Driver's licenses and anthropology

Driving is fun. What's more fun, is observing the way people drive, while not having to screech your brakes or curse under your breath. Most recently, I discovered something even more fun.... Driver's license stories. And while most anthropologists and social psychologists would not agree with me, (I know of one who would call me specifically after seeing this post, if only to yell at me), I think driver's license processes are pretty much indicative of the social construct of a place. As esoteric as this line might sound, believe you me, what you will read subsequently has the capacity to crack you up. The stories did get me guffawing for sure! Now, I have been told that getting a Pennsylvania license is toooo tough. In fact, when I told a professor of mine I was moving to PA, he wrote back with an opening line that said, 'good luck with the PA license'. Having driven in India, and even outside on an IDP, I wondered how one could possibly make driving licenses so tough to get! So, one morning, I broke my lazy, lousy get up at 11, sleep again schedule and went to the place called PADOT. The name just brought on the image of a big full stop, little did I realize that that was indeed their job, trying to put a full stop to all driving ambitions! Maybe not a full stop, but semicolon perhaps.... So one fine rainy morning in early fall, I went to PADOT. Presented all the papers they had asked for, presented myself, presented landing papers using which I'd zipped back and forth across the border a couple of times at least, only to be told that they did not have records of my legal landing in the state! Helloooo! Here I am... This is me.... There is a much better place (home and asleep) where I'd rather be was what I felt like telling them! 'fill out this form, send it to the powers-that-be, let them revert that you are indeed a legal alien (how exactly can something slimy green with a snout be legal? Although, I may not be very good looking, but calling me alien was a little harsh, but who'd listen), and then come back. So sad and gloomy, more for having lost sleep over a royal let down, I headed off to Starbucks to go drown my sorrow or rather sleep!

If this was a Khoda pahaad nikla chooha (or as ol'man Shakespeare would say much ado over nothing), here is the story of Alisha. She spoke to me one day about how tough it was to get a license in New Jersey. Having been stung by the PADOT disaster, I took her seriously. I had barely started relating my story, when she cut me off and said, "It's the written test that is painful!" Now, that took me by surprise, because I went back to my written driving test in India, which was never written. The person at the Transport office showed me a sheet with a stop sign and a sign for a speed breaker and asked me what they were. I answered. I got my license. "Take a sample test," she challenged. Intrigued, I did. And failed. Not once, but twice. Well, I pride myself at being a rather decent driver, but I really did not know whether one 5 ounce glass of wine was equal to a bottle of beer or a six pack of beer or a pint of whiskey or a shot glass of sake or spiked coffee!! And when you have 2 questions on the same 'concept', the stage was set. Then came the distance questions. How far from a stop sign do you stop? 5 feet, 10 feet, 20 feet? How far from a stop sign can you park? 5 feet, 10 feet, 20 feet? I felt like yelling out "Dudes! They'll mark off no parking zones and I'll stop at a stop sign as far as is correct as per my judgement! While driving, I am not going to get off, measure distances, mark off with chalk and stop!!! How far from a hydrant will you park? I run away from hydrants. Once towed 100 times shy! As if this torture wasn't enough, then came the penalty questions. If you are caught with a BAC of 0.05, do you get prison term of 3 months and a fine of $200 - $500? Or is it 6 months and 200 - 500 bucks? Or just 750 bucks and community service? Well, if I am caught with a BAC of anything, I am plain roasted! If the policeman tells me that I need to go to jail for 3 months and pay a $1000 fine, I will do just that! I wouldn't argue with him saying,'I guess you have your rules wrong. It's 3 months and $750 as fine'. The officer would just say,'arguing with officer, $1000 more!'

So when I went for my driver's license test in Ontario, I sat poring over books like how I did in B school. 20 meters is the following distance. dim headlights 60 meters in front of an approaching car. G1 and G2 have 0 BAC levels. And even page numbers were learnt by heart. I walked into the exam center more nervous than I have been over all my exams put together. And here, all they asked was what happens when you see a school bus flashing signs in front of you? And 3 questions on this concept! Whew! Saved!!! Moral of the story, Pennsylvania seems to be cut off from border posts. Drunken driving is a real issue in NJ and Canadians care a lot about their school children! And India doesn't really care about rules. As long as you can drive, and reach places alive despite the other drivers on the road, you're good. Anthropology here I come... Driving!

And then it got cloudy

Wonder what it is with seas and oceans! They evoke a multitude of emotions, ranging from thrill, to a sense of calm all the while exuding a sense of power. But then maybe it's just me and that intense link I have forged with a sea while growing up, that make me see a sea and throw me into a different plane altogether, and at some level it is the play of nostalgia that paints an emerald green seascape in my mind,complete with gulls and waves and sand arches as well!

Try as I might, I cannot fully describe the plethora of emotion that a huge water body like the sea manages to bring out. Sitting by a window 30 stories above sea level,everything looks tiny, even towering pines and luscious cherry trees. Men look like ants scurrying about on snaky roads. The only thing that looks grand and magnanimous from up above is the majestic sea that spans out way beyond the horizon. But then again, wasn't the concept of the horizon something the sea created? The point where the sea and sky appear to meet? For me the ocean has a humbling effect, implying that no matter how high one gets, there is something larger, more mysterious out there that man can never hope to conquer and that greatness has to be respected. Another key element though is that no matter how great the ocean is in terms of its raw power, symbolically it always appears calm, and never ruffled. Aware of his greatness, but never lets it show.

Growing up in a city by the sea, he was always the patient listener and I have had intense telepathic conversations with the sea. Breathing in the salty air, listening to the splashing waves talk back to me, have the balmy wind ruffle my hair, somehow the sea became my go-to guy for everything. So much so, that when I had to move to a land locked place, with no water body, I did go to say a rather poignant goodbye much to the amusement of an accompanying friend. Standing in the waves as the sea sucked the sand beneath my feet, I felt that the sea was teaching me to hold my ground even if the very ground beneath my feet were not stable. He also seemed to tell me that I might believe that I am standing tall, but there is only transient sand beneath my feet, and standing tall might be just relative.

And today, when I got a whiff of the salty air in a land far far away, by an ocean thousands of miles away from my old friend, the Arabian Sea, I felt as if I was back in his balmy waters, talking to him again. And that was when I realized that the real confidant was my city. If not for Mumbai, I might never have befriended the sea. If not for the life she offers, one where I'd push myself beyond my limits, take my chances, stay focused and see no boundaries, a life tinged with the din of local trains, honking motorists, people forever in a hurry to reach their Ithaca, I might never have longed for a solace in the sea. And I might never have formed an instant connection with a sea that is emerald green as against the grey of the Arabian Sea.

And as if to reinforce my realization, the sky grew cloudy, and far in the distance I could hear the same old familiar sounds of Mumbai, I could feel the smell of wet mud from fresh monsoon showers mixed with the smell of roasted corn on the cob on coal fires, all telling me that no matter where I went, or what I did, I would take with me the inherent traits of being a Bambaiyya as also the heart-to-heart talks I've had with the sea. And I said to myself, people may call Mumbai indifferent and insensitive, but if you listen keenly, she does talk to you, like she did to me by the Chesapeake Bay!

Malnourishment can be cured by Starbucks and Louis Vuitton

Of late, reading Indian newspapers has become an interesting alternative to watching mindless slapstick comedies! One headline screams out saying malnutrition in India is at 42%. And at the same time, India look to allow 100% FDI in single-brand retail. The irony of it all is the fact that for the average upper middle class urban Indian, let's call him average Rohan (as the more common Raj and Rahul have been made quintessential spoilt rich kid names by a certain Johar-Khan combine), both these news articles mean the same - Nothing! Why? Well, when he looks at the fact that close to half the kids born in India are malnourished, and then looks down at his huge French Fries digesting gut, and at the gut of his couch potato kid playing some random game on his PS3 while chugging down Coke, he feels that the statistic is fake and is yet another ploy by the Opposition to dethrone the ruling government. Second, when he looks at single-brand retail, he has no clue what that means! Our average Rohan is perhaps busier trying to 'like' Anna Hazare's movement on Facebook, while uploading pictures of his family vacations in Bora Bora! So oblivious is he to the changes, that he perhaps fails to understand that there are some things that are right with India and are better left the way they are!

Now, single brand retail. ToI mentions only IKEA, while the Economic Times mentions LVMH and such other luxury brands. Both these entities have completely different, yet not very likable repercussions. One, IKEA! In the rest of the world, IKEA is the simple, minimalist, mass produced, do-it-yourself furniture store. As one moves up the value chain, people in the developed world move from mass-produced to custom furniture. But in India, in a bid to do what the best west does, we move from custom design to IKEA! I wouldn't be surprised if like McDonalds did, IKEA were to pitch itself as a luxury furniture place, with all those who have set foot on North American soil thinking it cool to own 'phoren phurniture'! I can almost see how this could pan out. IKEA would deliver pieces of furniture to the house, and Rohan would be stuck in office till 10 PM every night and on weekends and so, Dagdu

the house helper would be called upon to assemble the furniture and keep it in place at no extra cost!

 Let's face it. In a place like Mumbai, where every house is no bigger than a cubbyhole, with layouts and room shapes challenging the axioms of geometry, custom is all that fits. Call your usual carpenter and have him design and fit in a 4.7ft x 8.2 ft cupboard with doors and one single glass door for the showcase, and it can be done, at maybe half the price of IKEA, and you, for your bit,  are stoking free enterprise of the freelancing carpenter.  Being a true desi at heart, I feel that there are some things that are functioning beautifully as they stand. Why spoil the fun with a new entrant who can do nothing else but spoil a party? Driving down the scenic hills of North Carolina, via the Blue Ridge Parkway, hailed as a beautiful scenic drive through snaking hills, waterfalls and the like, it felt a little weird to get out of those foresty hills and land straight into the lap of WalMart! But that is all that happens - big retail manages to kill the curiosity and uniqueness of a place. I am not against big dirty retail. They can be cost efficient for the end consumer. But why get cost-efficient mass produced, when indigenous is still cost efficient? What about all those hardware stores? The migrant worker, who knows no skill except maybe woodwork? Why kill all of that? Someone in the article said that this would open up India to new technologies. But haven't enough and more B schools had case studies on IKEA and their model? Can't a management consultant groom an Indian entrepreneur to start an Indian IKEA, with the entrepreneur's initials instead of the I and K of Ingvar Kamprad?

And then come the likes of LVMH. Till now, page 3 'celebrities' scrounged the markets and brought back a few handbags and purses to sell to their coterie over drinks and gossip. The coterie just had it's outlet for blowing off excess money that remained after the purchase of a certain fragrance, jewelry, shoes and such other c*#p.  But now, LVMH can open its own fully owned store in India. "Gaining access to the growing Indian population", a certain consultant was quoted as saying. The question though is, do we really need this? People who need the said bag have the wherewithal to fly to Paris and bring back booty. I wouldn't be surprised if these retail shops, as time progresses look for subsidies and grants from the government to set up shop. And in the 'me too' frenzy, we would eventually roll out the red carpet to them as we always have had in the past.

Am I against all luxury brands? Do I not like brands myself? Well, I do, and in places. But I do know that India is not in need of a Starbucks when udipi coffee tastes better (I can guarantee that as coffee is my pet poison). India does not need to roll out the red carpet to Starbucks and let Coffee Day get butchered in the wake of no government assistance. India does not need an IKEA when the Indian furniture industry provides livelihood for several people and generations. India does not need assistance to LVMH, when all that money can go to feed the 42% of Indian children who are malnourished. I guess we have more pressing problems that need resolution, with our democracy not being able to form a body to oversee itself, and our distribution network failing such that we can't feed almost half our kids, before we decide to go for a walk by the seaside sipping Starbucks coffee, carrying a Louis Vuitton tote that houses a pet chihuahua!

I'd give anything for the simple life

Period movies, 80s music, the Beatles, the oldest Pepsi commercial in India, Amitabh Bachchan movies, visiting villages, roaming around the countryside, listening to stories about how life used to be 'in those days', almost always evokes a happy feeling. Well at least as long as the Amitabh Bachchan movies stop at the era before Toofan and stop well before Lal Badshah and Sooryavansham. I have always wondered why because almost everyone tells us to look to the future and anticipate and enjoy the surprises it brings. They always say that life gets boring when things get predictable and by and far the future is the only thing exciting. Then why does nostalgia manage to bring on a smile all the time?

Going to museums can be a drag for many. Every museum has its own fair share of pots, pans, ceramics of white with blue ink, old tables, chairs, paintings and what not. But the underlying theme here seems to be the awe that people hold for the old. Just like wine and whiskey, old is always better. And even in terms of the way our lives have panned out, life in the 'days of yore' were decidedly better. 

The other day, I happened to read about the Japanese Tea Ceremony. And as chance would have it, there was an exhibit of the same at the museum. So there was the tea caddy, a small spatula like rod for spooning out tea into a cup, a small towel, a cup, a whisk, a ladle and so on. And the whole process, as seen on a video was mind blowing. Not because they prepare tea in some sort of superhuman way, although I haven't tasted the authentic thick and thin tea and so I don't know anything about the taste, but because all this ceremony was for the mundane act of drinking TEA! Something we do twice, and some of us do once every two hours! I could devote a whole post on the tea ceremony, but the key point here is the stress given to each piece of the process, for even so mundane an act. Cleaning the tea cup where the tea leaves are mixed and whisked with hot water is done in a certain way. The towel used is folded in a certain way. The ladle used to draw hot water is placed back after use in a certain way. The whisk is placed in and picked up by an odd twist of the hands. I was awed. More than awed. Again not because of the way it was done, but because of the simple product it was meant to produce. Simple. So the key here, was simple!

Again, I happened to see an exhibit of an excavation at Godin Tepe, near Iran, where they excavated 4 civilizations built one on top of the other in the same spot spanning several thousand years. The exhibits involved pots, pans, spoons, and other instruments of simple everyday life. A simple life, where one goes to hunt food anywhere as one knows no boundaries, one prepares a simple meal,uses  rivers to wash clothes, utensils and even oneself, enjoys a simple conversation, music is folk music with them singing and at times even dancing, warmth of a fire and sleep on a simple mat on the floor.

Cut to today. Both work or try to work assuming visas and permits that separate geographies do not come in the way, restaurants cook, dishwasher cleans, washing machines launder, maid cleans. Food is fatty, unhealthy. Music is that which is spewed by anything that catches people's attention, or else what can explain the fan following for a certain Macy Gray, Lenny Kravitz or even Amy Winehouse (God bless her soul)? We're too inhibited to dance for others to see and bathtubs are too slippery to dance for oneself. Everyone carries a phone and that too not any phone but smartphones, to check emails and update Facebook while driving a gas guzzling car in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Conversations are FB updates and vowel-less text messages. And that is assuming people have the temperament to have a conversation, without picking up a quarrel!

And I wondered. What will museums look like 400 years from today? A  BlackBerry, an i-Pod, an i-Pad, a life-size portrait of a Mr. Jobs, Pyrex and Tupperware microwave-safe utensils, with an aesthetic crack since they are in a museum, a big dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, vacuum cleaner? Or maybe just a website with all these pictures. Oh! With a copious amount of inexplicable Modern Art! Joan Miro, anyone? Or even the surreal Mr. Dali? Or perhaps Rothko!

Kolaveri, i-fads, Salem witch trials, INSANITY!!!

For starters, I can't believe I am writing about this. After all this hype, it just looks as though I want a piece of the action too, and that is why I am 'kolaveri-ing' away. Honestly, that is not the case. What is the case, is that this song is infectiously catchy! And oddly enough, not in an 'Oh my God! Get this song out of my head way'! so seriously, why this kolaveri???

Well, there hasn't been any shortage of inexplicable fads of late. Why, the very i-phenomenon leads the pack. How else can you explain people staying up all night to order the i-phone 4s, on a continuously crashing site? How else can you explain someone (read me) spending a whole day fighting with errors trying to install iOS 5, the day it was released, when the very next day installation on a phone proceeded like a dream? How else can you explain the phone being a huge grosser at the outset, when there were much better phones, available for lesser in the market? How else can one explain the very smartphone market? Honestly I wouldn't need to be perennially stuck to my email if I am just someone sitting at home all day, doing nothing, and no one needs an immediate response from me, whatsoever!

So, when this song caught on, I was surprised. Well, it really isn't a very bad song, given that songs like Altaf Raja's 'tum toh thehre pardesi' has had longer standing fan following. Just because it is that bad. Or for that matter, even the fame of a certain Mika falls in the same category. So good, because it is sooooooo bad. Gunda, the legendary cult movie, which even I have seen several times, just because of the terrible dialogues, or maybe just to appreciate a man who had such faith in his own work that he went ahead and made such a terrible movie. While on the topic of SGBSB (So Good Because So Bad), all new fans of Kollywood, must watch a movie called Yaarukku Yaaro Stepnee. It is on YouTube, and yes, Stepnee is the right spelling. It has awesome lines that translate into stuff like 'You think I treat you like a stepny, when in reality, I want you with me in every step... ovvoru stepu nee, in Tam'. If someone found a link and put in on FB, I am sure even this movie would get the Oscar equivalent of bad movies!

The whole Kolaveri phenomenon, the way it was covered in the news, or spoken about, or shared and tweeted on, really flashes back images of the Salem witch trials. Rajnikant's son-in-law might just hunt me down for likening his song to being burnt at a stake, but think about it. Such a massive herd following, many even 'Facebook liking' the video because it is cool to know Kolaveri. I guess, in the current age, give any thought to FB, be it an Egyptian overhaul or a scrawny guy singing a silly song with outrageous lyrics, it will end up becoming a phenomenon.

What's next then? The Bacchan granddaughter won the Miss World pageant already, or got an Oscar for future estimated sterling performance? FB like anyone???

Money at all costs.... Consultants, hedge funds and insiders

Spartacus, Rocky, Cinderella, Obama every Amitabh Bachhan movie.... What do all of these have in common? The story of the underdog. For some reason, everyone likes a good underdog story. And that is perhaps why there is such a huge surge in the number of stories and articles on Rajat Gupta and Raj Rajaratnam of late!

Insider trading is not a new construct. Martha Stewart was perhaps the biggest name a few years ago and everyone knows that insider trading is not unknown in India. But when big names and billionaire hedge funds are involved, the scale of the events just hits gargantuan proportions. Media has a lot more to talk about, and the stories look a lot more psychedelic. Imagine saying ," richest Sri Lankan born American on the planet caught in insider trading". given the current mood of 'if jobless, occupy a city square', the whole 'down with greed' theme seems to get its perfect frontpage story. And unfortunately we Indians and our 'money at all costs a.k.a greed' attitude provide the perfect gasoline steeped firewood for this fire!

I happened to read a couple of articles on these gentlemen the other day. Each written in an attempt to project the humane side of each of these supposed Wall Street manipulators. So, I learnt that Rajaratnam belonged to the Sinhalese minority (LTTE, anyone?) and that he had been physically assaulted when he was studying in the UK. Furthermore he wasn't privy to the so-called Jewish clique when he was graduating from Wharton! His father had been an upright 'head ASPAC' of Singer Sewing Machines, the largest selling brand of sewing machines in the East! He got to study in UK, and made it to prestigious Wharton, where B school education is one of the most expensive in the world! Anyone heard of Richie Rich (Poor little rich man indeed!) and as for Mr. Gupta, he was an academically brilliant young man, and a professor at Harvard made a personal call to the CEO of McKinsey to make them recruit Rajat, and not turn him down for want of experience. Here was someone who advised large companies and told them how to conduct business, solve their problems and amassed enormous wealth in the process. But there always is a gap between the cup and the lip and no matter how wealthy one gets, someone else is always richer! And looking at the South Asian community success stories in the west, a pattern emerges. A pattern of flimsy ethics and a goal described by only money!

But the story throws up a ton of unanswerable questions. Like why does a hedge fund manager educated at Wharton need to pay a million dollars a year to a consultant to tell him what is and isn't insider information? Wouldn't anyone know that discussing outcomes of board meetings with directors is material nonpublic information? How could a Wharton educated billionaire hedge fund manager whose wiretaps are public domain information plead not guilty based on a soothsayer's prediction? (There is a story that says that an ola leaf soothsayer said that such calamities would befall Rajaratnam and that he would finally prevail). And then, consultants, are known to advise clients how to solve their problems by sometimes exploiting loopholes, all the while ensuring they followed the laws to the letter, not always in spirit. But can this tactic be a process one employs in one's own life? Can knowing how to twist the rules be a noble safeguard against penalty for breaking the rules? One then wonders whether it makes any sense for someone to sully one's reputation built over a 40 year period in a quest for more and more money! One of those articles had a ridiculous line that went on to say that one needn't denigrate Mr Gupta, because everyone has twisted the laws at some time or the other! But in all honesty, if he is guilty of what he did, his fault is bigger, as he betrayed the trust of all such big corporations and their shareholders all for personal gain and also provided a dead blow to the reputation of all Indians who have tried to make it big in the world!

But the worst plaguing question is one line I read in an article that said that all non Indians had entered into a plea bargain without a wiretap while all the Indians who were accused, plea bargained with a wiretap. In other words, just the Indians had no issues making money off of someone only to turn on him ones times soured! Money at all costs, use people and throw them away and have really flimsy ethics and scant regard for human relationships? That Indian success story is better best forgotten!  

Indian GP and Metallica - do not mean India has arrived.....

'Master of Puppets' and whizzing cars on a racetrack - integral parts of every young person's life! A perfect juxtaposition then, that a Metallica concert and the inaugural Indian Grand Prix was scheduled for last weekend. The only problem, though, was that all this was happening in India! And for some weird, random reason, everyone wants to scream out loud that 'India has arrived'. As certified by Metallica and Bernie Ecclestone????

So, Bryan Adams, Michael Jackson, Enrique Iglesias have all come here and performed. And we've always had tamashas with these performances! What with Bal Thackeray's Patel Shot with MJ, Enrique's risqué stage performance being blasted by our very own moral police! So when the greatest band of all time (Rolling Stones and Iron Maiden fans, please excuse) was coming to town, some 'locha' was expected. But no one knew, or expected 'Shining India' Indians to turn into hooligans. Now if someone had seen those village shows that featured folk art with rural, cheap liquor swigging bumpkins as audience, they might have had a glimpse of what real Indian audiences can be like! So when crowds got unruly, noisy, restless, nonsense was expected. And honestly, when 'sophisticated' audiences started breaking up equipment, the mind brought out the image of the village bumpkin! India shone, didn't it?

And now comes F1. When news of the race started appearing on TV, other news that aired at the same time, was that of 12 infants dying in Calcutta in a span of 24 hours! When India is unable to provide for healthcare in even the metros, can we really say that India is shining, because a handful of affluent Indians who know of no better use of 40,000 rupees, choose to go see a race for Facebook update purposes? When I said this to someone, they said," go see a race and you would know why it really is such a big deal". Well, honestly, having been to one, the experience is akin to climbing a nondescript mountain. You yearn to climb it, but once you do, you don't want to climb it again. So at a time, 25000 Indians blow off freshly earned excess money on a race. Does India churn out 25000 new moneyed yuppies each year? NO! So what happens in 2012? Will the same guys go and see the race again and post 'part of history.... Watched the Indian GP (pronounced as gro pri)....' on Facebook? Again?

And why should such an overpriced sport get tax rebates? A sport that even the participants find overpriced. And why should billionaire Ecclestone be subsidized by the Emerging Indian? Why do we yearn for certification by outsiders? Someone hyphenated India and China and so we Indians wannabe China! China conducted the Olympics and so we conducted the Commonwealth Games and gobbled up a lot of money! China has a F1 race, so we should too! Why? Why aren't we proud of who we are? We respect human rights more than the Chinese do. Gandhiji refused to dress up in a dinner jacket to meet the king, and he was ok with not meeting the king. But today, we're too much of the wannabe type!

Ask any European, American or Canadian whether he would blow off a 1000 dollars on a Formula 1 race. I did ask, and I was looked upon with derision, when I told them that the cost of the best tickets in India was 1000 bucks. "You Indians are like the Japanese of the Eighties," someone said. But India can never lose a decade like the Japs did, just because such blatant shows of moneyness comes from just a handful of Indians.

And 25000 Indians do not make 900 million Indians shine! So till we can provide food and healthcare to every Indian, WE HAVE NOT ARRIVED!

I am not the 99%... Occupy Wall Street Protests

"I am the 99%" is a new slogan that has caught on with New Yorkers. All of America, some claim. They say that the 'Occupy Wall St' protest is a manifestation of the frustration of the 99% Americans who feel like they have been forsaken by the system in favor of the 1%. In principle, I agree with the protest against big bonuses with bailout money, but, when seen from closer quarters, I somehow felt that the real message had been lost in translation.

So when we walked into 'Liberty Square' as some choose to call Zuccotti Park in the wake of the protests, it just seemed like we had walked into a small crowd assembled in a flea market of sorts. For me, it was as if I was walking through Colaba Causeway in Mumbai, scrounging for junk jewelry, except that instead of random shopkeepers asking me to come sample their merchandise, there were a few bedraggled people mouthing protests. Instead of flashy store signs, there were scribblings on psychedelic signboards. And just a handful had anything to do with Wall Street. 

One spoke of bailouts, one spoke of corporate bandits in Wall Street or some such story and one just said 'Goldman Sachs hates America'. And while I looked at these posters, A band of people walked by chanting 'Less Greed, more Green'. And a little further on, someone started off screaming 'Fox News, we hate you'. And there were signboards slamming Monsanto and GM food! There were some making a statement with painted hair and faces, and the signage said 'Kill Turkish dictatorship!' There was a heavyset man with a Templar helmet and a sign that said 'Class Warrior'. I am sure he got photographed a billion times, not for his message, because I am sure very few would have grasped what he was protesting about, but rather for his getup. Early Halloween, maybe. Relevance, anyone? It looked as if there was a gross lack of theme in the whole movement, except that anyone who wanted to protest about anything could congregate there. And anything was almost anything! 
 


People holding out signs hinting at anti-capitalism were more than happy to smile into digital cameras. So, everyone was much too busy protesting against capitalism, on signboards made using psychedelic ink on shiny paper, or using LED lights for their signage. But without innovation and free markets dictating innovation, could we have imagined paper, ink, why even the jeans worn by people?

America is capitalist, believing in the concept of survival, and maybe flourishing of the fittest. And this model has served them well. Free innovation, knowing that he who survives will succeed has stood them in good stead and has led to the US being a pioneer in everything from life sciences to defense. There have been excesses in the recent past, no doubt, but power has been known to corrupt and history has shown excesses at all levels. But free enterprise and financial innovation cannot be done away with. One cannot fight Big Pharma just because they are big and therefore wrong! Had it not been for Pfizer, we would never have had penicillin! And had it not been for Wall Street, the iPhone 4S might have ended up in the grave along with Steve Jobs. 

And while big bonuses for bailout firms is an irony and perhaps needs to be done away with, t-shirts with 'Occupy Wall Street', that were selling by Zuccotti Park, perhaps captured the true essence of it all. The system is built in a certain way, and this system has been seen to succeed for all these years. Suddenly, if some feel like the overhaul of the system has thrown them out, and so want the whole system to be done away with, they perhaps have to realize that while they are protesting their heart out, someone somewhere is cashing in on the situation. He alone is perhaps the 1%. And if that is the message that comes out, I am so not the 99%.....

A brilliant edifice needs a passionate foundation - Part 2

Continuing from part 1, speaking of Steve Jobs on the eve of i-Phone 4S shipping day. So following his dream and starting Apple, growing the company on the basis of his vision, getting publicly fired from his own company, starting NeXT computers, a failure which proved to be the basis of today's web servers, starting Pixar which made Toy Story, A Bug's life, Antz and numerous others which have been thrilling children and adults alike over all these years, only to get back to a floundering Apple with his repertoire of i-Pods, i-Pads, Macbooks and of course the i-Phone to turn the company around, Steve Jobs is the kind of entrepreneur everyone aims to become. His artistic touch can be seen in every Apple product, to date and that's why, even if the i-Phone 4 came out with antenna issues needing a casing to be able to function, people bought it. After a while, they even paid to buy a casing that was essential to cover a true folly in the product. And soon after i-phone 4S' release, critics and tech analysts declared that the product was mediocre, and would just about catch up with the Androids that exist today. Yet, when the announcement of his death came out, it was but obvious that everyone wanted to own Steve's swansong product. Not because they wanted the technology, but because they wanted a part of Steve, his spirit, his passion. So people, even ones I know, stayed up till 3 AM to order their products online and i-Phone has seen record sales this week!


I remember his commencement speech at Stanford in 2005 when he addressed the students on 'connecting the dots', 'love and loss' and 'death'. He lived his life along those lines, and he is a man, who managed to do good for the company even through his death. There is an old South Indian story about a nobleman who was known for his generosity, who apparently even performed charity after he died. The story goes as thus - thsi nobleman would give away some money to any artist who came to his door. Hearing his fame, a poor poet came from afar hoping to get some money for his art and when he reached the village, he came to know that the man had passed away. Upon hearing this he started crying, whereupon the dead nobleman's fist fell open and a ring came running out to the poet's feet. That is essentially what even Jobs has achieved - magic when he was alive and success even when he died. 


If one were to look closely at these lives, one would realize that what defined these lives, was the passion and love for what they did. Be it Shammi Kapoor and his acting, Pataudi and cricket, Singh and Ghazals or Jobs and technology. When the passion is present, the brilliance comes through. And this brilliance lives on, long after one is gone. Each time I'd look at an i-pod or i-pad or even the i-phone, the only face that would come in front of me, would be that of Jobs.  While alive, Jobs had the tag of being ruthless, arrogant, a severe taskmaster and what not. But no one today will ever remember these aspects. If anything, all they'd care would be what he left behind in the world. 

 So, if I could wish, I would wish for the attitude of these people, towards all that I do, while asking for the ability to find out soon, what I would truly like to do with my life. For that alone would define what I would be remembered a. Perhaps not on a scale as grand as those I spoke of above, but at least among those I like to call as part of my circle.

A brilliant edifice needs a passionate foundation - Part 1

Name and fame during one's lifetime is not the real deal. What truly matters is how one is perceived and remembered after one is gone. These past couple of months alone have seen several people, Shammi Kapoor, Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, Jagjit Singh and Steve Jobs, in particular, leave a void in our generation as we know it. And each of them will be remembered, and remembered well, for all that they have done in their lifetime. They perhaps were known in a certain way when they were alive, but their passion for their art or their profession is all that will define them in all the years to come.


Expectedly overshadowed by his elder brother, the legendary Raj Kapoor, Shammi Kapoor had to carve out a niche for himself in the market, given that his contemporaries were Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar and all such big names whose movies would run just because they starred these people. And so he created this niche for himself as a bumbling, clumsy at times, romantic hero whose antics were more or less inimitable! Songs of his movies are still huge hits when played, and 40 odd years on, they continue to offer a light-hearted afternoon, a welcome break from the thought-provoking cinema of today. When asked what he would have done with his life, if not an actor, he said that he could conceive of no other profession!


MAK Pataudi, well, was in the news always for being the Nawab who married the then reigning supreme Bollywood actress Sharmila Tagore. But he will always be respected in the cricketing world for being the youngest Test Captain at 21 and being impeccable in the sport despite having just one functioning eye! And despite all the luxury that birth in a royal household could afford, he chose to spend hours on a pitch practising, leading the country and carving out a niche for himself. And he will be remembered as one of cricket's greatest by record-holding greats like Tendulkar as well. The underlying feature here - passion for the sport.


Jagjit Singh. Well, Indian Classical music has churned out stalwarts by the hundreds over all these years. But Jagjit Singh can perhaps be credited with the laurel of making Ghazals appeal to the mainstream audience. An audience that even comprises youth that cringes at the very mention of classical music. And with a voice as sublime as his, whether he was singing 'Woh Chandni ki raat thi', or 'Kaagaz ki kashti' as part of his ghazal performances or even songs like 'tum itna kyun muskura rahe ho' and more recently 'hoshwaalon ko khabar kya' in the movies, he could evoke any emotion in the minds of the listener. Again, passion for the art.


And finally Steve Jobs. I guess the internet is replete with eulogies and anecdotes and people expressing their sentiments about the short but completely meaningful life of a man who has managed to thrill many a life through his own endeavors! And his story would need a post of it's own to do him justice.... in part 2.

Chaos theory and the Great Recession

The butterfly effect - a good movie and an even more powerful mathematical construct - chaos theory. The situation that exists in today's world seems to conform to only this construct, if at all. They say that there are three main defining aspects to chaos theory, and the way I understand it, those conditions are - 1. Sensitivity or dependence to initial situations or triggers, 2. Mixing or topological transitivity or simply, overlap and finally, the most elegant of them all - density of periodic orbits, or that every point in the system is a finite distance away from a periodic, repeating orbit or simply put, every system is in a precarious state of stability, being just a miniscule distance away from... chaos! Now look at the current economic mess we are in. 

Housing boom, banking boom, loans repackaged, investment banks flourishing, CDOs, passing-the-parcel, the buck stopped, housing bust, CDOs flopped, banks plopped. Policy makers decided not to spare the rod and spoil the child and let Lehman go bust. Condition 1- Sensitivity to initial conditions. The first initial condition of what to do when Lehman was looking to go insolvent - had the reaction panned out differently, the world would have been different today! What policymakers didn't realize then, was that Lehman would take with it the whole financial system and put the world into a form of inexplicable chaos! What with European exposure to Lehman and the wonderful world of CDOs, and who expected AIG, the single largest insurer of all things risky, to face claims on all it's risks? The proverbial black swan was showing it's ugly face almost all over the world at once. And suddenly industry and producers were facing a credit freeze and people like GE were having trouble raising money to run everyday operations. TARP happened, cheap money was given out, but the economy was shaken and risk aversion kicked in. The credit freeze contagion spread and welfare state Europe began to realize how years of condoning mediocrity was doing them in. PIIGS or Portugal, Iceland, Italy, Greece and Spain suddenly found themselves in debts they were unable to pay. Unrest skyrocketed, and people took to the streets in Athens, Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and grim fears of war materialized. Condition 2 - Topological transitivity! 
  
Obama came to power, and people expected the fairy tale to continue and half expected him to wave a magic wand that could rid them of all maladies. But QE 1, 2 and 3 can only do so much if banks are unwilling to lend and people are unwilling to spend! So once upon a time banks lent money to a man with no fixed income and let him realize his dream of a swanky house he couldn't afford. Now, bitten by the shock of a fellow bank going non-existent, every bank started playing safe... perhaps too safe at that! And now, when 'Operation Twist' happened a few days back with lowering long term yields to make the short term yields look more promising, the street took the exact opposite view and believed that long term prospects look grim! Each time a steady state is approached or thought to be approached, we get nudged into yet another unsteady tailspin. Condition 3 - Density of periodic orbits....

And grim as it may sound, the phenomenon of history repeating itself (a manifestation of condition 3) does seem a reality. Lehman was allowed to fail as policy makers wanted to set an example and teach a lesson. Talks in Europe show that no country wants to hurt itself a bit in a bid to save a pal. Will Christine Lagarde let Greece fail in order to teach a lesson on austerity? Unrest began on Athens streets, and spread over to the Middle East and skeletons keep falling out of corrupt Indian closets every day. Fights on streets for jobs is a reality everywhere and civilized society is not any different, except maybe in the absence of fisticuffs and public fights. But if the Transcanada Pipeline controversy or the Keystone Controversy as it is called is anything to go by, with Americans in Nebraska fighting the pipeline that can connect supply from Oil Sands rich Alberta to refineries in the Gulf Coast on grounds that are environmental on the surface and protectionist towards jobs on the inside, it just looks like it is the Great Depression all over again. It took a World War to get the world out saner, more humble and tragically tempered. 

Hope the Butterfly somewhere can flap its wings to preclude that repetition and somehow get us all out of this chaos saner, more humble, more cohesive, more sensible and definitely less greedy!

Stereotypical Screw looses : Tryst with TIFF - II

Frustrated and cowering after The loneliest planet, I looked at the lineup of the TIFF evening and saw the summary of 'the incident'. Looked promising again. 3 sane cooks at a mental asylum caught in the frenzy when the power fails! Interesting. I expected something akin to Shutter Island and given my own very recent experience with power outages in the wake of hurricane Haha, sorry Irene, the juxtaposition felt just right. So after an arbit morning, spent trying to use my intelligence to make an unimpressive movie seem nice, I persevered and made bold to go see another movie at TIFF. A friend had remarked, that Slumdog had received rave reviews at TIFF and it had gone on to become a sweeper of all awards the subsequent year. So I was on the lookout for bragging rights towards having sampled perhaps the 2012 Oscar phenomenon! 

It was a movie by music video director Alexander Courtes and the story is essentially what I just mentioned. and more than a story, the logical loopholes stare you in the face! Power outage, the criminally insane are on the loose and their only goal seems to be to catch and torture and kill the 3 cooks! Really? Motive, someone? The only thing they want to do is kill the cooks? Insane! Oh wait! They already are!!! And so am I, for sure!!!! So, there is a super storm in the year 1989, the year is perhaps a disclaimer as to why no one has cell phones, or back up power or why the police is so slow or even better, why there are no doctors in the asylum! Yes, the asylum with over 50 inmates, has 3 security guards, with no firearms, and 0 doctors. Our sane cooks take pains to feed them, all in an attempt to make money for their dysfunctional band. Again, why work in such a high risk scenario for a band when they actually hate each other?


Then comes the actual power outage. The storm knocks off power when the inmates are in the cafeteria for food. The only 'meds' they get are from this nurse and the meds they get look like M&Ms and 2 stereotypical white pills for EVERYONE! Please! Mental health covers everything from schizophrenia to psychosis and the treatment implies 3 pills across the board??? Eli Lilly might be real upset, given their extensive research into Mental Health!!! The power goes out and JB, the main, scary security guard enlists the help of our 3 cooks to take the inmates back to their rooms. Fine. And they do, in single file. Except that they take them to their rooms, and just shut the door! No electricity, somebody? So automatic locks won't work? Even a chimp would try to wriggle the door and unlocked doors open easily, even for the insane! So they're all out, they bump off all the guards at once. Clearly a bump on the head against the wall kills the guards, but it takes a lot more to power down the insane. And remember, if you are insane, all you do is staaaare! Staaaaaaaaaaare like no tomorrow, for that is all that insane guys do!


Then starts an endless cat and mouse routine, with all forms of torture being shown explicitly on screen. So battering on the head, thrusting a rod into someone's middle, skinning someone, burning someone on a burner.... the works. Ok, so the sane get tortured by the insane, and all the sane can do is yelp! Then comes the supreme gore. One of the sane cooks, who thinks one of the insane is out to get him, sees the insane guy eat his own fingers. EWWWWWWWWW! This is not horror. This is gore. And a distinction exists as per the Oxford English Dictionary! Blairwitch Project - Scary. Saw - Gory!!! So everyone is bumped off except 2 sane cooks and at the end, one sane cook turns insane. Or does he? Does he cease to exist? Or what?

Such was my last encounter with TIFF 2011. It was also the last movie to be screened this year at TIFF. While opening, the MC said that in a previous screening 2 people passed out and he wasn't sure whether it was because of the movie or the drinking and partying. I declare, it was the movie and not because it was scary, but people burst their sides laughing! At least I did!!!!!

Tryst with the TIFF - I : Arbit arbit arbit abrupt!

I knew film festivals were akin to 'modern art' exhibitions. Like looking at say a Mark Rothko and trying to make sense of it, so you don't feel too stupid in the crowd you're standing in. I knew that if the movie was arbit, it would be featured. That my first ever tryst with a fim festival would be so arbitrary, and inexplicable, was never really expected.

So on a crisp Sunday morning, the closing day of the TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival), I decided to sample the fest to my senses! So with jacket, accessories et al, completing my art aficionado ensemble, I stepped in to watch something called The Lonliest Planet. The summary on TIFF, said that it was a movie that explores a young couple's life against the rugged Georgian landscape. Essentially, what it said was that 2 young people, evidently in love embark on a backpacking trip in Georgia. In the middle of a hike, all equations are turned on their heads by an incident, that perhaps even ends before you realize it. And the couple then evaluates the truth of their relationship, and the very basis shows signs of being threatened. Super impressive summary, Georgia, backpacking, human nature - it had it all, I believed and I was rather proud of my choice.

But this movie had an opening sequence that almost made me cringe. Darkness, a creaking sound and a woman screaming made me fear the worst, and shocking as the scene may be, I still haven't quite understood why the opening scene was so inexplicably ridiculous! Apart from a shock element and the unnecessarily presumed essential entry condition of female nudity, there was no coherent reason why someone would want to show a soap clad, not-intensely-attractive woman screaming and jumping in a decrepit bathroom. Someone, incidentally had a better immediate interpretation! He felt that the lady was insane, and the hero who ran in to wash off the soap was her caregiver! Maybe she was! Or maybe, as hindsight showed, I am insane, given my wonderful capacity to choose movies!

So after our great art movie opening sequence, we are told that the lady is not insane and the man is not a caregiver, but they are rather a couple who is very much in love and engaged to be married. Man, love is blind in more than one way! So they're in Georgia for a backpacking vacation and for company they have a Georgian tour guide. They walk, climb, frolick in the grass, take together-together pictures and walk and walk and walk in silence. Then came a shot of a large mountain and I was stuck looking at that mountain for a good one minute, wondering why, when suddenly 3 figures were moving at the bottom of my screen - presumably, tour guide, distance, man and woman together. The only dialogues so far are random comments like 'I want to buy a Japanese car' by the rambling tour guide, who has performed the best despite the hero being the guy who played Che Guevarra in the Motorcycle Diaries or more notably Octavio in Amores Perros!

Then comes the shattering scene, the famous scene that is going to change everything and expose the fragile threads that hold these people together! Great scene, all in Georgian, but understandable. Here is what happens. What appears like a band of bandits come to the site, yap animatedly with the tour guide and when interrupted by our hero, he points up his gun and instinctively the hero hides behind his fiancee for a split second, before hurrying in front. The next scene is again a landscape, and three tiny figures move across the scene, and it is tour guide, distance, woman, distance, man. Very well taken, and perhaps the only good thing about the movie. After this it just looks like the director has squandered away what could potentially have been something akin to a 'Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf' in terms of implied psychological undercurrents! I, for one, expected some flash insight into the past, which could perhaps have blown up in the current context. I expected an exchange, at least with expressions, if words are not arty enough and I expected a re-evaluation of relationships as the summary claimed. And I fretted so much after the movie, because I expected my creative instincts and expectations to be satisfied!

In what appears like a movie where the editor went on strike, we have another patchwork of silences in the rain, where the hero walks off in a huff when the woman smokes a puff and the woman, who so far has been angry holds her raincoat over the drenched hero. Then we have a bonfire picnic, where the tour guide gives his poignant story and yet another level of ridiculous inexplicability follows. The last scene is a do-it-yourself guide of how to dismantle a tent. End of story.

At the end of this, I was left dumbstruck, yet thankful that the movie ended and I wondered whether arbit movies with abrupt endings are definitions of film festival movies! A sense of perseverence prevailed and I went to watch yet another one later that night, though I shall write about it in part II.... where I flirted with psychos! I mean the movie and not necessarily the crew! Or maybe not......

10 years on......

What is with people and the perennial focus on depressing events? Every news channel has a show that glosses over pain and suffering in Africa, or on refugees in the Middle East. For so long, every single twisty wind in every ocean around this land mass was the center of attraction. And now, given that tomorrow marks the ten year anniversary for the Sept 11 attacks on NYC, even if it had slipped someone's mind, the media wouldn't let anyone forget. The buildup has been going on for over a week now, with every news channel streaming decade old pictures with captions like - Lest we forget.

The stress has been on so many real depressing aspects like the psychological effects on first respondents, or how survivors remember the event and so on. Beyond a point, the melancholy really makes you wonder why! After all these years, why exactly should one gloss over the old, really sad, depressing events? That too in a world, where 'moving on' is the only static rule in life - be it relationships, jobs, or even life in general!

The irony of it all perhaps hits someone from a country like India, or maybe a place like say Israel or the Middle East! Places that have been ravaged by war and strife over all these years! The September 11 attack is perhaps really stark, because after Pearl Harbor, there had never been any attack on American soil. Pearl Harbor too was a wartime event and perhaps doesn't quite qualify! And bringing the perpetrators to book, was an almost expected act on the part of the World's superpower. The very power that America wields on the world, on the basis of it's economic capacities, at least those that existed before the Great Recession, allowed her to make the bold move into Pakistani soil and take out Bin Laden. And maybe 10 years on, you must applaud the fact that they were sincere about the wish to bring closure to those who suffered losses on Sept 11, 2001.

It is time we took a lesson from this sincerity and maybe decided not to let Qasab and all other perpetrators, from the Memon era continue to cool their heels on Indian tax payer money while letting those who suffered in Indian terror attacks continue suffering every living day!

Hurricane HaHa

If only I had decided to spend this past weekend in some remote forest, completely cut off from civilization, without network coverage would I still believe that Irene was just Sherlock Holmes' evasive love interest. Given the continuous hammering given by the news channels and news websites, I have no choice but to know now, that  Irene is/was also a hurricane. Hurricanes are not new to the US, with places like New Orleans, North Carolina, and even provinces like Puerto Rico, Bahamas being so used to hurricanes, that they have an additional season - the hurricane season. But Hurricane Irene came and went like a breeze. Except that the media refused to let it just go! And decided that everyone else had to endure non-stop hammering with senseless, meaningless news all day long. Rains ensured that one couldn't step out. And news channels ensured that one could not tolerate sitting inside the house. Why did I spend time watching the news? Well, soaps need some conditioning to get used to (pun intended), Netflix was being rude and after a while the idiocy of the news got super hilllarious!

So what started as a category 4 storm projected to hit North Carolina, got downgraded to category 2 by the time the weekend approached. And when it finally arrived over the weekend, it became a category 1 or rather a tropical storm, much like the winds that lash Mumbai's sea face during the monsoons. But the hype had been built, the speeches written and Bloomberg exhorted New Yorkers to buckle up and face this adversity, as they were after all living in the 'world's best city'. Clearly he hasn't visited Tokyo, or Paris or Mumbai! And Fox and CNN had found a reason to finally ditch Gaddafi. They started 3 days before the weekend with continuous analysis of the storm, and expert views on which way the wind should ideally blow. Then followed a big discussion of the psyche of New Yorkers who were worried about the hurricane, given that all they've faced so far was light rain in the wake of hurricanes hitting elsewhere. There were special reports with people saying that they were stocking up ropes, wooden boards, flashlights, clearing up their patio and worrying about what they would do in the wake of the wind! Then the hurricane arrived and in typical 'Khoda pahaad nikla chooha style', it ended up being a whooshing wind with some rain.But the stories continued. They had to, given that they had already ditched Gaddafi. So came a video of a rotund guy swimming in shin deep water on 160th street with the newscaster proclaiming how New Yorkers, as always, found something positive to turn any situation around, saying, "What do you do when life hands you lemons? Make lemonade!" People, on their part, took the cue and got scared. Definitely in NYC, and also all over the east coast. Bread vanished from shelves in my nearby grocery store, and flashlights and batteries are still missing!

Unfortunately, the crumbling infrastructure ensured flooding ensued and swaying old trees broke on electricity cables rendering a greater part of the east coast powerless - literally too! So the vanished flashlights perhaps came to good use, given that 4 days after a wind blew, most gas stations still don't work. and a greater part of East Coast Americans are out of power. Floods were all over the place. Basements flooded, people complained, and Tylenol ads have since been on an overdrive.

Mumbai, on an average has faced rains. Our prediction systems are not as wonderful, and no one knew 26 July 2005 would inundate all of Mumbai. Almost every year we have intense rains, leaky ceilings, waterlogged roads, and transport is painfully slow. But somehow, the panic is never there. No vanishing flashlights, no stockpiling of food, and no weather channel on primetime television. I must say, people here, the media in particular have psyches as volatile as the weather! Given a choice, the media could sense a breeze and call it Hurricane Haha and all of America would definitely react!