Horses for courses!

A state that is home to the so called Silicon Valley of India has been witness to the dance of democracy the last 48 hours. The dance has been all but graceful, plunging the constitutional pundits into a huddle.  Though this is something we Indians have got used to irrespective of who is in power, sadly highlights the grey areas of democracy in a diverse and populous country like India.

We thump our chests with pride when we are referred to as the largest working democracy, largest yes, but working I am unsure. We sure are diverse and thanks to our colonial teachings on leveraging the multiple  cast / tribe / regional and religious divides, it makes the working of democracy all the more difficult. That is why a fragmented mandate turns the dance of democracy into a bacchanalia.

As a citizen of the largest democracy I have heard this term Horse Trading from the time I was old enough to read a Newspaper and follow politics. The origin of the word goes thus - courtesy the wiki.

Horse trading, in its literal sense, refers to the buying and selling of horses, also called "horse dealing.” Due to the difficulties in evaluating the merits of a horse offered for sale, the sale of horses offered great opportunities for dishonesty, leading to use of the term horse trading (or horse-trading) to refer to complex bargaining or other transactions, such as political vote trading.

We the people are the protagonist in the theatre called democracy and it is we the people who should choreograph the dance of democracy, but sadly with our numerous differences we are unable to evaluate the merits and elect our representative who later turns a horse to be traded. They end up being traded at exorbitant sum which is always proportional to the complexity of the fragmented mandate. The masters who trade them are extolled for their political acumen and compared to Chanakya sadly this comparison maligns Chanakya’s famed political dexterity.  

Democracy is all about people and not about horses. Thorough bred horses fetch a fortune and let’s not compare the illiterate opportunistic elected representatives to those lovely creatures of pedigree.  Let’s ensure when we exercise our franchise next, to house the political stables with horses for courses and not horses to be traded.

It’s all about the jeans!

Air travel in the past was a mode of travel confined to the rich and famous, and if at all one managed to afford it, they would make sure that they were donned in their Sunday best as they walked into an airport or boarded a flight.  Though the world has come a long way since, the skies are now as crowded as the gullies of an Indian metropolis, the old school patrons like yours truly still take travelling by air a little seriously when it comes to looking your best. So, during a recent trip to Europe I slipped into my relatively new & favorite pair of jeans.

Walking through the plane’s aisle I ended up tearing my jean at the thigh. As soon as I realized it, I was absolutely horrified at the possibility of having to walk through two international airports wearing a pair of torn jeans. There were days one used to rush back home from school or office when a part of your attire had given up at the seams.

As I got off the plane I walked coquettishly trying to hide the damaged portion of the jean. A quick glance around the airport made me realize that almost every second person passing through the airport had encountered an even worse mishap with their jeans. The denims were all ripped in different shapes and forms, and the so called rich and famous were flaunting their ripped jeans with pride. I developed a complex again when I realized mine was an accident and was confined to only one thigh; the others sported a more symmetric damage which actually made them look good.

Growing up in the 80’s I have worn different kinds of denims, stone wash, acid wash and even one with the complete lyrics of a Deep Purple song hand written on it, and yes some were torn at the knees but that was caused by natural wear & tear. We never bought a branded torn jean then, so when my daughter wanted one I was aghast at the possibility of having to actually pay for a torn jean. Its then I was given a crash course on the denim jargons I am supposed to use.

I was told it’s not torn… It was called ripped and the more expensive and the more torn it was it had to be addressed as distressed. In fact I have a better name for a recent distressed version that is doing the rounds on social media valued at 168$. It could be called STRANDS…there are a couple of strands left of what, was once a denim.

The irony is that the celebrities today who wear a distressed pair of jeans paying a fortune for it are all depressed while we were quiet happy growing up wearing hand-me-down jeans that were torn at the knees not as a fashion statement but as a result of over wearing.

The evolution of Gyration

Circa 1988, all of 16, I ended up in a theater watching a Hindi movie with a few friends; probably the first time I watched a Hindi movie on the silver screen. Sholay might have been up there but for someone who was baptized in the Kollywood land it was sacrilege to watch a Hindi movie.  

The Heroine was a fresh face who  had a very not-so – filmi-name, 80’s was decade when close to 13 ladies made their debut into Bollywood breaking the hegemony of Rekha, Hemamalini, Zeenat, Shabana, Smita Patil and the likes. This movie was the break this actress was looking for and her dancing skills catapulted her to fame and stayed queen of the industry for close to a decade.

Having been so conditioned to the Sri series (Sreedevi, Sripriya, Srividya, Srilatha et al) of actresses in Kollywood it was a welcome break for me to see a dance performance by this relatively unknown actress who would go on to be part of the history of Indian cinema.

Life and the world moved on since that day in 1988, we went our separate ways; the actress went on to make a name for her while I went on to try and make a living for myself.  That performance stayed however in memory for the gyrations and the graceful moves and above all the music associated with the song. It was the so called catchy performance which in today’s cinematic jargon gets referred to rather crudely as an item number.

The song and the dance unfortunately was replicated by an expat actress recently 30 years down the line in a movie officially as an Item number, watching it made me realize the transformation  the art of music and dance had undergone in the last 3 decades.

The radius of gyration had increased exponentially while the bending angle had moved from acute to obtuse, the epidermal exposure was directly proportional to the elapsed time period and above all the first part of the song was missing…3 decades back.. It began with a conversation that went thus…

Dancer: Namaskar…kahiye kya sunengey aap!!! (good day! What would you like to hear)

Audience: Arrey!!! Pehley yeh kaheye kahaan thi aap? (Oh tell us where you were all these days)

Dancer: Mein…Mein karr rahithi kissi ka intezaar… (Me? I was waiting for someone!)

Audience: Khon hai wo? (Who is that?)

Dancer: Wo jissey mey karthi hun pyaar!!!  (The one that I am in love)

Dancer: Aur jissey karthi hun minnethe baar baar! (And to the one whom I keep requesting)

Audience: Kaisey? (How is that?)

Dancer: Aisey ( Like this!!! Ding…Dong Ding…Ek Do teen…)

Well, the song and dance had a dialogue like prelude that gave the audience an interactive experience that made them remember this number for years to come.  Unfortunately 3 decades down the line the cultural landscape does not allow people the time to enjoy a work of art at length and hence the fast paced version did not resonate with me.

I might sound old school and so not in sync with choice of the Gen Z when it comes to music and dance. But it’s left to each one of you to watch both the version below and take a call.

PS : The direct links are posted below. Its possible you might have to log on to YouTube to watch the Gen Z version.

Checked out of privacy!

Alas! The world has woken up to the importance of privacy and suddenly it is the most sanctified. Last year we celebrated the 13^th birthday of the social media platform facebook and there was so much zeal over the network turning a teen. With the teen years, come the tantrums and that’s exactly what we are seeing today.

They are suddenly finding themselves out of favor with the majority and public in general are accusing it of sharing their data. Sadly the root cause does not lie with Facebook alone; we the people too have a certain share in the mess we find ourselves in.

Facebook opened up a culture that replaced the conservative closeted diary entry habits with the writings on the wall. The everyday life happenings were graffiti. Our neighbors who had never rung our door bell in ages were suddenly poking us to take a look at their holiday pictures from their La La land. We were in turn poked by our wives to take out a loan to counter the neighbor’s poke! The parallel rapid developments in data speed infrastructure & the exponential advancement of smart phones features further fueled man’s voyeuristic pursuits.

Then came about the check in culture, even if one waits at the car park of a 5 Star Hotel  to pick up a rich cousin one could ‘check-in’ to the 5 Star hotel much to the envy of friends far away. Every third person became a food photographer and some dabbled in writing and published it to the world like yours truly. 50 year olds behaved like adolescents who had a new toy in their hands. The world went berserk stoked by the human greed for attention. It was a mass hysteria of Mirror! Mirror! On the wall, who is the most famous of them all? Mark just facilitated a platform, we the eco-system created a behemoth out of it and now we cry foul.  

We kept shouting out to the world our joys, sorrows, emotions in our pursuit of virtual ‘likes’ sympathies and shoulders. We did this by writing on our walls and on the walls of others little did we realize the literal meaning of the ‘writing on the wall’ which simply meant a premonition, portent, or clear indication, especially of failure or disaster:

Unfortunately like all vices adopted by humanity we went overboard with this one too and sadly social media had words like addiction and rehab soon associated with it. The days are not far when we could see statutory warning on the ill effects of Social Media and asking us to use them more responsibly.

PS: Most of you might read this blog via my Facebook page and the writer is not responsible for the profiling you may be subjected to, as a result of reading this.