the Why chromosome...

The Writer's Blocked

2010-09-05T23:25:00.000-07:00

I'd prolly think of learning graphology, but then, methinks who uses written text now, everyone emails...

Is there anyone who teaches how to read between the lines from emails?

क़मी

2010-08-14T04:11:00.000-07:00

खुली हुई एक खिड़की से
मेरे कमरे में आज सवेरे
उड़ते हुए एक परिंदा चला आया

उसने मुझे
अंदर बैठे देखा
और मुड कर लौट गया

कुछ देर बाहर
एक पेड़ की डाली पर बैठे हुए
वह मुझे देखता रहा
और फिर उड़ चला

जाते हुए जैसे कहता गया
खुली खिडकियों वाले कमरे
आसमाँ तो नहीं होते हैं ना

Ismail

2009-09-21T06:15:00.001-07:00

I ended up watching The Kite Runner this Saturday. The film has been made skillfully, balancing the bright and the dark sides of Kabul’s history. The streets of Kabul resembled those that I had seen in my native district of Kutch, and the people looked quite the same. My grandmother used to tell me stories of how Kabuliwalas used to bring their produce of cashews, almonds and apricots to sell in cane-baskets stacked upon carts which were pulled by donkeys or camels, year after year, until they disappeared. I wished I could see at least one Kabuliwala someday, somewhere.

The ‘little Hazara boy’ Hassan and his friendship with Amir Agha also reminded me of an episode from my childhood. When I was about ten, I lived in a village in Kutch for a couple of years. I used to play with children in the village, amongst whom one was Ismail. He was the son of the only potter in the village. There was only one school in that village, where we all used to study.

Ismail used to turn up near my house almost every evening after school to play marbles with me and a number of other children our age. The rules of the games played with marbles are such that if you win, you end up richer by a few marbles, and if it’s a bad day and you go losing, you may even lose all your marbles. I used to have a good aim from a distance, but when it came to pushing a marble gently without disturbing others, there was nothing to write home about. It is at the end of the game when this skill comes handy. Ismail was perfect at that, and we often used to team up. He hardly had anything for pocket money, which was just enough to buy food for him, so he would borrow marbles from me, and I then let him have his part of those which we won from our games.

He studied at the school up to the fifth grade, and one day he left school to help his father herd their donkeys. He still used to meet us in the dry river-bed, where we often used to go in the evenings to make houses out of sand. He often met us on his way home herding his donkeys back and ask whether my jar of marbles was still to its brim.

When I left the village early one morning, I had again seen Ismail herding his donkeys out of the village. A few years later, I visited the place, and went around looking for everyone who studied with me at the school, everyone with whom I had played – marbles, cricket or just about anything. I learnt that Ismail had been bitten by a snake one day, while he was out at work and died after he returned home later that night.

The last sight of Ismail I remember is that of him smiling and waving at me, as I left the village and he started for work.

Ismail may not have uttered words like ‘for you, a thousand times over’ or may not even have been as dear a friend of mine. But I remembered him the most, when the child Amir Agha recites a poem by Rumi, while he and his father were being transported inside a fuel tanker from Afghanistan to Pakistan. The poem is from Mathnawi 1, 1510:1513, and it is titled ‘Who are we in this complicated world?’:

If we come to sleep

We are His drowsy ones.

And if we come to wake

We are in His hands.

If we come to weeping,

We are His cloud full of raindrops.

And if we come to laughing,

We are His lightning in that moment.

If we come to anger and battle,

It is the reflection of His wrath.

And if we come to peace and pardon,

It is the reflection of His love.

Who are we in this complicated world?

Paradise, found

2009-08-31T23:01:00.000-07:00

It has been long since I've been meaning to write this, and there has been a lot happening, in my world at least. But as life would have it, procrastination and action have long bridges to be crossed between them. I'm sitting by my bedroom window, looking out at the overcast sky, listening to some music and waiting for the skies to pour again. Perfect weather for nostalgia.

My thoughts take me back to the mountains that I explored over two weeks, a couple of months ago. The trek started with a day-long rafting trip in Hrishikesh, located at the base of the Himalayas in northern India. Even though the city is regarded as a holy place for pilgrimage, along with the many temples, shrines and communes, there also exist exciting adventure opportunities such as mountaineering and rafting.

The Laxman Jhoola at Hrishikesh

After a few hours of rafting, a couple of hours of swimming in the calmer part of the Ganges and diving from the highest rocks on the banks of the river, I set out on a walking tour around the holy town. The place has a pristine touch to it, with prayer chants buzzing into your ears as you walk past every nook and corner. Monks, real ones and beggars sporting saffron outfits, walk around the city along side hippies and the spiritually curious from all over the world. Even though the environs and lifestyle in the town remain nearly rural, its surprising how the place attracts people from the most developed parts of the world to seek solace.

A monk reciting the Geeta

The next place we set out for was a village close to the Indo-Tibetan border in the Garhwal region. Mandoli, the base camp for our trek is a small hamlet with hardly fifty families living there, plenty of naturally chilled water and no power. The flowers, vegetation in the region are exotic but for food, they grow only potatoes! So, the first thing we were told was that for the next couple of weeks we'd be having a highly potato-intense diet for all our meals.

The average temperatures are usually single digits, and the water freezes you head-to-toe. People in that region are the friendliest possible, kids the most innocent. Women have sharp features and a shy, dreamy-eyed look when they stare at us urban creatures. Even though they may be used to seeing hundreds of trekkers, they themselves must've conquered the mountain ranges a number of times in their lives they don't fail to express surprise and awe when you tell them you plan to climb up to Bedni Bugyal or Roopkund. It may as well be coming from their knowledge of the vulnerability that urban residents are subject to, and the luxuries they crave for.

Local women walk miles to collect fire-wood, at times climbing many trees on the edges of cliffs. The pictures were taken in the evening when our bus broke down on the way to Mandoli and these ladies were on their way home.

Sunshine all day long!

Life in these villages is nowhere close to easy. The villagers migrate from one place to another depending upon rainfall, snowfall and the intensity of winter in a given year. Farming is done on the steep slopes of the mountains without any modern means of transport barring a few trips to the nearest city in a jeep or a state transport bus over the year. Markets for their produce are far away from their villages, so they have to rely on intermediaries who make more money for their produce than they themselves do. Despite all the difficulties, these villagers seem to know some secret potion of happiness to keep up their mysteriously innocent smiles.

The many faces of innocence

Smiles from the mountains

By this time, I had already left behind my life without emails, phones, newspapers, television, music, and everything modern to keep me busy. The only hint of technology I had with me was my camera, which attracted brilliant smiles from the villagers – kids and grown-ups alike.

I could wake up at four in the morning and see the sun rising up to the world, covering the entire landscape in a golden hue. The view was addictive, and one can't stop clicking pictures of the same frame over and over.

The small temple, from which the God escaped...

...and perhaps, went this way!

Colours!

Freedom!

From Mandoli, our group of forty climbed up to Tolpani, an even tinier village with a small plateau on the mountain where we could camp. We stayed the night there, and witnessed new colours of the sunset we had never seen before. The next morning, we started off for a long trek up to Bedni Bugyal passing through Ali Bugyal. Bugyal, in Garhwali language means a meadow. Bedni Bugyal is known to be one of the largest meadows at the height of 12,000 feet above sea level in Asia. Tall trees cease to survive after the height of about 9,000-10,000 feet above sea level. We visited the place by the end of summers, just before it starts raining – or rather, snowing heavily. The place was covered with short grass, and I was told that by September the meadows will be colourful with various kinds of flowers and shrubs growing all over.

The meadows have no civilisation, except for the occasional hermit living in one of the many stone-houses built by the villagers living at the base and more recently, trekkers. We camped at Bedni Bugyal for three days, because we were planning to climb up to Roopkund at a height of 17,000 feet above sea level from Bedni, and return to the camp. For Roopkund, there is a legend saying that a king and his pregnant wife were passing by the lake at Roopkund with their cavalry, when a snowstorm struck and everyone died. We were told that when the snow melts, one can still find skeletons of 11-foot tall human beings, belonging to the king and his soldiers. The story continues: since then, whenever a woman tries to climb up to Roopkund, there is a snowstorm, no matter which part of the year.

On the way to Baguabasa, signposts are put together showing the way

We were also told that the trek from Bedni Bugyal to Roopkund is tougher than the mountains that we had climbed so far. So we eliminated 32 out of the 40 guys, and only eight of us started for Roopkund, via Baguabasa, which is situated at a height of 15,500 feet above sea level. Of the eight, only four of us reached Baguabasa, the other four returned mid-way. Until then, the weather was quite sunny with strong wind threatening to blow us off the cliffs. Suddenly, as we reached Baguabasa, clouds gathered in so thick that we couldn't see a few feet in front of us, and lightning struck as if right next to our feet. Within a few seconds, piercing bits of snow hit our skin, and we all had to run downward, back in the direction of our camp.

On the way back, we hopped and jumped our way down the boulders without even looking behind. Suddenly, I realised that I was alone, far ahead of everyone with nobody around. My footsteps made echoes, and the occasional strike of lightning still made me shudder. There I met a family of four – husband, wife, and two daughters, who were planning to climb up to Roopkund by the end of the day. I was spooked. I wished them luck and started walking back again, thinking over the now not-so-superstitious legend. When I reached the camp, I realised I had climbed down the terrain in an hour and a half, which had taken me six hours to climb up!

Through the rest of the day, I snuggled in my sleeping bag trying to bring some warmth back to my frozen body. The next day, we climbed down to a shy, picturesque village called Wan, about 40 kilometres away from where we had started climbing up.

Our guest house in Wan

People in this village were even more reclusive, perhaps in proportion to their distance to the larger world outside. But they turned out to be friendlier when they got talking. One little girl, barely eight years old, followed me through the village as I went on clicking pictures. Later, she asked me to send her all the pictures once I print them off but she was unable to help me with her own address!

This little girl wanted me to send her pictures back to her, but didn't know her own address...

On our way back to Delhi via Nainital, we traveled through a small town called Kausani, which is an old-style hill station. The town also has an old ‘ashram’ established by Mahatma Gandhi, back in 1929. The ashram has a viewing gallery, from which one can see peaks like Kanchanjunga and Neelkanth. After spending one night and one day at this calm hill-station, we headed to the noisier and more crowded hill-station, Nainital.

A mosque in Nainital

Though popular, Nainital is quite urban in its texture, and comes across more as a shopping destination for visitors than a place to unwind. Some parts of the city have an old colonial touch to offer, but the cycle-rickshaws and an occasional horse-drawn buggy make one contrast the past with the future pulled fast-forward by a six-cylinder V8 engine.

In the last leg of our trek, we ended up in a boiling New Delhi, where our skins peeled away because of the quick transition from the snow to moderate heat to scorching sunshine. I had now returned the world of buzzing phones, impersonal emails, quick conversations, coffee vending machines and junk food. Just then, I received a message.

Although I was sad to leave behind the tranquil world of innocence and was looking forward to my return to urban life, an ultra-urban surprise awaited me in the two words of the message: Hong Kong.

Maqtoob!

One flu over the swine

2009-08-15T01:42:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, and it takes a lot of effort to conjure up people and events out of nothing. None of the characters are real, and all references to apparently real-life events are intentionally coincidental. Please do not expect any apologies for insults to the fictional characters.

Once upon a time, there was a city made up of seven islands in the south of the largest continent of a fictional planet. The city was home to a lot of (fictional) people from all over the fictional world. Cutting the long story short, the fictional world was caught in a mass-masking epidemic which was curiously called Swine Flew. Someone had finally made pigs fly, which although clichéd, appeared novel to the resident villagers of the city.

There was a right-wing localist political party in that city, who took up the common citizen’s cause against Swine Flew. The flamboyant leader, who was himself nearing a century of an age, made public appearances claiming that the city was located on the eastern part of the fictional planet, and that he would not tolerate any influence from any other part of the planet (fictional, of course – the planet, not the influence) on the villagers living in that city. Among these influences from the west figured the flying-pigs-disease quite prominently, that the villagers of the city were catching like a fire. The flamboyant leader therefore, banned people from catching pigs-who-fly-disease and ordered a closure of every fictional and non-fictional activity in the city of seven islands for as long as he wished. Anyone who would not obey his orders would be quarantined along with other western-influenced fictional people, and be left to his/her fate.

As fate would have it, the right-wing localist party had a fictional split and one of the flamboyant leader’s fictional followers turned extra-flamboyant, and established another right-wing, ultra-localist political party. The newly emerged extra-flamboyant leader believed in opposing everything that the flamboyant leader suggested. So he opposed the ban on activity.

There had to be a counter-argument for the flamboyant leader’s ban on flying-pigs-wonder he thought the disease was. Mr extra-flamboyant therefore claimed that the Swine Flew was actually a sign of progress and the times to come, and that the villagers of the seven-island-city ought to participate in the disease whole-heartedly, (whole-bodiedly too). In fact, the extra-flamboyant leader went to the extent of demanding an 85% reservation for the native villagers of the city to be able to participate in the pigs-who-fly-disease and uttered a warning that anyone who would dare to take away his fundamental right on the progressive Swine Flew will have to face his wrath and said nothing about what he’d do to them. Speculation is, that he would make that rebel wear a tight mask covering his/her eyes, ears and finally, one of the two nostrils. He is also reported to urge to those villagers who wish to express support to regressive movement to put up nude pictures on their facebook profiles, while those who support the participation in progress are asked to put up profile pictures of them wearing masks.

The villagers of the city are nonetheless enjoying the duel between the flamboyant leader and the extra-flamboyant leader, while pretending to take sides in the presence of the supporters of either leader. Some villagers are now planning to launch a third fringe to oppose both, the flamboyant leader and extra-flamboyant leader but are yet undecided on the agenda of opposition. Sources from within the third fringe indicate that they estimate it would take a few years to come up with a fictional opposition agenda. Until then, the extra-flamboyant leader welcomes support for progressive pigs-who-fly-disease, while the flamboyant leader continues to issue successive bans on the western influenza.

And that, fellow idle-beings, is enough of a dose of bullshit for the day.

Karma!

2009-04-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

A few months back, I was sought for interviews by a number of major international publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Forbes and the like. When the quotes from these interviews were published, my father religiously collected each one of all the articles and took them home and maintained a copy. When I told him that this may happen quite often, he said to me: “My name has never been published in a newspaper. I don't want to miss out on your fame at least.”

I brushed it off thinking it amateurish at the time. Last month, when I was flying out of the city to someplace, I happened to look down from the plane's window, and spotted something that my father has been involved with, in the past. That something is a pagoda constructed for meditation, the sponsors of which are looking to get it qualified as the world's eighth wonder. The structure is the largest stone dome made out of interlocking large blocks of stone with a diameter of 90 meters and a height at the center of 91 meters. When I showed it to a colleague of mine traveling with me, he was awestruck and wanted to visit the place. It was only when I told my friends about the pagoda describing my father's contribution to it and saw their reactions, I realized what my father must have felt about the newspaper articles mentioning me.

It may not be a big deal a few years down the line that neither me nor my father will be remembered for our work. But thinking of the pagoda sure makes me want to do more, not for me, but for my father.

Sunday, bloody Sunday.

2009-03-15T08:55:00.000-07:00

It was a lazy Sunday, just like many others when you sit down and think of life in slow motion. I received a text message from an unknown number:

Life meant: A cold evening, four friends, a slow drizzle and four pegs of rum.

Life meant: 100 rupees for petrol, two rusty old bikes and an open road.

Life meant: Maggi® noodles, a hostel room and the clock showing 3.25 AM.

Life meant: The last exam paper, one night, one book and eight duffers.

Life meant: One girl, one number, four friends and a fight.

Now, life means: Old friends, many cities, different lives and a longing.

The number was an unknown one because I had left the old contacts’ lists on my previous phone, and moved on to a new one without caring to transfer all the contacts. The brutal honesty of our singular lives does not as much shake us up to rekindle long lost friendships, still.

So these days, even though there are evenings with slow drizzles and pouring rains there is usually only one peg of rum. These days, it is not the question of 100 rupees for petrol or collecting 6,000 rupees and then borrowing 2,000 more to put together enough money to buy an old rusty bike. While the stereo blurted out “Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!” I fished for reasons.

When social networking sites came into being some five years ago, I had a bit of a euphoric feeling about the ability to get back in touch with almost everyone I knew sometime in the past.

Over time, the realisation dawned upon me how different our lives have grown. Those friends with whom you shared a close camaraderie some years ago suddenly seem to be strangers: as if you knew a person who was someone entirely different from the one you are talking to now.

That perhaps was the reason why I chose to keep my past life past, and did not bring much of it further into the present. Strangely enough, the longing still remains even if the choice was a conscious one. On the other hand, I think it is part of the process of growing up and growing out of the world that you used to once live in.

Or perhaps, it’s written.

Maqtoob!

Condomania

2009-02-02T07:40:00.000-08:00

So they had installed condom vending machines to reduce the spread of AIDS. Initially people were quite wary of spending and expected them as complimentary gifts. They broke open the machines, took away as much they needed. But that carried grave risks coupled with limited supply. They sought privileged access. Turns out some eager chaps have taken the vending machines home!

Imagine what happens next:

He: "Look babe, what did I get! Lets get ready *blushing*"

She: "Oh wow! But dah'ling... this requires us to put in coins every time we need a pack"

He: "Darn... do we have any coins here?"

She: "Hell no... what are we going to do now?"

He: "I know what we've to do... pay-phones... let me go get a few! I'll be right back, and then we'll... *blushes more* ... happily ever after!"

All ye policemen and municipalitymen, if you're reading this, you know where to look for your condomaniac-turning-phonomanic! And for those who've still not taken any lessons, act now. Better safe than sorry -- there's still quite a few machines out there.

Maqtoob

2009-02-01T11:33:00.000-08:00

I remember this word ever since I had read The Alchemist. It is an Arabic word, which means “it’s written”. Someone asked me recently, whether I am superstitious: the question made me ponder. Is it being superstitious when you believe that it’s written? I guess not. Is the belief impractical? I wouldn’t worry about it. It works!

This weekend I saw Slumdog Millionaire, and found it quite well-executed. There was a debate about whether Slumdog’s a pervert, voyeuristic exhibition of India’s poverty and everything bad about India or just an attempt at realism. I wondered whether this was the first attempt at realism by any film-maker, considering the noise that has been made around the plot and some of the scenes of the film. Especially when I remember the 1991 Bollywood art film Dharavi (City of Dreams) directed by Sudhir Mishra, Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay or Dev Benegal’s Split Wide Open and English, August. All these were made in the 90s, when India was just about turning into the “center of the world” as Salim puts it, in Slumdog Millionaire. Nobody cared to peddle the term “poverty porn” earlier, when these films were released. Perhaps, this debate was written too!

A few weeks ago, I had seen a play titled “Kavita Bhaag Gayi” (transliterated as “Poetry is absconding”), which describes a young poet who has forgotten how to write poetry. His loss of prose is blamed on the stressful and frightening lifestyle in modern day Mumbai which is caught in a spate of terror attacks, language wars and disputes over political propaganda. Although the play was thought provoking, but its impact lasts just so long as we step out to get lost in the mobs. Sadly, the satirical taunts made by the protagonist were laughed at by the audience – most likely they were lost as attempts at ridiculing the (parallel, real life) characters in question.

A lesson I learnt from both these experiences is that we as a population get too engrossed in the superficial detail (I know this is an oxymoron, thank you), and are hardly bothered to understand the crux of the matters at hand. And I sincerely hope this exercise is not a part of the larger process of make-believe, of putting up an intelligent face. Besides, by doing nothing about it, I too would be an accomplice in spreading the rot. One does not need to make a choice here: the question is of taking the first step. If one waits for the next person to take the first step, well, this bit is not written for sure. That first step will remain as distant as ever!

History --||-- Fiction

2009-01-31T02:31:00.001-08:00

I was at the library looking for a few books to read in the India Collection. A (good-looking) girl walked up to me and started observing the books. She started talking (to me, it was apparent) that these were all history books and asked “where is fiction?” I replied, “Fiction is on the other side.”

A moment later, it struck me how the make-believe industry works: history, when crosses over to the other side, turns into fiction!

Spooked!

2008-12-21T06:46:00.000-08:00

Strangely, a series of events in my life over the past few months have been taking quite similar a shape, to the stories that I read in the books just before those events happened. It started with Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh. I ignored the coincidence, considering it a one-off, thinking that Uma Saraswati and Moraes Zogoiby cannot happen in real life.

The next one was spooky. I finished God’s Little Soldier, by Kiran Nagarkar, which revolves around the life of a scholar-turned-Jihadi. A week later, I was standing right outside The Trident, witnessing 40 hours out of the 60-hour long siege, trying to get my clients evacuated out of the doomed hotel.

It will be about a month after the incident, but I still get flashbacks of the place. And now, there are some advocates of waging a war against Pakistan, while some stand at the other extreme. As if both these lot know what ensues if India exercises either of the two extremes!

Personally, I am not against a war for any humanitarian or secular reasons at all. But, considering the outcome of a military attack on a neighbouring country, which has huge disparities in itself, and breaking it up into pieces, it appears that India is likely to add quite a bit to its already heavy kitty of troubles.

On the other hand, it surprises me beyond limits that, citizens of a country which does not have enough cash to buy toilet paper to wipe off their arses are so keen to help out their neighbourhood in tackling its population problems. So much at the cost of their own lives! This degree of altruism is quite an outlier for my naïve comprehension.

Back to books! Next, I read Vikas Swaroop’s Q&A, the novel upon which the now famous film Slumdog Millionaire is based. A couple of days after I finished it, I find myself working with my clients at Dharavi, one of the largest slums of Asia! A small thing, but it was spooky enough to keep me thinking.

I have now picked up Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan. In Taleb’s words, the book talks of understanding the fact that, events which defy our expectations make the logic of ‘what you don’t know’ far more relevant that what you do know. I am curious to figure out what will happen after I finish this one!

More importantly, if something really spooky happens, which book should I pick up next?

Maqtoob!

Joys of life...

2008-11-19T09:09:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, the Times of India's supplements were splattered with stories about 'best places to eat' awards being given out to restaurants and hotels in Bombay. While the riche, chic and high flying elite was going ga-ga about the events, it came across as arid, superficial and lifeless as it could get.

But Bombay never fails to disappoint you; even when you feel having reached a dead end, there is likely to be a surprise waiting for you in some unlikely place.

Late one morning, when I peeped out of my office window, I saw a man cooking meals for himself and his colleagues on the roof of a truck and when the meal was ready, his other colleagues climbed up on the truck and sat down to eat together.

Hope may not spur from the lofty and flashy multitudes of the city's who's who, where everything is decorated to shine so much that it blinds the onlooker, but little joys of life sure reside in humble hoi polloi, the unknown and ignored corners of this world. Care to join in?

Bumbay, once more!

2008-11-15T08:54:00.000-08:00

So this week, I went to see Antigone, a play written by Sophocles originally, adapted by Jean Anouilh, and further adapted by Satyadev Dubey. Nasiruddeen Shah played Creon and Ratna Pathak Shah played Antigone.

Strong cast, good adaptation, well-played characters. I was warned by people that I may either doze off during the play, or if I stay awake, I will notice that Ratna Pathak Shah cannot pull off a 16-year old's role. But I think, it was because we know for a fact that she is nowhere close to 16. However, the real Antigone at the age of 16 must have been much more mature compared to any other girl of her age back then.

Nasiruddeen Shah was at his best, playing Creon, the frustrated king who was caught unaware and had to wear the crown of thorns only to face rebellion.

The dialogues were all in English, Indian English to be specific. I feel the play would have been better, more intense had it been in Hindi -- but that may as well be coming from their Bollywood past that I have seen all their performances in Hindi only, as far as I remember.

Overall, an experience of a kind, to see the stalwarts attempting to shape perfection so closely. Worth a dekko.

And here's some more of Bumbay, for you before I sign off!

Big balloons, saar, for 5 rupees each...

Elephantitanic!

No chariots allowed. You may get fined 15 naya paisa...

On the edge

And if you're bored of local trains, you may want to buy a car from Car Point, the showroom is located right next to a scrap metal and paper mart in Mahim.

Car Point offers spot deals!

Pizza on its toes...

2008-11-06T23:17:00.000-08:00

A colleague ordered lunch from Dominos this afternoon.

A few minutes later, she called Dominos up, and asked, "Have the pizzas already left?"

All this, and much more...!

2008-09-21T09:40:00.000-07:00

I love weekends! This one brought Hamlet to me. Saturday, at Prithvi, the Rajat Kapoor-directed adaptation of the Shakespearean play - its advert reads, 'a play in English and Gibberish'.

And so it was. English and Gibberish. "We use Gibberish because you all don't understand the thee, thou, thy of Shakespeare, you see." Plenty of madness to keep you laughing for a couple of weeks after you've seen the play.

Do you know why Hamlet and Ophelia couldn't work out together? Because Ophelia was 'manglik'. That is, mesdames et monsieurs, their horoscopes didn't match, since Ophelia had a strong mars sitting in her birth charts! Damn!

Hamlet was just amazing. He asked us all why we kept laughing, when his father was just about dead, his uncle became the king and his mother married the uncle, King Claudius. "May be you laugh because it don't happen with you no, mister...? Imaginez!" Anyway, no more spoilers. The point is, its amazing how a serious plot like Hamlet is transformed into a light hearted, yet touching piece of work.

The use of Gibberish, with bits of Italian, French, Spanish and perhaps some other languages thrown in, reminded me of Tim Supple's Midsummer Night's Dream. However, this one is absolutely comprehensible, since the melange of languages is not too much to digest.

Another weekend, I had been out clicking pictures all over South Bombay -- Fort, Colaba, Nariman Point, Dhobi Talao, VT, etc. Throw in a beer at Leopold's, and you've already found perfection! Here you go...

Old glory of Dhobi Talao

Care for a 'cool' haircut?

The Taj
So we rose up to the skies...

The good old Victoria

Gateway of India

Lunch break

oye kabootar, chips khayega?

Taj again!

I wish I were a sailor...

Shantaram's Cafe Mondegar!

Flora Fountain.
Little flora, no fountain, ample parking.

The picture-post-cardish view from Flora Fountain

Sunset at Marine Drive!

goodnight, Bumbay!

The municipal fortress

Bumbaiyya Hamlet-house, the Victoria Terminus building...

... and its different faces

This city never sleeps, really.

"All this, and much more, I can truly deliver!"

The deeper meaning of liff...

2008-08-30T11:11:00.000-07:00

Life brings you to strange crossroads at times, when someone else makes the choices of directions for you. Not that it happens quite often with everyone, but when it does, it alters your perception of the meaning of life. A couple of weeks ago, Someone stepped away. For ever. Perhaps that was the way things were meant to turn, and this too, was to be part of my identity.

The events that followed set me on a renewed quest, for I had almost lost touch of a few things I had been planning to do for long. So, the first thing I did was go about the city and click a lot of pictures – something I had always talked about, but never really got around to accomplish! I walked past Kala Ghoda, Lion Gate, Hornimon Circle, and the Stock Exchange, clicking places that have always fascinated me, those that were described in Shantaram and Maximum City. They remind me of the Gujarati novel Saraswatichandra as well...

Looks like I managed to capture a number of hues and shades of this city, which, as I’ve always said, has taught me “The Art of Letting Go”. Here are few of the pictures, and a few more of these, coming soon.

Next, I caught a movie for the first time on the day it released! Saw Rock On, I must admit, a bit reluctantly. Not bad an experience, though it brought back quite a few memories from long forgotten years.

On to the movie, now: Farhan Akhtar and his team had put in a lot of effort to pull it off with style, and introduce the theme of rock to the Indian audience. Still, the flick missed the fine point of balance between being serious and being light. The humour is absolutely lame. The only genuine attempt at humour during the entire movie was at the end of the film, when they put up a message "Do not download the music, buy the CD."

Overall, the flick sounded like a potential sequel to Dil Chahta Hai, but it killed the fun, since the theme was shamelessly copied from Jhankaar Beats, from which, as NB said, it is difficult to find any flaw.

Nevertheless, all this ranting (both, about life, people and the film) is like "chaar aane ki murghi, barah aane ka masala" since it serves nothing when you ask 'why'! The message: it’s never too late, life’s still beautiful and yada yada yada. Go, catch up.

Maqtoob!

Haircut Hindustani!

2008-08-10T09:33:00.000-07:00

To have a haircut or not to have one has always been a question of perennial confusion for me. So much that at times, I have ended up nurturing pony tails hanging behind my head. It is a similar situation when I’m about to shave, but it becomes a compulsion every week, lest I start looking like a walking tree. The point is, today, I faced the same old question: to have a haircut or not. To end my quandary, I gave in to the thought of getting the dreadful task out of my way today itself, and turned up at the neighborhood barbershop.

Now, this is not at all a fancy place. Someone is simply going to turn away glancing at it and calling it ‘pedestrian’. Run by a Mithun Chakravarty inspired North Indian chap, who charges INR 20 (or half a dollar for the un-Indian) for a haircut and throws in a solid head-turning massage for free at the end – the barbershop’s precisely that: a barbershop, dirt cheap, down-to-earth, value-for-money, etc.

When I turned up, there was a queue for occupying one of the three hot seats. On asking him how long it will take for my turn to come up, he flashed a bright smile and said it won’t take any time at all, and engaged himself in shaving the present occupant of the hot seat number one. After waiting for about ten minutes (I think it was longer, but I’ll find happiness in counting ten minutes), it was my turn at hot seat number three.

I explained the chap, who was about to do the honours, with what kind of haircut I needed. Right then, another barber turns up and claimed his right to work at the hot seat number three, and in effect my hairy top-floor. I explained the new barber again, what kind of a haircut I needed. Scarcely before he finished listening to me, he zoomed off with his work, making me nod 90 degree downward for about 45 minutes.

In the meantime, he also plugged in a music CD into his loud music system, which blared out Altaf Raja’s qawwali: “Tum toh thehre pardesi, saath kya nibhaoge…” I’m sure it is because of the colonial mindsets of the Grammy award organizers that this superhit album never attained the glory it deserved. Perhaps they can think of some lifetime achievement award for Altaf Raja…

Back to project haircut. I wondered whether the barber was trying to depict some bottom-up and back-to-front growth of baldness on my head by progressing at length in the said directions. After about an hour’s dance-with-my-hair, the barber claimed the completion of his feat and started with the head-turning-twisting massage with a victorious stance. Thankfully, when I looked up in the mirror, I wasn’t looking too different from what I was supposed to look like.

Oh, believe me, it happened with me at an expensive Chinese barbershop in KL, Malaysia, when I’d reluctantly gone for a haircut. The Chinese like to have their haircuts to be oblique – i.e., they do not hold the pairs of scissors straight while chopping off the growth. So, when I went for this haircut, I asked the barber to hold the scissors straight, after showing him some pictures of Indian-styled haircuts on my cellphone (I had downloaded some pictures of the haircut that I wanted).

The barber looked at the strange creature in the hot seat, gave me a furious look and pulled out a huge Chinese haircut catalogue from his drawer. He dictated me through the catalogue and made me choose the weirdest hairstyle on the planet, and chopped my hair accordingly.

When I stepped back into my world, I was asked: “Did you attempt a haircut all by yourself?”

I dread to think what would’ve been better.

HK ahoy!

2008-06-08T00:06:00.000-07:00

Hong Kong is quite a tiny, friendly city-nation with honest taxi drivers (for a change), and a vibrant melange of both, western and oriental cultures. Getting around is easy, shopping is fun and the nightlife nonstop! For the rest, I'd let the few pictures do the speaking...

The view from my room...

My office building - Central Plaza, Wan Chai, the one with golden panels

The Pacific Princess
A princess I'd love to have in my life beside the Indian one...

Off the harbour, across the city...

The old and the new parts of the city are divided by the sea, and one has to either take a rail, underwater bridge or a ferry ride across the sea. I'd vouch for the ferry ride.

Shoppers' paradise

The endless streets are buzzing with activity round the clock, and people spilling out from all directions. Its easy to turn invisible, unnoticed in Hong Kong

The shops around the street are fun to walk around, bargain and buy good stuff for cheap. The chinese shopkeeper women curse you in a manner you cannot decipher, at first instance, but the moment you start walking away, they call you back to buy things at the price you suggest! The transaction ends with a polite give-and-take of 'thank you, come again!'...

Set sail, get going!

Just to put things in perspective...

The tallest building of Hong Kong, and the one next to it....

I'll be back!

Fuck the itinerary. Let’s go home…

2008-05-15T10:41:00.000-07:00

It is fun to watch movies. We all would agree to that. It is fun to watch comedies too, you know. Now, let us come to an agreement: whatever the scene may be, if there’s a comic movie playing, we shall all laugh. Whether we get the drift of the comic events or not is another question (not to be answered).

This is what the audience of The Darjeeling Limited agreed to, and signed as a contract before entering the auditorium, when I saw the movie a couple of weeks ago. But we shouldn’t blame the poor audience. Its just that the movie is made precisely to make half the bunch of audience appear absolute intellectual disasters and the other half to be diagonally opposite. The humour is neither too loud, nor tongue-in-cheek. So, the first half of the audience mentioned above tends to miss out the entire point-d’humour and ends up laughing when the second half has almost finished laughing at the laughable scenes. When the former realised they are portraying themselves as a bunch of retards, their guffaws ended in hiccups. The latter then laughed, but not at the movie.

End of the film, and people were either cursing whoever brought them along to watch it, or praising the skilful writing, direction and effortless acting – not that there were many who got to this point though. Good film – do watch it to figure out which one of the deux parties do you belong to...

Fun sequences include the mountain-top ritual when the three brothers present an assortment of hip-and-elbow thrusting moves with their knees and arms bent when they stand on one leg; the sweet-lime girl(s); the dinner table at which two obnoxious German ladies are shouting away to glory and these three Americans are even more obnoxious with their ‘strongest pain killers of the subcontinent’; the shoe-polish-wallah running away with the eldest brother’s single shoe and finally when the three brothers are stranded in the desert with their laminating machine, a colour printer and their itineraries when they were thrown off the Darjeeling Limited. Statutory warning: there are other laughable scenes too. Another warning: not all of the scenes mentioned above are laughable.

Ambition, achievement and boiled potatoes!

2008-04-04T10:44:00.000-07:00

I’ve been peeling boiled potatoes, for the large part of the day, cooking one meal after another. It isn’t even so that I’ve been cooking for half the city’s hungry people. Coming to think of it, my appetite can sometimes exceed that of half a city’s hungry people! But this fact shall be discussed in ample detail at an opportune moment some other time.

I’m just pondering over the extent to which my life can swing, when I am spending my days in a largely aimless fashion, not achieving anything significant. And I still feel comfortable, rather happy and content. It may be because of the certainty that revolves around the relaxed phase of these few days. Certainty of the hectic life as it was before, of moving in some direction which could be the right one, and of the so-called accomplishment.

Just about three weeks ago, when the figure-out-your-way phase was prevailing, I’d been impatient and restless to no end. Right when everyone was trying his or her best to reassure me that things were going to get alright, I wouldn’t even listen. Someone had then said, “Perhaps, we should wait a little longer” – and bingo, things did turn alright, and how! It is at these times that one feels one should have a small window into a little bit of our lives to come. It is, on the other hand, at these times that one feels really blessed too.

So, even while life’s heading nowhere at the moment - minus ambition, my days are splurged with leisurely inactivity, a lot of reading, loud music and long hours of peaceful sleep. I am happy not feeling the usual urge to be somebody and get somewhere. "Hold on, keep going, and we shall get somewhere" suddenly sounds right. And listening to someone sure helps!

Just another uplifting experience!

2008-04-01T07:30:00.000-07:00

I have made a mention earlier, of the strange ways of the elevator (or lift) at my office, how it shoves itself up at the rooftop following random mood swings, not a shred of which is comprehensible by the human species across sexes. However, I wonder at times, why is it just the men of the office who complain about the erratic behaviour of the said lift (or elevator) all the time, and none of the other two sexes. Not that we have anybody from the third sex around as it appears largely, but I’m just curious. But the third sex is not what I am going to talk about. God promise!

It is something that happened last week, which prompted me to write about the said lift again. But as I think back, this event is not so much about the lift that I’m alluding to, but more perhaps about a timid new liftman who occupied the pilot’s seat in the already cramped cockpit the other day. So, I took the lift to go down three (or maybe four) storeys, as I walked out of my office. Wait a little, oh, wait. I think I was going up four (or maybe three) storeys.

At the cost of sounding clichéd and technologically inept, I would like to point out for the uninitiated, that the lift which transports us upward does so in the opposite direction too. Another fact which is noteworthy is that such lifts are by law, not allowed to perform any movements sideways. This law must have been in force since the time they made mummies in Egypt, I think.

Without deviating any further, I state in all consciousness, that the lift moves either up or down and in no other direction than the two mentioned about ten words ago in this sentence. Hence, it does not really matter which way I was heading, unless one of you had climbed up above it to snap the strings holding this lift up in the air. Therefore, reverting back to the fact, that irrespective of the direction in which the lift was going, I took the lift. As I entered, I noticed the liftman making some strange sounds. I thought he may have been muttering his prayers to the Egyptian mummies. Turns out, he actually was!

Ask me how? I know you won’t, so let me tell you without much ado. I too didn’t know until he told me, that the lift was actually attempting to make some sideway movements, thus breaking the Law of Egyptian mummies for lifts. The liftman, who had just taken charge of this lift for the first time in his life, blurted out assorted abuses to a wide variety of people starting from those who constructed the office building in the first place, to those who maintain it now, and the people who installed the lift in between. The lift was behaving in a weird manner, to deserve this abuse. It shuddered whenever either the liftman, or I pressed a button, and started to move with an upward or downward jerk which was entirely unpredictable. It performed its sideway-salsa midway, which amplified the liftman’s screams.

So far so good, the lift didn’t wrench itself out from the hold of the ropes on which it was hanging, and finally landed at the ground floor with another jerk, making the occupants wonder whether there was going to be a bungee-jump turnaround, way back to where we came from. The moment it landed, the liftman’s screams reached the highest alto, and he shot out flinging the doors open, running around in the lobby of my office building. Alas, there was not a single spectator of his performance and nobody paid any heed to his plaint. Poor chap, he had to return to duty to the same horrifying cockpit, and I could hear him utter sing-song abuses as he closed the doors again.

On my way back upstairs, I chose to take the stairs. Thankfully, the journey back to the fourth storey was devoid of any such unsolicited entertainment. But the fact that I was more thankful to Holy Jesus and his band party was that the lift did not stop anywhere hanging in the air, like it did at an earlier instance. I cannot stretch my imagination to think of what could have happened of me otherwise.

That’s it. Now stop flooding your 250-gram masterpiece up there with useless information and get back to work. Don’t you dare to imagine what could’ve happened if the lift had stopped mid-air. Those who still do, will be entitled to one free trip up-and-down (and perhaps back up) in the same lift on a Sunday afternoon.

Thankyouverymuch.

Truth, at Rs 100 a year

2008-03-22T20:34:00.000-07:00

The last time when you looked out of the window of your car, perhaps pitying that child selling books, newspapers and magazines which claim to bring out the truth to you, he was not worried about the pride that you took over the shining state of your country or its economic progress, reading those books and magazines. All he was trying to fix is how would he make sure he and his siblings get their next meal.

So, the next time you feel proud and seek the thrill of being an idealistic revolutionary buying the magazine that boasts of bringing you the truth at Rs 100 a year, posing as the guardian of virtue in a country which is apparently turning dishonest by the hour, make sure you think of that child which you spotted at the traffic signal who was given the very same magazine to sell. Will you still buy it?

Uncommon sense

2008-02-25T08:27:00.000-08:00

Found at Alliance Francaise de Bombay. The French, or those who come in contact with them DO possess some uncommon sense, eh?

A taste of India...

2008-02-12T09:09:00.000-08:00

Dil le gaya pardesi, koi rokna tha,

Kya hoga hoga hoga, mera sochna tha,

O, kya hoga hoga hoga, mera sochna tha…

On a chilly winter morning, when you suddenly wake up listening to a toddler singing this number with music created by clapping two small pieces of asbestos into each other, it feels that the whole world has come to a stop to listen to what this tiny soul has to say to it. But right then, the kid’s voice is overtaken by a score of other shouts trying to gain mileage over each other, hustling through the squatting-sitting-standing crowds: “Chai masalawali, Chai”, “Garam garam vada-pav”, “Sev-khaman, desi ghee ma banavelu khaman khasho?”

And then, you realise you have woken up on the upper deck of the Flying Ranee, because you do not have any space to move your feet about -- since the entire coach is filled with people – men, women and children like roaches stuffed in a tin can. One can hardly sit, and one cannot even stand up. Wherever you set foot, you end up stamping somebody. Finally, when you reach the loo, you find it stuffed with luggage!

After all the jugglery and hullabaloo, one wonders how such a swarming crowd could stick around together in utterly uncomfortable situations for hours. It is beyond my comprehension, whether it is the innate Indian nature to subscribe to harmony in all circumstances (which to me, appears hypocrite rubbish) or the cowardice of the mob who is willing to toss around negligible trash, but do not have the guts to stand up and speak out about the inefficiencies bred by the system, including their own selves. I dare not ask why!

Bringing home the dream!

2008-01-06T12:52:00.000-08:00

Fu bai fu, fugadi fu

Dam-laas ka'ay majhya Govinda tu,

Re majhya Govinda tu?

- the character Nick Bottom, from A Midsummer Night's Dream,

by William Shakespeare.

Unconceivable, but true, I’ve just returned after watching a Shakespearean play being performed not just in English, but also in Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam, Sanskrit, Sinhalese and Tamil. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Tim Supple and performed by a couple of dozen artists from all over India and Sri Lanka. It was a dance-music-martial art do, one heck of a production! The play was divided in two acts, the first act, in which Hermia and Lysander, and Helena and Demetrius go round and round along the lines of the cupid’s goof-ups, and the second act, in which things fall in place and everyone lives happily ever after.

The play was rich with cultural stuffings from across India, with traditional and contemporary dances as well as a bit of a presentation of kallaripayatt, the martial art from Kerala. Dialogues were spoken in a host of languages that I just mentioned, but even though I didn’t literally understand the parts in Sinhalese and Tamil, I never lost the thread because the actors adeptly expressed just about everything. The dance and martial art performances were superb with amazing precision in coordinating every step. The ambience on-stage was quite unusual with ladders and ropes hanging on the stage, with actors going up and down all through. Besides, there were colourful drapes and the actors’ costumes from rich robes to torn rags.

Tim Supple has managed to take a comic pull at the original Shakespearean drama without climbing any rung lower, and brought in passion and rib-tickling fluidity in the sequence of events. The jumble of all the languages worked toward creating a complete dream. The part that I liked the most was the way the play within the play shaped up – the romance of Pyramus and Thisbe, and Nick Bottom’s character played by Joy Fernandes was the most entertaining -- not that other actors didn’t entertain me. No matter how much I write, I’m never going to be able to describe the experience, for it was like living through a dream. A never-before experience, I’m going to do an encore, whenever I get to lay my hands on this one again!

Something to check out: a good description of the play is here – the blog of Prof Christopher Conway.

P.S. : Anandham says, there wasn't much Sinhalese in the play, probably. I believe the troupe must be large, with various actors performing at different events, which leaves the production flexible enough to entertain a wide set of audiences, by simply plugging in or out some bits from the play. I stand corrected there. Thanks Anand!

Ranjha!

2008-01-05T09:47:00.000-08:00

Life, as unpredictable as it is, doesn’t fail to spring surprises even on a weekend. As fate would have it, I ended up planning to watch a play or two alone, and found myself walking into the Experimental Theatre of the NCPA. I must admit, the venue does live up to its name. So, I saw Navtej Johar and Madan Gopal Singh’s dance-musical drama Fana’a: Ranjha Revisited this evening. The play is a melée of two romantic epics, each one from North and South India. Heer Ranjha is a famous Sufi legend from Punjab, while Kutrala Kuravanji is a genre of dance-drama from Tamil Nadu.

Ranjha was a prince who fell in love with Heer, and became a cowherd in the farms of Heer’s father, just so that they both could be together. When Heer was married off to someone else, Ranjha turned a jogi, a mendicant and follows Heer.

The epic from south, Kutrala Kuravanji is a story of a young girl – Vasantvalli - falling in love with Lord Siva and living in fantasies of her union with the Lord. As the drama unveils, sakhis (friends) of Vasantvalli tease her, support her and enrich her fantasies of her union with Siva by bringing in a fortune-teller who would predict when Vasantvalli would meet Siva.

Johar’s drama presents both these epics in dance form, with songs from Kutrala as well as Sufi songs reciting Heer-Ranjha’s legend interspersed with each other. Both the stories flow simultaneously, with Navtej and his dance partner Anil Panchal playing the roles of Heer, Ranjha, Vasantvalli and Siva. Both the dancers changed roles –- and the transition was smooth -- which was indicated through the lyrics. The hour-long play was a mix of Sufi songs in Punjabi and Kutrala recited in Tamil. The seemingly distant fusion of Sufi and carnatic music did not sound odd at all. The dance technique followed was a fusion of Bharat Natyam and contemporary dance, throughout the play.

What appealed was the ‘seamlessness’ as people put it, of Johar’s masterpiece. Kutralas usually have a happy ending with Vasantvalli’s union with Siva, while Heer-Ranjha’s epic ends in despair, in separation. What brings about both the extremes to a common ground is the abstract nature that the stories take because of the male duet dance. Both the dancers interchange roles very frequently, thus keeping the audience glued to each and every movement of theirs.

More, the play brought both the epics woven together with one single thread – desire. Although Johar may have conceptualised the play due to his love for both Sufism and Kutrala as he admits, the thought has evolved into depiction of bare, plain desire in its most innocent form.

Besides the dance, the singers Madan Gopal Singh and Rekha Raj sung amazing Sufi songs like Ranjha jogi banke aaya and Aaj piya mere anganach aaye. Carnatic songs were played using recordings – sung by Govindrajan Elangovan. Without a single prop on the stage, the accompaniment to this one-act play were minimalistic with Preetam Ghoshal’s sarod, Gurmeet Singh’s tabla, Deepak Castelino’s guitar, G Raghuraman’s flute and R Kesavan’s mridangam.

What’s next? – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by Tim Supple. Now that’s what you call a streak of good luck.

Being ‘housewife-ly’

2007-12-20T20:54:00.000-08:00

This week has been a hectic one. I had to wrap up my work (my write-ups for the week, etc) right on Monday and had to run to my parents’ to attend to a crisis which thankfully ended quite quickly, and for better. But I had to assume the roles of playing a mom to my mother, father and my sister for a couple of days, which was quite an experience. On Tuesday morning, while talking to someone, I said I had to cook, make sure everyone has lunch, and only then I’d be able to attend to anything else. All this was followed by more or less a similar schedule in the evening too. I was told I sounded like a perfect ‘housewife’!

Although I’ve always been reluctant to use the word housewife, and tend to use ‘homemaker’ instead, I realised how different I sounded than usual. I woke up earlier than ever (6 AM, can I ever beat that again?), went about doing the chores in the kitchen and cooked an elaborate lunch which I usually do not, when alone. By the time I fed my three ‘kids’ – mom, dad and my younger sister – it was already two in the afternoon. I was still to have a bath, and only then I’d sit down to eat.

All this made me understand more than a thing or two. Its the reality, which we tend to overlook. No matter how much grateful I may feel to my mother and sister for being as caring as they’ve been for all these years, unless I’d worn their shoes (allright, metaphorically – their shoes barely cover half my foot), I wouldn’t have ever known what they go through every passing day. Thanking them would never be enough! Someone said (perhaps in some other context, too), “we’re blessed, aren’t we?”

It just takes a bit of pampering to chuck off a VC!

2007-12-08T02:45:00.000-08:00

We have all longed for being at the right place at the right time with the right idea (or even without). And we have all been in awe of one-man-army in a cellar, attic or garage start-ups, which have made it big like lightning. But on the other hand, quite a a sizeable majority of us have also seen the dot-coms rise from nowhere, and plunge into nowhere taking everyone who held on to them, along. So, even though buzzwords such as Silicon Valley, venture capital and internet start-ups do make our ears rise, they also make our upper lip twitch in a disapproving fashion and write them off, prima facie. One could only imagine what fate these buzzwords would meet when they fall on the ears of seasoned investors, most of the time. This may sound like the most sensible thing to do. But for new entrepreneurs and wannabes alike, this means something else.

The next generation of dot-coms and internet start-ups has to turn a lot smarter, coming up with ideas which will not need them to make a beeline at venture capitalist outfits. So, when Guy Kawasaki interviewed four such enterprises, it did not fascinate me as much that these four entrepreneurs did not need any venture capital. It is, but the line of thought, or the concept behind these businesses, which makes one think. The commonality between these businesses is quite striking, for all the differences it has with the previous dot-com boom of the late 90s.

I’ll first make it easy for you, by illustrating these four businesses in brief, and then move on to the point – the commonalities and how are they different from the dot-com-boomers. Fark.com which was founded by Drew Curtis sources wacky and humorous stories from anyone and everyone on the internet. He has managed to get over 50 million unique page views a month from four million unique visitors. Markus Frind put up a free online dating site called Plenty of Fish, scoring 1.2 billion page views a month from 50 million unique visitors. The biggest single cheque he received from Google AdSense is of $ 900,000 for two months, he’s cited.

Hi5.com, an internet social network which had been up way before Orkut and Facebook, is founded by Ramu Yalamanchi. Now the site is No. 1 in seven countries and has 35 million unique visitors and 12 billion pages. Although he did need to raise $ 250,000 the hard way after the tech bust, back in 2003, but this sum is minuscule compared to the humongous funds attracted by its other dot-com predecessors.

And finally, Mogad, founded by Lucas Ryan, Yan-David Erlich and Blake Commagere, which has tasted a few failures, before it came up with a successful project. This project is a plug-in to the social networking site Facebook, which has grown popular in no time. The Facebook plug-ins Vampires and Zombies are social games, which have attracted 20 million users in just five months.

These are the four businesses that Dean Takahashi’s Tech Talk Blog talks about. Now let us get on to the common string that I made a mention of. All four businesses derive their revenues from internet advertising, and the likes of Google AdSense. All four businesses have focused not on internet’s use for business, but for leisure and lifestyle – a mode of entertainment: quite obvious, eh? Here’s the catch. What remains at the centre-stage in all four of these businesses is the user. And here’s the big known secret: the most probable users of these services would be youngsters. That’s precisely why the revenue model of these businesses does not depend on charging its users directly, but by selling ad-space to those who vie to sell their stuff to these users. Rings a bell?

This strategy of attracting youngsters leads us to the long tail of consumption, and the fact that youngsters make up a large proportion of the consumer class. Converting young users into consumers would inculcate into brand loyalty when they grow old, and the tail is really long. But you get my point. The high amount of involvement of the user in creating their own online experience is the key to the success of these businesses. And this is precisely what makes them different from the dot-com-boomers. Even among the erstwhile businesses, those which survived the dot-com boom include the likes of Amazon.com and eBay – perhaps they caught the trend pretty early on.

For all those who thought it was the technology which drives technology companies, this may come as a wake-up call. It is, no doubt, the users. So much for the ego of each user, that these people who pampered them do not even need a venture capitalist!

I have a dog and her name is Trouble...

2007-12-04T23:55:00.000-08:00

Allright. Pay attention. This is something to do with a dog called Trouble, who’s really called Trouble and is in great Trouble. This dog called Trouble has actually managed to inherit $12 million (don’t worry, she’s –Trouble has-- counted ‘em all, in full), and is now in receipt of a score (literally) of kidnap and death threats.

Well, whodunnit?

I’m not talking about the threats. Don’t you see the $12 million is more important? It’s the Queen of Mean, as they call her, some real estate tycoon in the US of A, called Leona Helmsley. Doubtless of her generosity, people are all praise about it, going ga-ga over the millions she’s given away to this trust and that. But the $12 million in question has turned a bone-in-the-neck of a few un-pampered non-canines, which has rendered the pampered pooch in question, effectively, on the run and perhaps the poor lamb (only metaphorically, none of the expensive, sci-fi gene-conversion affairs, really) may be living in disguise.

I wonder what inspired her owner, certain Ms Helmsley to name the dog Trouble, or whether she had borne the foresight of what would happen in her affluent after-life scéance. The sheer imagination of inheriting $12 million prompted yours truly to run a quick survey about the reactions of my near-and-dear ones (allright, so-called), to the ghastly event of threats to the poor-li’l-rich-pooch.

The response was a unanimous “I-don’t-want-Trouble-but-I-wish-I-were-Trouble-myself.” D’you hear that? I’m surrounded with such innocent minds, who do not have the slightest gut to threaten even an ant. So, I hereby testify ‘not guilty’ and claim unawareness to existence of any individuals – canine as well as non-canine -- claiming ownership to the said $12 million or thereabouts. Oh I can’t think beyond this any more. I rest my case.

Thankyouverymuch.

Walk. Together.

2007-11-18T20:16:00.000-08:00

The streak of serious/heavy reading was rather long this time around for me, coupled with similar movies to watch, and may be, all of it could be tied to a thread – togetherness. I had read Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake a few months back. I was in tears when I finished reading the book, called all my near-and-dear ones, and had hearty conversations with them all. After a few books, I had picked up William Pennington’s autobiographical description of his tryst with India during the World War II - Pick up your parrots and monkeys. Although there is a lot to learn about the country, its history in those days, and the actualité during that time period, the thought that overrode the entire story of Pennington’s life was about the fragile nature of life – you could wake up healthy in the morning, do your chores, and could end up six feet under the ground by the evening (however, he mentions this in a British-soldier-in-India context, during both, peace-time and war).

Last night, I watched The Namesake, a film by Mira Nair based on Lahiri’s novel. It brought me the same old tears back—and the story has the amazing ability to make your life replay before your mind’s eyes like a quick flashback of sepia-coloured snapshots. No, it isn’t something like you have a near-death-experience and you start realising how little of life could be left with you, after all these years of running around in vain. It is more to do with the people around you who gave away the most important bits and pieces of their lives to make your life complete. It is about how far we get away in our pursuits, almost like entering a thick, dark, crowded city oozing with people-known and unknown, without even looking back who was walking with us and where we left them behind.

Perhaps we do not always understand their worth at the time when they walk with us, but when we are left alone among all strangers. And it is the togetherness of that ‘past’ life, with which one has to be content – I wasn’t all alone after all.

Look around. Hold hands of those near you. Those who are away: bring them back. Take everyone along. Walk together.

Keep towels handy (II)

2007-10-31T10:00:00.000-07:00

Another realisation as the lamp upstairs blinks after a little while. Picture this:

Distinguished guest: "Do you have a newspaper?"

Hotel staff: "Yes sir, we do. But I'm afraid, we do not have your size."

Keep towels handy...

2007-10-28T10:59:00.000-07:00

So, you thought sleepwalking was a disorder? Here’s some news for you. Lately, sleepwalking seems to have turned into a normal practice, and more and more people are waking up to the rising trend! In fact, hotels in London are preparing themselves for this new wave of fashion…

According to this report by Reuters, sleepwalking rose seven-fold in the past year, and 95 per cent of the somnambulants are scantily clad men. Did you notice that? 95 per cent. Men. And they are scantily clad. Looks like it’s time to revert back to our olden days, as primitives.

The report says:

Naked wanderers often ask receptionists such questions as "Where's the bathroom?," "Do you have a newspaper?" or "Can I check out, I'm late for work?"

Now, imagine what the guy would think if he’s getting weird glances from the hotel staff the next morning. Even worse, what would be the state of the poor bastard if he’s woken up right then!

Alright, serious crap. It is said that people often live the moments (which they wouldn’t want to be associated with their publicly projected selves) during their sleep. So here’s this bugger wanting to break free from his black-suit-shiny-boots throughout the day, but he doesn’t have the guts to do so. What does he do? Comes out at night! So better keep towels handy… no, not for what you’re thinking. The toll is on a rise, remember? So you better tie your own eyes shut.

Enough of horsing around. He might be genuinely stressed; you don’t just understand his problem. But in that case, anyone could fall prey to this ailment, right? Consider this:

Studies have found that sleepwalking can be brought on by stress, alcohol, eating cheese or consuming too much caffeine. It generally takes effect an hour or two after going to bed, when people are first slipping into a deep sleep.

Now I prefer working late nights, I live on alcohol and I gorge myself with cheese (someone would surely vouch for all this!). I do not consume as much caffeine, but that doesn’t make things look any better. Whew.

Okay, stop! Before you get any further ideas, I-lock-my-doors-tight-before-going-to-sleep-every-night-thank-you. Good night, sleep tight.

What comedy, I tell you man!

2007-10-09T09:19:00.000-07:00

India

is a peculiar place, in every imaginable way. The entire nation, all right: India. United States of India. Both, the US of A, and US of I were of immense interest to the phirangs – folks from the Blighty. They have British English and they have American English, so far. It’s high time they had an Indian English too. Microsoft’s word-processing software, MS Word already offers an option to set your language to “English (Indian)”. This new language of ours has triggered curious minds to think in various directions, of course derived from the absolutely utilitarian view of this ‘queen’s language’ taken by her erstwhile subjects. If Hindi is the language of the Indians’ motherland, English is that of their second motherland!

So now, people like Binoo John are reckoning this linguistic force, and coming up with their versions of a ‘ready reckoner’ for the uninitiated, as well as a slick review of what the people familiar with the twisted Indian tongues have been hearing for long now. This new language is one where tension can be given and taken. Of course can always go off course, and definitely is definitely spelled as definately. The book titled Entry from backside only: Hazaar Fundas of Indian-English by Binoo John takes an account of all such things.

It is not surprising that this book is out. What surprised me though, was why take so long to come out with such a book?! I would have loved to read it long ago. People could get gas troubles, and they may as well take it for a mild heart attack -- so as to make a visit to the good looking cardiologist (not forgetting their horoscopes behind: the astrologist sits just next door, may be it is some planet’s lateral movement that is the real cause of the said gas troubles). Kids could be named as Rinkal (pronounced as wrinkle), Ripal (pronounced as ripple) and Tinkal (pronounced as tinkle). I wonder whether there’s any Apple around (last week, NB et al profoundly discussed the name Pinkesh at the office, by the way). After all we live in the country where the cow is our mother. No, the bull is NOT our father.

The why-do-we-blog conundrum

2007-10-07T11:52:00.000-07:00

The Sunday Business Standard features a column from Financial Times titled Dear Economist. This week’s question was regarding YouTube, and similar user-generated-content oriented sites. Why do people take the pain to post videos of popular television series for the others to watch? A part of Tim Harford, the undercover economist’s answer is here:

The self-interested rational agent that populates some economic models would not behave like this. The puzzle deepens when you consider the impressive achievements of the voluntary networks that have been enabled by the internet. But while this behaviour may be economically and socially significant, most people participate only in the way you do – as consumers. J.K. Rowling’s books attract thousands of reviews on Amazon.com. Yet the overwhelming majority of her readers – more than 999 in every thousand – don’t bother to post a review. Frankly, if 0.1 per cent of people make unrewarded contributions to the internet, that’s just a rounding error away from nobody at all.

So, this suggests that our urge to blog could be explained as simply as just a rounding error. Just because a majority of us do not feel it the same way to articulate our thoughts via blogs or any other medium, that becomes economically, socially and more so, statistically significant, ‘normal’ behaviour! I have always been amazed by this ‘normality’ proposition. And they say you’ve to think out-of-the-box (OOTB) in order to stand out. Not just once or twice, but think OOTB always. Hell, if you’ve to always think OOTB, isn’t it time you changed/repaired/replaced your goddamned box and made something better? Oh, and under which normal curve do all bloggers fit, then? Hail economics!

Oh how I love Sundays... yum! :)

2007-10-07T02:58:00.000-07:00

What makes you click?

2007-10-01T12:09:00.000-07:00

Sunday reading’s been rich for me, lately, with two thick and one expensive newspaper at my doorstep. All right, I am not going to go cribbing about the expensive one, because that’s the one I work with. If they don’t ask enough from you, they don’t pay me enough. One of the three carried an interview of Sam Bourne, alias Jonathan Freedland, regarding his new book The Last Testament. This one is about some other secret unearthed from The Bible, and is already being pitched as a contender to occupy the category of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. The interviewer asks the author about the popularity of the theme he has chosen: Religion. An excerpt from his response:

Religion is the new politics –– if it was politics and ideology which motivated people in the last century, then faith does that today. For thriller writing, that has an immediate effect. The old cold war thrillers were about clashes of ideology –– communism against the west. Today’s thrillers are about today’s clashes.

Going by this, here’s how the chronology works: First, it would have been the wars among the kingdoms. Then the Great Wars (WWI and WWII), and pat followed the cold war, the Soviet Union versus the US of A, German spies and American saviours-of-the-world, and oh, how could I forget the Japanese, Vietnamese and Afghan villains? This time, it is religion. I dread taking a guess now.

Popular fiction or pulp fiction as it is better known would not survive, probably, without such ‘exciting’ themes. It truly makes one realise that the age of innocence is gone and done with. Oh, recently I read somewhere, the new kid on the block, Siddharth Dhanvant Sanghvi’s going to base his next novel on the private sexual lives of common-folk living in a supercrowded megalopolis like Bombay! I haven’t read his previous work, to have any opinion, neither am I against people talking about sexuality, but well, I am not surprised with anyone choosing this topic. After all, it would sell well in a society full of hypocrites who engage their selves in lofty sexual discourses during the day and practice variegated discourses in social, personal, sexual, political and whatnotical dishonesty by the night! Wonder what would be the next big theme after they get bored from these too. By the way, there would be plenty a taker waiting in Bollywood for all these themes… is anybody listening?

And you may never know, the researchers might just be watching you all the time from your bedroom window! What the heck, go ahead, have fun, you might just find yourself as a protagonist in some book one fine day... sounds eventful, eh, your magic moments to fame?

... *evil laughter*... !!!

No one else but you, can light your own lamp...

2007-09-30T12:11:00.000-07:00

Last week, I was at this conclave arranged by India’s frontline industry body FICCI and Ernst and Young on Real Estate, where I came across myriad discussions on a number of issues facing the industry in India. The participants came from varied backgrounds, such as real estate investment trusts, private equity players, real estate consulting and advisory firms and venture capitalists apart from builders, developers and businessmen from the infrastructure industry. Among the plenty of issues raised for discussion, stalwarts also stumbled across the problem of an unorganised industry structure which has grown in symbiosis with bureaucratic governments which results into corruption at all levels, seemingly inevitably.

Amongst various panellists, one was from an American real estate investment firm, an American by origin, who has lived in India for the past few years. One gentleman posed this American delegate with a question:

You make investments in real estate firms of India, who deploy money funded from you into their various projects. Now, many a time, there are delays in the execution of projects, due to bureaucracy, corruption and other similar reasons. Don’t you pressurise your Indian partner firms to take ‘shortcuts’ and get work done, since the quicker a project is completed, the earlier you see returns flowing in from your investments?

The reason I’m posting this, is because I loved the answer given by the American, no matter how hypocrite he may sound, keeping in mind the political-commercial controversies surrounding the two nationalities in question. He replied:

It had broken Gandhiji’s heart to see corruption break into the Indian psyche right in 1947, after independence. Everyone is tempted to take an easier way out to get things done. We are bound by the US Corrupt Practices Act, which stops us from not resorting to any shortcuts, as you put it. However, it would rather be unfair for the natives to expect someone else – a foreigner to come up and try to change practices for good. So, the onus would be on Indians, whether they wish to continue to let corrupt practices prevail, or they wish to change. This change cannot be imposed from outside, but has to come from within.

Quite a few of us, if not all, are able to bring about such a change. How many of us are willing to take up the cause?

Have a nice day!

2007-09-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

It’s amazing how your day turns out to be too good, when you’ve to start the day at 4 in the morning and someone wakes up at 3, just to make sure that you wake up in time! And even after setting up three alarms, you prefer waking up to the words from that someone. Little bits of joy make up for bliss, life’s beautiful, and all that…

I’m lovin’ it!

Another day, another question!

2007-09-18T08:59:00.000-07:00

Today was definitely another day, mostly unlike yesterday. Mei quotes the kid from Catcher in the rye: "Where do ducks go in winter?"

Go figure... I'm not going to get into any further details now!

The vital why!

2007-09-17T07:22:00.000-07:00

For obvious reasons, crappy days do not warn you before squaring in on you. Today was one, for me. I woke up way earlier than usual, to reach the office way earlier than usual – and I was actually feeling good about it. I had a telephonic call scheduled with somebody, who fell sick and cancelled the call right at the moment it was supposed to happen. First omen of a bad day! The office was at its noisiest best. I started working for the second meeting scheduled right at the lunch hour (which meant I either had to skip lunch, or eat something ridiculously early — I ended up doing both), just to discover after a couple of hours of arguments, that I simply couldn’t carry on with the meeting, since the people I was supposed to meet were acting fishy. Not just acting fishy, they were being so! Here I was, with half my day wasted and a pile of work waiting for me to look at it, hungry, bugged. By then, I had deciphered that there was no point trying to get work done, since nothing was supposed to turn out straight. Right then, AS messaged. Here goes the conversation:

AS: Can someone tell me why exactly superman wears his undies on the outside? It’s a serious question... There has to be some reason to think of something like that… got an answer?

Me: Eh?

AS: Why does superman wear his undies outside? I am actually looking for a real answer, not a funny one. There has to be some reason.

Me: ’Coz they're pinching him from the inside, prolly…

AS: Yikes! No man… it’s been design by default. Not because of some cause…

Me: Well, in that case, the color of the undie had to catch the eye of the pilots flying besides him… Some sort of a signaling mechanism etc

AS: Uh… forget it. I am looking for logic, not humour…

Me: Oh, signaling is logical. See, those traffic policemen wear fluorescent jackets. Now this fellow flies in the sky, he doesn't have any indicators where he's going to stop, which way he's going to turn, no lights, nothing… there's got to be something which would shine and catch the pilot's or astronaut's eye, so as to avoid a mid-air collision.

AS: That’s it!

Me: Makes sense?

AS: Well, people would buy it… But I do not still get it… Why does he need to use vibrant colours on certain areas alone of his body to signal? Why didn’t he just wear a bandana or something?

Me: Because a bandana may fall off... it’s not an essential.

AS: Why not just red sleeves?

Me: Again the question of essentials comes up… he can't take his undies off no matter how much he wishes, for some obvious reasons. Sleeves can be done without… undies cannot… (and others cannot pull his undies off just because he's the Superman and not them! Some logic, eh?)

AS: He can wear his undies… I’m not telling he can’t… In fact, he should. But why red? And why outside...?

Whew… and it goes on… do you have another answer to that vital why?

Kahaan Gaye Woh Log…

2007-09-16T02:08:00.000-07:00

At my parents’ place, they still do read Gujarati newspapers. We happen to be a fan family of India’s oldest newspaper – not just Gujarati, but in general – The Bombay Samachar, which celebrated its 185^th anniversary (whoa!) this July. This paper had a weekly feature called Kahaan Gaye Woh Log (Where did they all go?), which was an attempt to map the roots of all the old trades of people – like the street-side barber, the fortune reader with a parrot and a lot of cards sitting on a sidewalk, the wandering cobbler, the knife-sharpener on a bicycle, the kulfi-wallah with this thela-gaadi and the paan-wallah at his paanpatti– and try to track the trade of these nameless, faceless people who have been with us, always around yet invisible. Today, I was a privileged customer of one such ‘service provider’ of old days, and remembered this column of the paper while many a thought crossed my mind.

As soon as I stepped out of this bank ATM, I spotted this chaabi-wallah, a maker of duplicate keys sitting on the sidewalk. I remembered I had to get a duplicate set of keys for the door of my new house. This door has a latch, which is supposed to be immune to any attempt to break in. So I was a bit skeptic to approach this key-maker with a set of my home keys. The setting was perfect to get a set of duplicate keys made – this person was a perfect stranger, would hardly know where I came from and where I was going, since this place is far away from my house, and in all probability, he will never see me around for another month or two, so wouldn’t really know me.

I’m always suspicious about such trades which leave the other guy with a good chance to sneak into my house! Here I approached this guy with my keys, and he says “Ho jayega saab, ek dum perfect bana dega” (Consider it done, Sir. I’ll make a perfect set of duplicates). My skepticism mounted: “Mujhe dobara tumhaare paas toh nahi aana padega na, chaabi lekar?” (I shouldn’t be coming to you again with these keys, I say!). “Bharosa rakho saab, agar koi problem aayega toh main yaheen miloonga” (Trust me, Sir, if there’s any problem, you’ll find me here) he replied and started with his job. I stood there, watching his dexterity and precision, amused, because he was making those keys with just his hands to measure the thickness and a set of two files to trim the metal.

Yesterday, I was blamed of backstabbing by somebody who had been too close, with whom I had trusted my life, and everything that ever belonged to me. I was left awestruck, dumbfounded being the accused, while I myself felt the same: Felt like saying, ‘you lied, cheated, kept me in the dark and still think I do not know what you’ve done to me? And even then, you accuse me of harming you? You say you wouldn’t feel guilty any more, since I have left you in the lurch. I say you never had any guilt. If you’d ever felt guilty, you’d not have cheated on me and forced me to let go of you!’

I felt strange. Here I was today, trusting a complete stranger again, with the keys of my house where I have stacked everything that ever belonged to me! Perhaps there was a difference. He wasn't bothered about what I have. He wouldn't stalk me to wherever I go.

Somehow, I managed to keep my cool, kept mum. Yesterday was the day of forgiveness, as celebrated in the religion that I was born with. It was supposed to be so, in the true sense, perhaps. And I hope I would forgive, with all my heart. More importantly, I hope I’d forget. Trust and distrust, hurt and revenge, the good and the bad – everything.

“Yeh lijiye Saab, kaisa banaya hai bolna,” (Here you are Sir, tell me how’s the work) he called out, and I drifted out from my train of thoughts. I asked him his name: “Munna”, he said.

He had a pretty modest set up. A chair, a briefcase with his tools, a board on the street to attract passers-by, and all of this put up under a huge tree with a lot of bats! I didn't have the change to pay him. He asked me to go look for change from some shopkeepers nearby. I took the keys and wandered off to look for change, out of his sight. I had the keys, I could have vanished from the scene. But when I returned with the change, he was sitting there, smiling. He too, trusted me. I paid him and took his leave.

Back home, the keys worked fine. Still, he wouldn’t know who I was. I can go and find him at the same place again, may be. He doesn’t make keys. He puts together some trust and earns some in return, I thought. And then I hoped there are more such people around: trust them, get some trust in return. Where did they all go?

If I could turn the hands of time...

2007-09-10T09:40:00.001-07:00

At times, life brings us many a moment, unexpected, unforeseen, and mostly when we don’t really ask for them, or aren’t in a mood to ask for! Perhaps these surprises make life beautiful, worth exploring more, deeper, farther. And there are times when you know you’re in for a wonderful time, but you underestimate the joy it could give you – you’re glad that the moment arrives, but do not really see the bliss hidden behind that moment that will be left for you to cherish for a long time to come.

You live those moments and then wish all the more to relive them, again and again, every day. So one such beautiful day, you walk hand in hand with someone, endlessly, and do not want to take up any other, quicker means to reach from one place to another, just so that you get to hold hands together for longer. That’s the sort of moment of bliss everyone longs for.

Pooh says it’s all fairy-tale-ish. Let it so be. It’s beautiful, nonetheless. It’s real, and I’m sure, eternal too. These moments make living worth it.

Makes me want to fall in love all over again, with life, with someone!

Maqtoob, indeed!

Stuck!

2007-09-06T07:53:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, as I stepped out of my house on the street at around 9 in the night, I received a generous crap from an insomniac hiding in a tree up above! I was about to blog on it, but Scott Adams got there ahead of me and wrote on the very same thing just two days after I was victimized. Now, someone told me pretty much in the same words that I should be thankful cows don’t fly!

After reading the Dilbert Blog post, I kept wondering that both our events missed coinciding each other by just about 48 odd hours – what would’ve the resulting probability been, if both of us had been shat upon right at the same moment, I ask. And what would such a calculating model be called, that derives such probabilities of such events occurring on different points of the time and space continuum? The Craprobability model? The Shitprob spreadsheets?

But there was an intrinsic difference between both the events. He was shat upon in bright daylight, while I was out at night. I was asked, what the heck were the birds doing staying up at that time of the night? If I knew, I wouldn’t have been... uh!

And yesterday another thing happened. After an unproductive streak of two days through the office without getting much work done, I was planning to get to work earlier than usual. I managed to get to the office almost about an hour before my usual time, stepped into the elevator and instead of stopping at the third floor; the elevator continued its ride upward and stuck itself halfway between the roof and the top-floor.

I was stuck in this in-the-middle-of-nowhere sort of a satellite position for almost 20 minutes after I called my office up to get me out of there. Interestingly, after I came out, nobody seemed to pay much attention to the fact that I was stuck in the elevator. Everyone was asking instead, who I was stuck with! It’s amazing how people bypass the stuck in the elevator bit and are keener to know who you were stuck with. NB says: “wonder if you did something more interesting than just being stuck!”

Then someone asks me: “who'd you like to be stuck with, in an elevator, for say three hours?” I’d not really mind being with someone…

Ass like that!

2007-08-30T09:12:00.000-07:00

Churchill had once called Gandhi the half-naked faqeer, for Gandhi used to be wrapped up in a single khaadi cloth from his shoulders until his knees. I was reminded of this while going through this marvelous piece of legislation passed against sagging jeans in the US of A, most probably, after being inspired in a little different fashion by Churchill’s historical remark pretty long after both of the old men are dead and gone!

The legislation says that if you’re wearing a pair of jeans that’s sagging from below your bum, you’re most likely going to end up in jail. The poor mayor has had to go to the extent of sentencing sagging as indecent. Now the writer goes on to analyse the entire issue in this manner:

Behind the indecency laws may be the real issue — the hip-hop style itself, which critics say is worn as a badge of delinquency, with its distinctive walk conveying thuggish swagger and a disrespect for authority. Also at work is the larger issue of freedom of expression and the questions raised when fashion moves from being merely objectionable to illegal.

Sagging began in prison, where oversized uniforms were issued without belts to prevent suicide and their use as weapons. The style spread through rappers and music videos, from the ghetto to the suburbs and around the world.

Now, if sagging began in prisons, you couldn’t keep the ‘style’ within the premises of your prisons and couldn’t keep those asses out of public view, you’d pick up dumb, good-for-nothings from the street and bring ‘em back to your prisons to keep the trend alive?

Whatever, I must compliment the photographer for bearing this sight till the time the shutters of the camera clicked the scene!

Another chap goes on to say that

The focus should be on cleaning up the social conditions that the sagging pants comes out of. That they wear their pants the way they do is a statement of the reality that they're struggling with on a day-to-day basis.

What the heck, man! Could someone please help me with the tag price of one such pair of jeans, and the ease with which one could obtain it?!

Sins of the fathers?!

2007-08-07T09:59:00.000-07:00

I’ve always liked the poems of Jacques Prévert. His war poems would figure among the best. I was reminded of him, while watching a Goddard film called Notre Musique (Our Music). In this film, there is a dialogue which goes:

There was a German woman in 1943, who had said ‘The dream of an individual is to be two, while the dream of the State is to be one.’ She was decapitated.

Coming to think about this, the situation is no different today. Even though we do not have any world war going on around us, so to speak, we still continue to dwell on a large number of differences among humans - no matter what the advocates of globalisation, visionaries of a global village and prophets of equality blow their trumpets about. One may not be able to exemplify this phenomenon explicitly, but the way the world works, these differences come up to the surface in quite an unpleasant manner. And these differences are not just limited to the socio-political arena. Business, which is only supposed to recognise the colour of money, too is infested with this ailment of seeing yellow.

And I’ve finally found out a few people, who voice it out. For quite some time now, I have been studying mergers and acquisitions (M&As). The focus of my research has remained on the increasing M&A activity between emerging and developed economy companies. As part of this research, I’ve been studying the reasons why emerging economy companies pay hefty premia for companies and assets in developed economies, even though they would be able to set up their own base in the developed countries. There were quite a few logical reasons for emerging economy companies, such as technological and functional superiority of the developed economy companies, an already established client base, experience in working in mature markets, cost arbitrage opportunities, and so on. However, after all those reasons, which plenty a researcher have acknowledged in their papers, there was still something missing. I came across a number of emerging market companies, over these couple of years, which have the capabilities in-house to enter and service any market across the globe on their own and there would be no reason in particular to make an inorganic entry into a developed country. However, they still look out to acquire some outfit there.

I asked a couple of chief executives the reasons for doing so. Although I had a faint idea of what to expect in response, I was still left aghast on actually hearing it. Here is what I heard from one top executive:

As you have seen, I do not need any technology, or expertise from the target company. Neither do I need any experience in understanding how to service a diverse, more demanding clientele. However, when I go to bid for an order or a project, most of the times, I am considered inferior because I have my origins in a so-called third world country. I am not offered an equal price for my product or service and my chances of winning the deal too, are reduced significantly. Therefore, I am making these acquisitions purely to acquire and own brands and salesmen which look and sound occidental. This works for me in two ways. For one, I gain pricing power equivalent to my developed economy competitors. Second, the acceptability and receptiveness from my prospect increases dramatically.

Needless to get into the details of black, brown and white of it, isn’t it? I wish I’d not want to believe this. But I do, because a brand called “Fair & Lovely” is still among the bestselling ones. Tonight, the why chromosome raised its head again. All I can do is look at these Benetton adverts, and hope for a different tomorrow. Amen!

Born with a plastic spoon...

2007-06-05T06:20:00.000-07:00

“No, no… she’s too expensive for that sum…”

“How much would you pay for her?”

“You tell me… how much do you think she should be worth?”

Imagine this conversation being carried out in your vicinity. Imagine someone, some living two-legged-two-handed-two-eyed-two-eared-one-nosed person, having features very much similar to that of yours, being bought and sold. We are perhaps among the luckier breeds on this largely unfortunate planet, where nearly two-thirds of the population is not fortunate enough to be entitled to two regular meals (and I do not need any statistics to back me here). For them, there remains hardly any difference between a person and an object, for whatever reasons (we shall come to who’s to be blamed for all this, at some other time). So, to feed their selves, they sell their offspring. Another devastating reality is that this offspring is usually female. Who’re the shoppers? Usually, they’re somewhere right between you and me, taking pride over their possessions. And the trade is called human trafficking. According to an ABC News estimate, nearly 800,000 people are bought, sold and smuggled worldwide, and this industry might as well be scaling to billions of dollars. The report says: “Lured either by the hope of a better life or simply kidnapped, they (the modern day slaves) are forced to work for little or no money in deplorable conditions.”

The situation is no different in our effigy of greatness, Mera Bharat Mahaan! The ‘why’ to this is going to remain unanswered, as a proof of our hypocrisy. So some people try to answer the ‘what next’. There’s a non-government organisation (NGO) called Save The Children India (STCI), which rescues young girls from human trafficking, and helps them get along with life, by rehabilitating them, teaching them skills useful for working in the real world, with dignity. Women and children trained by STCI have been placed in places like the Taj Group of Hotels, Jet Airways, Mahindra and Mahindra, and Tata Chemicals.

What I’m looking at now is getting more such corporate partnerships for this NGO, so that more of these survivors, who are still jobless, can be placed at work and can, earn their living by themselves. Ideal places for survivors of trafficking to work would be manufacturing outfits, retail malls, multiplexes, housekeeping service companies and the likes – those industry which are service and labour intensive, and require bare minimum levels of literacy. People in doubt about the sincerity of survivors of trafficking could rest assured, as four identified government/ non-government agencies are providing referrals to each of the trafficked survivors.

This post could be viewed as a call to all of those, who are in a position to make a difference, to talk to corporate bodies, which may be open to employing trafficking survivors, and play their role in social responsibility. Being working in a media organisation, I’ve tried my share, to get this appeal across to those places which I could. I pass the baton on to the readers of this post. Given below, is the brief for the programme, and the contact at STCI.

Who to write to?

Email : purvigogri@gmail.com

If you’re interested, here’s a note, briefing about the concept of the programme.

Concept note on Livelihood Program for Trafficked Survivors

Collaborating Agencies: Government Institutions, Corporate Houses, Training Institutes, Marketing Institutes and civil society organizations,

One of the most serious challenges facing human rights today is the crime of human trafficking and its various dimensions, including organized crime, prostitution, security, migration, labour and health. Trafficking flourishes in environments created by the breakdown of law and order, police functions and border controls during conflict, combined with globalization’s free markets and open borders.

Save the Children India (STCI), a non-profit organization established in 1988, has been working towards the empowerment of the disadvantaged women and children. STCI is committed to creating and providing an environment wherein children can grow to their full potential, the focus being on education and health issues. A major milestone has been the anti-trafficking movement which was initiated in 2000 so as to facilitate the ongoing fight against trafficking of women and children. Prevention of trafficking of women and children from the vulnerable areas is the premise of the movement. Networking has been the cornerstone of this movement. SOS to date has networked with 400 urban NGOs and 250 rural Maharashtra based grass root NGOs.

STCI maintains that larger outreach and sustainability can be achieved through partnership and shared responsibility. The success of our interventions is largely attributable to our partnership with the national and international governments, corporate sector, non-governmental and voluntary organizations as well as the community based organizations. Corporate partnerships with Jet Airways, Mahindra and Mahindra and Taj Group of Hotels to name a few, have been instances of effective corporate social responsibility. The effective use of media, especially the Indian film industry has been instrumental in the success of our outreach activities.

· We recognize that Trafficking of women and children is an extreme form of exploitation and abuse leading to gross violation of their rights.

· We see it as an issue of significant concern at the individual, family, village/city, district, state, inter-state, national and international levels.

· We are aware that we are fighting against a strong lobby of traffickers for whom this is a low risk and high return business.

· We also accept that we have a long way to go in building a sensitive environment for the prevention, protection and care, rehabilitation and reintegration of the trafficked persons.

· We realize that the trafficked persons need to be treated with dignity & respect, get justice and are not further victimised. At the same time, we also need to ensure that the perpetrators are prosecuted and convicted.

Save The Children India’s approach to Sustainable Livelihood in the context of Human Trafficking:

The goal of Sustainable Livelihood (SL) approaches is the eradication of poverty, and as such attempts to address the root causes of poverty rather than the symptoms. “Livelihood Options” is of paramount importance as it focuses on economic rehabilitation strategies as part of the overall social reintegration process.

The proposed Maharashtra State Plan of action to combat Trafficking of Women and Children for Commercial Sexual Exploitation suggests, “Livelihood options have to be based on marketable skills and knowledge. Institutions, working for rehabilitation of victims should have a holistic approach –with trauma counseling, psychological intervention and health care for the victims, as well as provision for imparting appropriate skills training, knowledge and resources for a sustainable livelihood.”

In concurrence with this Save The Children India proposes a pilot project “Livelihood Program for Trafficked Survivors” as one of the key preventive measures of trafficking, with specific focus on “Prevention of Re-Trafficking of trafficked survivors”.

The programme targets around 150 Trafficked survivors in the age group of 16 to 22 years, referred by 4 identified residential care institutions (government/non government)

Programme components: The programme would include

A} Training & Job Placement

B] Manufacturing and Marketing of Products

C] Setting up of Micro enterprises

D] Ensuring Safe Repatriation and reintegration of trafficked survivors to prevent re-trafficking

E] Facilitating networking and coordination among various stakeholders, partners for better project implementation.

Salient features of the Livelihood Program:

8 Based on the best interest and capacity (skill-set, education and interest) of the survivors;
8 Partnerships among several organizations and institutions – government departments, Training Institutions, Corporate Houses, Marketing Agencies, NGOs
8 Based on market demands and not on convenient vocational training options Organisational capacity for continuing and mainstreaming the services required in sustaining these initiatives
8 Family and community support.

Expected outcome:

Expected outcome of the program at three levels has been envisioned as follows:

1. Economic: increased income, financial self-reliance and improvement in standard of living
2. Social: acceptance in the family and society, participation in social and political activities
3. Personal: increased level of confidence, capacity-building, decision-making skills, negotiation skills.

Conclusion:

The program ‘Livelihood Program for Trafficked Survivors’ would mainstream and integrate human rights into development activities thereby contributing to the fulfillment of the inherent dignity and worth of the human person.

Moose returns!

2007-05-14T11:00:00.000-07:00

There isn’t just one occasion on which we all think ‘why me?’ in our lives. It starts right from their birth for several fellows, while all might be inevitably uttering these words while they’re about to die (all right, accept it you creep)! I’ll limit this to a few happenings between these two events, particularly, while traveling. There are different kinds of people you come across every time you leave one place, to go to another. These brief encounters leave a lasting impression at times, on our minds. For instance, Moose would perhaps remember every other ‘cute chick’ he’d come across, and even make a list of them all, with their vital features (is her ipod bigger than mine?, let me guess: what is the probability that she would smoke pot with me?, etc), and names, if he could track them by reading the reservation list stuck out at the door of a train. On planes, he’d be hopeless – he’d be busy deciding what to do: to drool over chicks or stomach as much whisky as possible! On that account, airlines like Air India, Biman, Druk Air, or Yemen Airways make it easier for him to decide in the favour of the latter because of the sheer lack of the former.

Coming back to real reality, which has an awfully ripe odour, Moose is traveling by a train today. He’s in an air-conditioned chair car, which will pick him up from one place and dump him at another, in the course of roughly 5-8 hours, factoring in all the ritual delays, accidents, and simple red signals flashing at wrong places, wrong times. And he’s hoping that some hot chick comes and takes the seat besides him. Just as he thought this, lightning struck metaphorically on the outside, and as if all the Gods had responded to this command (read ‘subtle demand’), a hot chick (believe me, she is hot) did walk into his compartment. She walked past, and his hopes seemed to be dying. But she turned. And this time, she stood right at the row in which he was seated. He was trying hard not to show his ear-to-ear wide grin. She fumbled through her purse, looking for her ticket. For once, she found it in the right place. Crumpled between a number of coins, a pen which she never uses, her cell phone which is hot too (because of its extensive usage), a few pebbles which she liked and had picked up, her to-do lists, hairpins, clippings from newspapers, and many other listless things which she could never keep a count of. She looked at the ticket, as if remembering her counting lessons, and then looked at Moose for a brief moment, and then at the number inscribed on each of the seats. Moose looked up at her expectantly, and again down at the seat next to his. She was about to sit, and Moose couldn’t wait for the suspense of where she was going to sit, to reveal. Finally, he was just about to ask her to take a seat, and she sat down. Where she sat down, wasn’t quite pleasant. It tasted sour and puffy to Moose that she didn’t sit on the seat right next to his, but on the one next to the vacant one. For the sake of convenience and lifelong remembrance, let us call her Monica.

Moose closed his eyes, and thought his strategy again. He has to put up with the fact that there’s going to be someone sitting between the two of them and separating him, causing him a loss of opportunity. And much before he could just estimate the extent of this loss, the culprit arrives. A grumpy, richly dressed, middle-aged man comes up, and deposits himself between Moose and his prey. After a while, the man stood up and left. Moose rejoiced that moment with a blinking bright idea. He pulled out a paper, and found a pen to scribble something on it, placed it strategically oblique so that Monica could take a look at it, if she wishes to, and the world’s poetry started flowing across that small piece of paper:

“It’s been so long since I last fell in love,

Baby I swear, I swear by heaven up above…

I wasn’t ever keen for what you call the love stuff,

Living was so easy it could never go…”

And the man came back. He didn’t even allow Moose an opportunity to showcase his affection toward the newly met Monica, who Moose did not know even remotely. There were times when Moose felt like hitting someone, and he ended up hitting something. He felt the strong urge to punch the man in his face. Suddenly he felt the need to calculate the strength of his punch, looking at the man’s face. It was filled tightly with some stinking stuff which the man fondly identified as ‘mouth freshener’, and punching him in his face would result into vermillion squirts from his big mouth all over Moose himself. So he retraced his intentions, and started thinking of doing something else to get rid of his neighbour. Another sudden realisation struck him right in his olfactory senses, and he bent down to look at his own feet. No, it wasn’t him. It was his neighbour. He was wearing stinking shoes. By now, Moose had forgotten Monica. All his attention was devoted to the assorted mix of odours that were making way through his nasal tunnels into his head and driving him crazy, suffocating him. Within five minutes, when it became intolerable, he did something. He hit the toughened glass window so hard, he almost broke his wrist! In contrast with his anticipation and planning, nobody paid any attention to him, least of all – Monica. “Oh, she could’ve at least been grateful for the masterpiece of a poetry I wrote for her,” he thought to himself. And then he happened to glance at his neighbour. He was by now, fast asleep, snoring, with his one foot mounted over the other, sending waves of odour right across Moose.

This was frustrating. Awfully frustrating. Moose wanted to stand up and walk away. But how could he leave Monica alone with such a beast? So, out of his caring nature, he kept his backyard stuck to his seat, albeit uneasy. All this while, Monica had been performing a non-stop yak-yak-yak over her phone, utterly ignorant of the presence of her knight with a nearly broken wrist. Since Moose felt his hope losing shine, he too pretended to sleep. Just about when he was about to pretend to fall in deep sleep, his neighbour’s phone rang, and Moose was woken up, in his continuing pretense, from his sleep with loud grunts, shouts and hollering. This went on for almost a score of minutes, before his neighbour hung up the phone shouting that the person on the other end had dialed a wrong number.

After this episode, Moose had given up on his fate. But this wasn’t enough for his neighbour yet. This time, he dialed a number. And he went on speaking and dialing new numbers for another couple of hours. Moose had almost turned upside down in his seat, while Monica, oblivious to all this, had her phone stuck by the side of her face. By the time all three reached their destination, Monica and Moose had nearly fainted, but for different reasons. Moose was feeling victim to a respiratory conspiracy, while Monica was caught with a vocal-nasal disorder, since she too couldn’t tolerate the neighbour’s shoes after a while, but couldn’t even stop talking. Moose stood up, and eased himself out of the seat, and the compartment. Unknowingly, he dropped his passionate poetry right in Monica’s lap. Monica stood up, tried to follow Moose, but alas, she couldn’t find him. Moose was lost somewhere in the endless cohort of people and more people…

… to be continued (perhaps).

Light the sky on these dark mornings...

2007-04-12T11:03:00.000-07:00

That night, I had just stepped out of the Hilton Towers standing at the end of the city after meeting a honcho from one of the largest real estate corporations of the country. We had talked about a number of things, including of course, lifestyles and how those you-and-me sort of common men have to shell out more and more out of their daily penny worth of a pie. He pronounced endless prophesies of an equitable growth, development in the deepest pockets of the society and how one could bring prosperity to that ignored lot of the humongous populace. Talks about how poverty ridden rural parts of the nation could be brought up to a comparable standard of living to the megalopolis’ ways sounded really inspiring for a flying moment. After a while, we talked about other things which didn’t really have to do anything with the poor and common of people, and everything was comfortably forgotten.

When the talk was over, it was almost past midnight. I stepped out of the palatial hotel to walk back to the train station. The sight that I stumbled upon put my mind on an unstoppable reverse slide – deep somewhere, without a bottom.

I pondered for a bit, my mind stopped thinking anything, and I walked on. Silent, thoughtless, longing to lose out on my direction. But still, I had to end up being home – and so I did, unlike someone.

I, quicksilver.

2007-04-10T09:14:00.000-07:00

It’s again one of those early morning marathons. I’m seated to the right side of the train in a seat facing the direction opposite to which the train moves. I remember you telling me sometime last year how you do not like ‘moving backward’. I had asked you to lean on my shoulder, close your eyes -- you held my arm tight and asked me too, to do the same! It is not just now that I thought of you. Last night, I made a brief mention of you to a friend after a long walk together.

I look out of the tinted glass windows to see the sepia coloured landscape left behind, in a quick rhythm the trees get shorter, rivers grow distant. And then the coppery red and yellow sun peeks out of the horizon changing the glum taste spread outside the window. I tried to put these thoughts on hold, push them backward – behind the horizon. I turned on the music so deafeningly loud that I could not hear the steady hum of suspension springs holding the wheels bumping into themselves against the rails. Looking at your picture would’ve made me glad. I did not have any but one of your pictures – the one that I had taken looking into your eyes, holding your hand in mine. And it was the same day, that you had decided – you were to go.

Today, even after a year and more, that you are gone far away, I still refused to believe the truth, wishing you were here. Still, there you are attempting to move forward inch by inch, and here I am drifting backward faster than ever. Back then, we were too close but we were too fast. Now, even though we’re at a standstill, we’re too far. Yet, I have not lost a bit, for the beauty of those days still remains with me – it cannot be lost. For, I have given away every bit I could, and there’s nothing more to lose. Perhaps what I’d given away, was just there for that. Like quicksilver.

Mother, did it need to be so high?

2007-04-02T09:46:00.000-07:00

It is surprising, or rather awful to imagine a life without an identity, origin, nationality and so on. Just came across this piece titled Citizens of nowhere, and I was speechless. And these photographs clicked by Greg Constantine of International Herald Tribune - they're sure to keep you thinking. Right at the same time, I read this too:

Like the sinking of the Titanic, catastrophes are not democratic. A much higher fraction of passengers from the cheaper decks were lost.

Although this must've been said in some different context, it is just apt. It plays on, on my mind...

Mother do you think they'll drop the bomb
Mother do you think they'll like the song
Mother do you think they'll try to break my balls
Ooooh aah, Mother should I build a wall
Mother should I run for president
Mother should I trust the government
Mother will they put me in the firing line...

The big picture

2007-03-31T08:47:00.000-07:00

Often, when we speak, we hardly make an effort to contemplate upon the meaning or implication of what we uttered or are about to spill out. Today, while talking to a friend about some religious anniversary, I claimed, “I hardly have any idea about the said event, and it would not appeal me anyway, because a celebration in my religion (the one I am born with, proudly so) translates into renunciation – and I’m too greedy, materialistic, practical and ambitious to renounce anything!”

Somehow, I could never relate to those who renounce everything worldly. For such people, it becomes an ambition and purpose of life to renounce everything. But to me, such renunciation is often gloomy, jaded with failures and more of a material saturation than actualization. I always believed that one would give up on the world only when one is totally fed up with the world. Today, when I sat back and thought about what I had claimed, it made me feel too small and primitive. I realised that those who might be able to visualise some sort of a bigger picture of the material cyclicality of this world, may as well know a way to figure out what lies beyond, and elevate themselves to that final lap of the seemingly unending spiral. For those visionaries, renunciation of their material beings would not mean an end of the world. It just puts them perhaps, into some higher plane – free from the orbit to have an all encompassing view. A view so bright and clear, that these exists no ambiguity or uncertainty.

And this stature cannot be attained having blindspots. For this, I will need to know the world, and more importantly, the self. It would be then, that renunciation would not succeed any regret, but a celebration. And the celebration is not of the finite self, but an inexistent, though eternal being.

This seems like a long way from where I stand today. But I shall grow up, grow out of the world, and be there. Some day.

Maqtoob!

Déjà vu

2007-02-04T10:46:00.000-08:00

It is strange when you try and reach out for those things, which are aeons away from you, you see them, but cannot grab them. Not that they're unattainable, but you'd end up wondering what would you do with them once you get them all. Or at times even if you do not attain that state, you know what it would feel like, having it all - a sort of déjà vu feeling reigns your senses.

I had this feeling, when I was standing, looking at the faraway city lights - not too far that I would never reach them, not too close for me to see anything bright and clear. But the place struck a familiar chord with me, when I sat down staring at the guardians of the city. I have been there, some time- a distant moment, I wonder when. And I shall be back there, some day.

Maqtoob!

Infinity, revisited

2007-01-30T07:50:00.000-08:00

Bombay, I’d left you one day, to cross oceans. I’d confessed of my love for you, for teaching me the art of letting go. Today, I’m back to you, at the same place – and you tested me for my learning.

The art of letting go, as you’ve taught me, so shall I practice. And I declare my triumph doing so, for I have let go of my fears, of the bliss to possess and the reluctance to lose. For where I am, I’m on my own and owe nothing to none. I win!

This is my day, my moment. Infinite and unfathomable. I still love you, Bombay, to award me my victory.

A full circle

2007-01-28T06:11:00.000-08:00

There was a time, some four hundred years ago, when the routes to

India

were ‘discovered’ and the sailors went to meet the maharajahs – the kings of ancient

India

. Most of them would find them funny in all their opulence they lived in, the attire they would carry themselves with – jewels glaring, bright coloured dresses with layers of gold, silver and diamonds embedded onto them. For centuries, the grandiose style was obscure and off-trends. Indians too, moved on to occidental dressing, with the concepts of power dressing, friday dressing, jeans and work-wear being the in-thing and Paris-Milan-fashion followed every now and then.

Now, the opulent dresses are only seen on Bollywood sets for movies with historical themes, in expensive marriages and rich parties in India. And this is the time when the world’s turning full circle. Designers from the west have been too keen to use symbols from India in their designs, for dressing up celebrities and the like. We’ve all heard of Madonna flashing an Om and necklaces of Rudraksha beads. Today I came across this article, in which Giorgio Armani claims to be ‘inspired’ by ancient Indian attire of maharajahs and “took those heroic bejeweled males who "dressed themselves for pleasure's sake" — in all their "elegance, glamour and splendor" — and translated the details to women's clothes.”

The Indian odyssey was inspired by a trip to Rajasthan, but instead of being blown away by the hot and spicy colors, Armani, with his love of neutral shades, focused on the male colors of dust beige and mud brown, adding pearl gray and soft green.

It’s amazing how the world proves time and again that it’s after all a sphere, with a well shaped round so that things really do come full circle! And it would be curious to speculate when the coiffeurs of the likes of Jose Eber, Christophe, Umberto and Joseph Martin would start asking their clients to prefer hair oil to gels! It would be even better if the stars arrive to the Academy Award ceremonies riding horse-driven chariots and victorias, right?

Bombay: Everywhere!

2007-01-20T11:36:00.000-08:00

An inevitable review comparison of the two books I had read a couple of months back!

I tried to take on the wave of the new crop of books written about Bombay at the moment I was about to leave the city and contemplated missing the Marine Drive, the queen’s necklace. Like the love of Salman Rushdie’s Ameena Azeez, I could never love Bombay for the whole of it. It has to be only in parts. Small bits of Bombay, but never all of it. I picked up Shantaram and Maximum City to keep up with the reminiscence with the place to which I was brought to, in transit, and most of this place I despised for it was dead.

To me, this place had always lacked the essential sensitivity, warmth, life, love, space, privacy and freedom for one to be able to even find anywhere, leave aside to live with! Both the books glorified my shelf for a year and returned untouched with me, when I came back to Bombay. I finally started reading the books one after another, about two months back. It was Shantaram to start with, an almost epic-drama sort of autobiography of an Australian bandit, who had strayed into Bombay and fallen in love with the city.

Shantaram lived in the city for around eight years, and therefore, is more of a prolonged intimate affair with the city – a city which sheltered the bandit, protected him from the crimes he committed and punished him for those which he never committed! The writer passionately describes the different kinds of people he meets, with a sense of expertise in fathoming the insides of those with whom he talks. A parallel play of emotions is experienced by the reader imagining their selves being subjected to the events taking place in the writer’s – Shantaram’s life – and trying hard to keep themselves detached from what they read. And to me, the experience was more than familiar, as I visualised myself watching Shantaram walk into the Café Leopold and meet Didier while I would be sitting at the table on the far corner (the one at the left hand side of the entrance) observing them, or while he walks back to his Cuffe Parade slum and I would watch standing on the opposite side of the road, or trying to rescue Karla from the floods outside the Taj Hotel while I was standing half-immersed in water just outside the Dhanraj Mahal. Oh, I HAD been to all the places mentioned!

Shantaram romanticises with the dark side of the city in a manner that every newcomer fancies. He is taken aback, surprised with the down-to-earth nature, the materialism of the grass-root sorts prevalent in the people he lives with. As an Australian hailing from an occidental culture, and from a geography where one doesn’t encounter another being of one’s own species even after walking a couple of miles, he considers the smaller amount of worries that the slum-dwellers possess as a manifestation of sheer innocence and their largesse of hearts. And thus the baptising of India as the country of the heart.

When Shantaram is possessed by the insecurities of his identity, he practices as a slum doctor, putting to a good use the skills that he learnt as a first aid volunteer. This seems to be an effort to ward off his past from chasing him, an attempt to put aside the burden of guilt that he accrued living a robber’s life. And when he is possessed by the more material insecurities of life, he takes on to new identities, committing crimes, heading mafia rackets, smuggling people, gold, weapons across the world. He also went to Afghanistan, with his mafia godfather to fight the Russians, supporting the Taliban! But he returns to Bombay, alive, to settle revenge, to seek love, to live – and still keeps doing so.

I then read Maximum City, an account of the city by a writer who had spent his childhood in Bombay, migrated to New York and returned to Mumbai after 21 years – the city has now been rechristened. Although the book is the author’s personal journey, it is not an autobiography. He disembarks in Mumbai in a chronicler’s style, as if pretending or attempting to remain indifferent and detached to the life, events, incidents, changes that take place in the city. The place sucks him into its spirit, but holds on to him strongly in a manner that a spinning wheel would do – a rag struck on its rim!

The writer therefore, touches only the peripheral extremes – both extremely good and extremely bad. This perhaps is not a shortcoming, but the nature of his chronicle. It is like that spinning sphere which holds everything to its surface but does not let any of it to reach its core. The city therefore, treats the writer as a guest, an outsider in transit. The writer starts exploring the evil extreme of the city. Inevitably, the stained part of the city’s face spans much larger an area as compared to its clean counterpart which is being dwarfed day and night. And when he is fed up of gawking at the sick side of the face, he goes to take a look at the better part of the city.

Even then the account can never be a whole. The writer only meets the criminals, prostitutes, smugglers, rioters, contract killers, bar dancers, policemen, inmates, filmstars, other writers, struggling actors, diamond merchants, fashion photographers and monks! He does not witness any killing of human being but expects to understand what goes on in one’s mind when he’s about to die, and the other’s mind when he’s about to kill. The writer expects to feel the limitlessness of being detached from the world by observing billionaires turn into monks who renounce all their worldly possessions – while himself clinging on to the world.

The narrative takes an inappropriate tone of being tempted at times, being undecided at others. The reason that the chronicle lacks fullness is that the writer shows the symptoms of withdrawal at each instance. It is because the writer has a thought, a contemplative tug of war always playing in his mind that he has to return, to abandon this city for another, bigger, drier, more materialistic one.

The difference between Shantaram and Maximum City is that of belonging. Shantaram terms this city, this country as the place where the heart rules. Shantaram has landed into this city as a plain mirror, waiting to be etched. And to be etched with anything – he does not expect this place to accept or reject him. It still ends in a formidable bonding – the bonding of the soul of Shantaram with the soul of Bombay, the egalitarian way station for all travelers, bandits, nomads and guests!

Maximum City on the other hand, is a quest for lost possessions. If only the quest had not missed the few right places where Bombay could be found! Unlike Shantaram, the writer attempts to know and do all those things which he has never meant to – to kill, to dance in a bar, to act in a film, to renounce his billions, his family and worldly pleasures to turn into a monk. It starts with expectations and ends with a wreck, a betrayal, a feeling of being disowned.

The difference between the two books is that of ‘to have’ and ‘to want’. And as ever, ‘to want’ never has any destiny of its own! Therefore, while Shantaram treats Bombay as his first love, Maximum City treats the city like a mistress.

Disclaimer: The opinion regarding each of the two books described here has the ability to remain exclusive of influence of Shantaram on Maximum City, and vice versa, notwithstanding the personal backgrounds of either of the two writers.

Narcissism Rules!

2007-01-09T18:54:00.000-08:00

I woke up at 2 in the morning to start for Bombay and fell asleep on my way to the town in the back seat. But I dreamt of the road to the town, the places we pass by - and I also saw the "6-miles-away-from-my-home" milestone, while still asleep. Right then, I opened my eyes to look around where we'd reached, et voila! The driver had just slowed down at the 6-miles turn toward the town, the very place that I saw with my eyes closed!

It is at this moment I know why I believe in myself so much - and that belief is reinforced. I'm ever so focused, so confident that I can clearly see my path even when my eyes are closed, when I'm deep asleep! I AM on my way to take on the world - better poised than ever before. So today, I feel like that legendary archer who could see nothing else but his aim, and took his shot. I too, just have to take my shot!

This is one of the reasons I love myself! Maqtoob!

Taaranath

2007-01-01T07:24:00.000-08:00

“Life’s taxing in this wretched country. Wretched people, wretched country.” Mr Kannan said once, while traveling back from Cuffe Parade – home to the country’s who’s who. I remembered this, when I was on my way to the Marine Drive, to bid farewell to the year that was. It was when this little child comes up – I was reading – and spreads his rather long t-shirt for alms. I look up, and see a good looking, but dirt stained child, stretching his neck due to some sort of discomfort or pain, and praying with his eyes for a little bit of sympathy. He deserves more. Much more. He seemed to be a child from a well-off background, because his clothes appeared rich, although dirty. But he did not utter a word, neither insisted upon anyone to offer him anything. He stood for a while, and went away. I gave him a coin. I wanted to talk, but I was too shocked, too disturbed to speak out.

Right then, I remembered another child – Taaranath. Taaranath used to serve me every evening with water, in the restaurant where I eat. It is an abuse of childhood, for the idealists to make a child work in some place, serving able adults. But if Taaranath wouldn’t do that, he would end up treading the lanes of crime. He brought the jug of water, the first day I entered the restaurant, and when I smiled at him, he flashed his bright teeth distinctly white from his dark brown colored face. Nobody in the restaurant must’ve thanked him for his service. When I thanked him, he sincerely answered: “You’re welcome!”

Taaranath must’ve studied somewhere. He knew that a backpack is called a backpack. And once when I visited the restaurant after a break of a couple of weeks, Taaranath wasn’t at the restaurant. I wondered where the kid could’ve been. I thought he might have made some mistake, and had got himself fired from the job, for worse. I was spooked by the thoughts of everything that is possible to a lone, helpless child in this vampire megalopolis.

Yesterday, when I saw this child, all of these thoughts came back to me. I tried talking about it, while strolling on the Marine Drive. I tried talking it out to you, when I talked to you at midnight. And the couple of times when I called today, and when I was back from work. But I couldn’t talk. I went to the temple, and returned from its door. It was the new year coming. Everyone’s celebrating. People who didn’t sleep went out partying all night, and those who did went to sleep on the sidewalks right outside those posh restaurants where the insomniacs partied.

I couldn’t forget this. Tonight, when I went back to the restaurant, Taaranath appeared again! He wasn’t serving water this time. He works indoors now. The government has banned children from working at any such places where they’re deemed to be laborers. I don’t quite understand whether to feel happy about it or to feel sad. But I’m glad Taaranath is still there, and earns with dignity. And I wonder what the kid on the train might be doing at this moment. I walk back home, with The Beatles’ Taxman playing in my head:

“Let me tell you how it will be;

There’s one for you, nineteen for me.

…If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat

If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet…

… Now my advice for those who die,

Declare the pennies on your eyes.

‘Cause I’m the taxman,

Yeah, I’m the taxman.”

Faith: Raped, broadcasted live.

2006-12-17T05:48:00.000-08:00

The news channels are broadcasting a brutal killing of a wild bear in the Traal village of Pulwama district in Kashmir. The wild bear had strayed in the village of its own nature to roam, and would’ve had gone away too. It stayed in the village for 24 hours, they say, and did not cause any harm. Even if it did, it would not have been as considerable as the consequences it had to face for straying into the village.

The bear was beaten, close to death, by all the villagers together, as they attacked it with just about everything handy. Finally, when the bear was hardly able to lift up its own weight, they set fire to the living animal and watched – rejoicing. Not a single “human” spectator of the collective brutality went ahead to rescue the poor harmless bear. The media took distant shots from strategic angles with their flashing cameras. Viewers responded with calls blaming the forest and wildlife authorities.

We call Kashmir the paradise on earth. The people in a paradise may not be angels, but how could they turn into the judges of a dumb life who is not even capable of defending itself from their satanic instincts, leave aside any possibility of causing harm to them?

And the Big Guy whom we call God – he was perhaps watching everything from a distant balcony, noting each and every minute detail down, so that he can deal with this at leisure. Paradise? Billions witnessed it all. Human? Yes, yes. Definitely human. This incident just explains every single reason of the unrest all over – carried out by all the messiahs and prophets of humanity against the faithless!

Faith? She has grown used to her incessant molestations by now. She will now sit naked, with her wraps torn and tattered, at the doorsteps of every house of the Traal village of Pulwama , under focus of all the media cameras, near the phones of all the callers, and right above the television sets of all the viewers.

Disillusioned

2006-12-16T09:23:00.000-08:00

There are days when life appears to be a whacky, orange and violet, disconcerting parody orchestrated by disoriented minds, heads, hearts and souls. And there are dusks and dawns when it appears to be a mushy, excessively pink, harmonized in a strange manner, while making you float smoothly, and then there’s a sudden scorching noon which pushes you out of your free-float state to face an ugly brown evening with a cacophony of the whole world around. You feel like turning loud noise on, enveloping you with raging madness which would make you sense each and every beat right beneath each of your nerve, and finally break out of all of the orange, violet, pink, brown, black, white, sick, suffocating, day, noon, night, dusk and dawn.

The noise turns on, deafening you and everyone else, helping you forget and the others lose the last few bits of sensitivity. You start smelling the thick fabric of burnt skin with a slight tremor in your fingers feeling the heat but not quite able to move. Veins stiffen, the atria filled with some cement to stop the thick thumping walls from moving at all. It all still goes on, as normal as it can be. Superficially, though. Inside, the bone of your structure is crumbling into a coarse grain just about to melt into the red fluid that’s about to make an escape from the burnt ends of your fingers. That, perhaps is the only way to drain out all the gloom. And then you’ll stand disillusioned, as the world dismantles itself from being into thin air to infinity.

here, now.

2006-12-08T11:03:00.000-08:00

Tonight the moon is a copper-shaded red, lurking half out from those black clouds of fumes of the city. The night, cold and dark, with clouds near the ground and clear up above is about to chill while dropping some warm dew drops all over. As I walk, I stop to see a snail crawl past my feet, and think about the feeling of aimlessness I've had while on the stroll. Does the snail feel the burden of her aim to get someplace? Am I feeling any lighter? I choose to walk away without answering.

Perhaps, there’s none, here, now.

I used to be Schizophrenic. The Doc said its allright now... but we didn't believe it...!

2006-11-24T09:01:00.000-08:00

Personality Disorder Test Results

Paranoid	\|\|\|\|\|\|	22%
Schizoid	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	46%
Schizotypal	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	62%
Antisocial	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	66%
Borderline	\|\|\|\|	14%
Histrionic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Narcissistic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	62%
Avoidant	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	38%
Dependent	\|\|	10%
Obsessive-Compulsive	\|\|\|\|\|\|	22%

Take Free Personality Disorder Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Test Note: Read the descriptions below to avoid misinterpreting test results (for example, the Antisocial classification does not mean you are a loner, it means you tend to be insensitive towards others).
General Note: the validity and reliability of DSM personality disorders are still lacking in strong statistical evidence and clear agreement in the scientific and medical community. They are determined by the American Psychiatric Association and will likely be revised in the future.
Author Note:I don't think Schizoid personality is a valid disorder (read), some of the smartest people in history were schizoid because they occupied a remote end of the intelligence bell curve. Schizotypal personality can encompass highly original thinkers as well as totally insane people so I think it's a flawed type. I think the remaining eight disorders are generally valid.

Disorder Info

Eccentric Personality Disorders: Paranoid, Schizoid, Schizotypal

Individuals with these disorders often appear odd or peculiar.

Paranoid Personality Disorder - individual generally tends to interpret the actions of others as threatening.

Schizoid Personality Disorder - individual generally detached from social relationships, and shows a narrow range of emotional expression in various social settings.

Schizotypal Personality Disorder - individual is uncomfortable in close relationships, has thought or perceptual distortions, and peculiarities of behavior.

Dramatic Personality Disorders: Antisocial, Borderline, Histrionic, and Narcissistic

Individuals with these disorders have intense, unstable emotions, distorted self-perception, and/or behavioral impulsiveness.

Antisocial Personality Disorder - individual shows a pervasive disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others.

Borderline Personality Disorder - individual shows a generalized pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image, and observable emotions, and significant impulsiveness.

Histrionic Personality Disorder - individual often displays excessive emotionality and attention seeking in various contexts. They tend to overreact to other people, and are often perceived as shallow and self-centered.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder - individual has a grandiose view of themselves, a need for admiration, and a lack of empathy that begins by early adulthood and is present in various situations. These individuals are very demanding in their relationships.

Anxious Personality Disorders: Avoidant, Dependent, Obsessive-Compulsive

Individuals with these disorders often appear anxious or fearful.

Avoidant Personality Disorder - individual is socially inhibited, feels inadequate, and is oversensitive to criticism

Dependent Personality Disorder - individual shows an extreme need to be taken care of that leads to fears of separation, and passive and clinging behavior.

Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder - individual is preoccupied with orderliness, perfectionism, and control at the expense of flexibility, openness, and efficiency.

Imagine!

2006-11-17T23:02:00.000-08:00

Imagine you’re walking down a busy Bombay street and all of a sudden, out of nowhere your friend from Paris, to whom you haven’t even spoken to, for almost a year now – bumps into you. How’d you feel? More, how would you feel if this isn’t for the first time, but such things happen to you thrice in one year?

About eight months back, when I was in KL I got a call from a pen friend of mine for the past six years now (how we met the first time is another interesting story – we’ll call him SF). It was the first time I had heard his voice: he was in the city, and was at the KLCC. Me: “I’ll be there!”

Those who have been to the KLCC will be able to tell how big it is, and that every corner looks identical to the hundred others! And to spot someone who you haven’t ever seen before… well, you get that. I had never seen him, not even in a picture. He had seen me in pictures taken about a year back. And I tend to look different from my own self every two weeks. So, there I was looking for SF. Call it extraordinary luck, or height of coincidence, -- well, I believe I was extraordinarily lucky this time, just like I am at all other times – I walked into KLCC from the entrance where there’s a DéliFrance outlet and I heard that voice again: he called out my name. I turned to my right to see a simple spectacled guy in a colorful Hawaiian shirt and baggie trousers – he was standing right there! The conversation that followed was that which takes place when two bohemians meet!

Another time, another place. I was traveling someplace on the upper berth of a train compartment and there was a dentist couple in the same compartment traveling to a city en route. For almost 3 hours in the journey I was engrossed in my book, without talking to them – not even looking at them. The customary ritual of a typical Indian rail journey is to befriend every co-passenger and develop fraternity among each other turning the compartment into your make-shift home. This went on until in the evening when the gentleman dentist bought me a cup of coffee, and caught me surprised. We then talked about different things, when I remembered I had another pen friend (e-mail friend, if you please) from the same city which these people belonged to – she’s called P.

I told them that I knew a girl from that city, who was a daughter of some cardiologist. They told me there were only a handful of cardiologists in that small city, and they might know them all. I didn’t know this friend’s name then. But I remembered one peculiar thing about her. I told them: “This friend of mine has a couple of pet turtles whom she calls Kimi and Schumi!” They looked at each other, excited and spoke out: “That’s our P!” They knew her very well, and are neighbors. I then wrote a note for P and handed it over and till date, I haven’t seen her in person, but we make the best of friends, I’m sure.

And yesterday, while I still had some time for my next meeting to take place, I decided to take a walk by the Marine Drive. I met FR on the way. He says: “You know, this can happen only in India! Out of about 18 or 20 or 25 million people of Bombay, right when I get out of my hotel the first time after landing in India, I meet you right at the door!”

Ain’t life beautiful?

And me? I’m lovin’ it! But I know, once again: Maqtoob!

On why Moose would hate Newton!

2006-11-13T03:29:00.000-08:00

Millions saw apples fall, but Newton was the one who asked why. This was said by someone. Who cares who said it! But the point is, why on earth did Newton have to question it? Why couldn’t he stay mum? He would’ve saved the world of so much turmoil! He’s touted to be a noble soul with a lot of patience that he let apples fall on his head, but the fact is he was so desperate and possessed by his own self that he was jealous of the other millions of the dispossessed beings who never cared why apples fell! Just the matter of his staying quiet, and nobody would’ve researched gravity, nobody would’ve thought of the G-forces, projectile motion of matter, the speed of light, planets, atoms, neutrons, and whatnots. Neither would’ve been any bombs invented, nor would there be an equally menacing world war! Hell, the Wright brothers would’ve been unemployed all their life and nobody would’ve had the thought of crashing a couple of planes here and there into the World Trade Centre Twin Towers!

And if you propose the case of intellectual advancements, then take a look at the Chinese and the Indians. They invented useful things, allright? And meaningful ones too. The Chinese gave us needles to sew with and lanterns to look at pretty faces at night. Imagine using a bulb invented by that lousy old fellow called Edison on a date at your candle-light dinner table! Indians, Oh… Indians went a step further. They tried to bring everything full circle – life, death, everything – and said that there’s nothing but a zero! Now Mr. Newton, would you have ever had that kind of a realisation in your goddamned life full of gravity? Even a potato will tell you it sucks.

For example, if people come up to advocate for the unemployment problem of Wright brothers, it has one fairly simple solution, as compared to carrying out the whole process of inventing an aircraft and trying to make it sail in the air and breaking a couple of limbs and a collar bone. There used to be another noble man called Guttenberg who printed a Bible and became famous. No, I’m not asking you to print Bibles. All that everyone needs to do is print a few currency notes! Now the inherent issue after every job is the money that people can earn from it, and we’re so used to being wrapped up in our brain-in-a-glass-vat egos that we’ve forgotten how to tackle a problem at its roots. We’re going to end so many problems with such an endeavour! And if someone questions whatever would happen to productivity, demand and supply then go and ask Moose how to handle all that.

Moose says that if every other person starts working, then what on earth is going to happen to those poor people? He’s another darn noble soul who doesn’t believe in taking away jobs from his poor comrades. That’s the humble reason why he wouldn’t believe in work, or anything at all. He says, if he’d work, he’d be finishing off some of the work which many others could do and earn a living from, if they’re not printing any currency notes, that is. He doesn’t want to take away that opportunity from these poor fellow citizens of his, and would rather choose to print a couple of thousand currency notes each day and live in peace himself, and let others live in peace. That way, he doesn’t need to commute anyplace – saves a lot of gas, reduces pollution – and also doesn’t have to make any additions to the already crowded transport systems of this weird city. You only ought to imagine the widespread, long term ecological-social-political-economical-theological-geological-just, plain logical-anatomical-botanical-what-not-ical- implications of such a standard of living!

Wouldn’t the world be much quieter a place had Newton kept mum back then?

P.S.: If you’re thinking of making sense of this crap, then forget it. Realism is not the point here.