Maid in India

In fact I had started this blog much before the diplomatic row between the two largest democracies, one more capitalistically inclined, was sparked over a socialist issue of wages and rights of a domestic worker. Before you begin reading, let me warn you this is a highly critical blog on the social trends and is written purely from an individual perspective on the issue.

My family and I have been without a maid / domestic help for the last 3 months after ours decided to take an open ended sabbatical. Though, not a live in maid, the time she has been away has been one of great introspection on the need and the role of a domestic help at home. That’s when I decided I should pen my thoughts and then came the controversy surrounding the Indian diplomat’s treatment of her maid. In the recent past we were confronted on a daily basis with news stories on the ill treatment of maids by the rich and the famous and also by the well-read and highly acclaimed citizens in India.

We have reached a stage when marriages might be made in heaven but their very sustenance is in the hands of your maid. Coming back from work to a home with beds undone, toys littered all around, dishes to be done, floors to be mopped, can be a stressful ordeal for a working, career oriented family and even prompt a review of the pre-nuptial contract clauses on shared job responsibilities.

The dependency on maids is something that I personally try and avoid particularly when you can make do without one. I understand the need of baby sitters when you have infants at home or a domestic help for a couple of hours a week to lend you a helping hand in tidying up your home. The last 3 months made me get back to the basics and also help teach my kids the dignity of labour, do your own beds, wash your dishes and keep you rooms tidy which they had come to believe was not part of their domain of activities. I gave up on my yoga and started to focus on my own version of wash-asanas and mop-asanas. They are as good for your body and soul as yoga, long distance running or pumping iron.

The dependency on domestic helps in India is an offshoot of the colonial era; unfortunately that legacy was passed on to our very own defence and bureaucratic community. This culture is so rampant that a memsahib beau with her maid in tow is a common sight. Unfortunately this dependency has made them indispensable which is definitely not a good sign. Over the years the role of a maid in or from India has been elevated to that of a Chamberlains of the Victorian era. The utilitarian aspect of a maid has given way to that of a symbol of social prominence. The more foreign your maid the more respected you are in social circles, call it a manifestation of reverse colonial hangover? ‘Chottu’ is what you call your youngest son or lovingly the domestic help if he is a young boy in most homes in the northern part of India and elsewhere. Chottu bring this, chottu do this, chottu do that, chottu fetch me this reverberates in any affluent Indian home.

The common argument for a full time maid at home I hear is a four dimensional one, people keep talking about quality space and time with their spouses and hence the help at home to take care of their little ones, wonder if the little one is not part of their space or time then the very fundamentals of a family are being questioned here. I have heard that the kids cannot eat or sleep without their maids wonder what these kids will grow up into, after experiencing a diluted motherhood since their childhood is so maid centric.

‘AAP’ jaisa koyi mere zindagi….

This vintage Nazia Hassan song from the yesteryear Bollywood movie 'Qurbaani' has been reincarnated thanks to the surfacing of a new kid on the political landscape block in this glorious democracy called India where even the right to swing both ways is restricted by the judiciary and I’m not talking about the pendulum and simple harmonic motion.

They call themselves the AAM ADMI PARTY…Mango (AAM is incidentally Hindi for Mango too) is definitely an alternate to the banana republic we live in. Even though the likes of Arvind Kejriwal & co might not have given much thought while naming their party they have struck a gold mine in branding terms.

For the less initiated in Hindi not that I’m more initiated AAM AADMI PARTY means common man’s party. But the abbreviated version stole the show from day one. AAP was positioned in a way to identify itself with the ‘I’ generation, the irony being AAP on its own meant YOU in Hindi. So actually positioning ‘YOU’ in the ‘I’ generation can sound profound and at the same time can be an effective marketing ploy. And so it was. For all your ‘I’ gadgets to work one needed an AAP (phonetically speaking). Steve Jobs might have in some way contributed to an APP revolution with all his ‘I’ gadgets but Arvind Kejriwal has now a cult status with his own AAP. Move over the ‘I’ gen, ‘U’ is all set to take over.

Well actually my association with the word AAP started when Kejriwal was still a kid. Kejriwal’s school of thought might have been centred on AAP but my schooling itself was in an ‘aap’ school in Madras. Any school that was run by the erstwhile Anglo Indian community, who have contributed a great deal to education in India was generally referred to as an aap school, a name probably derived from the theory that aappam was sold by Anglo Indians in Royapuram. Though, it is now the malayalee’s claim to fame for a celebratory breakfast.

Aap had also a different connotation altogether in Madras Tamizh, which literally meant a peg / dowel but was used commonly and colloquially to represent a peg that was drilled up your you-know-where, and over the years was transformed into an euphemism for injustice being meted out in its crudest form. Well that is exactly what happened to the differently oriented citizens of India this week, literally and figuratively.

These final weeks of 2013 got the people of India dancing to the tunes of aap jaisa koi meri zindagi mein aaye (Somebody like YOU (AAP) make a difference in my life) but the judiciary had other ideas when they said ‘mere jaisa mere saath koi nahi!!!’ (No one like me with me anymore).

Welcome to the largest Democracy in the world!!!

Disclaimer: The above piece has been written in jest and not with an intention to hurt the feelings of people around me, I’m as over joyed by the advent of the AAP as an alternate option in Indian politics as I’m saddened by the curbing of the freedom of choice for the differently oriented people around me.

Amazon the new 'Dron'acharya!

They revolutionised online retailing when they entered the scene in 1994 and exactly 20 years later they come up with another revolutionary idea that could change the way you get stuff delivered. They are intent on teaching the world at large an art or two on delivery.

Lo behold! The time when you can get your potatoes delivered directly to your couch is not far away if Jeff Bezos has his way. Couch potatoes can order Big Mac and fries with diet coke from Mc Donalds and a DVD on yoga from Amazon all delivered at your footstep. A balanced diet delivered with instructions on how to burn the unbalanced calories the exotic way. Now that’s one healthy life style to lead.

It might find its way from the delivery station to the doorstep via GPS and what not, from there on with an extended app it will find you on your couch for a couple of $ more. I like the Idea. I could tweak it a little once near my couch to fetch my TV remote and a beer from my fridge too. Forgotten school assignments, science projects, lunch boxes and even a fresh pair of socks could be delivered by drones.

But in certain parts of the world it could create confusion with regard to the identity; there should be methods in place to distinguish between the one with a lethal payload and a non-lethal one. From an Indian perspective it will be interesting to see some of the challenges that the drone deliveries will face and on the positive side there are a whole lot of potential drone applications too. In fact this whole concept of air borne basket delivery was an Indian concept. Go to a middle class high rise in Bombay you will find neighbours sharing stuff between different levels. That all important missing green chillies when the curry is on the stove are all yours with a simple tug at the rope and a shout and in exchange you might have to send some tomatoes on its way back, some kind of a mid-air re-filling of grocery.

Imagine a drone navigating through the thick ‘manja’ laden kite traffic during a peak kite flying season in Triplicane in Madras. The ‘manja’ might just be strong enough to snap a key communication cable on the octocopter and cause it to malfunction and thereby delivering the sausage that was meant for Kevin of Kilpauk to Krishna Iyer in Mylapore. That’s sacrilege unless Krishna Iyer is a US return with a German wife who loves her Frankfurters. We might have to allot a dedicated air corridor for drones or impose a no fly zone for kites.

In Kerala I find a better use for the drones, these are days when it’s hard to find someone to climb coconut trees, why not use a sickle attached to the drones to fly up the tree and do the job. An improvised version could be developed for toddy tapping too and be named the Drunken Drones! Ha Ha if you are thinking of patenting any of these, it’s too late mate. I’ve done it already!! But our comrades would be up in arms against the drones and stage a bandh on account of this. But Comrades, the bandh unfortunately will only affect the mortals on road not the air borne drones. They could come up with an inbuilt stone pelting recognition system to change the altitude once they spot comrades down below.

Drones in Drains is where I will put my money on next, when manual scavenging is still so rampant in several parts of the world why not use Drones with a basket to go down in and clean up the drains. The application of drones in sanitation would certainly be noble idea.

How does it matter if you don’t get that music CD, or a book or that mouse pad or that Pizza within 30 minutes? There are more worthwhile uses of drone technology that will serve mankind better. Why don’t people get working on that? And by the way, I would sell the toddy tapping drunken drone patent only to Mallya and he might end up bottling Toddy and call it Woodpecker instead of Kingfisher!!!

We should know more about the use drones than the Americans…after all ‘Dron’acharya the teacher of Drones was Indian!!!

Adios Amigos Sachin! (Yawn! Yawn! yet another Sachin farewell blog it is!!!)

We remember not the scores and the results in after years; it is the men who remain in our minds, in our imagination. – Nevile Cardus

The boy, the man, the master, the legend and finally THE GOD (notice that I have used definite article ‘THE’ for God too) was how he was addressed all along over the last 2 decades. If there was a tradition of beatification in cricket no one better would qualify to be conferred the sainthood other than SACHIN RAMESH TENDULKAR.

I never wanted to write a tribute on him ever since he had overstayed his welcome over the last few years, but then, why not, he has taken the liberty to do so in the last couple of years after we took the liberty to venerate him for 2 decades prior to that. Fair enough I thought.

Writing a piece on a cricketer is a tall ask and greatly depends on, the on and off field personality of the particular individual. For example a piece on Rahul Dravid will evoke Poetry, while the one on Laxman will be tailored Prose and the one on Dada Saurav Ganguly might be in the lines of a Bollywood blockbuster screenplay. Mind you, all the above people and the associated emotions were part of the Sachin saga for a considerable period of those 24 years, just that you had to write an epic and epics don’t sell in this era of messaging, tweeting, poking and posting.

While a piece on Sachin is any day a number crunching statistician’s delight, I don’t intend to take that route going by what the great Sir Nevile Cardus said , It is the man that should remain in our minds and imaginations not his scores or the results. I can assure you that no one better than the ones belonging to the same peer group can do justice to this quote. Yours truly is also from the same period as all the above legendary cricketers, the only difference being I wished too like them to retire at 40 but that never was to be, for obvious reasons.

We grew up together if I can take the liberty to say so. Just that he grew and grew while we grew. I was 17 when Sachin made his debut in the winter of ’89, to be precise this day the 15th of November circa 1989, and you can imagine the dilemma of a passionate cricket loving fan in the erstwhile Madras at the age of 17 just 4 months away from that one all important exam in life that determined whether you made it to an A grade or a B grade Engineering college and nothing else. There comes along a boy just about your age making a statement that he has arrived on the world scene. Can be intimidating when, after work sheet after work sheet of solving calculus or deciphering the bonding in Organic Chemistry you still didn’t know what lies ahead of you in the next 6 months.

His stay at the crease over the last 24 years has caused many a marital discord at home, mother-son conflicts were plenty, production efficiencies were affected across companies, folks missed trains or flights, candidates arrived late for interviews that changed careers. So these could be blemishes when it comes to considering his credentials before ordaining sainthood on him. There were times he not only controlled the emotions of a billion plus people but also controlled their bowel movements and their bladder functioning. There were days when you were hesitant to take time off when he was playing to relieve yourself for the fear of missing out on an exquisite cover drive.

One thing that sets him apart from the many greats, some even more talented than him, was his self-discipline at his chosen profession and in his personal life. It wasn’t the technique, it wasn’t skill it was sheer discipline coupled with some in born talent that got him to where he reached. Talking about discipline I would like to go back to the much written about series in which he abstained from playing the fatal cover drive that had accounted for his downfall many a times just prior to that particular one. This abstinence by Sachin from cover drives even when a half volley was bowled outside the off stump put him on an orbit above sage Vishwamitra who faltered in his attempt at asceticism at the sight of Menaka. Probably that’s when I guess people started calling him God.

Being served brickbats and bouquets at regular intervals are the order of the day for any sportsperson in India more so for a cricketer, the blame should be squarely on us, the fans. As I am writing this I get a viral tweet that Sachin’s total test runs prior to the 200th test match were 15,847 which happened to be India’s Independence Day. Wonder how much more fanatic can a fan get! The same fans would have thought twice before mentioning this esoteric statistic had he fallen exactly 1000 runs short. We are not a sporting nation nor are we a sportive nation. We create them, we deify them and we banish them almost at ease. Sachin’s experience has not been any different from the rest before him nor is it going to be any better for those who are going to come after him, but the man had his head pretty square and rose above it all like a colossus ending his career blemish less.

Well recently when asked what cricket meant to him he said it was like oxygen to him, sure it was, he came at a time when Indian cricket was almost in an ICU and he kept supplying oxygen cylinders ever since. Thank you Sachin for the lovely moments and sorry for baying for your blood the last two years, after all we are just mortal Indian cricket fans. We are like that only!!!

Iconic Emotions!

There were times in life when you really wanted to express yourself with emotions and these emotions where manifested physically like stimulating the lachrymal glands to secrete tears or follow a complicated physiological process involving the cerebellum and the frontal lobe of the brain to stimulate laughter or simply a warm tight hug that felt good. In college we used to give each other a high five if any 2 of us had flunked the same number of papers those were emotions that showed sorrow, joy and the sharing of both.

The last few days I was hooked onto the new kid on the social networking block Whatsapp and got together with friends who parted ways 25 years back to form a group. We exchanged pleasantries, jokes, life and philosophy but I realised most of our conversations was ‘punctuated’ with funny looking shapes and it was the most intimidating part of the virtual reunion at least for a not so text savvy person like me. I’m not naïve and I know what a smiley is and incidentally that is the only emoticon that I know, the cute yellow chubby smiling stuff that you find everywhere. But what got me writing this piece is that after I cracked a wit in the group I get a smiley with an open mouth and tears and boy sure was I disappointed! I figured out later that it was a representation of laughing to the extent that causes tears!!!

Wiki defines an emoticon (/ɨˈmoʊtɨkɒn/) as a metacommunicative pictorial representation of a facial expression which in the absence of body language and prosody serves to draw a receiver's attention to the tenor or temper of a sender's nominal verbal communication, changing and improving its interpretation.

In short the two dimensional funny looking images that trace their roots to the humble punctuation marks that could make the likes of Shakespeare and co which includes my English teachers in school to turn in their graves at its fate. Emoticons were more an illegal off springs of English and Math in my opinion. How else do you think a colon that denotes a pause, separated from a parenthesis by a hyphen can end up representing a smiling face? Well I can live with simple stuff like that. There are some emotions that are ‘metacommunicatively’ communicated with complex special characters which I might not be able to express in flesh and blood. Do you know that an emotion as complex as ‘disappointed but relieved face’ can be expressed using an emoticon, give me a break, as a small experiment, all those who are reading this, please run to the nearest mirror and show the facial expression that denotes a disappointed but relieved face!!!!If it is anywhere close to this 😥 I will quit this blog of mine. I’m sure most of you will say that it looks exactly the same to save you the ordeals of having to read this time and again. There are even more complicated ones that denote an open mouth with cold sweat 😰, Open mouth I can understand but cold sweat? Well there are many more and I don’t want to look ignorant.

As though the metacomuunicative pictorial was not enough there were these set of abbreviated expressions to express emotions LOL, ROFL, ROFLMAO, LMAO. Growing up I have read the best of Wodehouse and other quality humour never have I rolled on the floor and laughed my ass off, had I done that I would have had a sore ass by now.

It’s ironic that I write this on the day Twitter went public with their IPO at NYSE and did fairly well. Though the emoticons and the abbreviated forms of expression where in use much earlier, thanks to Yahoo and Microsoft via their messengers that popularised it, Twitter was the one that created an entry barrier to expression of emotions via long prose by restricting the characters to 140. But why not, if a colon, a hyphen and a parenthesis which in all consists of just 3 characters can bring a smile to your face then you need not type the boring SMILE that uses up a precious 5 characters.

I’m on the lookout for a Rapidex guide to learn Emoticons in 30 day. Even if I lay my hands on one of them and master it, I would still prefer a warm hug or a palm reddening high five to the ROFLS, the LOLS and the confused cocktail of characters that mean nothing to me.

Emotions are to be expressed not represented.

Pot Philosophy

This is neither about raising a stink nor about being on a high. I was on a sabbatical from all forms of electronic media for the last few weeks as it was getting a little out of hand since the Barkhas and the Arnobs were competing with each other to drill their opinion down my head. So much so that a nervous breakdown was inevitable as a result of breaking news overdose. Thought it best to seek solace with an old friend, the print media.

Picked up the latest copy of the Outlook and walked into the most peaceful part of my house and the place where I get all inspirations from. Settled myself on the throne and started to read the cover story. It was about India's no 2 problem. We are not talking about a deputy to the Indian Prime Minister; even if that was the case it would have been a number 3 problem. It was nice to read that the who's who in Indian politics was vying with each other to stand up to the cause. All along they were at each other's throat as sitting MP's and occasional taking a hit at each other, no, I spelt both words right if you are wondering about a missing 'h' and a ‘s’.

Sanctity and sanitation were no longer at crossroads but the sanctity of sanitation certainly was. The debate over the old saying Cleanliness is next to Godliness was undergoing an image makeover. Political parties across right, left and center were challenging each other to rephrase it, and cutting across party lines and ideologies they settled on a rearranged version. They showed the courage to say Godliness was next to Cleanliness. It might be a small step but certainly will make a huge difference in our efforts to be a sanitation friendly state.

Parryware the legendary sanitary ware manufacturers were the first to position washrooms as Glamour-rooms. It showed the most sought after models endorsing candle lit glamour-rooms when a majority of Indian women had to walk miles to relieve themselves. The kind of evolution that is taking place in the design of cisterns is phenomenal. They have motorcycle shaped designs for the young and the adventurous heart shaped ones for the romantically inclined wonder why you would want to do it through the heart.

Move over the designer ware cisterns. This is the era of innovative Smart Potties. The crown amongst the throne is the one that can be controlled with your smart phone. I mean the smart phone can only trigger the lifting of the toilet seat and the flushing of the cistern and bidet not the urge itself. It doesn’t matter how smart you are or what app you may develop when you got to go you got to go!!! You can flush with, not flush down your android or your ios enabled phones. It can maintain a diary of the music you want to listen to and play it from an in built speaker, depending on the situation you are in it can play a Beethoven or a Metallica.

The sad part is all these developments are aimed at improving your comfort during your stay in there. These days with the foray of international sanitary ware manufacturers making a beeline to tap into the potential real estate market in India, I feel it should be made mandatory as part of their corporate social responsibility to offer at least 1 pot along with a shelter from their basic model for every 50 they sell.

So all of you out there, as you sit in there like androids or monks in deep thought trying to hit upon that game changing idea and run out like Archimedes, spare a thought for the millions of less fortunate who have to walk miles or stand in long queues for the same.

We all know **it happens….but I believe that we as a community can make it happen in a more pleasant way for the less fortunate around us.

The back to school market mania.

The last week saw the reopening of schools after the summer break in the part of the world I live and was surprised at the back to school offers. Newspapers carried entire supplements screaming offers on all the wares a school kid needs.

There were sections dedicated to Pens, Pencils, sharpeners, erasers (rubbers for less initiated ones like me), style statements and gadgets. Why was there a back to school offer on cars by a leading car maker I wonder.

A leading writing instrument manufacturer was promoting a pencil and promising you ‘unbreakable creativity’ with an ABS on their pencils. They call it Anti Break System. I was given to believe that their lead breaking was controlled thanks to a protective coating. Pencils were made out of wood from PEFC certified sustainably managed forests. God knows what it means. The only time I felt a pencil was more complicated than rocket science. Pens were competing with each other on low friction and the meters of writing it produced. One even compensated the flow of ink for the rapid changes in air around, which was some fluid dynamics I thought. They came in shades, sporty, casual, bright and pop style. After analysing a few, the clear winner was a Xylene and toluene free pen that did a cool 1200M of writing and also came in even cooler colours. Whattay design!!!

Another was selling a pen that was fade proof, fraud proof, and time proof. I wonder why they did not think about all these when I was younger but I almost got the answer immediately. Our passions never faded, we were too innocent to indulge in fraudulent activities and some of our memories were timeless.

The correction pens entered the fray as the saviour, after all the low friction, air adjusting smooth writing pens and more importantly your grey cells had failed you. Even these were competing with each other on their inbuilt evaporation system efficiencies.

Now the lead might not break but it sure does abrade away. So don’t we need a sharpener? The sharpener for me was my dad who never let me touch the blade when I was a kid. Well my kids are fortunate because my dad did not teach me how to sharpen a pencil with a blade so I had to buy my kids a sharpener. A sharpener with a built in option to adjust the degree of sharpness and point angle was on offer too.

Well there were offers for designer bags, school wear with ink resistant pocket, anti-bacterial socks and here I sense a small inter industry rivalry. When the pen makers are busy making anti leak pens the shirt makers are designing anti stain and ink resistant fabrics.

We as kids carried nice little bags made of khaki coloured ruck sack material and our back to school wares consisted of a black coloured fountain pen though the more fortunate ones carried a ‘HERO’ pen which had those nice shiny golden caps that sported a built-in filler. The lesser mortals carried the above mentioned fountain pens filled with ink from Bril ink bottles using a filler at home and exactly knew the quantity of ink required for a Maths, Science, English or a History paper. We also had a standby pen in case of any force majeure event. Additionally we carried a Nataraj pencil for all our drawings and a Red pencil that was our highlighter along with an eraser that could only erase pencils markings. So you actually had a small tolerance for error when using your pen and that was the perfection we were in pursuit of. There were shops that could replace nibs, clean feeders and other components of our pen and refurbish the same.

In the same back to school week, I had the privilege of attending a seminar by Mr Anand Kumar of the famed Super 30 Training institute of Bihar which churns out IITians year after year from the lower strata of the society. After his speech and his methodologies I realised, all that a child needed was a good teacher and not the best of infrastructure or instruments.

I wish to conclude by drawing your attention to a reply by a kid when asked what he considered his best talent was that I came across recently. The reply went thus ‘I’m trying to master the art of being good with people’ he said. I’m not sure if he was taught this by his parents which in my opinion was a bad piece of mentoring. But sad to see the world reach a state when 11 year olds think being good with people has become an art that needs to be mastered.

Eerie Economics

I was taught that economics combines both Art and Science. Over the last few weeks the horror that is unfolding in the Indian economy is posing a threat to The Conjuring at the box offices. Theatrical it has been, to say the least… ah! so it’s more of an art. The Sensex was running around like a headless chicken and the rupee staggered down the forex corridors singing a melancholic requiem, occasionally doing a rare celebratory jig. Economics turned eerie.

As a layman who was short changed by Lehman not so long ago I do not know if I should be sceptical at all the happenings around me. Domestic financial planning has become such a conundrum these days that make me miss those sparrows from the TNSC Bank ads of the past.

Fearing a nervous breakdown I tried to stay away from the idiot box where the ‘experts’ analyse the rise and fall of the rupee and diagnose the health of Indian economy. These experts keep referring to the fall out of the global financial crisis triggered by unregulated monetary policies that needs to be corrected by bringing about major changes in fiscal policies which in turn could call for injecting the much needed stimulus in the form of quantitative easing in countries the world over. I have no clue about the words in Italics above. But this was a set script of these analysts irrespective of the organisation they represented. And recently when the rupee touched 68 to a dollar they were wise enough to ‘predict’ it would touch 70. Wonder where they were when the rupee was at 50. You ask them that and they come up with a whole lot of stuff on market dynamics, current account deficits and blame it on Black Swans. Just that, these days the Black Swan events are so common that the time has come to change the colour or rename the metaphor for game changing events. I even refrained from pages devoted to Business, Finance and Economics in newspapers and stopped subscribing to business journals. The unfortunate fact is that Economic news is no longer confined to the inner pages of the newspaper or is a supplement that could be left untouched, but manages to DOLLAR its way to the front pages every other day.

Added to this are the rating agencies whose general ‘standards’ are pretty ‘poor’ keep ringing the downgrade / upgrade bells at regular intervals analogous to school periods. The rupee, stocks, bonds, GDP, funds and the King Khan were all in frenzy to head south. The only ones that ended up north were inflation and Khan’s earnings. Crashes, tumbles, tanks and bloodbaths were the words that did the rounds. You could play and win a depression bingo with these. The antonyms of these words did show up once in a while too but that was mostly during the intraday trading sessions. But what surprised me was the sensitivity of the Sensex, it was behaving like an adolescent with bad mood swings. One tweet from the Finance Minister propels it and almost immediately a moment of nothingness from the PM makes it nose dive, wonder why this happens though, by now the market must have also got used to his silence. The fundamentals that we are so proud of, are they really strong is what I wonder?

As in every story, there needs to be a Hero and so be it in our drama called Indian Economy. Enter the Messiah, Dr Raghuram Rajan, acclaimed of Nostradamical powers of predicting THE crash, now that’s a rare breed among the economist tribe. Most of them I know or heard are skilful in dissecting the cadaver. But I’m not sure if he has used up all his powers of prediction in 2008. He however safely acknowledged he is not a magician nor does he have a wand. What we need, is not a magician Dr. Rajan, but an exorcist who can put an end to this demon that played spoil sport in the India-growth-story fairy tale. Within 24 hours of assuming office and quoting from IF by Rudyard Kipling among other things that I did not understand, the stock market propels and the rupee stabilises….for a day. Communication is the key he said, wish I could communicate in a similar fashion to my bankers and ask them to waive a few EMI’s. Not sure what works in the market, Sentiments or Fundamentals. We keep harping on our strong fundamentals whenever we have an Economic crisis the same way we talk about resilience after each terrorist attack on Indian soil.

For the risk averse financially naïve common man these are hard times. Fixed deposit returns do not counter inflationary trends, aurum throws up tantrums, Equity markets are volatile, stocks are drunk, forex market is on marijuana, bonds are not bonding, real estate is a bubble, and the government is in a huddle, with such a bouquet of misbehaved, ill brought up financial instruments, Can someone out there tell me what to do? Demand daily wages from your employer spend for your food and clothing on a daily basis and get yourself a nice little piggy bank (not a swan shaped one) the ones made out of tin with little lock and key that the good old SBI distributed to school kids of yore and drop in whatever is left at the end of the day.

A MALTAN's tribute to Madras.

As the Madras day celebration is now an extended affair from a day event to a monthly one I thought I should contribute to its history through my history in this wonderful city. I lived in Madras from 1972 to 1996 and all along during this period I never knew Madras Day was on the 22nd of August. I was pretty surprised that the city suddenly thought about celebrating its birthday since 2004 and that’s a clear 360 odd years after its birth. It was so, due to the efforts of a few people which included the likes of the historian Mr. Muthiah is what Wikipedia says and I'm happy for that, since no one better than the respected Mr Muthiah. The doyen who has chronicled Madras history more than anyone else deserves to be credited with the evolution of this event.

I write this because I owe a lot to this city; Madras is what made me what I’m today. Let me first introduce myself, I’m neither a hard core Dravidian nor a part of the much accomplished and more re-known member of the Tambram community that shaped the intellectual and artistic landscape of this city.

I am a MALTAN. There is no chance that you might have heard of this tribe or usage before, since I just coined it as I was writing this piece. No, I don’t come from Malta, I’m someone who was just born in Gods own country, Kerala, but over the years have made Madras my home. MALTAN is a word I coined which could sound more like the anglicised version of MALAYALATHAN which I was referred to, during my growing up days in Madras or an amalgamation of a MALyalee, living, adapting and imbibed in the TAmiliaN culture, just like the way the word TAMBRAM was born. In fact we had a lot of stuff common with the Tambrams except the Non veg part. We were a community that challenged them intellectually and earned our place in the multifaceted society of Madras. We (as in TAMBRAM and us) both belonged to the erstwhile Forward Community as per records irrespective of our economic or social standing, which means we were the only ones to compete with each other when it came to admissions to professional colleges and I still wonder how a SYRIAN Christian could NOT find his way to the list of minority communities in Madras.

The Maltan’s contribution to Madras has been awesome. We played a pioneering role in the economy of the city ranging from tyres, carpets and all the way to jewellery. We also did take part in creating some of the great educational institutions in Madras. More importantly my mother’s contribution was that she managed to teach each of our domestic helps Malayalam but managed to learn bits of pieces of Tamil, while my dad has learnt to read Tamil from all the wall posts of Thina Thanthi and Thina Malar and I can narrate a piece out of Silapadigaram or a few couplets from Thirukural. This is how we have managed to merge with the society. This is what gives me hope of surviving in the Middle East without knowing Arabic.

I deliberately left out a profession practised by the Malayalees in Madras which I felt needs a higher stage than the ones listed above. The term Malayalathan came into existence only due to the efforts of malayalees who set up Tea stalls across the length and breadth of Madras which was further propagated by movies churned out of Kollywood. Any TEASTALL in Madras in those days was referred to as Nair kadai irrespective of whether it was owned by a NAIR or not, just as any provision store was referred to as Nadar Kadai.

Coming to me, I was fortunate to have been brought up by liberal parents who taught us secularism in all its true sense unlike the ones propagated by the vote bank biased politicians of today. We, a family of Syrian Christians lived in a building owned by one of the richest and most influential Muslim family in the erstwhile Border Thottam in Madras with a hard core TAMBRAM family having their roots in the erstwhile agraharams of Kumbakonam as our immediate neighbours who taught me the virtues of Brahmanism and vegetarianism. I fell for their doctrines and displayed the principles during family reunions in Kerala so much so that I earned myself the name BRAHMANAN within my circle of relatives which has stayed on even as of today, though a good Kerala Beef Fry accompanied by Old Monk will top my to-do list any day.

I was even more fortunate to have studied in a school called Christ Church on Mount Road which was located sandwiched between 2 of the most famous cine complexes, the Devi group of theaters and the Plaza, was actually half as old as the city and was founded in 1842, a clear 100 odd years before India attained Independence. It was here the fundamentals of real secularism was taught thanks to the wonderful friends circle that I had from different spectrum of the Religious, economic and intellectual spectrum of the society in and around the school and the teachers. Even after I moved to the so called more affluent part of the city, Besant Nagar I was at ease with the diverse and more affluent version of the Tambrams of Adyar, Gandhi Nagar and Besant Nagar whom I encountered in another great school called St Michaels Academy in Gandhi Nagar.

I could not have earned this experience anywhere else in India except Madras. People might say Bombay or Delhi offers the same, sorry folks; Madras knew and still knows what it takes to play host to a secular community. No particular political party need to take credit for this. It’s just the people of Madras now Chennai that need to be given the full recognition for creating this secular atmosphere.

Thank you MADRAS for making me what I’m today and thank you Chennai for letting me enjoy the same freedom in the city that welcomes me with open arms each time I visit it.

Lungi’s hour of glory!!!

Datuk Shahrukh sensed southern spice (Masala) sells and intends to stay stuck even though a kkkkkiran Khan in Dar sounded and looked much better than ‘indha madhiri appon irrupanna’ at the climax in Chennai Express.

King Khan looked more like King Kong in this one. Doesn’t matter with the ancestral looks, Khan ended up laughing, laughing at us all the way, to the coffers.

I know enough has been written about Chennai Express over the last few weeks and I might be the last one on the block. However, I felt I should offer my 2 cents too on the blogosphere, where else will I rant about my contribution to the 250 odd crores that found its way to his kitty.

This blog is not a review of Chennai Express but just focusses on the USP of this movie the Lungi dance and the positioning of lungi that contributed to the success. The bored economists having nothing much to write about since the Indian rupee had turned a chronic alcoholic, hitting a new high every day, started to analyse the impact of this movie on the business of lungi’s bottom line, just that the bottom line needs to be always up literally, if the lungi needs to be in the limelight.

The humble lungi a rectangular piece of cloth, all of 2 M X 1.15 M that covers the modesty of a man and much more, was an inseparable piece of cloth that doubled and tripled as a single bedspread and as an aerator, during the torrid Madras summers and as a comforter during the mild Madras winters, or even as a shade during mild drizzles. We did not need quilts for the winter all we needed was our unassuming lungis that looked like Scottish Kilts when we wore it all folded up with pride especially if it had Madras checks as its design. I remember during my growing up years when all of my cousins or a group of friends had a today’s equivalent of a sleepover we used to wake up in lungis that did not belong to us and were not the ones that we went to sleep in. Thankfully some sensible soul (looks like I’m on a ‘S’ trip since I started writing this) managed to invent the version of the lungi where its ends were stitched together which transformed a 2 dimensional rectangular piece of cloth to a 3 dimensional cylindrical structure that could save you from many an embarrassments the morning after when the unbridled end went astray.

The lungi was to the South Indian what denim was to the cowboys of the Wild West. Sad that Microsoft prompted me to use the upper case for W for wild and west when I typed them together and not for the S and I of South Indian. Sadly my friends, the lungi are a minority.

Now to the lungi dance in Chennai Express. Having a song in Hindi punctuated with Thalaivar, Rajini fans and the likes is a sure recipe for success at least in box offices down south. I will just take a couple of verses from the song and analyse it. Here it goes….

‘Moochhon ko thoda round ghumake
Anna ke jaisa chashma lagake
Coconut me lassi milake’

Moochon…give me a break Khan or the Khans haven’t seen anything growing below their nose, rather immediately below their nose for ages and ‘Anna ke jaisa chashma lagake’ was a failed attempt by King Khan.
‘Coconut me lassi milake’ can only come from a someone called Yo Yo Honey Singh who happens to write the lyrics and score music for this song.

‘All the Rajini fans - Thalaivar
Don't miss the chance - Thalaivar
All the Rajini fans - Thalaivar
Don't miss the chance - Do This!
Lungi dance, lungi dance...’

This was the USP of the movie.
Now coming to the most controversial part.

‘Lungi ko uthana padega
Step karke dikhana padega’
‘All the Rajini fans - Thalaivar
Don't miss the chance - Thalaivar
All the Rajini fans - Thalaivar
Don't miss the chance - Do This’

This is what I call the “Choli ke peeche Kya hai” equivalent of a song. I remember the calls to ban the song when it was released. Now read the above lyrics in conjunction with the chorus. This should have been banned in my opinion. Why should the Rajini fans want to see what’s down under.

At the end of the day, I'm happy that the Lungi was endorsed and adorned by SRK and the pretty Padukone. It will certainly go a long way in catapulting the lungi to the cat walks. Imagine the Khans, Padukones, and the Kapoors walking the ramp in lungis designed by the Manish Malhotras, the Satya Pauls and the Sabyasachis. Hopefully they in turn lead to the Versace’s, the Calvin Klein’s and Dolce & Gabbana’s launching lungis as their fashion statement of the season.

X, Y, Z and me!

I belong to the peer group who turned 40 over last year and this. I somehow get a feeling that we belong to one of the most fortunate generations. Though we broadly fit into Gen X we were lucky to have joined them towards the end of it with an overlap with Gen Y and have children who teach us what Gen Z is all about through their actions. I will try and elaborate on the fortunate part since I’m sure most of my friends from other generations might not agree with me. Though I write this predominantly from an Indian perspective, global events and changes during this period definitely made an impact on how we were shaped. Please note the population in their 40’s right now is the protagonist of this piece.

Most of us who are part of this ‘generation’ which I intend calling Gen X’ were born between late 60’s and early 70’s and were in all likelihood born to parents born in the late 1930’s and 1940’s the transitional generation between the traditionalists and the baby boomers, a period I believe, was one of the most defining periods in world history. The end of the great depression, the beginning and end of World War II, the first use of Atomic weapons are some of the events that would have influenced the character of any individual being born and brought up in the period. From an Indian perspective they were born just around the time India attained independence and were at the right age to appreciate freedom and understand the values of living in an independent country imparted by their parents who probably went through the struggle. They made it a point to impart the same to their offspring.

Though each generation will have its own share of experiences I believe the generation I’m talking about were fortunate to enjoy the right experiences at the right time. Be it technological or political. On the tech front, computers were born with us and internet made its appearance just when we were around 18 plus, an age when we could handle and enjoy it responsibly. Politically the Berlin wall went up when our parents were around 18 and came down when we were around 18. They were mature enough to understand the agony and we were mature enough to understand the ecstasy of this event. The interesting part is that the fall of the wall coincided with the advent of internet. The melting of the Iron curtain, official end to cold war and the era of globalisation all came about when we were wise enough to accept, appreciate and evaluate their pros and cons. We grew up dependent on the newspaper for our daily bite of information but were also open to accept information in the form of ‘bytes’ later on in life.

From an Indian perspective we were around 18 when India was opening up to the world and were full of hope at the opportunities ahead of us. We were the flag bearers of India into the millennia. The great Indian dream was just beginning.

We are able to appreciate the smaller, finer things in life because we were witness to the evolution of the television in black and white, colour, plasma, LCD and LED. We used the floppy, diskette, CD, DVD, USB, memory device and the cloud. We read newspapers and we read news from apps. We walked, cycled and biked to school and now appreciate the best of the cars in town. We grew up eating plain dried fish with rice but along the way learnt to appreciate fine Sushi and Sashimi. We have seen postmen bringing tidings of comfort and melancholy. We also have active email accounts through which we still receive the same. We had pen friends and we now have friends who write on our walls on facebook. We grew up appreciating music across genres. We began our day listening to suprabathams in the morning, felt at peace with the muezzin’s afternoon call to prayer and went to bed hearing the church bells toll irrespective of our religion.

We were in my opinion the last of the GENERATIONS. What came next were only short periods of experience with no influence from the decades before or after and the worst being the current Gen Z who in my opinion are only as old as a mobile phone or a tab model? I’m sad about this since I have my own daughters and a whole lot of nieces and nephews belonging to this period. Wonder what the generation beyond Z would be called. Since unlike the X and Y that spanned decades the Z and above will only span months hence the need for more innovative variables to name them seems inevitable.

The dog dogma!

Annual vacations to India can be a revelation of sorts and mine was no different, the rapid changes to culture and lifestyle surprises me to no end. As years go by I feel that I’m more of a tourist than a son of the soil and indulge in all kinds of touristy things. The one thing I notice is that, the haves and have-nots divide is widening. The weekend morning paper is flush with ads on Sunday brunches costing around 50 $ and above per head, while the same paper also talks about government subsidised canteens serving meals for less than 10 cents per head. This is not a rant post by an NRI or an effort to define the poverty line which I have left to the eminent alumni of Cambridge like Sen, Bhagwati et al to bicker over. This is an effort to unravel and understand the changes happening in India. Though I have spent my childhood, adolescence and youth in India, I somehow get a feeling of disconnect with the country. What surprises me, is that as someone who has made it a point to spend 30 days every year for the last 17 years and still very much connected in every way to India can feel the gap growing by the year.

Mall culture has come to stay, wish the authorities linked the approval for malls with laying and maintaining of roads within a radius of 30 Km (or if that is too much to ask for, at least 15 Km), I’m sure with this they could increase the foot fall to their malls and also fulfil their corporate social responsibility by reducing the carbon foot print on the foot falls. Moreover the roller coasters in their play areas would be more fun than the ones (Read Roads) that were used to reach them. Recently a McDonald outlet in one of the malls in the erstwhile communist Kerala got into the record books grossing the highest first month revenue for an outlet opened anywhere in India. The comrades who were once proud to bite into their Parruppu Vaddas and Kattan Chayyyas as they discuss socialistic reforms will now have to settle for Big Macs with Cappuccino to discuss on how to stall the next capitalistic venture.

I should say the only day that I felt like a vacation was the day of the Hartal in Kerala. It was very kind of the government to grant me the much deserved break. Having nothing to do, I googled the difference between a Hartal and a Bandh and realised that the former enjoyed the luxury of being declared just with a 48 Hour notice, but all I got was 48 Minutes to muster up a couple of beers to keep me company on my forced day of rest.

Apart from the snippets above what follows is a little thought provoking anecdote from my recent visit.

During this visit my daughters and I had the fortune of being introduced to a brilliant mongrel or a beach dog that had made the Elliots beach its home. When my sister in law called out his name, Castro, the black dog with white spots came running and was overjoyed to see her after many months. I was told that this dog was special; nobody knows who christened him Castro, probably one of the ‘socialist’ who frequented the beach did the honours. He does have friends from all walks of society and I was told, when one of his friends move out of the city he or she makes it a point to introduce him to other friends….or so the legend goes. He stayed with us for the time we were there and refused to let other dogs or ‘strangers’ close and guarded us as though we were his own. He drank tea, which made me wonder if this was a reincarnation of the pre-independence memsahib’s pets. The best part was that he walked us across the road and stayed back and ensured that we were well on our way back and then left. The values that this mongrel displayed was amazing and at the same time made us introspect. These are days when human values erode faster than the roads. It was one of those rare occasions when you ask your kids to learn from dogs.

Ironically right opposite the beach that was home to ‘Castro’ was a premium pet store which claimed to be into Pet Management, Events, Training and Premium Store. I realised that the widening divide was not limited to humanity alone but to the canine community as well.

Connectivity – The new addiction!

I’m actually writing this from on board the new Boeing Dreamliner, 41000 ft. above sea level experiencing the luxury of connecting to whatsapp and what not. Technology has pushed boundaries in all dimensions. We are always in awe of it but really wonder if this is the best thing to have happened to mankind. When I say I don’t think so, I know, I will invite raised eyebrows. I have been observing people over the recent past. Humanity in general seems to be slaves to ‘smart’ phones / tabs and the likes and in the process getting less smart by the day.

The so called social networking is creating a kind of social vacuum and social insecurity in my opinion. Networking it is, but the social part is suspect. This was fittingly highlighted by a recent joke that was doing the rounds on Social networking sites…A teen posting on twitter…The internet was down all day, spent time with family. They seem to be nice people...is what it said. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was not a joke but a real posting by some teenager somewhere. There is a vacuum these days at restaurants, airport lounges and even at home with people too preoccupied with their tabs or theirs phones the customary smile or even a courteous salutation is almost extinct. Recently when an old colleague of mine and I were having lunch, his phone beeped he told me that it was just a reminder for his next meeting and went on to sadly confess that he was no longer the owner of his diary or his time these days.

Connectivity is the new addiction. The flashing arcs that represent the strength of connectivity on our phones / laptops or tabs are our strength and security these days. We have reached a stage where we can stay without food and water but not without internet connectivity. As I’m typing this I have lost mine on the plane not because it’s not available anymore but because the time I paid for has elapsed and I don’t intend extending it. Hence, though I’m writing this at 41000 ft. I might post it only when I touch down.

If connectivity is an addiction then Facebook is the ‘LSD’. This is a stage where you see posts about a toddler calling out papa or mama for the first time. The parents are so excited because both of them were at work when this happened and their tech savvy maid at home captured it on her smart phone and sends the audio file via ‘whatsapp’ to her memsaab who in turn ’shares’ this joyous event with the world and ‘tags’ her husband who in the middle of the meeting gets 35 ‘likes’ and 70 ‘comments’ congratulating him on his little ones first uttering of papa. Later that evening they posts pictures of the dinner celebrating the event which is again liked by hoards of ‘friends’. I’m not sure if the quintessence of the event was lost in the entire social melee. Amidst all this sharing and tagging I wonder if the parents really spent quality time with the kid or really gave it a try to prod the kid to address them. How many of those 35 likes and 70 comments really meant it? Where they fulfilling a virtual ritual? I recently saw some ‘likes’ on a post on the death of a loved one? Their phones must have beeped and they religiously carried out their ritual as responsible social network citizens by ‘liking’ it!

Twitter is the other, the tequila of social networking. These are the ‘shots’ version of social networking, 140 characters is all you have to express yourself, be it messages of joy or sorrow. You get a high shooting off your cuff. This has spelt doom to many politicians’ career. Even though some of them were educated in the best of institutions in English literature they were not taught precise writing of a political discourse with a limitation of 140 characters. Mind you, the space you don’t have these days also accounts for a character. Sad they are referred to as tweets, the irony is the infrastructure that facilitates these ’tweets’ has almost driven the original tweets of sparrows and other birds to near extinction.

On the other side after accessing the internet from 41000ft I plunged to reality reading a news article on the nature’s devastation in Northern parts of India. Sad that technology that enabled me to send pictures to my loved ones of the in-flight food served was unable to deliver food to people stranded at much lesser altitudes.

My feelings on the achievements of humanity fell from a zenith of 41000ft. to a nadir of helplessness to foresee nature’s fury. Realised that even after all the advances technology has made we are all mere mortals, yet to fathom Mother Nature in all its glory or fury.

Hey Teacher (& Parents) leave the kids alone!!!

I haven’t written in a while. During this period the world around me went through a lot of changes, Rupee touched 60 to a dollar, gold plunged to an all-time low, Comrade Narayanamurthy was back in Infosys trying to salvage the company he founded by following the Congress policy of, East or West, in kith and kin we trust! Advani flip flopped and flopped for the third time around, once bitten twice shy, they say, but thrice my friend, is almost back in a sty! The reputation of the gentlemen’s game of cricket took a beating when it was compared to a game of chance and not skill. Cricket is no longer associated with the Lords but to Las Vegas

Coming to what made me write this blog after a while. My second daughter all of 5 came back from school with tears in her eye having lost a recitation contest. Though I’m not one of those pushy parents who wants to see his daughter cornering glory, I was devastated, because I had taught her a poem about 10 little tortoises. The poem begins with what 1 little tortoise can do and then goes on to say what 10 can do too in a language 5 years olds understand. It was, what I believed, a perfect amalgamation of counting and literature and very age appropriate. She had delivered it well too.

She lost out to a kid again all of 5 who recited ‘Daffodils’ by William Wordsworth. ‘Daffodils’ is what I learnt in Class 10 and in which I had trouble understanding the following lines even as of today… ‘In vacant or in pensive mood they flash upon that inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude’. Can you imagine a 5 year old narrating this without understanding the state of being in a vacant or a pensive mood or knowing what an inward eye can see or experiencing the bliss of solitude!!!

The parents have encouraged rote learning in this case and the poor child has simply followed it. I can still see the joy & smile in my daughter’s eyes when she enjoyed learning stuff like
……
Three tired tortoises
With feet feeling sore
Along came another one
And that made four.
Four tired tortoises
Just trying to survive,
Along came another one
And that made five.
Five tired tortoises
In a thirsty fix,
Along came another one
And that made six.
…..

My daughter comes to me and says ‘I did not win because I did not say a poem that was long enough with big words in it’ .By big words she means Pensive, Solitude and even bliss. She asks me to teach her poem that is long and with big words in it the next time. I don’t feel sad for my daughter, but for the little girl who won the competition because she was living her parent’s dream and not hers.

This is not a cribbing parent’s sob story of sour grapes but that of a person who believes that the kids these days are being subjected to a different kind of slavery. I’m sorry if that was a harsh word to use but that is what I feel.
The kids these days are living a life not knowing what boredom is. I was bored to hell growing up as a kid. I had nothing to do and hence I was ‘thinking’ on how I can counter boredom. A kid today has his or her day charted out on his / her dad or mom’s outlook calendar with a time limit for everything, even a spare time is well defined. He or she has been denied the joy of ‘thinking’ what to do with their spare time simply because he / she has no right over it. You might have heard of phrases like bored to death or even at some point of time plotted to kill boredom in your childhood, but this is an era of the death of boredom, the death of innocence and the death of nascent creativity. If I mention all this to 5 year olds today, they might even ask me if I have an app for all these.

So all you teachers and parents leave the kids alone…They don’t need no education but some guidance to make them better citizens wherever they live...

Teach them not to be just another brick in the wall but the very foundation of the future!!!

The kid who drove a Ferari!

This story is about a kid who drove a Ferrari and the monk like me who shuns a Ferrari and other equally expensive worldly stuff simply because I can’t afford them.

As I typed the above title in MS Word, Bill (Gates) warned me, that my knowledge of life on the fast lane was in the red by highlighting Ferari in red…I believe you can see that. I spelt Ferrari with an ‘R’ less. I might have been literate enough to know the 3 R’s of literacy. Though, I still have no clue how the second and third R’s found its way into the group of Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. I thought that an additional R in Ferrari was as redundant as the W and A in the evolution of the 3 R’s. A red Ferrari might be impressive but not a misspelt Ferari. That’s sacrilege.

This story is not about miss spelling Ferrari but on how it has become a brand associated with kids, and no, I’m not talking about their merchandise or the toy car replicas but the car itself. I got to watch a recent video of a kid less than 10 driving a Ferrari on youtube, I have not published the youtube link on this blog in an effort to project myself as a responsible citizen who is against promoting underage driving (to be read as too freaking jealous to post). I realised Ferrari is not any more one of those fantasy cars that you dream to own if your father is rich enough to own one and generous enough to let you drive and even more richer to own the road on which you get to drive it. Driving a Ferrari is no more a dream; a rich irresponsible dad with an equally spoilt offspring can make it happen.

With great concern I sent the link to my nephew who happened to live in a city close to where this blatant driving display was performed. The reply I got from my nephew was even more shocking, he put forward his arguments on the case to me a la Grisham and explained, that what the kid of 10 or less did was technically not illegal in the Indian court of law since according to the motor vehicle act of India it was a punishable offence only when the act was carried out on a public road and went on to point out to me that this episode happened within the confines of a private property apparently owned by the father of the accused / suspect (If I have the liberty to address a juvenile delinquent as such). Not sure of the legality of this argument but I was pretty impressed. I wished I was as aware of the legal nuances as my nephew when I was stopped by a cop within the by lanes of the erstwhile Blue cross road which technically was also part of a private property and had to cough up INR 50/- for riding / cycling my TVS 50 about a quarter century back.

He also went on to add more salt to my wound by sending me a few links of the same little kid driving a Range Rover Evoque and more links to the other cars from the kid’s father’s stable. Impressive it was. But a kid getting to drive a Ferrari and an Evoque when he must be barely 10, wonder what will motivate him to aspire for in the remaining 5 odd decades of his life going by the average life span in India. As a 15 year old I did start with a 50 CC and had something to work on for and managed to keep adding a few hundred CC’s over the years.

War, Peace & Pigeon poop…

Well, a recent holiday to Cappadocia in Turkey was more enlightening than any other trip of mine. During a hiking tour we passed a place called Pigeon Valley. What I heard from the guide was some serious trivia. Pigeons were revered for their poop. He went on to explain Pigeon poop burglary was so rampant that guards were employed to secure pigeon poop. I hadn’t heard this before. Thought it was one of those fast ones the tourist guide was pulling on me. Back in the room after some ‘research’ I realised what he said was indeed true. Roman soldiers in the past used to guard them to mine them later. Apparently pigeon poop is rich in Ammonium Nitrate and could be put to some real lethal use and was commonly used as gun powder. Trigger happy could well be poop happy.

Just the thought of pigeons suffering from dissociative identity disorder was scary, the symbol of peace, the messenger of information and the war monger within were the multiple personifications of the humble pigeon. The sad part was, their fairer cousins, the doves were not as scandalous as them. Wonder if the ammonium nitrate concentration level in the dove poop varies from that of the pigeon's. Would like to be enlightened on this by someone who knows about this. However, I intend not to move away from flight path of a pigeon anymore, instead try and catch all the poop I can and mine them later on. Sad to know that I had wiped it off my head and shoulders without knowing their worth all these years.

I know this wasn’t one of those blogs to be read at breakfast,lunch or the dinner table, depending on the time zone you are in. But as they say shit happens and if it is from the pigeon, go ahead and have a 'blast' this weekend!!!

In pursuit of yogic nirvana...

When you are past forty your wives suddenly realise that THEY need healthy husbands or rather more conservatively, A HEALTHY HUSBAND around when they turn forty too, as a result of which I was forced out of bed one fine winter morning and dragged to a yoga class my wife had enrolled me into without my knowledge. On meeting my guru I clearly told him that I was not in pursuit of any packs since I had all my packs tucked in one and the only six pack I knew was the one I emptied on weekends.

What followed were weeks of aching joints caused by efforts to reach out to unexplored regions on my body (to be read as touching my toes without bending my knees), should you have any misconceptions on the regions I was trying to reach out to.

Crash course on asanas followed, and soon realised that I was half an assana all these years for not having led a healthy lifestyle. What followed were lessons on Tibetan five rites, Sufi Trance and then a briefing on aligning your life to the Meridien Organ Clock. For those like me who heard these terms for the first time, the explanations follow, but those who know what these are already, thank you for dropping by, as I figure out that you are one of those health conscious folks around.

Thanks to my guru I learnt that my body had various spinning psychic vortexes and as the spin rates reduced with aging, ill health surfaces. So in order to keep the spin rate high I had to spin. Ironically, I’m someone who earns a living as an Hydraulic Engineer telling people around me that Vortices are bad and they need to be broken or slowed down to increase the life of a rotating machinery like a centrifugal pump, Here I was being taught on how to increase the spin rate of my psychic vortex. I didn’t have the courage to tell him that after 7PM most of the nights I was on a perpetual spin and followed the motion of the earth and the universe with all earnest (though at times did try to change the course and failed).

So, as instructed I began to spin and soon realised the effect of physical spinning was way difficult to handle than the C2H5OH (In the Spirit of Chemistry!) induced spin I experience on occasional evenings just that the occasions happened every evening. Well I would have been happy if I was challenged physically with the spinning alone since that was something that I was used to. I was asked to immediately follow it up with 4 other rigorous exercises under the influence of the not so spirited spin, this I was told was what the Tibetan monks did and that I would attain monk like qualities. All I wanted was a Ferrari and never sell it and here I was being trained to be monk like. I loved the Old Monks though; they are the ones who taught me to spin the first time around.

Following this was my course on meridian organ clock where I learnt about the time of the day when my organs are up and about…I meant my liver, lung, pancreas, heart and the likes. Learnt that my liver was most active between 1AM and 3 AM, forcing me to take a tough decision on doing away with my late night binges and start as early as possible.

I should say that the one fine winter morning changed the course of my life and now I lead a life of asanas, pranayamas, Tibetan Rites and wake up to the alarms of my meridian organ clock. My advice is, follow your wife to the yoga class you are dragged to…and be sarvangassnically (Sarvangaasana = An aasana (posture) where you do a shoulder stand) in English to be head over heels in love with her for showing you the ‘steady’ path to a rejuvenated life when you spent wasting most of it trying to crack the relationship between the spin rate and the bonding between the right ethanol - water mixture.

The 'whr to go' illness...

Couple of days back I woke up with a hangover, I thought, maybe I had overindulged in seeing off the year that just went by or it must be the age playing games. Staggered out of bed with a heavy head. I was actually feeling 'nice' though. After walking around like a zombie for a while I realized that it wasn't as nice as I had felt in the first instance.

Visited a doc who after hearing me out and after a session of diagnosis of making my head follow the snap of his fingers from left to right making me feel like a pup under training, told me gravely that I was suffering from vertigo, I explained patiently to him I didn't know 'where to go' or where I was going and that was a symptom and thats why I was there. He cleared his throat and repeated vertigo and went on to explain that it was all about imbalance of the ear. The happenings around the world that I was hearing over the last weeks were bad enough to throw any sane person off balance.

On reaching home I could hear the strains of music from my daughters room, on quizzing her she told me that the album was from One Direction. Here as I entered directionless with my newly acquired knowledge on what vertigo was, felt my daughter was actually pulling a fast one on me. It was not to be, it was just pure coincidence and this was the name of the new boys in town of the boy band genre. Looks like these boys were better at least as far as their name selection goes in comparison to their predecessors who were more confined to the back streets or the ghettos...some hope I thought, these guys at least have a direction.

Stability is such an overused word these days, be it the economy, politics, business or even life, every one craves for stability and yet a tiny labyrinth and a few milligrams of fluid imbalance in your ear can change the confident swagger to a directionless stagger. We hear day in and day out the importance of so many vital organs and the path breaking innovations in medicine around these organs and very little about tiny little stuffs like the ear labyrinth which are equally important. But guess these are natures little signs to keep you grounded, while you might think you know where to go in life, with a momentary vertigo attack you might not actually!!!