From...

From tomorrow, emerges today.
From darkness, light.
From death, life.
And, from pain, pleasure.

I?

I am son.

I am father.

Brother. Uncle. Nephew.

Husband.

Lover. Former lover.

Spurned lover.

Lover-in-waiting (eternally?).

I am haste. And patience personified.

I am friend. And foe.

Shishya. And guru.

Boss. And beer-sharing colleague.

I am jester. Shoulder. Weeper, too.

Agony, I am. And ecstasy too.

I am all this. And more.

But I am not me.

Am I?

15 Today

He would've been 15 today... and stressed about things like Class 10 exams. Is he better off not being in this world of ours any longer? I'd like to know when I meet him, wherever he is... I'm sorry but the day did get me down.

My apologies...

Don't think I'll ever be able to write like this even though the thoughts match completely :-(

Under a Certain Little Star (sometimes titled 'Under One Small Star' in some translations)
by Wislawa Szymborska
Translated by Joanna Trzeciak

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity in case I'm mistaken.
Don't be angry, happiness, that I take you for my own.
May the dead forgive me that their memory's but a flicker.
My apologies to time for the quantity of world overlooked per second.
My apologies to an old love for treating a new one as the first.
Forgive me, far-off wars, for carrying my flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
My apologies for the minuet record, to those calling out from the abyss.
My apologies to those in train stations for sleeping soundly at five in the morning.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing sometimes.
Pardon me, deserts, for not rushing in with a spoonful of water.
And you, O hawk, the same bird for years in the same cage,
staring, motionless, always at the same spot,
absolve me even if you happen to be stuffed.
My apologies to the tree felled for four table legs.
My apologies to large questions for small answers.
Truth, do not pay me too much attention.
Solemnity, be magnanimous toward me.
Bear with me, O mystery of being, for pulling threads from your veil.
Soul, don't blame me that I've got you so seldom.
My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere.
My apologies to all for not knowing how to be every man and woman.
I know that as long as I live nothing can excuse me,
since I am my own obstacle.
Do not hold it against me, O speech, that I borrow weighty words,
and then labor to make them light

If you like this, you'll probably love these...

Clothes

By Gulzar... also available translated into brilliant English by Pavan K. Varma

मेरे कपडों में टंगा है तेरा खुशरंग लिबास
घर पे धोता हूँ मैं हर बार उसे, और सुखा के फिर से,
अपने हाथों से उसे इस्त्री करता हूँ मगर,
इस्त्री करने से जाती नहीं शिकनें (creases) उसकी,
और धोने से गिले-शिकवों के चकतें (blotches) नहीं मिटते!

ज़िन्दगी किस क़दर आसां होती
रिश्ते गर होते लिबास -
और (हम) बदल लेते कमीजों की तरह!

Layoff Time

Overheard in an office cafeteria yesterday: "Good to see you!"

Overheard in the same cafeteria today: "Good to still see you!"

Angry Young Man 2.0

Now, if you really want to meet an angry young man, you'll find him here.

I want my India back!

By I.M. Indian

Unlike most Indians who had a ringside view of the terror attack on the night of the 26th, I was asleep. I awoke only the next morning to see The Times of India and haven’t slept since then. You’ll call me mad! But the fact is, I watched the 9pm headlines and then part of a movie and slept unusually early on Tuesday night, awoke at 4 am as I usually do and tossed around in the dark before lapsing into a fitful sleep again… a disturbing pattern that recurs every night. I didn’t switch on the TV or log on to any website at that unearthly hour. So I remained unaware that my favourite city was under siege.

Over the last few days, almost voyeur-like, I’ve watched news channels scoring television rating points over each other. And interspersing their live reality shows with unreal advertising breaks – it’s like rushing someone to hospital and pausing for a cigarette break on the way. If it was terror uninterrupted, it certainly wasn’t news uninterrupted. So, the media made some quick money out of a nation’s misery. But what’s new?

I watched politicians start the blame-game. And police martyrs cremated. But it was all happening to people I didn’t know. I was upset and angry until Sabina’s news came through. As though that wasn’t bad enough, Rohinton Maloo’s name appeared in a crawler on some channel. Not the same Rohinton, I convinced myself. In vain. It was the very same full-of-beans Parsi… and I was close to losing two lovely people. Did they know each other at all, I wondered, as they lay trapped in two different hotels? After all, there was so much in common between them – both were in the media, fun-loving, feisty and ever ready to help people in need. Why did it have to be them?

Today, at Sabina’s funeral, I watched a Chief Minister give her sound byte to one of the several news channels bang inside the crematorium. And I was asked by an electrician, holding one of the camera cables, “Who died?”

I could’ve answered, “Sabina.” Instead I looked at him and said “You. And I. And our India.”

Mr Politician, I want my India back.

Over every successive election, you’ve taken it away from me in painful instalments. And now I want it back.

I want back the country the Mahatma died for. The country my parents made their home when they fled across the border in 1947. The India I chose to live in and work for. And pay taxes to. Don’t make me give up on India, Mr Politician. Because you’ve had your chance and you’ve botched it up. Big time. You can’t give me back Sabina and Rohinton and all the others who died needlessly. Nor can you take away my memories of farewells at Café Leopold, of coffee at The Taj and dinner at the Oberoi. But you can give me back my India without raping it any more.

You’ve allowed terrorists to infiltrate our borders when other countries have succeeded in sealing theirs. Has USA had another 9/11? Has the UK seen any other bomb blasts after the Tube was attacked? Has Israel allowed its people to be killed again after Munich? Has China ever seen a terrorist? Why, then, are we regular target practice to assassins without a heart? Is it because we have so many Indians that we don’t care? Or is it because our elected representatives care only for themselves?

Come on, Ms Gandhi, Mr Singh, Mr Advani, Mr Patil and Mr Thackeray! You’ve built your future and that of your progenies by systematically destroying ours. So, give me back my India.

I watched a father, a daughter, a son, a brother, a mother weep today. But I felt no sadness. Strangely, no tears. Just anger and shame that I have allowed my India to be held ransom like this.

All the way back from the funeral, I asked myself: is this the country I want my children to grow up in? Like so many others, should I abandon it and migrate to America or England, Singapore or even neutral, peaceful Switzerland? And it made me even angrier that I was being forced to think this because you, Mr Politician, chose to play your petty games while a larger war was being unleashed. So, give me back my India.

Give it to me now. Allow me and a billion others to defend themselves because you are incapable of it. Give me the India we set out to be; not what you are making it to be. Today, I am angry. Tomorrow I will be uncontrollable and will rebel. Your Z-category security will stand aside and allow you to be publicly lynched because you feel that what happened in Mumbai was “only a small incident”. You forget that the same shoulders that carried the corpses of their relatives and friends and colleagues will one day stand like a phalanx and prevent you from going any further. Don’t make this the start of your end.

Don’t tempt an angry Indian, Mr Politican. Another set of rulers tried it and failed a century ago. We’ll do it again – only this time, the enemy lies within.

I don’t want Pakistan being blamed. Or USA being pleaded with to exert pressure. I want you to give me back my India.

Because you are not India.

I am India. And I will be. In spite of you.

Two P(J)s

What did one beeraholic ask another?

To pee or not to pee...

And what did one bald man ask another?

Toupee or not toupee...

The Triumph of Evil

Ever since I can recall, every story I’ve heard, every book I read and every play and every film was about the triumph of Good over Evil.

Think about it. It’s the oldest, most-clichéd plot in the world. And continues to be spewed out. Orally, on papyrus, in print, celluloid, MS Word, whatever. Kalidas did it. Enid Blyton followed. Lee Falk, Ian Fleming, Ms Rowling, Javed Akhtar…

Even old Bill the Bard. Though he did make a feeble attempt in Mark Antony's speech after the assassination of Julius Caesar:

“The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;”

But, eventually, even the playwright played to the galleries and allowed Good to triumph. Why is it that everyone follows the same safe path? Is it fear of rejection driven by commercial compulsion that compels literary works to pander to a populist, consuming class? Or is it an innate inability to accept that eventually it’s Evil that finally triumphs? And I’m not referring to the “…bad girls go places” line of thinking; even though it may be true :-)

Go back to every contest that’s been crafted on paper or stage or film where a hero faces a villain. And flash your well-conditioned mind back in a disruptive state to compare the characters in each of these works. While mothers will extol the virtues of Ram to little boys, it is actually the ten-headed Ravana who captures mindspace. As a character, Ram is as flat as a six-month old bottle of Kingfisher sold in a seedy Gurgaon booze shop. Ravana’s my man any day. So is Rastapopulous and Lady Macbeth and the villains of all the James Bond films… 007 is predictable, his enemies are wonderfully imaginative and surprisingly fiendish. Think of Darth Vader versus Luke Skywalker, the Clown versus Batman, Gabbar Singh and Vijay… why is it that we remember nuances, dialogues and faces of all these villains long after the chocolate-box heroes have faded away?

Is it because Good is uni-dimensional? It will always do the right thing and be sickeningly appealing in a pre-formulated manner. Good cannot do anything out of the ordinary, away from the predictable. The moment it breaks the pattern and the cliché, Good seems to cross over to the dark side.

And Evil is everything that good cannot be. Unpredictable. Deviously creative. It defies logic and follows no set path. Every villain is different from the rest; all comic-book heroes do the same old trick – and even end up wearing underpants outside their pants!

If, after all this effort to tell the world that Good is what triumphs, how come we remember the villains better? Why is it that the world talks so much about The Clown in Dark Knight and not Batman?

In fiction, Good may be victorious. In the mind, Evil wins.

A Woman's Words

I've never been particularly fond of her.

At best, she came across as a harridan. At worst, she paled under the shadow of her more (in)famous hubby first; and then in comparison to his wide-mouthed, more attractive intern.

Then she decided to come into her own and ended up giving Mr Obama a run for his online-acquired money. She lost her party's nomination narrowly but, instead of retreating and licking her wounds, came right back fighting again. Only, this time, the target was someone else and she was on Obama's side.

Grudgingly, I began to change my opinion of the would-be first woman president of the US of A.

Yesterday (or was it the day before in another time zone) she wowed America with what must be a speechwriter's potential prize-winner. Read it or watch it (in three parts unfortunately). And soak in every word that's winning hearts and votes.

Either way, Hillary Clinton's moved up in my esteem. And in many others' I guess.

If only she'd become Obama's running mate... would've been interesting to see the shadow-play then.







Does Mr McCain have anything to say, I wonder?

Me, Myself and i

For all those obsessed with a misplaced sense of self-importance, check out Caroline Winter in NYT...

Dog Flight

Okay, so the BMC is ready to dish out Rs 1000 for every pothole you spot in Bombay!

I've just landed in my favourite city and haven't spotted a single pothole... aren't there any between the airport and Chowpatty? Or am I so used to the craters of Gurgaon that Bombay seems like a dream-run?

Talking of runaways...Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport (mouthful!) opened India's longest runway today with a dog chasing its shadow down the asphalt... spotted it on a news channel; can't find it online.

Wonder what would happen to dogs that chase cars and finally catch up... what would they do next? Lift a leg and wet a tyre, I guess.

Cheers!

Teach not Cheat

If only we could Teach India not to Cheat India...

Superheroes

There's been so much written about Dark Knight that I'm  glad I didn't read a single word about it till today and that I finally managed to see the film yesterday... almost alone.

I'm also glad I heeded the advice of a young designer who shared the movie off his pen drive but cautioned me not to watch it on the MacBook until I'd seen it in the movie hall first. Was he right!

How I wish Ramesh Sippy would see the film along with his Vijay and see what one can do with a double-headed coin all through the film.

And what if Gabbar had met the Joker (may both their angry souls rest in peace)?

I was warned that this was a dark, depressing film and that I shouldn't take it too seriously (its tagline is 'Why so serious?'). True, it's depressing but in an alluring kind of way... like the little boy lost in the world of comics and superheroes, I too need that willing suspension of disbelief as long as one doesn't try to imitate the winged wonder and defy gravity... bruises and pain are the only result of "what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object (The Joker)." 

And if there are superheroes we need and superheroes we deserve, it's going to be tough choosing between the two. Just as it is with friends in real life.

What's good about the Nolan duo is that they've crafted a tight plot and turned it into a gripping masterpiece that's a hit in every which way. And so Batman meets James Bond meets Darth Vader (almost).

There are also plenty of reviews that'll show up when you search but this one is insightful and doesn't show up on Google yet. Read it only after you've seen the film.

As for me, I'm going to see it again (also because of Morgan Freeman). And will try and "endure" this world as Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred (Michael Caine) put it... no point giving up just yet. There are a few jokers yet to be dispensed with.

By the way, almost allegorically, I think the real dark knight is Aaron Eckhart, the D.A. And the real hero is the one who's the villain.

Perhaps that's what makes this film almost tormenting in its hangover...

YouSpirit

Perhaps it's my paranoia of getting drowned in a swimming pool, or maybe it's the sheer awe of watching a superhuman re-create Adidas' 'Impossible is Nothing' theme in real life... either way Michael Phelps has lit a spark somewhere on this lazy Sunday morning.

As he stroked his way to win his eighth Olympic gold medal (the number's lucky for the non-Chinese as well!) with yet another world-record less than a couple of hours ago, the glory of a quartet winning a relay was overshadowed by this one man who is now being called Phenomenal Phelps.

Some of us watched water catch fire as it happened today. In other worlds still asleep, people may have missed out on this feat. And even if they were up and about, there is little chance of them having caught the action - in at least one so-called developed world that I know, some people have no access to daily newspapers and certainly no television set. The only way someone can afford to stay in touch with the world is either a radio (yes, it still works!) or the free Internet.

Enter YouTube... much abused for copyright violations from publishers in Belgium to the music mafia in India - and everyone in between. But what we tend to miss is the service YouTube delivers at moments like these... if the Olympics is all about bringing the world together in one triumphant spirit, the money-making machine that TV companies have become is in clear contrast. For all those who missed the freestyle swimming relay finals this morning, they'll catch glimpses of it on news bulletins for sure. But if you really want to relive the breathtaking win, if you want to replay it at will and have inspiration delivered on demand, only YouTube will have the full spectacle online soon (it isn't up yet - I just checked) as some kind soul rips it off TV and uploads it.

Criminal? Perhaps to the legal boffins.

But to many of us, YouTube is equal to YouSpirit. Always.

After 40

A couple of Saturdays ago, I dropped in to meet a former colleague and still a dear (but not very near) friend who'd emerged from a separation with a well-known actress and had suffered a near-fatal heart attack. Fortunately, he survived. Not easy at the age if 41, I'm told...

While there are several stories about this gentle lad in his copywriting days in Calcutta, there's even more hilarious stuff about another mutual friend and fellow-writer who also happened to be there that evening.

He's the kind of guy who flashed his PAN card when he asked for the bill at a restaurant. Or - and this is true - mixed up his pregnant wife and dog's stool samples while sending them to separate laboratories.

He's bright but absent-minded. Yet, pithy enough to come up with this classic: "Till we're 40, we ask 'Who am I?'; after 40, we ask 'EMI?'"

Cheers!

Kabhi Kabhi A...

Jaane tu ya jaane na isn't quite the film it could've been. So, the less said about it, the better - though I must admit that when I saw it on a pirated VCD, it felt good. A nice timepass.

Later, it sank home that all I'd liked was just one song not only because it is very hummable but because, like all songs, it has associations with people, places, memories... all of them very far away right now.

So what if nostalgia is a thing of the past... Kabhi kabhi Aditi is right here, right now. And makes every day worth living...

Denmark-USA-China

Ever since I vacationed in Beijing and Shanghai last October, I've been waiting for China's coming-out party at the Olympics. And, while much is being written about how they faked a lot of the razzmatazz, the fact is they're out to show they can do this better than anyone else. In fact, London is struggling to complete its Olympics Village for the 2012 Games because of a paucity of funds and might as well consider outsourcing the entire Games to China!

Juxtapose this with the rest of the world - India included - reeling under rising oil prices. While the Arabs seems to have all of us by the short and curlies, Thomas Friedman finds solace in what Denmark does... what's this got to do with China? Read till the very end, my dears...

(Am reproducing an essay he wrote in the International Herald Tribune on August 10. But you can also read it on their site.)

Flush with energy

By Thomas L. Friedman

COPENHAGEN : The Arctic Hotel in Ilulissat, Greenland , is a charming little place on the West Coast, but no one would ever confuse it for a Four Seasons - maybe a One Seasons. But when my wife and I walked back to our room after dinner the other night and turned down our dim hallway, the hall light went on. It was triggered by an energy-saving motion detector. Our toilet even had two different flushing powers depending on - how do I say this delicately - what exactly you're flushing. A two-gear toilet! I've never found any of this at an American hotel. Oh, if only we could be as energy efficient as Greenland !

A day later, I flew back to Denmark . After appointments here in Copenhagen , I was riding in a car back to my hotel at the 6 p.m. rush

hour. And boy, you knew it was rush hour because 50 percent of the traffic in every intersection was bicycles. That is roughly the percentage of Danes who use two-wheelers to go to and from work or school every day here. If I lived in a city that had dedicated bike lanes everywhere, including one to the airport, I'd go to work that way, too. It means less traffic, less pollution and less obesity.

What was most impressive about this day, though, was that it was raining. No matter. The Danes simply donned rain jackets and pants for biking.

Unlike America , Denmark , which was so badly hammered by the 1973 Arab oil embargo that it banned all Sunday driving for a while, responded to that crisis in such a sustained, focused and systematic way that today it is energy independent. (And it didn't happen by Danish politicians making their people stupid by telling them the solution was more offshore drilling.)

What was the trick? To be sure, Denmark is much smaller than us and was lucky to discover some oil in the North Sea . But despite that,

Danes imposed on themselves a set of gasoline taxes, CO2 taxes and building-and- appliance efficiency standards that allowed them to grow their economy and gave birth to a Danish clean-power industry that is one of the most competitive in the world today. Denmark today gets nearly 20 percent of its electricity from wind. America ? About 1 percent.

And did Danes suffer from their government shaping the market with energy taxes to stimulate innovations in clean power? In one word, said Connie Hedegaard, Denmark 's minister of climate and energy: "No." It just forced them to innovate more - like the way Danes recycle waste heat from their coal-fired power plants and use it for home heating and hot water, or the way they incinerate their trash in central stations to provide home heating.

There is little whining here about Denmark having $10-a-gallon gasoline because of high energy taxes. The shaping of the market with

high energy standards and taxes on fossil fuels by the Danish government has actually had "a positive impact on job creation," added

Hedegaard. "For example, the wind industry - it was nothing in the 1970s. Today, one-third of all terrestrial wind turbines in the world

come from Denmark ." In the last 10 years, Denmark 's exports of energy efficiency products have tripled. Energy technology exports rose 8 percent in 2007 to more than $10.5 billion in 2006, compared with a 2 percent rise in 2007 for Danish exports as a whole.

"It is one of our fastest-growing export areas," said Hedegaard.

It is one reason that unemployment in Denmark today is 1.6 percent. In 1973, said Hedegaard, "we got 99 percent of our energy from the Middle East . Today it is zero."

Frankly, when you compare how America has responded to the 1973 oil shock and how Denmark has responded, we look pathetic.

"I have observed that in all other countries, including in America , people are complaining about how prices of [gasoline] are going up,"

Denmark 's prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, told me.

"The cure is not to reduce the price, but, on the contrary, to raise it even higher to break our addiction to oil. We are going to introduce a new tax reform in the direction of even higher taxation on energy and the revenue generated on that will be used to cut taxes on personal income - so we will improve incentives to work and improve incentives to save energy and develop renewable energy."

Because it was smart taxes and incentives that spurred Danish energy companies to innovate, Ditlev Engel, the president of Vestas -

Denmark's and the world's biggest wind turbine company - told me that he simply can't understand how the U.S. Congress could have just failed to extend the production tax credits for wind development in America.

Why should you care?

"We've had 35 new competitors coming out of China in the last 18 months," said Engel, "and not one out of the U.S."

Rani to Rani

Once upon a time we had Chamko Rani in Saath Saath.

Then we got Billo Rani in Omkara.

The girl next door has morphed into a hot item number.

Polar opposites they were... or are. As actresses and as characters.

Bollywood's come a long way, lady.

Punjabi Dictionary

This one is from my Sindhi brother for all you Punjabi lovers...enjwoy!

A is for Aiscream ~ And it needs no further axplanation, my dear!

B is for Backside ~ And it has nothing to do with the rear. It is an instruction to go to the rear of building or block, shop or whatever it may be.

C is for Cloney ~ and is not the process for replicating of the sheep, nor is the first name of it George. It is merely the area whare people live e.g. ‘Defance Cloney’.

E is for Expanditure ~ arbitary spanding of the money.

F is for Fackade ~ and even though it is the sound of a bad word, it is actually just the front of the building (with ‘backside’ being its rear).

G is for Gaddi ~ and the way a Punjabi can speeden his ‘gaddi’ puts any F1 driver to the shame. (If the Grand Prix does come to Dalhi, there is no way Hamilton, Alonso or Kimi can overtake the Balvinder, Jasvinder or
Sukhvinder’s taxi.)

H is for ‘Ho Jayega Ji’ ~ and the moment you hear of that, you have to be vary careful because you can be rest sure it is jast not going to happen.

I is for Intzaar ~ and to know more about it, please to see P.

J is for Jutt ~ which is what the every Punjabi seems to be.

K is for Khanna, Khurana, etc ~ Punjabi equivalent of the Joneses (e.g. ‘Keeping up with the Khuranas, ji’)

L is for Loin ~ who is the king of the jungle.

M is for ‘Mrooti’ ~ the car that an entire generation of Punjabis grew up with.

N is for ‘No Problem Ji.’ ~ To find out how that is working, please to see H.

O is for Oye ~ which can be surprise (Oyye!), greeting (Oyy!), anger (OYY!) or pain (Oy oy oy!).

P is for Panj Mint ~ and no matter how near (1 km) or far (100 km) a Punjabi is from you, he always says he will reach in ‘panj mint’.

Q is for Queue ~ the word that jast does not axist in Punjabi vocabulary.

R is for Riks ~ the Punjabi is always prepared to take one, even if odds are all aganst him.

S is for Sweetie, Sunny, Simmi and Sonu ~ all of the who seem to own half the cars in Dalhi. (The other half by their Pappas - like as ‘Sweetie de Pappe di Gaddi’).

T is for the official bird of the Punjab ~ Tandoori Chickkan.

U is whan you lose your sax appeal and become ~ ‘Unkel-ji’

V is for VIP phone numbers ~ @ Rs 15 lakh is the bare minimum.

W is for Whan ~ as in ‘Whan are you coming, ji?’

X is for the many ax-rated words ~ that flow quite freely in all the Punjabi conversations.

Y is for ‘You nonsense’ ~ when axtreme anger replaces the vocabulary in any
shouting between Punjabis.

Z is for Zindgi ~ which finally avry Punjabi knows how to live to the fullast.

Me who?

George Clooney...

Michael Douglas....

Richard Gere....

Someday when I'm old - older actually - I'd like to be like one of them.

And then when I'm really old... Morgan Freeman.

Will I ever be me?

Who's me, I ask?

Update on August 18: if not Morgan Freeman, then Sean Connery.

Butterfly

Overheard on Radio Mirchi this morning: 8.8.08 is supposed to be a lucky day because of the number 8... evidently some people believe it to be true; others may not.

China evidently does: why else would it launch itself at 8 pm on 8th August 2008? The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games is more than just a sports spectacle; it's the coming-out party of an entire nation.

Today could also be the day when people end one life and start another... like the Tibetans, for instance, who protested and hoped they'd make it to centre-stage (and they did for a while, at least).

Ironical then, when one is reminded of the Buddhist saying: "What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly."

Go for Gold...China and Tibet and whoever else is charging off the blocks of life!

The Last Lecture

On this date, in 2002, I went in for my second surgery to remove a stubborn, ruptured appendix. Not too many people remember this but I was reminded of it yesterday by one who does. It was a surgery that could've killed me but I survived and went on to have some of the best few years of my life after that.

Today, in the mail, I got to know of Randy Pausch. He was a professor of computer science, human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon. A terminal pancreatic cancer patient, Randy decided on June 26 this year (my birthday, incidentally) that he was stopping all treatment. A month later, yesterday, he died in faraway Virginia, USA. 

I hadn't even heard of the man but if you see this recording of his last lecture in September 2007 at Carnegie Mellon, it'll tell you more about life than about death.

Packing for a Vacation

We spend a lot of time planning what we should pack and carry when we go on vacations.
If only we spent as much time figuring out what to leave behind...

Schmap

I've lost friends along the way.

And I've seen friends lose their way.

If only a map-app like this existed for the meandering madness we live through every day...

Harvard Potter

Confessional as it may sound, I've not read a single word churned out by Ms Rowling.

Harry Potter movies I've watched. Glasses I've bought (and worn). His magic has fascinated me and, contradictory as it may seem, I've stayed away from the books only so that I don't become part of the herd that devours every title as soon as it's published.

Then, I find this in, of all places, Harvard.

And the spell is cast... the books must be read, I suppose. even if they're not, this itself is worth every word. Even when it's read over and over again.

Seductive Music

Paul Irish is a Bostonian. He's also a geek who digs music and "brings to you an eclectic menagerie of aural pleasures. I scout out music you've never heard and deliver only the finest. Expect music curiously different, yet simply enjoyable."

Check out his brilliantly-named blog and you'll realise why some people get a high by just listening to music. Awesome music, at that!

Wine, Women and ?

Have been planning to write on a cocktail but need a few of it before the keypad's hit.

Meanwhile, try a glass of wine Neruda-style. And lose yourself in its seductive power.

But before you start to take life - or love - too seriously, try this.

Obviously...cheers!

Spell-struck

Thanks to a friend's email...
It isn't often that a website comes up with typos like these but when they do, it's worth archiving... the headline in this article on a child of Indian origin winning a spelling bee has a spelling error in its headline! Ironical but comical as well...and even after 24 hours, Rediff hadn't corrected it. By the time you read this, they may have; hence, the screen-grab.

Seven Pedias

Many moons ago, a friend and I thought of a Wikipedia-like site with one specific yet universal benefit. Someday, we'll create it too.

Meanwhile, there are these:

1. Chickipedia
2. Lostpedia
3. Uncyclopedia
4. Wookieepedia
5. Dickipedia
6. Dealipedia
7. Congresspedia

Any favourites anyone?

Five People

There are days when you'd like the past to be best forgotten, the present rushed through and you wish the future wouldn't really arrive (or, at least, arrive with some clarity).

On days like these, thankfully there are people to look forward to.

The Camel and the Sphinx

I 'd first read this in my college days and while I remember every word, I could never recall who actually wrote it. Googling hasn't helped either. But enjoy it anyway...

The sexual urge of the camel is greater than anyone thinks
And can only be gratified fully by going to bed with the Sphinx.
But the Sphinx's magnificent orifice
Is choked by the sands of the Nile.
Hence the hump on the back of the camel
And the Sphinx's inscrutable smile!

Shakespeare's Omelette

To beat or not to beat... that is the eggsact question.

Chholey Manchurian

Ever tried chholey and fried rice?

Or paneer with noodles?

And a rossogolla for dessert thereafter... no bread or naan... it's a BYOB (Bring Your Own Bread) place.

China meets Punjab meets Bengal occasionally in the lunch room of my workplace.

We're truly glocal.

Google Death

Don McLean makes an iPod come alive early in the morning:



Which then takes the wandering mind to Gharonda:



And from there to John Donne.

The question is: will Google ever be able to make these actually-not-so-random connections when you search for 'death' and end up with about 581,000,000' results of which the first is this, according to which I will die in 2019?

Am I over-obsessed with death? Worry not folks 'cause as Donne wrote: '...death, thou shalt die.'

Rainy Days

A couple of weeks ago, Delhi (and Gurgaon) was reeling at 42 Celcius. A few duststorms later, the temperature had been reversed to 24.

A while ago, the skies darkened and the rains have come down almost as though the monsoons have arrived. The only problem is that this part of India doesn't really get any rain so the folks here aren't quite sure what they should do with Mummy Nature's bounty. The roads are flooded within a few minutes, cycles and scooters have been abandoned as riders scurry for cover, women on their way to work in autos have been drenched to the bone and are wondering which parts of their otherwise well-covered anatomy are now visible to the unashamedly- staring Jat...

On rare Monday mornings like this, there are only a few things one should indulge in.

Get hold of some brinjal and besan, add a few chillies and some salt; heat up lots of mustard oil and fry enough pakoras to keep you going for the next few hours. Combo this with piping hot masala chai and you have the perfect nibble-sip-nibble rhythm in place.

If that's too much to do, just toast some bread, spread dollops of butter that'll melt through and drip on to your cold fingers... the chai, though, has to be there.

I could spend hours watching the leaves get bathed and turn from dusty brown to glistening green as fat drops come down by the litre; Kishore Kumar would play in the background and I'd do nothing but daydream... nothing, though, will quite make up for the warmth I could get from curling up to someone who's either too far away or too distant to care.

The winds will blow the clouds away and, finally, the traffic jams will ease up enough to let office-goers get to work. The morning will get swallowed by the madness of another Monday and the rain won't quite return. Even if it does, it won't be the same. There is an unforgettable smell of parched earth that floats up when the first showers hit the ground... the second shower will never do the same.

So, for the sake of the sinful stomach, let me too get down to work.

Rain, rain, go away; come again another day!

Beer and Baldness

Why is it that men lose hair at almost the same time that they gain weight around their middle?

Why does beer lead to a pot-belly? Whereas stale beer is supposed to be a great hair conditioner?

I can either drink the beer and watch it go straight to the centre of my body... or I can let it go stale and use it to get some of my hair back.

Belly and baldness...Why does one always have to choose?

Women's Names

Why do most Hindu women's names end with a vowel?

I may have stumbled on this and have thought a lot... but don't have an answer.

If you know, please to tell.

Rambling

Kolkata Knight Riders played Mumbai Indians in the latter's home-ground last evening. And lost.

I missed Kolkata achieving the dubious distinction of the IPL series' lowest score because I was playing another match in Delhi on a slippery wicket... and not quite winning that either.

On the way back from Delhi to Gurgaon, caught in traffic, the skies suddenly opened up and let loose a shower which, inexplicably, took me back to Amby Valley where I was last year in a conference during the monsoons.

An old college friend, still in Calcutta, sms-ed to invite me to her son's thread ceremony; I called her back and heard her rant about how meaningless the whole affair was in this day and age. I agreed but had to tell her that she needed to do this not for herself or her son but because we often do things to please others... she wasn't quite convinced. And it doesn't look like I'll make it to Calcutta for the feast she's organising :-(

The call reminded me of another classmate, now in Bangalore, whose birthday it also was yesterday... her phone though went unanswered. I had found her after years on a bookshelf at Crosswords in Kemps Corner, Mumbai - but that's another post.

At home, an old friend again from Calcutta - now living in Mumbai and staying over for the night - was waiting.

When I did get home finally, no one wanted to watch Mumbai thrash Kolkata. Were we being parochial or just prioritising the few hours we had to spend catching up on each others' lives?

We finally yakked till midnight with Jack Daniels for company and figured that Saurav, Sachin and Shoaib were just not worth it.

Is there a point to this post? Doesn't look like it but Calcutta's always worth rambling about.

Happiness

A few minutes ago, a colleague (and part-time mentor) who goes by the self-styled nickname of 'Servant Leader' called after ages.

Having discussed whatever we had to on the work front, he then asked if I was happy.

My response is classified information but I couldn't help recalling an old JWT commercial from a previous life:



There's more of these classics if you search YouTube for Hamlet Cigars.

Watch them. Don't smoke though.

Cheers!

Madonnaah!

"The problem with beauty is that it's like being born rich and getting poorer" said Joan Collins.

The problem with YouTube, though, is that it allows Madonna at 50 to look like 20; and makes most women wonder why life is so unfair to them!




Of the close-to 17 million ogles this video had got at this time, how many of them would have been envious? How many women's popping eyeballs? How many men clutching theirs?

How does a woman (like Rekha, for instance) reconcile herself to the fact that, no matter what she does, beauty will be lost? Or, that fighting weight-gain may be a losing battle...

Chootiya

The title itself is worth reading... and a riot at that!

Only I might have replaced the 'oo' with a 'u'.

Enjoy...

Sinful Stomach

With no disrespect to Keats...

My tummy aches, and a bloody cramp pains
My sense, as though of fiery fries I had ate,
Or emptied some Old Monk to the drains
Four years past, and again surgery seems the fate...

This is now way to end the week... but I am too weak and worried to argue with myself.

Did I speak/blog too soon? I hope not... homeward I head with the sinful stomach. Neither fries nor a bottled senior priest have I encountered... and there is no other appendix to be removed (I mean, you can't go through three surgeries for the same damn thing... or can you??).

Un-cheers!

No Cannes Do

The annual screening of the Cannes award-winning commercials takes place later today in Delhi with brilliant ads in a dark room and a crowded bar outside. It's the minor Mecca for advertising creatives who can't make it to the real thing and a great place to meet old friends, former colleagues et al.

There was a time I used to be there... but no longer. I think 2004 was the last time I went and had a truly memorable time.

But that was in another life...

I can go there today. But should I?

Perhaps I would have had I not got another life to kickstart...

So long Cannes!

The L-Spot

I’ve not been much of an athlete, considering that my mother was the Hurdles champion of Uttar Pradesh in her younger days.

Frequent illnesses as a child ensured that I was constitutionally- challenged – by the age of 11 I’d had three bouts of jaundice, two of malaria, one para-typhoid wrongly diagnosed as malaria with an overdose of quinine leading to a cardiac seizure and a fit… I mean, running or playing any other sport was out of the question. I was grateful that I could walk… grateful to the prayers of my parents, the school-church, Mother Teresa and God. Not to mention, the sundry quacks who mistook me for their medicinal guinea-pig.

Over time, I survived without much exercise until 2005 when the first Microsoft Corporate Challenge pushed me to the limits of my endurance and helped me lead the team to the third position. People who knew me were amazed that I, the perennially-plagued person, could win at a highly physical (and somewhat mental) event. I even managed to temporarily overcome my fear of water and dived into a swimming pool at night to pick out clues from the bottom…NDTV has me on camera if you don’t believe me. I won’t go back into a pool again; although I did do the rapids at Rishikesh once – with my breath held all through that mad ride!

Last year, I was thrown into the Microsoft Corporate Challenge again and was I unfit! The team was aghast when we met for a trial at a farm near Bombay – this last-minute substitute skipper they had was surely going to let them down. It required a huge amount of psychological boosting and the gentle but firm inspiring of two colleagues that made me strap on a pedometer and run hard enough over three weeks, despite a sprained ankle, to be good enough for them and to make it to the no. 2 spot in the event.

But I slackened again, only to run occasionally on weekends. Lazy boy that I am… the two prime movers of my last fitness binge are too far away – and too immersed in their lives - to scold or goad me.

And then, a couple of days ago, I looked at myself and swore I’d put on the grey and yellow Reebok running shoes I’d so loving bought as part of my prepatory pep-up last year. So, I walked at first yesterday. And walked a bit more on Sunday – and ran as well. It felt good, great actually.

Sting was belting out Fields of Gold over the clunky iPod that I must now replace for a lighter one with video-capability.

The weather was warm but a gentle wind kept me going… all was well until an sms stung me.

At 7.16 on a Sunday morning, the boss had no business to be up and online, spotting a minor error on a recently-launched site. I was first aghast that he hadn’t partied all night and then put it down to a loo-break he must be taking, within which he took a ‘let-me-see-the-site-just-once’ sub-break as well.

Well, he broke my momentum and the mood as well. My legs stood still and the only part of me that frenetically moved were my fingers playing sms-sms… and the playlist had moved on to An Englishman in New York and I couldn’t help but hear Sting refer to himself as a Legal Alien…

It’s moments like these that make me feel at odds with the world I currently live and work in. The house needs me to go and get bread; the boss wants me to respond to his sms-es… I just want to listen to music and get a good run.

Has anyone read Shobha Narayan in Mint Lounge yesterday? My admiration for Mint grows with every passing Saturday... I discovered that the L-spot is not just a lactic threshold that gives runners/cyclists a high. It’s what I’d call a Life Spot. And the faster some people get it, the better it’ll be for me.

Saturday

OK... made sure Friday stayed a dry day. And felt great!

Dined by 9.30 pm. Unwound with Criminal Minds (am into Season 2, episode 13) and continued to be fascinated with Gideon and Reid. More on them later...

Saturday morning and am back on track (literally) - walked, ran, sweated, panted after ages... gorged on cherries and plums and strawberry jam on crisp brown toast.

And am also back at work when the rest of the known world is probably selling old papers, dusting, cooking or just trying to shake off last night's hangover which, as a graffiti artist once wrote, is the wrath of grapes (with due apologies to Steinbeck, I guess).

So what's new?

Friday

It's Friday evening.

I'm supposed to go cross-country to Noida for a colleague's birthday bash. But a site has gone down and then been resurrected with several glitches. Murphy is still around me...

The weekend is clearly becoming a mirage. There are a host of other landmines exploding around me and I am reminded of Ogden Nash: "Candy", he wrote, "is dandy. But liquor is quicker."

And Friday must not be a dry day.

Cheers!

Women!

Women get harassed at work by men who have nothing better to do.

They say they don't rise to the top unless they agree to being on top.

They get the short end of the stick because they have a long list of things to do at home, children to bring up, husbands to cook for, mums-in-law to please.

They come into my room and cry because they are arbitrarily reassigned.

I listen to them because God gave me two ears and one mouth. I talk to them after they're done and get things done to make sure they feel better. I don't always succeed in making them take back their resignations but they do go away smiling and mail me "You’re gifted with the skill of bringing smiles on people’s faces. Here’s to (sic) hoping we get to work together again."

I lead a dog's life and have crow's feet around my surgically-repaired eyes; feet that some say don't show up as often as they used to but, when you make others happy, you will end up being less happy yourself. Q.E.D. The bath sponge can never be dry, by definition of its very existence, can it? Unfortunately, though, I can't do this for everyone every time.

At the risk of distressing these damsels who I may have helped de-stress all in a day's work, I am reminded of Professor Higgins...



But I thank my stars for Hum Tum:



Some months ago, I threw out an inebriated colleague whose paws felt up two women at an office party. Unfortunately, I couldn't throw him out of the office for reasons that are best left unblogged.

Someday... men will learn their lesson and women will be happier. The right way.

Made My Day

When you're having a lousy day trying to drill sense into thick-headed people, you need this to make your day:

Yesterday Once More

Whoever Mr/Ms Anonymous is, thank you for your comment(s) on this post...sparked off some nice memories and thanks to YouTube, here it is:

Mindblowers

One of the best things about this job is that you get to discover at least one new, mindblowing website every day.

Today was a better-than-average day: the score is five.

Should I share these?

Or be selfish?

The latter... for some time at least.

Hee...hee.

Losing it

Am really losing it...

First my memory fails me and it becomes difficult to pinpoint places/people/ incidents/ birthdays...

Then, without warning, my Seagate 100 GB drive fails to be recognised by my Mac after it's worked perfectly for months. I'm told that all the work I've backed-up over the last three years is there; so are the music files and the photographs.

Everyone's reassuring me that the data can be recovered.

Okay, now you know it and let's say, I also know it. Question is: does the drive know it!

I need the work-files back. And the photos. Everything else is sacrificeable.

This is all I have of my memories and, until the day they can backup our brains in a real-time environment, Seagate will have to be my crutch.

Fingers crossed, I await the data recovery guy's report. Makes me feel like I'm in surgery and waiting the doctor's prognosis...

Jab We Separated

We are distanced from our friends either by physical gaps or by time.

Of the two, geographical distances are somehow bridgeable.

Time is the one we struggle with. At least I do. And the longer we are separated, the further we seem to grow.

You don’t have to be in different time zones to grow remote. Even the same latitude-longitude co-ordinates are often not enough to be connected.

There are stories, films aplenty about people who meet after ages and reconnect as though they were never apart.

I’d like to be like them. And if there’s any reason to see Jab We Met once again, it’ll be for just this.

I spent an entire Sunday afternoon enjoying the antics of Kareena Kapoor (if only she could act better) interspersed by long commercial breaks. It’s a silly film but, if strangers can meet on a train by accident – or by a scriptwriter’s design – and lose each other after they grow so fond of one another only to meet again after nine months (why the symbolic nine I wonder?) perhaps it’ll happen to real people too.

There are so many people I'd like to link up with again... people I miss scattered around the world, colleagues - and former colleagues - in various cities all caught up in their own mad lives. People I'd like to share memories with but can't because the cell phone can be intrusive. And changing status updates twenty times a day on a social networking site isn't my cup of chai.

Time for a sanity break, I guess.

As the chubby little girl in Sound of Music sang, "... the sun has gone to bed and so must I".

Surprising Life

There is so much that's happening to me on so many fronts right now that I don't know whether I should be angry, worried, happy, dismayed, stressed, depressed, disgusted, nostalgic, optimistic... or simply amazed at life's twists and turns.

Last night, Radio Mirchi played this...

Ulcer

Whatever you do, don't get an ulcer.

Don't then land up in hospital.

Don't eat at odd hours only to suffer all your life. Don't drink coffee if you can get tea.

And don't think this is the only life you have to change the world.

Have seen too many friends lives being affected... and am only talking to myself here.

Haven't got any ulcers yet... I think.

Vacation

It's that time of the year...

A gang of girls is planning a backpacking trip through France, Switzerland, Italy and Spain.

Someone else will go off to the hills.

And others will find holiday spots like Egypt, Scotland, a cruise ship...

I've got my hands full monitoring social networking sites which have become so complex that people who are networking socially are evidently not working officially.

But I've a job to do. And a master breathing down my neck...

So I think I'll take a vacation. And go Facebooking instead!

Cheers!

Today

Took a decision today that I should've taken ages ago.

Hopefully, I won't change my mind. Or my resolve.

Takes a huge burden off these drooping shoulders.

No looking back now...

Cheers!

China's Party

There is so much being written and broadcast about the Olympic torch these days that everyone is out to cash in on it... including a virus!

But that's not the point...

In Paris last week, I missed the run by a day but saw the protests on TV (CNN and BBC were the only two English channels available in the hotel). I saw, too the chaos that happened in 'Frisco.

Yesterday, the torch reached Delhi but there was no way anyone could get past the 20,000 securitymen on duty. The page-three sports-celebs did their duty as did some actors (though it looked like everyone was acting).

And India got some brownie points from big brother...why are we so petrified and hypocritical? Read these two columns by Antara Dev Sen (Pico to us in college) and Mahesh Dattani which I came across in The Week a couple of weeks ago - both very incisive and going straight for the jugular.

In ancient Greece, all battles ceased for the duration of the Games and athletes were protected. While the modern Olympics are still about brotherhood and all that jazz, they have been the perfect stage for protests. So Presidents will cop out, China will get upset and refugees like the Tibetans will be let down.

Given the amount of effort and money the Chinese have pumped into their coming-out party, they're going to go ahead regardless of whether a senile American president or a playboyish French premier attend or not. What's a few protests got to do with the biggest celebration that country will see in a long, long time.

China, when uttered in Bengali, means "don't want". They definitely don't want their party being gatecrashed. Unless the Dalai Lama and his supporters do pull off a coup.

August 8 is still some time away... aagey aagey dekho hota hai kya.

Monsieur Murphy’s Laws

This is a long post… so sit back and grab a glass of whatever your poison is.

I first got to know about Murphy in Calcutta at what used to be the annual Book Fair on the Maidan. I say “used to be” because this year there was no book fair thanks to pseudo-environmental wrangling between the guild that hosts it and the Army on whose land we used to spend hours every day of that last week of January when the book fair would bring the city to a halt (even the political demonstrators paused for those days). I had a knack of spotting odd titles and Murphy’s Law became part of my collection. Over the years, my admiration for the man grew as I found hundreds of his laws applying to the weird situations I’d land up in. I even made some of my own…

And then, Murphy came back to me with a vengeance over the last few days.

It started last Saturday.

I’d requisitioned a Blackberry despite my aversion to the damn thing, as I was to fly out of the country on Monday morning and didn’t want to be without the office email (the laptop data card I have works only in India because no one has bothered to cater to a Mac user). Unwilling to be faced with another five-digit bill from Vodafone in less than two months (a three-day conference in Thailand in February had set me back by over Rs 18,000!) I thought I was being smart. My secretary had compared tariffs of Vodafone and Matrix (who have been doing some splendid advertising lately) and reached the conclusion that I wouldn’t save too much. Damn Swapan, I muttered… his agency’s ads were a delight to read but it looked like here was a repeat of a brand being better than the service offered.

The Blackberry that was handed over to me on Friday was temperamental. It refused to connect to the GPRS network without warning and I was left holding an ugly, unreliable object. The office replaced it on Saturday morning with another, even uglier looking piece. It took me 15 minutes to realise why its previous owner had orphaned it: the click-wheel wouldn’t work. I could scroll down with difficulty but not go up. So, there I was with all the mails downloading beautifully but not accessible. Frustrated I was. And increasingly paranoid.

Even my boss – among the wealthiest in the land – counselled me and suggested I check out Matrix. So I did and called dear Swapan. It is Saturday evening now and I am getting irritated that the last few hours I have are being wasted in stupid logistics. But Swapan is true to his word and so is his client. Kunal from Matrix calls back and assures me he’ll meet me Sunday morning.

I reach office at 11 am on Sunday. And Murphy strikes again.

An untrained office maintenance worker has accidentally pulled the plug on a UPS that leads to several servers going down – including the one that hosts the email. So, no office email – not on the Blackberry, not on the Mac, not on the Internet. Twiddle, twiddle…

But the Matrix man arrives and takes over. He has an engineer somewhere on standby who gets on to the phone and guides him meticulously through the set-up (it’s the first Mac installation Kunal is doing) and, after one aborted attempt and forty minutes into the process, the data card comes alive. Bye-bye Blackberry! The office technicians haven’t even surfaced – they have bigger problems to fix. Then Kunal explains why their country-specific SIM cards are more economical and I am convinced. Two cards are handed over and it looks like my problems are over.

Hold on… the credit card authorisation Matrix requires as a backup doesn’t go through. I have a 5-lakh rupee limit on this card and we can’t get 15,000 authorised! Murphy works Sundays too. It does happen eventually but not before some more calls are made and pressure vessels ruptured.

I head home and all is well.

Monday morning at the airport is glitch-free. The 9 am Lufthansa flight to Paris via Munich takes off finally at 10.10 thanks to Delhi’s air-traffic jams. Does Murphy have a Shengen visa too, I wonder? Is he following me?

Midway into the flight, I drop my co-passenger’s tomato juice on his video remote control – a minor disaster compared to what follows.

The flight lands at Munich at 2.20 pm – an hour late. And I have just 10 minutes to make it to the connecting Paris flight. Immigration takes a while and I run with an 8-kg handbag in true Microsoft Corporate Challenge style, dodging trolleys, kids and duty-free shoppers (looks like a nice airport that’s blurring by). I am the last person to make it – in the nick of time. And I am exhausted.

Paris airport. Baggage belt no 1… no bag though. I made it to the connecting flight, the suitcase didn’t. So much for the fabled German efficiency. Claim forms are filled and the first Parissiene I am talking to assures me in her condescendingly official way that I will get my bag that night itself. It is Monday evening and the conference I have come for starts at 9 am Tuesday. I tell myself never to wear jeans, a denim shirt and sneakers on an international flight and to carry a spare change of clothes. I am so worn out now that I cannot find the energy to figure out the bus/train to town and opt for the more expensive but less stressful taxi.

The rest of that evening – what’s left of it – passes incident-free in the hotel room itself. It is the second time I am in Paris; alone. And I am too worried to try and explore the city or any of its cafes.

Before turning in, I try Lufthansa again. Big mistake… Now there’s a man at the other end who chides me for assuming my bag would come that night. “Tuesday” he growls. And I set out to find a grocer who will sell me a basic toilet kit so that I can brush and shave (this hotel is a tiny boutique hotel that offers free wi-fi broadband but no shaving kit – and no one’s figured out a website yet that’ll clean you up and make you look presentable). Sleep comes fitfully and I am up at 5 am wondering what to do. Having slept in my underwear, I am prepared to turn them inside out and wear them again (no clothes could be bought at night ’cause no shops were open) but I am already feeling dirty and disgusted with life. I have no clothes, no cell-phone charger… so I go down to ask the hotel if they have one. And voila! I am told that my suitcase had arrived at some unearthly hour – why they didn’t send it up is a mystery but it would have saved me some stress.

So I hurriedly bathe and change into fresh clothes and look presentable enough, thank you. Murphy leaves me alone that Tuesday – perhaps he’s a Hanuman devotee and this is his Sabbath.

(This post is not about Paris so don’t look for anything to do with my stay there. Ok?)

Wednesday dawns and I am wondering why the red thread on my wrist (acquired from a temple some weeks ago) isn’t warding off the evil eye. Even the suitcase had a red ribbon (for easy identification) on its handle. Perhaps I should switch to black threads and ribbons.

Murphy strikes again! The email data on my Mac in a program called Entourage (an Outlook equivalent) disappears! Data binding and backup happens on its own but I cannot find my mails…it’s there somewhere on this machine but I’ve just about had it!

The conference ends on Tuesday and I wander around seeing parts of Paris I’d missed earlier. No further encounters with Murphy that day.

Thursday dawns and I checkout; the receptionist guides me to a bus depot nearby and I drag the suitcase, buy a 13 euro ticket and board the bus to the airport. One hour is what I was told… along the highway I see a sign that indicates Charles de Gaulle airport is in the direction this bus is not taking. “Don’t be paranoid,” I chide myself. I’d asked three people, including the bus driver – a tall dark Moroccan I think. But the anxiety grows as the city gets left behind and the countryside appears… I walk across to the driver to confirm and he is aghast! The bus is not going to CDG Terminal 1 but to some place called Beauvais… I’m doomed. He points to a sign on the front of the bus – except that I’d approached it from the side while boarding. Beauvais has a tiny airport and that’s where he’s headed. I’m now cutting it fine and frantic calls to the office tell me I can catch another flight four hours later but I have to make it to the right airport first!

I grab the only cab at Beauvais airport, the driver discards his coffee and we set off again… 80 kms, 45 minutes and 117 euros later I reach CDG. In time. But I’ve lost money, many heartbeats and a few years of my life.

So much for Paris. I’m not coming back. Not alone, at least.

Cat and Comma

What's the difference between a cat and a comma?

A cat has claws at the end of its paws.

A comma has a pause at the end of a clause.

Now, have a good Monday...

Cheers!

A Shogi State of Mind

(Originally written: Sunday, March 30, 2008)

When you start the morning with an hour-long trek in the hills of Shogi, clambering over avalanche-hit slopes, dirt tracks and paths beaten by hill goats, it looks like the day ahead will be good.

The trek is just about the only exercise one gets in an otherwise lazy weekend getaway at the Park Woods Resort in Shogi, a tucked-away village 15 kms below Shimla and easily accessible from Delhi via the Kalka Shatabdi. Bamboo huts, Swiss tents and an activity centre where the physical minded can generate adrenaline are all that there is in this resort popular with corporates looking for team-building venues.

But, throw in a few motley families with children and a bunch of schoolgirls from classes 9 and 11 - who have driven nine hours by bus all the way from Dehra Dun for an excursion - and you have an interesting amalgam. The families can’t make up their minds whether getting away from the hustle of daily life means doing nothing through the day or whether it means finding things to do in that paisa-vasool mode some people get into (every minute then must be planned and not be permitted to pass idle). The girls are evidently close to becoming women and even a nine-year old boy can’t help but comment that “they are a bit top heavy”. ‘Small trees, big fruits’ was the descriptor in our college days – but today’s youth probably employ more graphic and less subtle metaphors. Affluence is on show in their designer apparel and their physical structures indicate that they enjoy eating. So, every meal in the common dining room becomes a feast. The bonfire after sunset is a time for mirth and giggle-filled squeals rent the cold air. And treks are abhorred.

It is, honestly, not cold. Our morning trek started out with jackets that were soon pulled off and tied around waists as the sun went up. The path itself was a meandering one and largely safe except for an avalanche-hit stretch. No animals were encountered though some dung piles were crossed carefully (probably belonging to cattle). A late lunch under pine trees that shed their needles without warning into the raita, ensured that weary bodies would sink into slumber for at least a couple of hours and would rise only to the continuous growling of thunder in the distance. The hills are notorious for rains that come without warning: this one was threatening to rain forever it seemed (almost like that falsely-macho Mohun Bagan supporter who threatens to attack his East Bengal opponent unless he is held back by his adda cronies!).

But rain, it did. And when the drops came down, they were blown by a strong wind that abruptly made the place cold. Should one leave a warm bed and enjoy the rain or stay within the sheets and hear the pitter-patter of tiny drops on bamboo walls and thatched roofs (how can you hear rain on straw-covered roofs? oh, but I did!)? The birds one had heard in the morning chirped away again – all of them except the parrots that were still gallivanting somewhere and would return only after sundown. A long-tailed black-and-white bird with an orange beak and a tiny black crest was the highlight of the morning and a call made to an ornithologist friend resulted in no real clarity save a long SMS referring to Dr Salim Ali’s book but not quite getting the species right. Not that it mattered though – the effort though was well worth it and pretty much what a true friend would do.

What else does one do when it rains in the hills? Ask for a cup of steaming hot masala chai and watch the rain come down. It’s freezing but that’s what it’s all about (as Billy Joel might say). So the hour after the rains cease and the fresh, damp smell of the soil has evaporated is spent watching two completely contradictory events.

Their accompanying teachers have rounded up the gaggle of 45 girls – reluctantly, it would appear, from their complaints. The excitement of crawling Shimla’s Mall Road in their Saturday best is being replaced by the dread of exercising their rather heavy bodies with a frenetic round of rope-crossing, rappelling and other similar energy-draining activities. That’s what one can see from the end of what the resort clichedly refers to as Sunset Point.

The other end, with a conveniently-parked bench, is for watching the sun set. Obvious, isn’t it?

I clip on the iPod and listen to Billy Joel nursing the piano keys as only he can and crooning New York State of Mind and The Stranger. The sun is making its way down slowly, fighting a losing battle to beat the dark clouds that still hang heavy. The hills are shaded in various hues of grey (they were a myriad shades of green in the glorious morning light) and you wonder why the same sun goes down in such a rush in the city while – like all things else – it slows down in the hills and the sea. You think back of the days that were, of the chaos you’ve left behind at work, the stress that wasn’t packed in the small Muscat-acquired strolley that’s on its last wheels after 10 years of being trundled around. And how easy it would be to get tempted into leading this life minus the pressures of the daily grind.

And then, you spot a villager in the distance, on the same path you’d climbed breathlessly just hours ago, carrying firewood on her head. That’s when it comes home that, no matter what your state of mind may be, the state of your life isn’t going to allow you to sit back and watch the sunset every day from a place like this.

Which makes this moment even more rare and worth cherishing. It’s been a great break thus far, and instead of moaning mentally about the Monday that will hit me when I return to work, I’d rather look forward to the next break.

The sun will set soon. But, thankfully, it’ll rise again tomorrow.

I pick up the bottle of water I’d brought along – it’s still half full. Mercifully.

Just Chill

Hey chill! I'm talking to myself... I've read what I've written the last few weeks and need to snap out of it... it's only one life and it ain't that bad. Or sad.

It's like bitter chocolate... bitter, dark yet delicious.

Managed some today. Must find more...

But chill first, Jack!

Won't be down...

I will not let this day get me down. Nor any other day like this.

No matter what, no matter when.

Not even when Don McLean is played back...

Connections

It's been a mixed day thus far.

One connection broken - a dear colleague decides to quit despite much persuasion that obviously hasn't worked. I'll miss him. I'm also hoping he'll miss us.

And one old, fractured link re-established - not repaired but established again at least.

Amazing how easy it is to connect people, situations, coincidences. Like last night, surfing channels on the dumb box watching V-Day being celebrated, I got the feeling that Someone up there's trying to tell me something...

First this on MTV:


Then this on VH1

Murgi

A friend in Radio Mirchi shared this wonderful spoof they've created on the Bird Flu... in brilliant Bengali!



See it, listen to it, enjoy it.

And remember, chicken is good for you, your soul, whatever!

Dilbert's Blog

A lot of us like Dilbert.

Some of us will probably love Dilbert's blog.

The Dentist

I seem to have this love-hate relationship with my teeth.

I love the way they help me nibble (not just food but other heavenly-body protrusions as well). And I hate looking after them.

Mercifully, I've never smoked; but endless cups of black or lemon tea have left their mark. A craving for sweets has added to the torture the teeth go through. And not brushing regularly at night has been the last nail on the calcium.

So, fillings and root canal treatments are things I'm au fai with. And I love my dentist as well - enough to traverse 32 kms. (one-way) to try and get 20 minutes with her. She’s good and gentle with my pearlies. And she’s nice to talk to as well. Plays good instrumental music, is fussy about cleanliness – obsessively so. All this out of a tiny but very-much-in-demand clinic out of her home.

I’ve been going to her for some years now but something sparked off a chain of thoughts that led to this post...

Sitting in her waiting room yesterday, leafing through back-issues of magazines, I came across a book review in an old issue of The Week. It’s not the book that interests me but the person it’s about and one particular quote... Echoes & Eloquences: The Life & Cinema of Gulzar’ by Saibal Chatterjee, in which he quotes Gulzar saying “ No relationship ever ends completely. No relationship ever dies. It transcends to a different meaning.” (He must've said it with far more evocative words in Urdu - need to find it and post it in its original form).

What that “different meaning” is is something that every one of us has to individually fathom, I guess. But it struck a chord: some ageing teeth in my mouth may fall off, but hopefully the few friends I've found will remain for good. And the ones that have gone will return....even if the cavities in these relationships need filling.

Perhaps I need another kind of dentist...

A Lucknow Wedding

A Sindhi gem-trader based in Bangkok marries a Thai girl. In Thai style. Stylish, tranquil, very Buddhist.

They then come to Lucknow, where the boy's family lives, to repeat the rituals in a gurdwara. The priest, meanwhile, has forgotten to brief his folks that a pink turban is a must. So, everyone waits while three people dash off to find a long, pink satin cloth from which a turban will be made. The girl's two sisters accompanying her (two of 10 other siblings, mind it) are aghast and amused but maintain a straight face.

Many Sindhis have descended from Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune... all hosted in a hotel where 'running hot water' refers to housekeeping staff scampering floors with buckets of warm water; breakfasts, lunches and dinners are occasions to catch up, to meet cousins for the first time, to discover that a cult brand 0f t-shirts is owned by a nephew in Colaba who I've never met...old uncles are bonded with, babies drooled over, gossip is encouraged and mirth flows over some rather horrid paan, guitar strumming happens over a bonfire and presents are exchanged while unpleasantries are whispered.

Free time is spent rediscovering my mother's old school and home, the grand old Imambara and the bylanes of old Lucknow where bangles, saunf, munchies and mojris are bought.

Along with, if you please, red chillies by the arty brother in the khaandan.

Wonder what the poor bride had to say - she went from a red silk sari to a stunning white satin gown admirably. Her palate, however, has probably been laid numb by the curries and chaats that were omnipresent.

All in all, a hectic, crowded two days of socialising but a great way to escape from this mad world of work.

Pity, there aren't any more weddings coming up. But Ms Nair should consider a sequel...

Timepass

Today, I may have lost two of the brightest, nicest and most committed colleagues I've worked with.

I'm hoping that my charm will make them change their minds about moving on but it does look like the legendary allure I had is wearing off.

One is a gent who's asking me why I'm still here. The other is a young girl who's wondering how many damsels in distress will I bail out.

And then I recall Piet Bels... (whose image I can't seem to set right by turning it in any clockwise direction!). He was sitting outside Wenger's in Connaught Place last Saturday sketching portraits. A Belgian language teacher who's been visiting India since 1998, Piet lives in Pahargunj and paints to pass away his time and also make a slow buck. that's what I'd like to do someday... only, I don't know how to paint!

And then, on another trip to Bombay, I see this homeless man (whose image is also lopsided!) waking up on the porch of a watch repair shop. The irony of it: he's passing time as well - and his life badly needs repairing.

Makes me wonder whether I'm serving my time in this world in the ideal way.

Update (February 15, 2008):
The charm still works... thank God! At least 50% of it (the right 50%!)... as for the other half, am sorry but I failed. Perhaps he'll change his mind at the nth minute (eternal optimist that I am).

Update 2 (February 22, 2008):
Sunday, February 17th... the nth minute happened! The other half agreed to stay back... the charm - and some other stuff - worked. Phew!

Ho Calcutta :-)

When you're in Bombay every week and don't really want to be there, when you return to work in Gurgaon only to feel like running away from all the turmoil around, when yesterday has been tiring and you feel today should never have dawned, when you're getting nostalgic about things and people and places, thank God for people like these...

Happiness is...

I've been told - nay, ordered almost - to do at least one thing every day that makes ME happy all through 2008.

So, here goes...

Sunday was spent at the Auto Expo in Delhi, Dilli Haat and the country's longest shopping mall. Now, I hate crowds but ended up happy nonetheless.

The Auto Expo was a quick zip-in and zip-out visit to see a website's stall, the famous Nano, some vintage beauties, Audi and Mercedes. Fortunately, one managed to escape before Delhi's auto-drivers hit Pragati Maidan to check out Ratan Tata's replacement to Mr Bajaj's stuttering three-wheeler.

Dilli Haat was a disaster. Kashmiri food that wasn't very palatable and stuff on sale that couldn't be bought because they were overpriced and had a boring sameness to them. The only bit of excitement came when a gust of wind took an eight-feet signboard off its perch and it missed my head by a foot or so. The children, just behind me, gasped; one even exclaimed "Oh shit!" and then wondered if Daddy had heard it... you bet.

Having gained a second life (for the umpteenth time in this life) we then proceeded to Ambience Mall on the Delhi-Gurgaon Highway. Much to my dread, if I may add but I'd decided that happiness would happen today.

The mall was an eye-opener. I'd avoided it for months but the stores were truly world-class until one discovered Reliance Trends (Mukesh-bhai's response to Kishore-bhai's Panataloon just across the foyer). Good clothes at very affordable prices... so time was spent stocking up kids' wear for an imminent Sindhi-Thai wedding.

Shopping anywhere is tiring. But billing at Reliance Trends can drive you to tears. Not just because you have to queue up but because their billing system can't calculate percentage discounts. They either overcharge you or undercharge. And if you don't check every item and its final price meticulously, you could win or lose money depending on what your horoscope has in store that day (and this wonderful mall has several palmists hanging around to tell you your future). Be careful when you shop at Reliance... evidently you can't rely on them.

So shouldn't I have been irritated and angry?

Naah... I was happy because I'd lived that Sunday through the eyes of children, had candy-floss and enjoyed Delhi's rare winter sun all day.

Would I have been happier had that signboard fallen on me?

Figure it out, friend.

Cheers!

Never Be Lonely

You have a raging fever for several days that makes you want to lie down and die and never get up because the office refuses to leave you alone and because you won’t switch off the mobile in case an ‘important’ call is missed.

You have to catch a fog-delayed flight to Hyderabad on Indian Airlines (or Air India as they now call themselves) and the soup tastes like dishwater, the food looks like it’s been eaten once already and the blanket is dirty (and you’re travelling Business Class!).

You reach ISB at midnight, seven hours after you left home, where you’re going to be part of a three-day course for which you’re completely unprepared… and discover that the campus is heavenly. Even though it’s dark all over.

You want to reach out and speak to someone, anyone.

But the people you’d like to unburden your fatigue on are either asleep or have turned against you or have gone far away to an alien land.

So, you’re alone. Which is good, because that’s what you’ve been yearning for anyway. Some time to yourself.

But there’s a difference in being alone and being lonely.

And then MTV plays Never Be Lonely… the number of times Never Be Lonely is repeated at the end is special – for me at least.



It’s better than a hot chocolate or a cognac. Though not as good as snuggling up… but hypnotic enough to get six hours of dreamless sleep.

Leap of Faith

Another year ends... a leap year begins and I look back (for once, not in anger but in pleasure). This has been a good year for a lot of people I know; and miserable for a few. But perhaps the wrongs of 2007 will be set right in 2008. Perhaps, too, the ones whose eyes I helped light up this year will light up mine from tomorrow. There is a cold fog creeping in tonight and warmth will be hard to find... which is where Tennyson's Ulysses helps:

The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are---
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

2008 will be a better year and while loved ones may not always be close at hand, distance is only in the mind.

It's the year of the Olympics... so let's see if one can make that leap of faith and not dither at the hurdles ahead.

So here's to a new year, a new blog template and a renewed love of life.

Cheers!

Nostalgia @ Rs 5/kg

It can take over 20 years to squirrel away precious memories in the form of notes, letters, photocopied articles, workshop material, photographs...

And less than three hours to sift through cartons and discard most of them.

The cleaning up of painfully collected archives (physical not digital) is a mind-numbing exercise that leaves the shoulders aching. But nothing is as disconcerting as the fact that you can sell all of what you've discarded for just Rs 5 per kg to the loccal raddi-walla.

I may have been richer by Rs 145 on a cold Sunday morning. But what's gone are old remembrances that there is little room for in this weary world of mine.

Christmas is meant to be a season of giving. I just gave most of my memories away. I should be happy, I guess.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

Okay, so it’s been a long time since I wrote here. But then it’s been a busy time…

What with a vacation in China, a debut appearance on a ramp, my first (successful) attempt at throwing out an eve-teaser co-worker from an office party (but, sadly, not from the office itself), a dual eye surgery that was meant to be painless but ended up numbing the brain, the arrival of long-lost friends and some sundry things in between, life has been demanding.

Heck, it's been hectic. That’s what it’s been. But is it going anywhere?

An SMS from my brother, the other day, said “Due to cost-cutting, the light at the end of the tunnel has been switched off.” Imagine this: you know you’re hurtling through a tunnel, hoping it’ll soon end and you’ll be flung out. But the ride seems to last for ever – never straight, always unpredictably driving you round bends. That’s what life seems to have become.

The sadder part is that one doesn’t seem to be alone.

A friend who was to be married last December and had been Plutoed (not for the first time in her young life) came close to getting married to the same gent last week again but chose to defer taking the plunge for some months more – in a way, she extended the tunnel ride herself. Ask her and she’ll swear it isn’t by choice – it’s because she can’t get the man she wants and doesn’t completely want the man who wants her. Life is replete with difficult choices.

Sometimes you can be rescued by tragedy. Or killed by ecstasy. Don’t ask me to explain this – I know what I mean but cannot shed light on it at this point in the tunnel.

Which reminds me of a line I’d heard in a riveting performance by Jalabala Vaidya decades ago: “I am the agony and I am the ecstasy.” Aren’t all of us actually? Don’t we start with the honourable intent of making people happy but end up making either them or someone else in the same eco-system bitterly unhappy?

Sometimes I feel it’s best to be less sensitive to people’s needs and operate with tunnel vision. If the SMS is to be believed, you may never reach the light at the end of the tunnel but, at least, you won’t get distracted by side-lights either.

One life, one fate. No impossible choices to make. Just staying happy at trying to be happy.

Lives Entangled

Wayward lives, like strands of unruly hair, sometimes get entangled with each other.

Caressing at first and then angrily cross with each other, they weave in and out of themselves. Struggling to sometimes meet passionately; at other times, part in pain. Tangled knots that know not what they want.

The cleansing of a life is never as easy as a gentle shampoo and blow-dry job at the nearby salon. Instead, it needs shears to wipe away the tears.

Some places are meant to be cherished for the memories they hold. Of a love missed, a new love discovered; years later, a flame kindled and then snuffed with a slap. Places like these are best left alone – for, even memories get all twisted and then tug at each other.

Some emotions should never be exhumed.

When words and feelings go awry, it’s not just the head that goes into a vertigo-like spin, trying in vain to pull away from the whirlpool-like vortex of a past one never knew but only nightmarishly imagined in fragments through the memories of a life interrupted.

Lead one life my friend, wear just the mask you were born with. Every other is an illusion, a mistress of our times.

(And watch the time they call ‘happy hours’. Sometimes they can be neither happy, nor ’ours.)

Cheers.

Dry Day

October 2nd, Mumbai.

A dry day. Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary. All liquor shops closed (Indiawide). No alcohol being served in any restaurant, pub or hotel (regardless of the number of stars it boasts).

Correction: no alcohol being served to Indians in any of these places. But foreigners are welcome - as always in this land of double-truth.

So, to drink a beer on this venerated day, you need a non-Indian passport or a non-Indian friend.

This happened at Taj Land's End, Bandra.

Cut to Goa Portugesa, Mahim.

Could the fenny-loving Goans be kept away from the tipple even if it's Gandhiji's anniversary?

Try ordering some spicy non-veg coastal cuisine (this, for some inexplicable reason, is not banned on October 2nd). Ask the waiter quietly for a drink.

No passports required... you'll get anything you want masquerading as a mocktail (except beer which can't be camouflaged) and will be billed for soft drinks. You can't clink glasses and say "Cheers" though.

Could it be so because India still scores low on the alcohol consumption chart of the world?

Or is it because we're still experimenting with the truth?

Mobile Thais

Three visits to Thailand in the last four years and it struck me only on the last trip that it is a uniquely mobile land.

They have mobile food...

Mobile music...

Mobile massages...

Mobile monasteries...

Even mobile bars...

And, given the high number of women available legitimately for pleasure at a price, even very mobile thighs (sorry - no pictures to show though!).

Leading India

Earlier this year, I'd written that The Times of India said India was poised.

Now it exhorts the Indian who's ready to spring that he must Lead India.

In a campaign led by Shah Rukh Khan, who is otherwise someone I have never had much time for (except when I trounced him in a quiz on national television decades ages ago - but that's another post...) The Times of India seems to have caught the pulse of young, disillusioned Indians yet again. SMS-es, website registrations, snail mail, phone calls... every medium has sprung into action as people nominate future leaders of India.

And this morning, on my way to work in Gurgaon, having dropped off six children (not all mine!) to school, we were caught in a traffic jam approaching MG Road in Delhi. The cause: at first, a Maruti 800 parked bang in the right lane, indicator on, driver's window down but - lo and behold - no driver!

"Typical..." I cursed.

And then promptly swallowed my words.

The missing driver was 'on duty'... the signal had failed because of a power cut (yes, it happens) and he had jumped off to voluntarily steer traffic. He even had a whistle which he blew to draw attention to himself and then got on to his phone to call someone (a cop? a friend? boss?) and asked for help to be rushed here. Was he a cop off duty? Perhaps, because he even took down the number of a car that jumped his 'signal'.

Here he is, the unknown Indian who is already leading this land.

With heroes like these, who needs politicians?

So far, (not) so good

For the last few months, one has been trying to find a sofa set for one's house.

And, for the same last few months, one has had to walk up and down malls and furniture stores to check out sofas ranging from the plush to the ethnic.

While the choice leaves one befuddled, it also means that the more one searches, the more weary one gets.

Why do we have to walk miles to find a sofa that will finally be used to take the weight off one's feet?

Shilpa for President!

So Ms Patil is India’s first woman president. And some newspapers are already touching her feet.

Does this mean that Rashtrapati Bhavan will now be known as Rashtrapatni Bhavan?

But if Ms Patil is to be the nation’s wife, wouldn’t Ms Shetty have been a better choice? I mean, she has a doctorate from Leed’s University, a figure that would make for great photographs – even if she were to stand next to Ms Clinton at the White House – and a perfume to her name. S2 is what that little bottle is called and its creator, a certain Mark Earnshaw says it has “jasmine and musk but also have a fruity scent to it as well, to pay homage to her Indian heritage and appeal to the European market. Packaging for the fragrance is unique - the box iis (sic) quite classic and modern on the outside, but inside it is of leopard print, because, says Earnshaw, there are two sides to Shilpa…cool on the outside but she also has a different and deeper side.”

What does Ms Patil have? Why should I even attend her swearing-in ceremony if she won’t even smell of S2?

And God help us if she decides to launch P2! What would that smell of I wonder?

Pinky

June 18, 2007: Is this why Jaipur is called the Pink City?

Harry'd I am!

Ms Rowling's laughing again... all the way to the bank.

People I know are practising spot-jogging to prepare for the long queues on Saturday morning outside bookstores (one is even throwing in a breakfast offer) so that they can beat their ilk at grabbing her latest book. The last? No way!... watch this space.

These folks are also going to switch off their mobile phones and stay home to read every word of the book so that they can figure out what happens to Master Potter.

I'm wondering if I should go and watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - tickets should be easy to get because the mania will have moved from the multiplex to the stores.

And I'm also wondering if I should finally pick up one of Ms Rowling's books and start reading them.

Should I give in to temptation?

But should I start with this, the latest? Or go get the first one?

Will I look sheepish trying to buy the first title when everyone's hankering for the last one?

Decisions...decisions! Life is never simple, is it?

Hierarchy

At an e-commerce seminar last month in Kolkata, it was both hilarious and horrifying to see hierarchy being displayed in the most bizarre manner.

Like all good Indians, we believe in rushing towards the future even as we cling to the tailcoats of a rapidly disappearing past. And nowhere was this more evident than the inauguration of this forum on new-age economy... in true desi paradoxical style.

Why should public-sector corporations be obsequious to ministers? Is it part of their KRAs? Their culture? What?

The inauguration of this seminar took place not with a mouse but with a candle lighting a brass lamp... I kid thee not! And the flame was (literally) lit first by the State's IT Minister and then passed on to a Joint Secretary who, having added his flame, handed over the wax baton to the head of the PSU that was sponsoring the event while the remaining wicks were lit by lesser mortals.

What absolved this minister, though, was his speech. Not quite what one expected but a crisp monologue with a lovely insight.

He pointed out that all villagers ask for electricity, a school, water and a road that connects them to the highway/the city. Wouldn't it be better if we could just give them a broadband connection that would connect them to the world instead?

On that thought... adios.

Lollipop

If life sucks, then am I a lollipop?

Happy Half

There must be something ironic about being a reluctant frequent flyer who finds solace in Paul Theroux’s The Great Railway Bazaar. Or is it nostalgia that drives me deeper into the pages of this 1975 travelogue I discovered only last week by chance?

It was a hot humid afternoon walking down Sudder Street, the hippie-haunt of Calcutta and treasure trove of second-hand books on adjoining Free School Street. Both streets exist only unofficially, their current names being something else. I know that the latter is now called Mirza Ghalib Street and have often wondered what the शायर would have thought about having a red-light road named after him where autos and rickshaws will gladly take the perspiring tourist to a place of pleasure.

And then I remember the auto – that ubiquitous symbol of Delhi – with a couplet silkscreened on its yellow back:
शाम होते ही दीपक को बुझा देता हूँ, दिल काफी है जलने के लिए.

If you’ve ever been on one of these autos that scurry around the capital, the mood of the शेर is completely incongruous with the character of the mobile medium. But then, who am I to judge the anonymous poet or the happy plagiarist who copies it minus any credit and prints it on the auto? It’s better than seeing cheap website URLs advertised, I guess.

‘Only connect’ wrote EM Forster in Howard’s End. And the mind connects the auto with the mobile phone, with the शायरी SMS’d from Bombay every so often by a friend who, in turn, receives it from another, a full-time brand consultant and happy half-time couplet-creator। The medium does nothing to detract from the depth of the poet’s mood and I wonder whether we’ll soon see a tiny book on SMS शायरी…

Here’s one that came my way recently (copyrights are reserved by the Happy Half, as he will be known here only because real names are not to be mentioned in my world of masks):

Bekhabar maut aane ka bus yeh gham hoga, mohabbat bayaan karne ka waqt kam hoga.
बेखबर मौत आने का बस यह गम होगा, मोहब्बत बयां करने का वक़्त कम होगा.

Time, indeed, is running out and sleep is what I’d like most right now as I sit on yet another flight (my fourth between Calcutta and Delhi in the last ten days) and wonder at the marvel of cheap fares that make it possible for almost every person to fly. Paul Theroux could well write a sequel: The Great Indian Airport Bazaar. (Or maybe I should.)

I have, for company, on this trip a Bengali family of eight that includes one number non-Bengali son-in-law along with wife and month-young child. The patriarch is evidently the only one who’s flown before, everyone else is a first-timer. My hunch is that even Baba has flown just a few times before but, like it is in the villages, the one guy who’s been to the city (even if it is for a week as a peon) becomes the expert on urbanisation. Or on airplanes and all things related. Much ado is made about sitting together because their seats are scattered and Baba vociferously takes over, requests people to adjust (that smooth act every seasoned traveller does on trains when berths are to be shuffled so that womenfolk do not have to sit next to strange men). I voluntarily move back a row in the interest of domestic integrity but have to suffer the ignominy of seeing a wife quickly shifted away from me by her protective husband and question whether my unshaved appearance has anything to do with their fear that I may join the mile-high club with Mrs Dumpling.

Dumpling can’t help but smile to herself when the aircraft picks up speed on the runway and one can see years of ambition being fulfilled. This is the only time I admire Air Deccan for getting the insight right and capturing it in their launch TV commercial: we all want to fly, only some are lucky enough to get a cheap fare.

Dumpling’s equally chubby hubby, a thirty-something, wants to know what to do with the juice carton he’s just finished; his wife nudges him and shoves hers into her purse. The matriarch, it seems, hasn’t approved of her oldest daughter’s marriage to this North Indian (I later realise, he’s a Muslim) for she sits silent, sulking almost, smearing sticky sweet red mixed fruit jam on to her kulcha (no non-veg breakfast for her, thank you). She’s the only one not dressed to the hilt; either she had no time this frenzied morning to change into the finery flouted by the rest of the family or she’s still silently protesting and going along because she simply can’t be left alone.

From their conversations, it’s evident they’re flying to help the new parents settle down in Delhi – older daughter must’ve come home to deliver the baby… another stupid Indian custom in which the expenses of childbirth are picked up by the girl’s parents and not her in-laws or husband.

But I’m sleepy and another Happy Half शेर comes back…
या तो एक कन्धा हो जिसपे सर रखके रोयें, या चार होँ कि हम हमेशा के लिए सोयें.

Cheerzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Surviving

Why is that we spend all our lives trying to live a better life when all that lies at its end is death?

Why is it that a 'better life' has to translate into more money? A car instead of a motorbike. Two cars instead of one. An apartment. Clothes. Shoes...

Why is that we spend so much time chasing things and not enjoying what exists?

This isn't called living, it's called surviving.

And, to survive, is to live with what is left.

Midwife

Having just relaunched a news website, and discovering several glitches that need fixing, the mind is preoccupied. Not just with solving the current problems but also ensuring that these don't recur in subsequent changeovers.

The editor of the news portal complains how I haven't had the time to chat with her and, perhaps, congratulate her. But little does she know that I am merely the midwife: having delivered one child with whom I cannot be attached for too long or too deeply, it is time to move on to the next delivery.

There are babies queued up, waiting to be born. This is, after all, India. And changing times mean there's actually very little time.

Loving detachment, remember?

JurassicFest

2900 sweaty bodies rubbing against each other on a sun-soaked beach

Sand in their shoes and God knows in which orifice.

Beer being knocked back with no हिसाब ... and blending with every other spirit besides.

Rain dances, never-ending nights, incestuous agency employees forming multiple alumni associations at the same time, pretty young things in tiny skirts accompanied by sulking, bearded guys holding them on a long leash...

There are many ways to look at Goa - depending on your current age and state of mind. To the under-30s, subsidised by the Advertising Agencies Association of India, this was GoaFest at its best.

To the over-40s/50s/60s, jaded by the continuous bickering on the split between media and creative agencies, this was not GoaFest but JurassicFest. Dinosaur-like agency heads, supposedly respectable figures, squabbling on a public forum - it couldn't get worse! Nor could it have been more appropriate that the principal sponsor of the fiery panel discussion was the ABP Group, whose corporate line (crafted way back in 1997) is 'Power of Words'. (Words, is an anagram of sword - did you know?)

At least there's consistency: scam ads still win awards.

But, sandwiched between the crowds, one can be alone. Really alone without being lonely. That's when it strikes you it's the 20th and 21st of April and that the last time you were here was the 20th and 21st of July. And then you wonder whether you can ever get back to Goa with someone you really want by your side (not those thrust on you by the coincidences of corporate conferences). Just someone with whom you can wander the wet, winding roads, watch the sun go to sleep, awake each others' senses till your smells intertwine. Soon, you hope, before life takes another turn.

But then you wake up and set out to walk the beach while it's still unpopulated. And then you come across this:


And you wonder whether this road is best not taken.

One for None

I work in an organisation that has 23 conference rooms in the building. That's right... 23!

And yet there's one particular room that's not available to anyone because it's booked all day, all week - apparently by one person who, officially, sits in the open area on that floor along with others of his ilk. But since he wants to work out of a room, and isn't entitled to one, he books this conference room and moves in with bag and laptop.

Neat trick... except that if we move out to another building with fewer conference rooms, then will this gent be able to work with the hoi-polloi? चलो, देखते हैं।

हिंदी Rules OK?

आख़िर गूगल ने भी हिंदी भाषा की औकात मान ली... :-)

Friday the 13th

The morning starts with an SMS that redefines old age as that point in your life when a sexy babe arouses your memories instead of your you-know-what.

Funny, I guess.

Mid-morning and I realise a female colleague is being flirted with on the email by a middle-aged, perhaps dirty, man with lewd intent.

Not funny, for sure.

Afternoon: a girl who works with me is about to leave for Amritsar to get married and has come by to say 'bye but does so by bending down to touch my feet!

Embarassing. And disgusting.

Early evening and another female colleague recounts her advertising agency days when a client booked her and two male colleagues in a hotel in Bombay that turned out to be a pickup joint.

Cheap.

Should I hate guys who do this to women? Or change the circle of male friends/colleagues I have?

Heaven & Hell

Why do people go up to heaven?

And down to hell?

Why can't it be the other way?

There are some things that are better when one goes down...right?

Human Flu

Two lovebirds coo away in a cage, awaiting freedom.

A mother tending to some household chore, sneezes in rapid succession right over their cage.

And the seven-year old girl, whose birthday present the birds were (in the reluctant father's futile hope that she would let them loose sooner rather than later) stands with her hands on frail hips and admonishes: "Mummy, can't you sneeze elsewhere?! They'll get human flu!"

Life's like this only. Bless her.

The Patient Pandit

Can an x-ray machine be a leveller of mankind?

It can if it's a baggage scanner at Mumbai airport on a Friday morning.

A long queue of dusgusted passengers wait to get their bags scanned because only one machine is operational - probably because the operator/security guard has rushed off to ensure that his bowesl evacuate his backside at the appropriate location :-)

There's the businessman sending his wife to get a copy of The Times of India and then, realising it's free, sends her back to get The Economic Times as well. Slavery exists yet.

There's the college-going, backpack girl with mom in tow wondering whether this is the right queue to be in.

A suited-booted CEO-type hitting the Blackberry... at 6.15 in the morning!

And then, right at the end, unassumingly stands the man who made the santoor so popular. Not irritated, not impatient. Just calm and soothing like his music.

He goes through the pain we all do, waits in the lounge, boards the aircraft and drops off to sleep. Celebrities need to learn from him before they start pulling strings and creating cacophony.

Beyond the Navel

A gent, known for his rather profound, motivational statements (most of which aren't even understood by his colleagues, let alone practised) said this today: "Most of us are like the deer which doesn't realise the value of its navel where musk is created (probably because its nose is too far from its navel anyway). And so is it with us... we can't look beyond our nose and see the value of what lies beyond."

True, I guess.

As for me, more than my rather long nose, I'd prefer to look beyond a navel.

Cheers!

Timing

At a Scenario Planning Workshop in Bangalore held over the last four days...

Case study: list down key 'drivers' that will impact the real-estate industry in India.

One 'driver' suggested by a participant: extra-marital affairs!

And then, the next day, from the driver of the hired car taking us into town in a new Toyota Corolla with no number plates but paper stickers on both front and back windscreens, when asked why he had no number plates: "Timing saar!" (i.e. "no time").

Talk about coincidences...

Pune: the past and the preacher

February 10th was a weird day in Pune.

I met an uncle retired from the army who I’d been meeting every few years. Nothing noteworthy there.

And then I met – for just the second time in my existence - another uncle who had retired from life itself when I was just two or three years old.

One spent his life in green battle fatigues dodging bullets. Another, clad in saffron, continued to preach love and peace as a sadhu.

Green and saffron… the colours of India?

It takes all kinds to make up this world I suppose. But, caught in the conflicting worlds between the two, I wondered whether the rest of us were in the twilight zone.

And then on the drive back to Bombay, down the Expressway, the car’s antenna picked up a radio signal. And there was AB – awesomely best – sharing the pain of Rozana in Nishabdh. If there is a deep ache in anyone’s voice, it is here. If there are memories it evokes, blame no one but yourself and your past.

The present is nothing but a transition between what was and what will be. Rozana is just that… the agony of a man who knows what he’s lost and knows too that it will not return.

Perhaps that’s why we can only remember the ones gone by and not revel in those who are.

Hip-or-crazy?

A frequent traveller to another at the airport one morning: "My wife in Bangalore is convinced I have a girlfriend in Hyderabad. And my girlfriend in Hyderabad is sure I have a wife in Bangalore! Doomed I am…”

Remember My Fair Lady? “Get a woman in your life and you’ve got eternal strife!”

Also uttered by the same gent (in his mid-50s I gauge) to his companion, caught between his diva and the spouse: “Why did Amitabh have to do Nishabdh? It’s the first film of his that I hate. How can he play the role of a 60-year old in love with an 18-year old? Chhi-chhi!”

So it’s hip for Mr Doomed to balance two lives in two cities but not for AB to put on yet another mask and stage another performance?

Leaves me nishabdh, I say.

Long Time

Long time no write...

Long time no free time left!

Only the good die young?

Off Park Circus in Calcutta, down Zakaria Road, lies a Hindu cemetery. (Yes, some Hindus do get buried, not cremated.)

That’s where He was buried exactly 13 years ago, to this day.

His father didn’t even see His face, just held the little lifeless bundle, lost to the family, wrapped in cloth. Joy turned into almost instant, inexplicable despair.

Nor did he go to the graveyard. He couldn’t. The boy hadn’t survived more than 20 minutes after His birth. But the living needed looking after.

So the father didn’t bury Him; His uncles did.

Was it Billy Joel who sang “Only the good die young”?

Try explaining this to His grandmother, whose birthday it also is today. Or to the wife who carried him within her all those nine months?

Tell me, Mr Joel: if the good do die young, is it the bad that die old?

Pallu Wedding

On February 9th, in a Bombay suburb, a Panju married a Mallu.

Now, does that make them a Pallu couple?

Cheers!

An Indian Spring

The weather's changing up north. Winter's giving way, not so reluctantly actually.

Small B's got engaged to Ash (officially).

Shilpa's defeated Jane (unfortunately now we'll have some more trash to spew out in the media unless there are more people like these).

India may score over West Indies today (but even if they don't, advertisers on TV will have won over audiences).

SRK looks like he's going to do a successful imitation of Big B. Again. So Star TV will survive on the strength of KBC again (it may even consider rebranding itself as Phoenix).

And the Tatas have won Corus.

Looks like the hype is turning into reality... poise is in the air.

Growing Old

Last week, I met someone I'd last met in October and she observed: "You've really greyed in the last four months!"

While I don't think that's true, I was reminded of Will Smith in Hitch when he comments: "Age is a question of mind over matter... if you don't mind, it doesn't matter."

True, I guess.

Remote (out of) Control

We weren’t the first family in the building to own a TV set way back in the days when there was just one channel and no one more entertaining than Tabassum to watch on Phool Khile Hain Gulshan Gulshan (Mr Karan Johar, please note: no coffee, just dimple-cheeked Tabby talking non-stop while the person she was interviewing tried valiantly to get a word in edgeways). No MTV, just Chitrahaar. The brand we bought was Televista, not Weston or Beltek, because it had sliding doors that shielded the precious glass screen. So, we weren’t the first family with a TV set but we were the only ones who allowed the neighbours and everyone else in the vicinity to happily crowd our drawing room when the film was telecast on Saturday (Bengali) and Sunday (Hindi). No Act II popcorn, no Coke, just water or tea and some home-made Sindhi-style pakoras depending on Mummy’s energy levels keeping up with her generosity quotient.

And there was one number Pye radio set whose valves took time to light up as we waited in anticipation while Dad tuned the knobs to get the right frequency and expose us to Ameen Sayani from Radio Ceylon doing the Binaca Geetmala. Or the cricket commentary on Vividh Bharati.

Life was boringly simple. And we yearned for variety.

Yesterday, I wanted to rewind my life and get back to those days.

Because yesterday it finally struck me that my life – always run by remote control by some unseen hand(s) – had been taken over by four remote controls that sat beside me. Lifeless but capable of ruling one’s life completely.

A remote control for the three-year old TV (a Sony Wega that’s working perfectly fine but will probably get exchanged for a flat-screen plasma TV because, again, we’re not the first family in the building to show off a wall-mounted piece of plastic electronic art).

Another for the Pioneer DVD player that came in from a trip to Malaysia four years ago.

A third for the eight-year old Sony music system that’s been connected to the TV to create a home-theatre like sound system.

And the latest entrant to the RC clan is the one that comes with the Tata Sky set top box.

Now, try and watch a movie with everything on (including the Tata Sky box on just in case one of your children sleepily saunters in looking for that missing teddy and you don’t want her looking at a scene that’s a bit steamy and need to quickly change channels pretending you’re watching the news!). No immediate problem until the power goes off and everything shuts down till the generator kicks in somewhere and you need to restart everything. That’s when you realise that irrespective of whether you have two hands or four or none (in case you encountered a Gabbar-like character who took them away) remote controls work one at a time. No two will work simultaneously when pointed in the same direction.

You struggle to gain mastery over these six-inch long objects and wonder if it’s all worth it. They’re making you lazy and they’re not exactly the most co-operative or intuitive pieces of technology, are they?

And then, you ask yourself: if buttons are all I have to hit, why can’t I punch the right ones in my life?

Why can’t I get back control of a life that’s supposed to be mine?

Why, like the plethora of TV channels that get beamed at us, do we have to multi-task and live multiple lives within this one life?

Why can’t we control the remotes?

Look who’s changing!

“Calcutta’s really improved.”

The first time I heard this, I was pleasantly surprised. It isn’t often that the city which has been your home for almost 36 years and has been run down by almost everyone, including a Prime Minister, is praised.

“Calcutta’s changed.”

By now I was curious – and a bit irritated. I felt cheated because I hadn’t been back to the city in what seemed like ages, except for flying, infrequent visits to check on ailing parents or attend a wedding… moments where the preoccupation of the task at hand prevented me from really absorbing what seemed like a shifting streetscape.

“Calcutta’s looking good.”

Sure, I told myself, there are more shops than I recall, malls and multiplexes are multiplying like rabbits, but have the people changed? Has the चलता है attitude progressed to a दौड़ेगा mindset?

So, on a recent visit that took me back to Calcutta on work and compelled me to stay at a hotel because I couldn’t stay with the family for various reasons, I ended up soaking in the city at almost every level.

“Welcome to the Taj Bengal, sir. Is this your first visit to us?’ whispered Payel at the reception.

“We’ve upgraded you to a small suite sir, enjoy your stay, do let me know if there’s anything we can do for you”, she continued as she escorted me up to Room 303.

303? The Enfield rifle from the Commando comics! Or Jeetendra advertising that virility capsule that almost vanished later thanks to Viagra? Little did I know then that I would soon be waging a war within the precincts of the Taj…

I dump my bags and head off to meet the people I have to meet. And that’s when the mood-change becomes palpable. Here’s an evangelist who’s struggled to get professional and family-run businesses to migrate to the Internet and when you speak to him, you hear not despondency but optimism. He could have been in Bombay or Bangalore – not Delhi mind you, he’s far too genteel to survive there. After protracted negotiations that are going nowhere, we decide to go for lunch – if all else fails in Calcutta, seek out food and much will be forgiven.

Waldorf on Park Street has changed: they don’t make the fried fish I used to get packed and scamper home with in the pre-microwave days so that we could have it really hot! It isn’t even called Waldorf any longer and is now branded as Marco Polo. The food is good, the prices reasonable (presumably) and the buffet has variety. What more could you ask for in a business lunch? A paan perhaps, and even that is just round the corner.

The car makes its way down Chowringhee and you notice someone protesting about the ban that’s been announced on Calcutta's rickshaw-pullers. This is Esplanade, the Hyde Park of Calcutta, once ruled by a sea of red flags protesting at everything that could be considered an agenda. Only this time, there is a small stage, a lone politician making a speech and a crowd of five (that’s right, just five) in attendance. Either there are other, more persuasive speeches being made in the vicinity where the crowds have flocked or the rickshaw-wallah has sensibly chosen to go and earn his daily wages instead of wasting time here.

In fact, the attitude is clearly that of moving on and not wasting time. At advertising agencies, publications, even a Government-run office with an officer swamped in a sea of dusty files jostling for space with two desktops in the same room, the clear signal being sent out is one of catching up with lost time.

Yes, things have changed.

At Oh Calcutta, the celebrated Bengali-cuisine restaurant that opened some time ago amidst scepticism, it is difficult to get a place for five on a Thursday afternoon. The place isn’t just packed; it’s packed with Bengalis stuffing Bengali food down their throats and paying for it through their mustard-oiled noses. Apparently, there’s also a Bhojohari Manna that serves similar fare which is lapped by residents only. We Delhi-ites get a few odd glances – but because we’re the only ones minus any warm clothing while the locals are all huddled up in their winter warmest. The mall where the restaurant is located has a serpentine queue of people booking tickets for Salaam-e-Ishq which will be released the next day. The elevators are crowded with a youngster pushing his way in and a didi-ma (grandma) jostling her way out (if there’s ever an exam before granting migratory rights to Calcuttans seeking a transfer to Delhi, these two will surely be elbowing each other to top the list)… yes, Calcutta’s changed.

But nothing is as certain a sign of change as Oly’s (or, to the uninitiated, Olympia) the bar on Park Street where the advertising crowd used to be found without fail. In fact, rumour has it that a particular agency almost shut down because its managers would be found at Oly’s from the moment it opened to the time it halfheartedly downed its shutters. At first, Oly’s looks the same: the laminated walls haven’t changed, Dansberg beer is still available (God bless Danny Denzongpa and his Yuksom Brewery), the चानाचूर tastes the same but something’s missing. After a while it hits you: where’s that empty, extra glass that would be plonked down on the table into which would go a copy of every bill recording every round of drinks you’d order just so that you didn’t lose track of your own creditworthiness?! It was a ritual that made Oly’s unique. Now even that’s gone.

You cross the road and notice a new-look Flury’s with the same old hot-cross buns and, worse, the cross waiters who are probably paid a bonus to be surly. Next to it stands MusicWorld and on its steps sit teenagers out of college and office-goers as well waiting for their dates to appear. Calcutta’s looking young.

Somebody wants चाय, someone else is hungry and it’s just 7.30 in the evening. Is Azad Hind Dhaba still around, I ask? The locals look at me as though I’m an idiot – I may as well have asked does KC Das still make rossogollas? So we head off to the dhaba that used to be our haunt after late-night pitches in search of tight-fisted clients in the early 90s. While I was away, MF Husain has been here, I notice, and amidst the red laminated tables, right next to the kitsch Pepsi tiles on the walls hangs an original Gajagamini painting by the eccentric bare-footed artist. This was his gift to Azad Hind Dhaba. Again, nothing seems to have changed except that no one speaks a word of Punjabi or Hindi – all you hear from the waiters is Bengali but, mercifully, the food remains incorruptible north Indian.

By the way, I’m told Nizam’s has been bought by a Marwari whose first initiative was to stop making beef rolls. I’m also told that he’s thinking of renaming it as Agarwal’s! Can someone confirm this please?

Back at the Taj, the Chinoiserie still exists – minus the fried ice-cream though. Instead it has a rat scuttling across the floor. “Can’t be,” I mutter to myself but there it goes again. The waiter apologises and I wonder whether I should continue eating or just retire hungry.

At breakfast the next morning, I find a tiny cockroach under the milk dispensers. I am horrified. So are the chefs. They apologise profusely, the Sous Chef gives me his business card (as though that atones for their sloppiness) and fails to convince me that there is a pest-control operation that happens three times a week. I decide to skip breakfast.

On my last day, at breakfast again, I discover another cockroach in the same milk dispenser – only this one’s bigger. More horror, more apologies but nothing else. Not even a complimentary bottle of wine or meal at some other pest-free eaterie in the chain. Nobody takes me seriously anymore.

Evidently the Taj has changed: they’ve become worse at house-keeping but better at apologising. I tell myself that it must be the proximity to the zoo that keeps bringing in these creatures despite the hotel’s best efforts and wonder if other guests have woken up to find a giraffe looking in through the window.

Has the Coffee House changed? The puchka-wallahs? The roll and chow-mein stalls? The mini-buses? JU?… I don’t know because I have to leave and can’t change my ticket.

But at least, I know that I have to come back. And that won’t change.

Cheers!

Gurgaon-isation

Okay, so you know of being Bangalored. And of Plutoed.

Now there's Gurgaon-isation...

To the uninitiated, Gurgaon is a dust bowl that's been built-up by two large builders (DLF and Unitech) and many smaller ones who have sold the dream of 'sadda ghar' to tens of thousands. The capital of Haryana and land of the Jats, it's pretty much like the Wild West where the whiteskins ousted the native Indians who hunted them down (in vain, albeit) with bows and arrows. The Jats still try and hunt down the new settlers by driving like maniacs and banging their old, rickety buses into shiny new sedans every now and then.

To the initiated, Gurgaon is a contrast in concrete. Here's why

1. It has call centres who employ cabs who frequently drive on the wrong side of the road - evidently their drivers think they're already in the US of A.


2. Its full of swank apartments with no roads leading up to them.


3. There are centrally ac'd buildings but no electricity to power the traffic lights.


4. Premium apartments are being sold facing a golf course - but that's likely to be moved to another location five years from now. Only no one really knows it.


5. There's a complete takeover of some services (maids, sweepers, guards, rickshaw-pullers) by just one community (Bengali migrants from Bangladesh). It's what Derek once called the ABCD class in a quiz years ago (ABCD=Ayahs, Bearers, Cooks, Drivers).


6. There are malls that run up high air-conditioning bills but low sales.


7. And malls that have more window-shoppers than real customers.


8. It also has cows that double up as temporary road dividers. And set out every morning along with the fitness-concious joggers who usually end up running their expensive Nikes into dung.

So, if you spot any of these happening in any part of the world... you'll know it's Gurgaon-isation. Time we gave ourselves some more credit, what!

Cheers!

What, me Majboor?!

Came across this in an anthology of poems by someone called 'Majboor':
मैं चलता रहा मोहब्बातों के रास्ते,
मैं जलता रहा मोहब्बातों के वास्ते.

And was reminded of something I'd scribbled somewhere some months ago:
मैं बुझाता रहा हर किसी की आग,
और ख़ुद बन गया राख.

Now, I'm not majboor, nor do I want to be. But there is something similar here...or am I imagining it?

PS: can't read the Hindi font? Try downloading one from any of these sites:
http://tdil.mit.gov.in/download/Raghu.htm
http://chandas.cakram.org/
http://www.kamban.com.au/
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/hindi/

Where are you going?

"You don't really know where you're going until you know where you've been."

I'm not saying this. Will Smith, the date-doctor said so in Hitch last night on HBO.

But it is true, isn't it?

Don't Talk Like a Zune

AdAge has this Media Guy who has 'assembled this convenient glossary of must-know terminology. '

SICK MINUTES or SICK HOURS: Minutes or hours taken off of work when a person comes down with one or more viral videos, the watching of which entirely precludes productivity. Sample usage: "Jim's going to be late for the meeting -- he came down with a viral video and had to take some sick minutes, so he's scrambling to finish his PowerPoint."

VIRAL VIDIOT: Anybody who thinks she or he can be the next Lonelygirl15.

DEATHLY HOLLOW: What publishers other than Scholastic, and authors other than J.K. Rowling, will feel in the pits of their stomachs when "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" goes on sale later this year.

IDOL IDLE: What will happen to TV ratings on other networks -- and lots of other electronic media -- when Fox's "American Idol" starts airing again later this month. Sample usage: "Well, our website traffic's going to be Idol idling Wednesday night from 8 to 10, so maybe that'd be a good time to do the rebuild."

GOOGLE EARTH: An animated mapping service from Google. Also: what the planet Earth will be renamed circa 2009 when Google executives look at their cash balance sheet and decide to make an impulse real-estate buy.

GOOGLE WALLET: What every living human being will use to pay Google Rent to Google Landlord starting in 2009. Sample usage: "Did you hear that Bill Gates is thinking of moving out of his 40,000-square-foot mansion? Google Landlord raised his Google Rent again, and he's not sure he can afford to live there anymore."

HUFFINGTON PEST: Common household pest that's attracted to warm, bright places, such as computers and TV studios.

WIKI: Hawaiian for "Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free?" See also: user-generated content.

FIREFOXY: What most bloggers aren't. Sample usage: "Is Xeni Jardin from Boing Boing, like, the only Firefoxy blogger in the world?"

ZUNE: Microsoft's new music player. Also [slang]: a poseur; a wannabe. Usage: "Dude, you look like such a Zune in that shirt."

VISTA: Microsoft's new operating system. Also: a scenic view populated with bugs and security holes.

MASH-UP: When one thing that's not good enough on its own joins up with another thing that's not good enough on its own -- and they, like, make out and have babies and stuff. Usage: "Zune should think about doing a mash-up with the new Adam Sandler movie."

MICROSOFT: What Bill Gates feels in his pants when he thinks about Sergey Brin, Larry Page and/or Steve Jobs.

MOORE'S LAW OF OLD MEDIA: If you have a job in old media, you don't actually have a job in old media anymore. Surprise! Especially right before the holidays. Origin: derives from Moore, Ann, the Time Inc. chief who has a habit of laying people off with astonishingly Scroogey timing. See the 27 consumer-marketing people axed the Tuesday before Christmas.

AJAX: Asynchronous Java Script and eXtensible Markup Language. Also: powdered cleanser with bleach that's useful for cleaning the blood stains off the floor at Time Inc.

And here's my humble contribution...

WIRED: It's what happens to folks in the Internet space in India when they read the latest issue of the magazine and get all strung up about how they're missing out on the gravy train :-)

Got something to add?

Mind meets Heart

Rose meets Gregory and emotions meet rationality... that's Barabara Streisand and Jeff Bridges in a wonderful comedy (that didn't do too well at the box office): The Mirror Has Two Faces.

There's this one long - but wonderfully scripted - scene in which Rose, a professor of English Literature holds forth on why people fall in love. And Gregory, a maths prof. at the same university (Columbia) sneaks in to get a look at her because he's looking for a relationship that goes beyond sex (which is all he's had with some of his students).

Here's what she says to her class:

This is the scene at my sister's wedding.
She's getting drunk, regretting that she got married for the third time.
My mom's sprouting snakes from her hair in jealousy.
It was perfect ...We've got three feminine archetypes: The divine whore, Medusa -- and me.
What archetype am I?-
The Virgin Mary? -
Thanks a lot, Trevor.
No, the faithful handmaiden. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.
It proves what Jung said all along. Myths and archetypes are alive and well and living in my apartment.

As l stood beside the altar beside my sister and her husband to be, -- it struck me that this ritual, a wedding ceremony, -- is the last scene of a fairy tale. They never say what happens after. That Cinderella drove the prince mad by obsessively cleaning the castle.They don't say what happens after because there is no after.

The be-all and end-all of romantic love was ... Mike?

Sex?

You have sex on the brain.

Marriage.

But it wasn't always like that. The thirteenth century had ''courtly love'', which had nothing to do with sex. The relationship between a knight and a married lady of the court ...And so they could never consummate their love. They rose above ''going to the toilet in front of each other'' love, -- and went after something more divine. They took sex out of the equation, leaving them with a union of souls.

Think of this. Sex was always the fatal love potion. Look at the literature of the time. All consummation could lead to was madness, despair or death.Experts, scholars and my Aunt Esther are united in one belief:True love has spiritual dimensions, while romantic love is a lie.A myth. A soulless manipulation. And speaking of manipulation ...It's like going to the movies and
seeing the lovers kiss ...The music swells, and we buy it, right?So when my date kisses me, and l don't hear strings, l dump him.

The question is, why do we buy it? Because, myth or manipulation, we all want to fall in love. That experience makes us feel completely alive. Our everyday reality is shattered, and we are flung into the heavens. It may only last a moment, an hour, but that doesn't diminish its value.

We're left with memories we treasure for the rest of our lives. I read, ''When we fall in love, we hear Puccini in our heads.'' I love that. His music expresses our need for passion and romantic love. We listen to La Bóheme or Turandot, or read Wuthering Heights, -- or watch Casablanca, and a little of that love lives in us too. So the final question is: Why do people want to fall in love -- when it can have such a short run and be so painful?

Propagation of the species?

We need to connect with somebody.

Are we culturally preconditioned?

Good, but too intellectual for me. I think it's because, as some of you may already know...

While it does last, it feels fucking great.

Go unearth a copy of the film from your local library. While it does play, it's good.

India Fogged?

On Monday morning, The Times of India says India Poised…

I say, it’s India Fogged.

Delhi is covered by a thick blanket of fog that crept in on New Year’s eve. And Delhi-ites are covered under blankets with their foggy minds hung-over from innumerable glasses nursed all night long.

The India Poised campaign says there are two Indias; I say, there are three.

Apart from the ones straining at the leash and being the leash, there’s another India that doesn’t even know what is going on. So fogged out they are.

There's the Mukesh Ambani India, the Anil Ambani India and the poor Rest of India who will finally be swallowed by one of the Brothers A.

There are beached-whale like airplanes sitting on tarmacs, poised to take off but unable to because runways are fogged.

There are parents discovering lost children in skeletal instalments in a Noida house where they’ve been butchered.

There are openers in the Indian cricket team who can’t score any runs against the South Africans.

Malls in Gurgaon are poised to earn rentals from shopowners whose establishments were sealed in Delhi. And rumour has it that the local Congress government is poised to lose the elections because they’ve earned the wrath of these traders – as well as hefty commissions from mall-owners.

DTH operators are poised to replace cable-operators (an industry is being buried even as I blog this) and their snake-like cables crisscrossing lampposts.

The Metro is poised to cut through MG Road in Delhi – where will the trees go, I ask no one in particular?

And Shah Rukh Khan is poised too… to imitate Amitabh yet again as a quizmaster. Perhaps he’ll do a Hindustan Poised campaign for Hindustan Times now as well.

So we are poised all right. The question is, for how long can we remain poised and not quite take off?

The fog is finally lifting and the sun is making its way through the clouds. India too shall rise – if you don’t believe me, listen to AB again (and let’s see Shah Rukh imitating that baritone – ha!)

Cheers!

A Year for Friends

2006 will be a year best remembered for Friends.

Old friends who came back from ages ago - and never let you feel your age.

New neighbours turned into new friends.

Colleagues evolved into friends... and felt like they'd always been there. Hopefully, they'll always be there too.

Friends who happened out of the blue. And pulled one out of the blues.

And friends who could have been but, inexplicably, weren't to be. Sadly.

It was (and the year will be over in just a few hours) what Dickens may well have had in mind when he wrote "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

Amen 2006.

Bangalore's Most Stylish Place

If you're ever in Bangalore and are cursing Indian airlines because your flight back home is delayed, look at the brighter side of life. Or, better still, look for 39 St. Mark's Road and diagonally opposite KC Das stands Koshy's.

Started way back in 1940, it won MTV's award for the Most Stylish Place earlier this year. And that's the beauty of this eaterie that wraps itself literally around the corner and around you with its character.

If you enter the place and turn right, you'll end up in the wrong section: sitting in the air-conditioned part of Koshy's is as bad as going to a Woodland's and ordering channa-bhatura! Enter the place and turn left and you'll taken back in time. Everything seems to come from an era left behind by the British and their pretender-followers. The menu has to be read to be believed (the food, mind you, is delicious) and the service is slow but you're not meant to be in a hurry when you come here. The loos is still called 'cloak rooms' with prominent red signs stating GENTS ONLY and LADIES ONLY (indicative of earlier goings-on behind their doors perhaps).

This is where Banaglore hangs out. And it's a good place to be in and watch locals, tourists, artists, ad-agency types and laptop-toting salesmen nurse chilled beer and masala peanuts (with tomato pieces).

However, if you're there on the last working day of the year watching old friends reunite, it's not such a good feeling. You could be amidst the crowd and still be all alone. Or you could be with a friend you're leaving behind and wondering why you have to part when everyone else is coming together.

But Koshy's couldn't care less if you kissed or cried. If you hugged or held hands. As long as you order and consume, Koshy's will find everything kosher.

You watch this and wonder... why must you leave at all? Perhaps because friends must part only so that they can meet again.

Upstairs Folks

A friendly neighbourhood super woman works for India’s largest BPO. Her husband is with the world’s largest software company. Her daughter (not yet a teenager) has, what must be, the largest heart in the condo.

While most of us went back to work after a three-day Christmas weekend, she had a holiday on Boxing Day. Why? Because USA was shut. Her normally hard-pressed husband also came back before sundown – again because his US office was shut.

And that simply drove home the point that there’s a corner in Gurgaon that is, for now at least, American.

But that’s where this family’s affinity with the Bushland ends.

Are they religious? Yes, but not in a mantra-chanting way. They come from two different communities, so that’s a great start anyway.

Do they have good old Indian values? Yes, but not in a prudish way. I mean, he cooks while she drives a mother-of-them-all Scorpio that terrorises most Jats as well as the ubiquitous bulls that are an integral part of Gurgaon’s landscape (must check Google Maps to see if the bovines feature!).

Will the daughter become Americanised as she grows up? Frankly, my dear, I don’t care a d! Chances are, her non-resident cousins in the US of A will become re-Indianised if our population keeps growing the way it is today. Haven’t the Japs displaced American cars? And China-made toys rule the world?

Well, they can keep their cars and toys. We have our people. And these lovely neighbours, to boot.

Cheers!

Love Cabs

Bombay is a city with tiny homes, tiny taxis and a huge appetite for love.

Couples who don’t find privacy at home will happily crawl into the compact black & yellow Premier Padminis and snuggle up in the back seat. They couldn’t care less if anyone saw them kissing and fondling each other as long as it’s not a nosy neighbour or aunt.

And other Bombay-ites will not even ogle – unlike their cousins in Delhi who would hoot and whistle! Perhaps even shoot videos on the fly and MMS them… dumbkoffs!

But it still makes me uncomfortable to see this... until a friend very insightfully pointed out: “Isn’t it better that other people – especially children – see love being shared, kisses exchanged rather than violent arguments and blows?”

Perhaps displaying affection in Bombay’s backseats is better than witnessing heated arguments on Delhi’s streets.

No Time for Time

The best way to lose track of time is not by not wearing a watch.

Some people do this in the (mistaken) belief that being freed of this handcuff automatically leads to a sense of being unhurried.

Having been a daily watch-man since Class IX when I was gifted an Anglo-Swiss by my father, I’ve been a slave of the ticking hands. And have tried often to shake off the feeling of being watched over my shoulder and rushing from one task to another. And I’ve failed.

Then, on a Saturday morning in Bombay, unable to laze around any longer in the transit flat’s comfortable bed, I sprung up, grabbed my camera, but not the watch, and set off to the nearby Hanging Gardens for a walk (someday I’ll give up the mobile phone as well). There was nothing unusual about the morning: the expected set of joggers, walkers, exercisers were all there… from the portly to the sprightly. I walked around – aimlessly for once. A path led past a temple and went down to Chowpatty for which I didn’t have energy enough to explore. On the way back, a chai-walla’s fare tantalised the tea-drinker in me and, for three rupees, a glass of freshly-brewed chai was had. I tried buying a couple of his glasses off him and failed – “Nalbazaar is where you’ll get it for five rupees each”, he directed me.

Again, not quite in the mood to seek out Nalbazaar, I went back into the park and marvelled at this oasis-like space in the concrete stalagmites reaching their ugly fingers up into the sky. If the voices around weren’t overwhelmingly Gujarati and the benches didn’t have donor plaques with Kapadias and Shahs and Mehtas on them, I could have been in another city.

Incidentally, why do people have this desperate urge to put the names of their kin on benches when they donate them? I mean, am I supposed to thank the deceased for giving me a butt-parking space every time I sit down? Isn’t the ideal donor the anonymous one?

But this was Bombay and three garrulous old men wouldn’t let me forget it. Under a gazebo, I sat on a Doshi-donated bench (or could it have been a Kapadia?) and was soaking in the golden morning sun when I began to eavesdrop on the conversation between these three retired gents (straight out of that Basu Chatterjee comedy, Shaukeen). They went effortlessly from discussions on Bombay’s income tax contribution to the country’s coffers to the miserliness of a Marwari colleague’s wife to the perils of flirting to a morning satsang… and I listened in shamelessly.

That’s when it struck me that none of the three wore watches. They had evidently worked hard enough (or inherited enough) to live in the most expensive area of the city and be completely bindaas about life. Time meant nothing to them except as a means of catching up with friends and reminiscing happily. Not once did I hear them discuss politics or rape or murder or inflation. It was either an unwritten, pre-determined code that kept ‘bad news’ out of the laxman-rekha. Or perhaps it was just the way they were.

I’d like to believe the latter.

Twilight Zone

Twilight is an orphan.

The day doesn't want it any more.

The night won't own it yet.

Why do I get this feeling I've been in the twilight zone all my life?

Jigsawing

There are people who watch movies on TV by appointment... as in, they keep track of which channel is gonna play which movie and will make elaborate arrangements to see it undisturbed by pesky children, low-level IQ maids, interfering moms-in-law, etc.

Then there are people who will watch a film from any point in time depending on what the remote discovers. They may or may not see the film through to its end.

And then there are those who will watch a film from, say, midway till the end. They'll figure out its name (tough if it's the local cable operator and his pirated DVD) and then look out for the next screening of this film... at which point they'll watch it from the start to only the point where they had started the first time around. Get it?

This piecing together of the celluloid puzzle in not-so-equal instalments is what I call 'jigsawing'. And, to the best of my knowledge, there's just one person I know for the last 15 years who has been doing this happily.

If you know of any others, please to tell.

Being the Bridge

Not too long ago, I moved from what’s called ‘old media’ to ‘new media’ and was meant to be the bridge between the two worlds. Which sounds nice but is actually quite agonising.

The fundamental problem with being a bridge is that you get walked upon by people from both sides. People who don’t even think twice about it because you’re a bridge, damn it! Hullo... you’re there to connect two ends who are technically not created to be linked, and must be trod upon. (Not a doormat, mind you – I’ve been that too but just didn’t realise it at that point because the heart was ruling the head.)

It’s been troubling me for a while now until I heard Simon & Garfunkel this morning after a very long time and couldn’t help empathising with their lyrics:

…When times get rough
And friends just can't be found
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down…

And the more I heard the song, the worse I felt. Why, I asked myself, was I beginning to wallow in Christ-like self-pity? And then, the ballad reached its wonderful end:

…If you need a friend
I'm sailing right behind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind.

And I told myself, “Ease up, friend”. If this is what you’re meant to be, c’est la vie. At least in this life I’ll be the bridge. In the next, not the troubled water, hopefully.

It's what the Portuguese would call Saudade.