left on the table', or rather was money that could have been got with niftier pricing! A war of expletives broke out on Twitter between Mr. Dangdang and someone claiming to belong to Morgan. I say claiming, since Morgan was quick to wash it's hands off this dirty business.

But the issue is not so much the use of Twitter or the entrepreneur's endless tirade but rather how exactly is one to quantify risk. Morgan underwrote the issue, which, in other words means that if the IPO went undersold, they would pick up the pieces at the issue price. So obviously, being the risk absorber in the face of the ebullient risk-loving entrepreneur, by Newton's law, Morgan is bound to be risk averse and hence cautious. Besides, underwritten IPOs have an inherent conflict of interest, is perhaps a given, as they need to set the best price for the client, while minimizing their losses. So, in all honesty, Newton perhaps dictated the price!

One place where Newton's law does not apply though, is in the wonderful world of insurance, which perhaps has been the theme of countless books and movies to date, with the term 'pre-existing condition' being used akin to a cuss word in places! The most elegant part of insurance is the inherent irony in the whole concept. One, usually the more risk averse people are the ones who prefer to get insured, in order to protect themselves in the event of a rainy day. However, while Newton might have said that a risk lover is to be coupled with a risk-averse entity, as it turns out, given the wriggly, defensive stance taken by most insurers, you wonder why two risk-averse individuals have been thrown together into the bond of not-such-a-holy matrimony!

All in all, the fact remains that Newton not just missed out on a lovely red apple, but also set the very foundations of the frameworks that underlie this risky business!

The Bai Chronicles - I

Maids have been in the news recently, for all the wrong reasons! What started a couple of years ago with Shiney Ahuja in India, seemed to afflict even the ex-IMF chief, and our very own Terminator took the idiocy a step further, by literally 'keeping a house' with his housekeeper! So much for maids dictating people's lives! And I thought that I was the only one with the dubious honor of having allowed my maid to wrap my whole life around her little finger! I seem to have a horoscope that shuns hired help! If a maid so much as dares to agree to come work at my place, Rahu, Ketu, the maid's 'marad', the aunty who lives upstairs who incidentally was her ex-employer all wreak havoc with my peace and cruelly whisk her away. If I fight against my stars and manage to find someone (fight sounds nice, but plead with every maid who walks past my building gates is more like it) she ends up being someone with the work ethic of a vagabond!

So once this lady made bold and came home, with the intention of being employed by us. How my anti-maid track record went off unnoticed is beyond me. Praise be to the fact that she was just recently married and she'd only just come from her gaon! I explained everything to her and she said she'd work here! Yaaaaayyyyy, I almost screamed out loud. She then asked me to keep her number just in case. "Madam, aapka number do, mein meees call maarti hoon", she said, pulling out a swanky looking touch screen phone from a decrepit plastic bag. I thought back about my own strictly functional, terribly scratched, un-stealable brick phone and told her that my phone was in the other room, and that she should give me a call and I'd store the number when I next saw the phone! The next day, a Saturday, I got myself a hair appointment, having found a new found freedom from 'bhaandi ghaas' and 'jhaadu'! I walked over to the salon, and savored every moment of freedom. I had to spend a good 4 hours there, getting my hair straightened. I made the cautious, half-hopeful call back home and was very happy to know that the lady with shining cell phone had indeed turned up. I relaxed and went through the intense hair-straightening experience, at peace with the world!

The next day, while I was on a strict 'no water on your hair' and an even stricter 'no clips on your tresses' and the strictest 'no hair behind ears' routine, the morning was slipping by, and there was no sign of the woman of the moment! Fearing the worst, I made The Call! The call didn't go through. Thinking my dilapidated phone was perhaps to blame, I tried with another phone. Yet no luck. Frantic attempts later, amidst a massive cacophony that sounded more like a movie theater in the background, a voice answered. 'Haan, mein baahar hai. Kal aake baat karega'. And click. No explanations, whatsoever. Not even a courteous moment of conversation to a lady whose hair was saturated with chemicals! Anxious to know why she hadn't turned up, I tried calling her again. She cut my call. Not to be put off so easily, while feeling a little embarrassed myself, I decided to try one last time. And I was met with the dreaded 'Jya numbershi tumhi samparka saadhu icchitat, toh sadhya banda aahey'. I gave up. Wrapping a scarf around my chemically endowed tresses, I set to work. Hoping the few thousands I'd belted out on my hair wouldn't literally be washed down the sink.

The next day, the dame arrived and declared that her marad felt that she was working too much and hence she shouldn't come work here any more! Aaaaagh! "Tell your marad to talk to me!' I almost begged. I would have gladly bribed that marad fellow to just let my cellular maid stay! 'Nahin. Kal poora din mere peeth mein darad tha. Uthne ko hi nahin hua! Mera marad na bolta hai', she said. (Apparently her back was in agony all day yesterday and her husband told her no more working!) I was tempted to ask her whether her house was a movie theater and the seats there comprised of her bed, but I wanted to salvage the bai as much as I could! As it turned out, the love shove between them was too much to fall for bribes, increased pay, lesser work et al and I was left again with straight hair and no maid!

I have a billion such stories and I could write a whole book on my maidscapades! But so much for now!

The Media's Favorite Husain

The papers screamed out 'India's Picasso dies in exile'. And if the headlines weren't enough, the life and times of M F Husain were covered in vivid detail in the inner pages. All along, in my opinion, underscoring the very hypocrisy that defines us! Harsh? Yes. But true.

To be honest, I didn't really know about the whole controversy. I did know that MFH was involved in a 'nude painting' row that involved Hindu goddesses, but I didn't know about the quasi fatwa issued against him by Hindu factions, and I definitely did not know that these Hindu factions were epitomized by the 'holier than thou' entity who runs Mumbai as his fiefdom, who has taken the responsibility of safeguarding 'Indian culture and moral values' even if means of safeguarding involved vandalism and mindless rioting and disruption of law and order!

My thought and hence the purpose of this post was manifold! One, nudity in art is something we've known since caveman times. That painters, sculptors and photographers have a thing for the nude human form is a known fact. To the extent that I read somewhere that artistes make a distinction between 'nude' which is natural and free-flowing artistic, and 'naked' which is supposedly suggestive art, although both are to be considered aesthetic! Why they gloss over nudity, is something I can never understand. They say they are catering to a greater human consciousness, although I feel they're just pandering to a larger human population! But then again, I accept that I am not an authority on art, not even a novice! But we've all seen 'David' and studied about renaissance art in history books. So MFH really did not manage to do something pathbreaking like his predecessor Van Gogh who pioneered the use of the color yellow! So why did we create such a ruckus in the first place?

Second, why did MFH need to rile Hindu sentiments? Everyone knows that people in India take their Gods and Goddesses very very seriously. Our Goddesses are not akin to Greek Goddesses, who have forever been depicted in a certain way. So why not respect that part of what is intrinsically Indian and not 'firangify' everything! So if not for free publicity, what else could have been the motivation for such depiction? Why not call her Svetlana and the Veena? Making the picture just any picture, not necessarily tied to any religious sentiment! Ah! But that wouldn't have gathered so much publicity, including tomes being printed and published post his demise!

Third, why did we fly off the handle in 1996 about a picture that was actually painted in 1970! If not for blatant hankering for eyeball space by the media, who published the picture in the first place, and then again by political powers who suddenly found themselves turned into toothless tigers with no meat to chew on, what else could explain such unnecessary, irrelevant controversy creation? And then the whole 'death threat' circus. In what way are we any different from the clerics who issued a fatwa against Rushdie for Satanic Verses? How on earth can we adopt a 'holier than thou' attitude and preach about how intolerant those clerics were, that they could tolerate not even a word
against their religion! and if this is indeed our stance, why call ourselves sham secular with freedom of expression? No one forces us to be a free-for-all society like the Americans, who take their freedom very seriously! Let us agree that we have a thing against blasphemy! Nothing wrong at all!

And lastly, what a supreme level of hypocrisy we show, by feting the individual after he passes away! Extolling his virtues, forgiving his faults, reminiscing over the Maqbool Fida he was to various people and so on! News channels speak of nothing else all day. Newspapers publish tomes and tomes of MF times! The sheer blatancy of it all is appalling to say the least! Publicity, eyeball space, TRPs at all costs. Doesn't seem all too blatant, given the controversy-courting individual, who is the subject of the media's present fancy!

The world Bin Laden (The world without Laden)

Osama Bin Laden is dead. And it's been written about and spoken about, complete with an unwitting tweet account giving a bit-by-bit update to fake pictures up on the internet. The whole operation, looked like the 'capture-and-kill' operation in the movie 'Face/Off', with the high security house being ambushed and the main bad guy being asked to leave the world by a bullet in his head. And with this event, on May 1, 2011, Osama Bin Laden, the man who lent a face to terror, for all Americans and the world population to see and hate, left, hoping to get to the place he has been promising every gullible, impressionable, poor mind, that agreed or was coerced into becoming his foot soldier. Now whether he got there or not, is something only he can tell, and God willing, he doesn't come back to tell us of his escapades!

The bigger point though, is that this means the end of nothing actually. The man was supposedly frail, reportedly needing dialysis to keep him alive, albeit with a razor sharp brain, nonetheless. Agreed, this heir to billions founded Al-Qaeda as a retaliation to US setting up defense bases in Saudi Arabia to assist Kuwait against Iraq, and ever since he has been the one man who took it upon himself to cleanse the world of all things not Islam, a diktat that perhaps would make Prophet Muhammad's blood boil! The issue is that this man has managed to build ranks and ranks of lunatic foot soldiers, capable of inflicting horror on millions on their own, without the need of a larger lunatic! The funding might still continue, since over at least 10 years, OBL has managed to incite thousands of millions into the 'Jihadi cause'. Rumor has it that he was a very strong orator with a strong tongue to guile many an impressionable mind. What happens to that network? Those fund routes? All those millions leading Al-Qaeda offshoots, with a framed picture of OBL hanging on their cave walls?

Secondly, will anything be done about Pakistan being a terror haven? That nation is in a state of utter chaos, such that their President could have done nothing, had OBL been plotting his next move, right in his own backyard! Although in reality, that did happen, since OBL was captured barely a 100 kms from Islamabad and more glaringly a mere 800 meters from a large Army training camp! Army - ISI - Taliban - Al Qaeda, anyone? The relationship is too blatant to dismiss as mere coincidence.

This may be a moral victory. Placards of '9/11 victims may RIP' flashed through TV screens all of yesterday. A small voice in me asked, "what about the victims of 26/11 in India?" OBL was elusive, living in caves in South Waziristan, maybe, Pakistan, Afghanistan for a while and so on. The capture operation went on for a long time, and the forces were diligent in their quest. Qasab, the man who inhumanly killed scores of people at CST station is alive on Indian tax payer's money in a prison in Mumbai. Wouldn't the blood of victims' families boil each time they cross the prison road that houses that monster? What about the souls of these victims? What about the souls of the victims of the 1993 blasts in Mumbai? We have had a face to terror long before OBL even broke into the terror fraternity! So, why do we lack the will and wherewithal that the US possesses? Is our PM's mandate any different from the mandate of the US President in issues of terror, given that both are democratically elected?

It is indeed high time our own people were taken less lightly and their lives and souls given their due. Even the body of someone like Osama Bin Laden is given a burial, albeit at sea, in adherence to Muslim convention of disposing of mortal remains within 24 hours. If only our elected leaders felt for those who elected them and were serious about bringing them justice!

I support the fight for a corruption-free India.... do you?

The past few weeks have seen upheavals follow each other. First came the barrage of scams and scamsters in the Indian scene, and while India was busy getting disillusioned with almost everything from politics to sport to industry, a 26 year old immolated himself in Tunisia, setting off a snowballing domino revolution of sorts. The revolution spread from square to square toppling Governments, creating unrest across the middle east. Last checked, Tunisia and Egypt had toppled leaders, Libyan Gaddafi was at his rambling best and now Syria, Bahrain and Yemen were also joining the revolt bandwagon. Not wanting to feel left out, our own country too is debating, wondering, and getting charged up about an all-out war on corruption!

I, personally am a huge fan of people movements, akin to Munshi Premchand stories where the protagonist, who all along having been ill-treated by the 'mean Britisher' finally turns around and hits his 'master' with a stick! Gandhiji's Satyagraha which formed the basis of winning India independence from British rule is the starting point. More recently, Justice for Jessica was a classic case where miscarriage of justice was brought out to the open and people fought for the blatantly smirking Manu Sharma to be booked for cold blooded murder. So, non-violent populist protest movements are not new to India. In Tunisia, ages of despotic rule despite simmering resentment, perhaps reached a tipping point and the youth's self-immolation was the trigger the already incensed nation needed to break free. And Tunisia, perhaps was that precedent, Egypt needed to set her revolutionary wheels in motion. Yes, the current Middle Eastern revolutionary spree is nothing short of a fairy tale - one small event sets off a 'Facebook' revolution of sorts and manages to topple regime after regime. But the issue is, not all fairy tales have predictable endings! Like say, in Egypt, people now are suffering from revolutionary fatigue, the army that took over comes across as an equal, if not a bigger devil in terms of human rights violations, the economy is in a shambles, tourism is dead, and the void looks alarming, to say the least.

Why am I bringing this up here? Well, Anna Hazare's current movement is my trigger for this thought. The slew of scams that India has seen does make me feel rather ashamed to say that I belong to this country as it stands today. I've almost forgotten the look of the newspaper without a scamster headline screaming at my face. Winning the ICC World Cup perhaps helped salvage some pride, though the up coming Indian Premier League (IPL) brings back memories of blatant frauds and scams of less than a year ago. The way scamsters and Indian politicians work hand in glove is disgusting, to say the least. I know for a fact that a greater part of the Indian youth has lost faith in Indian politicians. No doubt, democracy is lovely, the freedom to choose who governs me is excellent in concept. But, given the kind of people I see ruling over me, I feel that I'd be happier being disenfranchised! It is election time in Tamil Nadu, and laptops, TV sets, gold, clothes, money are being promised to all and sundry. Protesters are being harassed, thrashed even and the brazenness of it all makes one's blood boil!

Having an independent entity oversee the moral uprightness of people who govern us, looks like a plan that can deliver us from such disgrace as what faces us in India, today. The fact that the Lokayuktas would comprise upright, respected members of civil society is a shot in the arm. The fact that they would have rights to press charges and prosecute any wrongdoer who might be in power seems most necessary. The fact that those in power cannot protect their own, hopes to ensure no more Jessica Lal cases, or instances of Marie Antoinette, steeped in arrogant power! It is a new model, where we want a stand alone entity apart from democratically elected leaders, put in place by us, to keep a check on those who govern us. The old, existing model has clearly failed, as there was the office of the Central Vigilance Commissioner, appointed by Parliament to check corruption, which, as it turns out, was toppled as the CVC himself was kicked out for being corrupt in a palm oil scam!

So, why not try the new model? Maybe those who govern us, need a higher power that governs them, because clearly, depending on a conscience and God is a non-existent concept vis-a-vis Indian politicians. No doubt, this is not a panacea. In my humble opinion, I would perhaps be happier saying I am an Indian if such a body did come into place, and did manage to keep a tab on the corrupt corridors of power in India. This revolution is not a be-all and end-all. But it is not a trigger happy FB revolution, either. If not for anything, I, like scores of Indian youngsters, want to give this concept a fair chance. So, my bit for this movement starts with 'Here' is what you need to know about the current Anna Hazare movement for enacting the Lokpal bill.

Per Nostro Circolo : The story of the inner circle

Long years ago, it was the Bastille. Tired of the despotic, grossly uninterested nature of the French regime, with Marie Antoinette famously telling the languishing poor to eat cake if they could not get bread, the people revolted. They took charge of the country, and brought the evil king and queen to the guillotine. History most certainly repeats itself and tired of police corruption and high handedness in a remote Tunisian village a 26 yr old immolated himself and that brought the whole Tunisian regime down. Cascading effects are a reality too. Others took the cue, with festering dissatisfaction finding an able bolster in the power of precedent, and Egypt and now Libya have followed course. Watching the trend is nothing short of fascinating.

This book I am reading just gets the plight of these nations blatantly to the fore. Take the case of Iran. Safavid rule was prosperous and all inclusive when it began, with money split between the Government and the Waqfs. As time progressed, the leaders got corrupt and there was a mass siphoning of country funds into personal coffers, which was when the Shahs stepped in. Reza Shah began by appropriating waqf lands under the guise of reform and save for a few developmental projects like the Trans-Iranian rail line, there was hardly anything to show. The elite rich class never complained though, for they were in the inner circle. They dined with the Shah when it was time to split the spoils. Sensing the opportunity, the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini stepped in, ferreting already incensed tempers of the common man, while showing them a utopian state, himself claiming to be divinely guided . Unfortunately, he brought along his own inner circle, which now was another class of people, the bazaris or trading class and others who heretofore had been excluded. And this time, they didn't complain in the face of the blatant corruption and misuse of power in the name of religion. The inner circle just changed from one to another!

Mubarak was an able leader till he was convenient for Western politics, allowing the set up of bases, buying defense supplies, opening up the population as an able marketplace. But once the people of Egypt had had enough of his despotic rule, they revolted, asking for democracy. And the West suddenly swung to support the wish of the people, for they are after all the self proclaimed caretakers of democracy (just as Saudi Arabia is the caretaker of Islam just because it houses Mecca). Likewise Libya. Libyan crude is sweet crude, unlike the sour crude churned out by Saudi Arabia. The next best source of such crude is civil strife-torn Nigeria. So Gaddafi, was the man of the hour for so very many years and his unjust, cruel rule was condoned, 'human rights, what human rights?' was the tone adopted. And now, when his people have started revolting, the caretakers again have stepped in, quick to impose sanctions and further destroy another crumbling nation. Suddenly the despots have fallen out of the inner circle.

The stories are plenty. Every war-torn middle-eastern nation has had a history of exploitation at the hands of a western power. Whether it is the Sykes-Picot agreement that enlisted Arab support in WW I against the Ottoman empire in return for the right to govern themselves via Greater Syria, (an agreement wherein the Arabs were cheated through conflicting agreements made that excluded them entirely) or the very creation of Iraq, throwing in 2 huge Shia counties carved out of Iran into Sunni Iraq to ensure a life-long war between Shias and Sunnis, the exploitations are several. The inner circle is at play again, an inner circle of world powers dominating over the weaker squabbling entities.

Even in recent times, the inner circles rule. Be it large bank CEOs with a direct line to the political powers who laugh their way to the bank with their large bonuses despite the crumbling economy or whether the shining Indian telecom story shows signs of rust thanks to a million scams, the perpetrators somehow, always get to go free just because they are part of the inner circle. Sufficient money has changed hands, as a result of which a minister argues away that what is regarded as a scam is in fact very very legitimate! Sons of politicians get to walk free after committing a murder in cold blood because they are born in the inner circle and it takes a popular revolution to bring him to book.

At the end of the day, it turns out that Robert Ludlum's Matarese seems to be the only truth. Per Nostro Circolo (For our circle) they muttered and that is the way life is today!

The royal meet-jack!!!

Hijacks and carjacks. What do you call a meeting where the agenda gets royally pulled offtrack? A meet-jack???? Hardly have I found a phenomenon more annoying than one where the agenda of a meeting you've called gets hijacked!

So, here is some background....

A certain task on hand needs a small group of not more than 5 people with variegated pasts to get together and dish out ideas on a common underlying topic. No, I am not talking about an AA meeting or a psychological roller coaster ride, but rather just an issue where the people in question have an opinion that counts more than mine (which is akin to a cow's opinion, mind you), owing largely to their rather intense experience in the thick of things. As someone I know would say, collectively, we'd have close to 100 years of work experience in that room and with the express intention of tapping into that immense treasure trove of gyaan, I guess I decided to get em all together for a 'brainstorming' session.

And what ensued just made me want to storm out of that place, with my brains screaming out in agony! One key takeaway though was that I managed to recognize and make a note of those signs that signal the royal meet-jack. At the end of the exercise though, I was surprised at the close alignment of what happened with key elements of an HBR article on conversations I'd recently read!

What happened : What happens when you get people steeped in loads of gyaan together? Each wants to peddle his gyaan as the next best thing since sliced bread! While assiduously pointing out that every other person's slice has layers and layers of mold on it. This vociferous defence and offence routine looks straight out of a quintessential war movie thanks to our apparent bellicose demeanor. Ok, so combative perhaps accounts for the offence, how exactly does it impact the defence, you ask? Well,defence because once the offence starts, the others begin to build strategies of defence. This played out in front of my eyes,with people speaking continuously, with one gentleman speaking and staring straight ahead as though he had blinkers on his eyes and maybe he believed that not making eye contact with others would also mean that he could blank out people in the room! So the combat, and the thwart story was part 1.

The result: The issue on hand was rather complex, with us having to discuss some key aspects of future strategy. But owing to the clash of the egos that was in progress the issue ended up looking like a second grade school debate contest! Every statement was made trying to second guess the other person's ulterior motive, half believeing that everyone out there was out to rule the world and decapitate anyone who dissented! No one wanted to stop and think that at the end of the day the discussion was happening in an attempt to achive a bigger goal. Somewhere the goal was lost in translation And in the ensuing mayhem, I was stuck with my notepad, bullet points under the heading 'agenda' and not a single strikethrough, blankly looking at the crossfire of words and thoughts, clearly realizing that this is anything but a discussion or a brainstorming session.

Salvage? : A feeble attempt at trying to get everyone back on track resulted in more noise, given that no one typically pays any attention to the words of someone a fraction of their age! Once the wars subsided, and everyone perhaps began to realize that warring words expended a lot of energy (the fact that lunch time was drawing near helped the calming of energies), everyone seemed to calm down, and suddenly before one could realize it, everyone had almost shut off! All that we managed to achieve was an abrupt reaffirming of what we already knew and we ended up convincing ourselves that a lot of key insights had indeed been gathered. Although for me, I realized that in front of my very eyes, I had just lost 3 valuable hours of my life!

I like leeaving onnnnn a JET plane!

Take any usual service experience in modern India - getting a cell phone connection, traveling, a flight, a hair cut, anything. What are your typical reactions at the end of the service? I have always either ended up being angry or just plain indifferent! There are very few instances in modern day India, where you end up being genuinely happy after going through a 'service experience'. That, despite the fact that we are a service-driven economy, with everyone trying to differentiate themselves from the herd via their 'service-model'. So, when a happy ending comes along, you're tempted to talk about it! At least I am, or well I don't really need a reason to talk about anything anyway. But that is beside the point.

So, this has to do with a certain airline. And I know that someone upon reading this would be very happy, albeit for a completely different reason. That Jet Airways is very sweet to its flyers is known. But the fact that they've been sweet to me, despite my being a chronic offender, landing really late at the check-in counter, is additionally sweet. So, last year, I had the dubious honor of running to the boarding gates at an airport, flanked by 2 uniformed ground personnel of Jet Airways. I was appalled at my gross lack of exercise, when I noticed that those perfectly well groomed, prim and propah ladies on pointy high heels managed to go from the main airport terminal, down the escalator, into a connector train that sped on for a few minutes before depositing us in another building, and from thereon, up another escalator and a few more hundred meters really swiftly, without breaking into a sweat, while I could feel my ankle scream out in agony in just half that time despite my sneakers! And why was I involved in such an intense running exercise? Because a friend and I managed to check in our luggage after which we sat with a pizza and iced teas lamenting our fates oblivious to the fact that the departure terminal for our flight was in another building, and not just down a flight of stairs! But yet, despite not showing up in spite of the umpteenth last and final call, not once were we given a dirty look, and in fact after we boarded, we were told that there were empty seats at the back, where we could comfortably offload our jackets and cabin baggage and perhaps even put our feet up and sit comfortably! OK maybe not the feet up part, but the rest, yeah!

And now, this one was grander. My domestic flight yesterday was to leave at 10 past 8 and I landed at the check in counter at 10 minutes to 8. With a ton of luggage. The lady at the check in counter was quite firm in saying I couldn't get in, with my luggage and I pleaded, very sweetly. I was sincerely stuck in a terrible traffic snarl and I literally ran into the airport. And what made Jet even sweeter this time, was the personnel's almost immediate call to the baggage handling people to hold off the shut and lock down procedure of their baggage hold, and the extremely swift handling of my luggage and almost immediate transfer to the hold. Yes, I ran again, this time in slippers, and landed at the boarding gate at 8 PM sharp, just as that employee was about to write down my name to sound out the last and final call to Ms. Sindhu Subramaniam. In an almost Mission Impossible move, I jumped into the plane, and I thought I might become Agent Hunt, when I saw at least 4 more people behind me. I hurriedly sat down, and the flight, left exactly at 10 past 8, perfectly on schedule.

They say contrast is essential to appreciate one from the other. I have had the dubious honor (wonder how many dubious honors I've had) of being disallowed a check-in on a 5.30 AM flight because I landed at the check-in counter at 5:03 AM. No pleading, reasoning, begging, helped my case. The lady at that spicy airline refused to listen to me, or realize that a police security hold-up just at the mouth of the driveway to the airport delayed me by exactly 3 minutes! I had no luggage, I just needed to walk through. But I was told to shoo, and buy myself a new ticket. What good came out of this? I made me a new friend, another companion in my moment of penury, who had been similarly prevented from boarding!

So, of all my experiences, where I've had my luggage lost, broken, where I've been disallowed boarding on a spicy airline, or shown a dirty, grim expression, with no words when I asked for water on a silky airline, yesterday's gesture sure made me a believer and a huge fan..... till a gory experience do us apart!

Swindler's list

It's crazy to observe our extreme sense of adjustment to everything that happens around us in India. Being a Bambaiyya, I have grown up in an atmosphere of adjustment to everything - from adjusting to accommodate a fourth passenger on a train seat that can fit just 3 people, to adjusting to traffic snarls caused by snail-paced infrastructure development. One spends a good deal of time and effort fighting for the basics - electricity, water, transport, a house-maid, and almost everything else! And at the end of the exercise, you end up becoming a pro at adjustment. But extrapolating this sense of adjustment to a greater political and economic arena and expecting the average Indian to adjust to swindling behavior by a handful of crooks who choose to not just swindle the nation of a few crores and in some cases a few lac crores, but also to make the average taxpayer look absolutely foolish is perhaps stretching the 'thoda adjust please' concept a bit too far.

That's why, a new scam story hitting the papers each day is not just disgusting to me as an average Indian, but it's also extremely frustrating to know that while I and maybe half a billion other working people in my country are much too busy working, a handful of characterless and morally dead individuals choose to subvert the very meaning of the word law and turn every single public office into a viable money manufacturing machine! And each day, the stories get murkier. Long long ago, a supposed clean PM got embroiled in a scandal involving kickbacks on a defense deal. Then came a couple of huge stock market scams involving forgeries, and massive insider dealing. In the recent past, we've had scams in real estate, with benaami properties, nameless bank accounts, unverifiable customers swindling huge sums of money, nepotistic dealings by people in power - you name it, we have it and if we don't just wait for a bit!

And now, we have the massive 2G scam, wherein as a dirty, murky plot comes to the fore, one gets more and more disillusioned about the whole civil system as a whole! So we have the 2G spectrum airwaves to be used by telecom companies (demand side) sold the same by our government (supply). The Govt sells it dirt cheap to some unrecognizable players for peanuts. You think the Government has been cheated in the bargain, but as it turns out, it is just the taxpayer and the economy of the country that have been cheated. The spectrum sold by the govt for peanuts, finds buyers for over 10 times that price, amongst huge global players, begging the question why they were sold dirt cheap in the first place. And in this story, the main characters allegedly range from a ruffian Indian political party and all its cronies to one of the doyens of Indian industry, to countless babus in places of power.

And while the media has enough stories to fill reams and reams of paper, hog airwaves 24x7, one hopes that something would be done about the perpetrators of such dubious acts. Although, I do wonder, while staring in disgust at the blatant indecency of the whole mess, why must we believe that those, smart enough to conceptualize and pull off such a swindle, might just not be smart enough to buy their way out as well! After all, even a 0.01% of 1 lac 76000 crores can cover anyone's legal fees plus bribes for 7 generations!!!

Petty - thy name is human.

It is the human mind that is frail and petty. In more ways than one. And the instance where this trait comes through in the most blatant fashion is in the realm of religion. A book I am reading these days has brought out several truths. Reading the book has not just informed me about the religion, but rather has gone on to show how words of God or words inspired by God have been distorted, misinterpreted and generally manipulated to suit human political and societal needs of the time.

For example, before the Hijrah, the calendar system for Muslims was grossly manipulated, given the fact that one could build a calendar based on the lunar cycle or the solar cycle. As a result, the leaders of the time would set the holy months of no fighting and violence, to coincide exactly with their political needs. Another example, is that the very basis of jihadi literature, arises from a terrible misinterpretation and ‘taking out of context’ of a certain verse in the Qur’an, again for human gain! The gist of the verse, which again is specific mainly to the nomadic tribal times of the first revelations of the Qur’an says that it allows a Muslim to retaliate, if need be violently to incursions by followers of other religions, who hurt them just because they are Muslim. This, in turn is being twisted to mean that all current acts of terror are retaliations for some acts against Muslims, somewhere, again conveniently directed to and associated with religion!

I was talking to a friend the other day, and the topic veered towards, Hinduism. I remarked how the history of Hinduism has been tolerant and peaceful in comparison to Islam and Christianity, both of which have had rather violent periods in history – be it the fights between Shias, Sunnis, and before that, the violent opposition of Prophet Muhammad and the Qur’anic revelations, or the Crusades in Christianity, or even the very Crucifixion of Christ! My friend then remarked that Hinduism also had its faults – and brought up the caste system, and how the scriptures mandated the 4 Varnas and the subsequent discrimination in society.

Yes, the scriptures – Vedas, do mention the 4 Varnas – Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudras as 4 classes based on type – or role of livelihood in society. They mention it in periphery, not talking about a mainstay as such. They say that a class is decided based on a person’s skill set, and not by birth! They also say that it is possible for one to be able to move from class to class based on his skill sets, again. There is a line in the Rg Veda that says, “I am a bard, my father is a physician and my mother’s job is to grind corn”. Malleability of castes, inter-caste families, and so on are all interpretations that emanate from this one line! Not the crooked way in which the caste system exists today – as a political weapon, an upgrade voucher to First Class for people who perhaps already have the ability to travel First Class, a terrible tool that undermines meritocracy in Indian society.

The instances are plenty! Religion was a means to unify people along one cause – to find a higher purpose, and to prevent fighting and strife amongst humanity, as a whole. One God communicated to people of various regions in the language and a manner that suited them best, all the while, keeping the gist of the message the same. But unfortunately, the real truth has been obscured somewhere over the years – making even God an object of abject manipulation!