Dadikaka, we miss you.

'Jug-jug jiyo, beti'... who'll say that so lovingly each time, Dadikaka?

A completely unexpected joke each time - where will the 'each time' now come from, Dadikaka? And your infectious laughter?
Those wonderful paintings of yours - who will now paint them? That fabulous Hindi hand-writing of yours, that we so painstakingly tried to copy, the shuddha bhasha - and the values we imbibed in your presence....
That absolutely amazing voice of yours - really, the side of you that the world is usually aware of, and that youtube does have some bits of - where did it go now, Dadikaka?

Our earliest childhood memories are so wrapped up in your enveloping warmth - you taught us what unconditional love is. That we unconsciously imbibed and have hoped to have replicated. And more than anyone else, you loved this name we called you by - Dadi-kaka = Bearded Uncle.... Dad's brother with a beard.... One day, after a decade of having called you by this name, Ma tried her level best to get us to call you 'Uncleji'. She said it does not sound good to yell out dadikaka in a crowd, making everyone turn around in shock - to a figure who is so completely revered in public.
Uncleji sounds respectful, she felt.
'Nahi bhai!' you said (thankfully!).
'I will always be Dadikaka to my Munnu-Mitku'. And Dadikaka continued to reign as ever.

You brought spirituality to us - by just being you.

I know what you will say now... stop regretting. Look ahead. Jeeti raho, meri bachchi....
And I suppose we shall do so. Go on in life. Enjoying the silly and unexpected twists of life.
How many people are lucky to have had your electric presence in their lives anyway? To be touched by you in this lifetime, to be blessed by you... And to now regret that we did not meet often enough.... When did we grow up and become so preoccupied with our own lives, Dadikaka?

Tera Raamji karenge bedaa paar, udaasi man kahe ko kare, you sang this song that Bappa and you put together. Way way back in the 60s.

Bappa and you - that is another amazing story. Of how you met. Unbelievable.

Lots and lots of love, and eternal respect, Dadikaka, we adore you...

Munnu-Mitku, behan-bhai
Abhi bhi yaad hai, woh butterfly

(Ah, Dadikaka, while the bhajans you wrote yourself were out of this world, your poems on us were pretty gross ... and you knew that!)

Aaja, Khinchle...

Watched Aaja Nachle, about 'small town Shamli' - in an asli small town Solapur. A town deep inside Maharashtra - no flights, no three, four or five star hotels. One where, 'families with ladies' were allowed to enter the cinema hall first ('As in Titanic?' quipped the hubby), and the balcony ticket cost Rs. 40/- (also price of hiring the autorickshaw for an hour). Solapur welcomed the entry of Madhuri Dixit on screen with whoops of delight and wolf-whistles. Later, collapsed into laughter everytime we were shown the two locals of Shamli sitting down for a drink and pouring a bit into the tin cup of the third hanger-on (Why did they find this so funny? Who knows... but hey, it was crazily infectious :-) ). An audience WANTING to love this movie about their amchi mulgi coming back, and soon, an audience let down completely, resulting in an ominous quiet very soon, as the story got - not curiouser and curiouser, but 'boringer and boringer'.

Aaja Nachle was like falling into the hands of a bad dentist who's taking his/her own time to khinchofy your teeth.

So here was one more movie with the trope of a Bollywood small town - a vanishing point of low buildings beyond the hillock, a place where announcements, we were given to believe, still needed to be made from a bhonpu-cycle-rickshaw... the geography always looks suspiciously similar in all these places. What else can we expect, built as they all are under the sky of the Film City property in Goregaon Mumbai, where if you turn the camera an extra inch either way, you get to see the high-rises of the suburbs.

Ill-thought out storyline of half-baked aspirations. Worse, the makers forget that small towns whether quarter or half baked, do rest their beliefs within the ideological framework of the 'Indian Family' - much more into 'shame' and 'values' than their more metropolitan counterparts - for that very reason, the protagonist comes across as one that not the hip youngster nor the wannabe of the city, and not quite the small-towner will relate to... a carelessly carefree woman, following her own instincts. Instincts are shown to be proven wrong - from a small town perspective anyway, when it is carelessly thrown in, that she got 'divorced' (bad girl!), and one who comes back running at the bidding of a long forgotten 'guru', but never the parents, presumably because they did not yell out for her.
And why Laila-Majnu for God's sake! as the story-within-the- divorcee-story? In 2007?

Well, it didn't seem to weave any magic in a small town, that's for sure. Not sure if the folks in metros will throng the multiplexes situated within shopping malls to see this sanctimonious story that is built on the theme that small towns should not get this shopping mall. Oh boy.

Ugh, and why does every movie have an audition sequence nowadays? Was intriguing in RDB, just about OK in OSO but by now in this one, it is like mildewed roti being served on a platter. And the only actor who manages to step out of the pasteboard boundaries set for them is Irrffaaan or whatever his spelling goes nowadays. An unscrupulous businessman is an ubiquitous Indian phenomenon, and he makes it spine-chillingly so. The rest are just not there anywhere in the story. Kunal, Konkona, Raghubir, Ranvir, Jugal are not different from the hundreds of 'Shamli' residents who suddenly step out on stage during the grand finale ('yeh kahan se tapke' asked the Solapur audience to one another).

And will YRF please explain the most inexplicable point of all? How do you get the pulse of India so right with Chak De, and so devastatingly, off-kilter in your very next?

God. Not again....

It is one thing to read about folks with fanatic beliefs (or even see them on strident TV). It is quite another to run into them out of the blue, in an absolutely average and otherwise normal day-to-day life.

Within the past one month, have jaw-droppingly met two human beings - one an MBA classmate of my husband (from IIM-B, OK?) who I was meeting for the first time, and the other (another day) a senior marine engineer I was introduced to, at a dinner party.

Each convinced about their personal way of looking at the world. Of complete distrust of the 'other' religion they had constructed in their minds. Equally distrustful of anyone's pluralistic credentials. In the midst of a staid dinner-do, with its polite guests, to have an oh-so-polite row with a stranger, was to me, a strange, disorienting experience by itself. Also made me aware of how easy it is for all of us to fall into a routine and pattern of our everyday lives, with little need to meet / interact with folks from outside our usual ambit (thus, we usually spend all our time with folks who have similar thoughts as ours). And then, when you do meet someone this way, how easy it is to find not just a healthy difference of opinion (that makes life interesting actually!) but someone completely completely polarized in his / her own set beliefs. [I expect these two chaps felt the same way about me..]

Coincidentally or not, I am currently reading Richard Dawkins 'The God Delusion'. While I am not an atheist like him, I am intrigued by his logic. So far (page 156 now), his definition of God - the Christian / Islamic / Judaic / Hindu one - one in a human form, who is supposed to listen to your prayers and even answer them by favoring you - in these respects his distrust is well taken. I have zero patience with a karva-chauthified country... But I can't quite figure out what it is with RD's own strident all 'Reason and Rationality' tone of voice and 'evidence and proof' fundas. We are splitting hairs, methinks, re: God.

To me, God is the name I give the awesomeness I feel - of the Universe, the very fact that we exist, that we question our existence, that we 'love', we 'smile and laugh'. It is in the sheer diversity of the immense yet puny planet we inhabit, a world where even chaos theory has a logic of fractals behind it. In short, a world that never ceases to amaze, in its order as much as its disorder.The formless 'consciousness'. That was there in the era of the dinosaurs, now and long after we'll be gone.

Where miracles are not just in the mysteries left to be solved, but the miracle of the possible - the three airplanes I can now see out of my window, waiting to land over Mumbai airport, in the 'sms's that I can receive at a moment's notice, from anywhere in the world. That is akin to reading someone somewhere's deepest recess of their minds. In everything that we have 'created' where nothing existed earlier.

It is even in the exasperation of meeting folks who dig in their heels, and believe all 'proofs' proffered by their own kinds, are right, and nothing you can say can anyway change their already-made-up minds. :-)

Reminds me also of Andy's Christian sister-in-law. Andy is one of my corporate clients from the UK, and he mentioned one day, how she does not believe that we human beings 'evolved' from apes such as orangutans or chimpanzees, for like she says 'have you ever or has anyone ever , ever seen even one of the thousands of apes in our zoos becoming a human!?' :-) :-) Ahhh....

At yet another do last week, a gentleman (who loves conundrums) posed this query to me: How come he could recall at least 5 occasions in this past year, when in a gathering of 20 people, two had their birthdays on the same date and month... and what is the statistical probability of something like this happening, he asked, when each could have been born on any of 365 different dates. He said he threw this challenge at me since I am a Stats student (was too, in my undergrad!)

My reply - not sure if it was to his satisfaction - was this: you and I have just met today, and here are 15 other people around us. With no birthdays matching. This will be promptly and conveniently forgotten by all of us. We human beings are social by nature and meet folks ALL the time. Everyday. But when on the rare occasions, birthdays do match, it sticks in our mind. This is psychology. Not statistics.

Now, the question that I am intrigued by is: What was the probability of running into such well-educated fanatics who believe so totally in their own version of the world. On two out of three social dos, in one month. One of them, in fact, disbelieved all statistics... census or otherwise, and actually indicated to me that he thinks Muslims outnumber Hindus in India due to their 'high birthrates'. How did I know we Hindus were in the majority anyway, he demanded.

Well...
This reminds me of Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot. As quoted by Dawkins. 'How can you doubt', Russell asked, 'my suggestion that between Earth and Mars, there is a china teapot circling the Sun in an elliptical orbit'?
And any proof you give, will always be 'non-proof', you see, for I can always ask 'How do you REALLY know it is not there, eh?"

Pandeji, Purchase Power Parity etc.

Pandeji has just delivered some piping hot samosas and glistening lavang latas. On this bright and clear Diwali morning. The samosas are just as we like it - light, crunchy, not over-spicy and not too large. And the LLs melt in your mouth - not too sweet, not too soft.

This old man appeared out of nowhere at our doorsteps around a year ago, with a large white-cloth wrapped hill of degchis containing various mithais, with a word-of-mouth recommendation from a distant neighbor. I refused to buy anything initially and quizzed him with what I like to believe was a hard-nosed attitude - 'who cooks this? how can you just expect me to buy your stuff when I don't even know you? where do you stay' etc. I never got any satisfactory reply and warned him, I won't buy it next time (and bought a lot of stuff anyway).
By now, months later, of course, it is like 'oh, it's you - give me six samosas and twelve lavang latas, will you?' Without having figured out his antecedents yet.
And the total? Rs. 60/-

Nowadays I tell myself about how tickled I am at this wonderfully sublimated globalization. That we can partake of such prices at my own door, in the so-called gated community of Hiranandani Gardens. At around a dollar and a half, in the Y2K plus 7 year of 2007, a wonderful snack for the entire family. AND a couple of friends who dropped by, over chai.
All this talk of purchase power parity - how does one compare a Pandeji across the world anyway? What exactly is the equivalent of 6 sams plus 12 lls in the West?
The istriwala just delivered 10 items of clothing. Ironed at a price of a total of Rs. 20/-: This is 50 cents in all. The fellow that washes the car charges Rs. 200/- per 'bada gadi' and Rs. 150/- per chhota gadi, per month that is - and makes an income of over Rs. 5000/- working from 5 am to 8.30 am, across a few homes. He then works full-time elsewhere 10 am to 6 pm, and is seen as one of the successful guys in his circle.
How can we measure parity for something only we have and understand, as part of our economy? How can we put a price to the slogging put in? Should we be celebrating this 'value-for-money' we get or wondering seriously if this is to be seen as 'exploitation'?

And then there is the 'bauni' factor. Pandeji claims to begin his day's sales at my place (hubby dearest believes dryly, that this is his stock line-of-trade). But all said and done, the thing is you don't want to not-bauni someone. If the first customer brings him luck, let the luck come in, we say. That's our pride in our peculiar Indian 'culture' again. How can you turn away such an old man who's earning a living anyway? (my family pegs him at a doddering 80, he says he is 64).

And what the heck. It is like harking back to the times of our childhood when we lived in the now - fast-vanishing 'middle-class' padas where hawkers announced their wares, each with a lilting and individual call of his/ her own. When the poring over the goods with the neighbors' helpful comments was an essential part of our socialization. When they all aided in the bargaining along with us. When it was essential to crib about something or the other to the hawker. The rising prices. If the prices were good, then the quality ('last time it was not at all like you used to make it').

So. One of these days, we may all be poisoned by Pandeji. That's what say the cautionary doubters of today. Or worse, he may be thrown out by the 'gatekeepers' before we even get to know he had arrived.

And that is when we shall be totally McDonaldized - No taking pity. No bauni (imagine, the guy in the McDonald's counter telling you 'aaj aapka bauni hai' and then doing one elaborate circling of the cash register with your 100 rupee note). Or imagine this: Telling McDonald's "last time your ruthlessly 'always-the-same' McChicken burger was not at all like you make it'!


Ah, Globalization - here we come.

The Vanishing Lakes, Trees, Clouds, Rivers...

Nature.

In the wild. In human nature...
Metaphor. Metanym....
Out there.
In me...


WE BANISHED NATURE

We banished Nature, made it bleed -
As if Nature ever had the need
For us.

Clouds drift slow across faint stars
As the moon's bright light falls onto rocks,
And out of all our feverish minds
Flows the stench of a terrible pox.

We banished Nature, sowed dark seeds -
As if Nature's darkest deeds
Could not reach us.

Wild waves roar rough upon the breeze
As birds take easy wing,
But all our spreading cities bring
A creeping dread disease.

We banished Nature, banned its creed -
As if Nature ever had to heed
Fool us.

Mountains call, sweet waters sing,
There's beauty found in everything,
But we keep chasing bitter dust
In our crazy, grasping lust.

We banished Nature in our greed -
As if Nature won't be freed
From us.


Dreams hang soft upon the air,
There's silence gathering everywhere,
Yet we haven't got a care
About the damage we have done.

We banished Nature at top speed -
As if Nature cannot easily lead
Us to oblivion.

There's nothing now that's left to die,
Just smoke rising in the sky,
And if you listen there's just a cry
To show that we have gone.

Copyright © Richard Macwilliam

(And, thanks Sir at IIT for the pointing out
of this poem,  the  'deictic',
now that I've learnt tis new word :-)
In relation to the trees
in the campus.)
'Banish' is a deictic too, no?

But then, Nature shall have the last laugh,
as she will say
'I still rise'...  as did Maya Angelou...

As time will surely tell. Over a period of eons...

ROFL - Rowling on the Floor, Laughing....

Kind of late in the day to do a 'deathly' review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? Or is this the right time, now that the initial euphoria is over, I mean?

Here's a book and a series that has involved the world real-time into a fictional world. In the past ten years, we have kept pace with the author's imagination - happily gone wherever it has led us. I recall coming back from a trip to the US, telling all and sundry here in India, you've got to read Harry Potter. I'd bought five copies of Chamber of Secrets (that was the one out those days) along with Philosopher's Stone, as the de facto gift for everything - birthdays, weddings, home visits, whatever. And trying to explain it was an amazing children's book series though it was me recommending it; also a book for all ages...

JKR's confidence by now, her seventh in the series, borders at an arrogance - that we Harry Potter lovers would be waiting with bated breath, would've read the books in the right order, and know all about Polyjuice Potions, Expelliarmuses, Disillusionment Charms etc. No need to explain and no need to try and come up with any other new surprises that a magical world gives full leeway to its maker to bring about. Recall the amazing idea of Tom Riddle's diary? Pensieve? Time Turner? And in this Deathly Hallows, forget coming up with the new stuff, she seems to have kedged a line off Pulitzer winner Toni Morrison's Tanner lectures of 1988 ( wherein Toni refers to one of her novels as 'Book can be seen to open with its close'). Uh oh...
Kavya Vishwanathan, you are no longer alone. One, a does-not-know-any-better teenager and the other, a nouveau billionaire with a host of secretaries to do the background reading up, and provide the appropriate warnings wherever necessary.

Also why try to keep the book lean and crisp any longer, when the world - mainly consisting of children following the proverbial Pied Piper, fawns over every extra word put in? So we get 600 plus pages of a vista that seems either to take its readership for granted ( it meanders along even while the book seems to move at breakneck speed) or made to order with a Warner Bros. future for itself - wont this Big Battle look great on screen? Same with the Gringotts seige that is suspiciously like an entertainment ride in one of the modern 'Disney Worlds' (can already imagine this ride in the future 'Harry Potter World' coming up). Humour is absent even when the Weasley twins are around - and often, when we are exhorted by the author to LAUGH since the characters on the pages are laughing till their bellies ache or something like that (page 119: they were all laughing so much...) bewildered we smile at the joke that escapes us.

And she puts Deaths (the capital D is my interpretation), into the story with the attitude of - 'haven't I told the world I am writing for a mature world and not merely for children'? Haphazardly, and helter-skelter. When a Weasley brother dies - come to think of it, one of the ones we loved best all through, it is with this same sanctimonious underlying feeling - did you think I'd leave you to get away scot-free, she seems to be saying to the hapless readers, caught in the throngs of the imagination of a You-Know-Who author who has risen Phoenix-like in the past decade, to capture and ensnare our minds. There is no real mourning for this character. And no naming of children after him either, in the nineteen years later last chapter. With all the other dead guys having got their place in, with the names of the next gen, this most deserving bro is left 'out in the cold'! :-(

A last chapter that seems to have a close-to-reality feel paralleling JKR's personal life - as the brood expands, and the babies start to grow. A fellow blogger Uma Damle has written it well : the unexpectedly expected ending rather than an expectedly unexpected one. Also, wonder what a feminist reading of the book will come up with... Mrs. Weasley, Hermione and Fleur do all the cooking as and when there is any cooking spoken of, and the men - well, they go out to work. Also, in the last chapter, please note, it is men who do the driving, no mention of women, however 'brainy' they may have been through the long journey so far.

Anyway, the wait - from July to September, was worthwhile. I did not have to buy the book after all :-) My nine year old niece Ishani has kindly lent her personal copy of the book to her much much older aunt, just a few days ago. To me, this has been a well-timed borrowing along with being down with a viral attack ... in other words, no rapid reading, and consequently, more time to mull over JKR's plans for our imagination.

And a glimpse into hers too. Why in the world does she want us to accept that if a Horcrux has a bit of your soul, you don't feel a modicum of anything while it is being destroyed, but just sharing a thought within your mind, like Harry does with You-Know-Who, is excruciatingly painful.

Or why she believes that a mom can protect a child only till his 17th birthday. Is it because the law so decides in this non-Muggle world? The eons-old maternal instincts actually follow the bureaucratic decree of current times!

Perhaps, what does it matter, eh?
While the Galleons roll in, into the Gringotts of the Muggle...
ROFLOL.

Chak De India

My eleven year old daughter’s obvious delight was infectious. Ultimate compliment to Yashraj films is now paid: She wants to ditch basketball, that she is pretty good at, and go for hockey. And loves the idea of bashing up the 'bad guys'. At McDonald's no less, her mecca of gourmet food.

Am impressed with Yashraj’s finger on the Indian pulse of today:

• Pride at firangi lehraoing jhanda
• Our cultural symbols e.g. we value and respect age, little matter if its incomprehensible to others : The coach of the international team asking, during a match, in frustration: ‘Which one of them is Didi?’
• Bharat is a word consigned to the history bin. It is 'India' all the way.
  
• Girls who at last look endearingly normal and not the Yash-Chopra-filmy looking
• There is a time and place for romance – and it is not during the ‘winning that is everything’. Same goes for chiffon that gives way to khadi-types sarees.
  
• Women stating their wishes and needs – that men are beginning to pay heed to, but it’s a long haul yet… (Indian Men versus Women - Nah, women can't win!)
  
• Recognition that Madrasis is a phrase we use to club Telugu+Tamil + Malayalam+ Kannada in one; that we think of those from the North-East as ‘foreigners’; that we have new states like Jharkhand. But then, ultimately, in yashrajese, the North still rules... Punju sounding ‘Chak de’ is the phrase to go with. While some of the girls have been allowed to keep close to their real life names, Sagarika Ghatge becomes Northy Priti Sabarwal.

How many heads were needed to create an Indian Political Crisis?

The 'burning issues' we desis face... Ram setu et al!

Hopelessly proud of my nephew-in-law Vikram's talent.
Do see his blog 'point blank' - http://pointblank2006.blogspot.com
A staid TCS engineer when otherwise occupied...

RGV's Aag is a success...

Was reading Sidin’s blog ( http://sidin.blogspot.com)– his hilarious take on RGV's Aag.

Here goes my theory about a movie that one just MUST have an opinion about...

I can’t quite recall a period in the past two or three years when someone, somewhere was not carrying a story on it. The movie has actually succeeded in what the movie industry is conventionally here to do – provide entertainment. And how. Not just for a few hours, but over a period of a few years.

Let me theorize without ever having seen the movie (and God forbid, ever having to see it), that RGV who I’ve never met (and God forbid... ), has always been made out to be this supercilious and arrogant son-of-a-gun who ignores every single tangible individual in his life - his sister, his actresses & actors, and the media goes adoringly hysterical about a guy who is so atypical of the cultural norms of seeking social reassurance. Well, once in a while, it is within the realms of this new quasi-reality that the director must get his diabolical come-uppance from those who actively partake of his life, so freely supplied, as much as his movies, that one buys tickets for.

‘Reality shows’ have gripped the nation. The media definitely, but even the producer-director allowed themselves to be carried away by their own hype of build-up. The Reality was whatever was the media representation of the movie representation of a movie made in 1975, which was a representation of an Akiro Kurosawa movie. The Quasi-official truth Q = r of r of r of R.

So finally, the co-conspirator media, feeding and fanning the fires of stories of the remaking of Sholay turn into perpetrators, and cannot contain itself at RGV’s misfortunes of a movie gone dud. It is time to be the vultures to the kill (and blogging fits in nicely in this scheme of things as well) to pick the bones of RGV's A dry, at leisure.

In this culture industry , his 'Factory' made Aag cannot die a quick death, as long as it is not allowed to rest in peace. It's having a very successful debacle just like its long build-up.

So How Do You Respond to that 'pesky' call?

‘You bloody f&*%# b*&^%##, go jump from the window, that's what I like to say’. This was intoned by one of the distinguished guys, salt-n-pepper hair et al , with a great deal of relish, in a perfect staccato public school accent.

To which the other guy in the golfing attire responded. “No, yaar, for me ‘You dare call me again and I’ll have you a r r e s t e d’, when said menacingly, works best”.

We were in a Club in South Bombay (roundabouts here we say South Bombay, never South Mumbai), where a cocktail conversation was in progress.. This was about that unsolicited sales call received yet again on the cell phone. From banks, credit cards or insurance companies.

But, hold on....

In all likelihood, weren’t these very same corporate honchos, or their MBA pals heading these companies? I was curious. Had they ever received a call from their own bank / credit card/ insurance division, selling it to their own Big Guy inadvertently?

Sheepishly, one of them admitted, yes. Worse, it had happened while traveling internationally. This was received with much glee by the others, in the party.

And out there, the souls in the BPOs making the calls, have the same letting-off-steam sessions with one another. I was at one such place in New Delhi doing a study on something or the other, and in the open plan office, one guy who had just been at the receiving end, put his phone down and mimicked loud laughter. The next two quickly waited till their own calls got over (next 10 seconds), and in the cubicle, with low voices asked ‘kya kaha usne?’… What did he say?

‘Yeh wala naya hai. Bolta hai, pichhla boss ka number deta hoon, uska phone laga, chutiya’. ‘This is a new one. Says, I’ll give you my old boss’s telephone number, call him, you bastard’

What they were doing was, chalking up the responses, and by chuckling and sharing it with one another, reducing its potential sting. This was a necessary survival tactic to be able to make the hundreds of calls they needed to, all through the day. Being at the receiving end of a steady stream of invective was the rule rather than the exception. Not very different from the Club set, who were using this occasion to say the unmentionable loudly not just to the telephoning persons, but later, to one another also. A chance that the usual ambience belonged to, rarely gave, in the polished lives led. This was the 'carnivalesque' time obtained, when they could truly let their hair down.

And just like we all recognize the call that needs to be given a complete ‘put-down’, from the real bank person we need to speak to, urgently, the folks making these calls have their own systems too, to figure out which way the call will progress. Both ways, it is just the first few seconds when this direction is worked out. Do we modulate our voices to be welcoming while receiving that call? Or should we be suitably brusque? What is it in the intonation that we quickly recognize often in a split second? Is it the singsong chanting style of talking (irrespective of whether we are being exhorted to go for that credit card or insurance, in Hindi or in English – my friend tells me that in Bangalore, it is even in Kannada nowadays) that sounds so pat and standardized? Is it the way they jump in and start to speak 30 words in 10 seconds? Is it that they call just when we’ve found that rare moment to snatch a snooze in the middle of the day?

Once I began mulling over this question, I decided to allow the next pesky call a longer stretch than usually given, before I finally put myself on the ‘Do-Not-Call’ list. Strangely enough I did not get any such call for over a week (moral so far: If I had only sought that next call, I may have been able to avoid it altogether).

‘Good afternoon, this is Sonal, I am calling from Standard Chartered Bank…..’ came the much sought after singsong voice this morning.

‘Oh, hello! How are you’ I said, delighted at the opportunity presented.

Silence… even the pesky caller must have got alarmed. She had her own template that helped make a judgment of the ‘client’ and I think my response did not fit in with the usual ones she receives, and that they in the BPO cubicle, have learnt to laugh over/ ignore/ hate.

'Yes?' I said most encouragingly, 'You wanted to sell something, didn't you?

'Yes', she said somewhat doubtfully.

Hmmm, must be a new recruit. 'Yes, tell me what are the details', I repeated encouragingly.

'You have a credit card with us, and based on your payment performance, we wanted to upgrade you....' again her voice petered out.

'Go on' I said. Her voice had not yet perfected that absolute singsong tone that five thousand calls in two weeks can bring. I pegged her as being in her first week at her job.

continued on page 3, column 2.....

nah - to-be-continued …

Dancing Through The Minefield

Ann Kolodny: The minefield is the male fear of sharing power and significance with women. Once we deactivate its components, we can ‘dance through the minefield’.....

The essay through an anecdote from Mumbai, India:

This week’s Indian Independence Day celebrations in our building society:

The Chair’man’ of the society decides to make the announcements to those assembled – around 50 to 60 adults, more or less equally divided by gender. Also some 10 to 15 primary school-age kids in attendance - older children are away at school for a similar celebration.

He calls upon the women thus: ‘Now that the Pratibha effect has happened, I request one of you to come forward for the first time, and hoist the flag’… and urges Mrs. Khandelval as the eldest among all to come forward and do so. By all accounts, he is extremely pleased with himself, at making such a timely and what he sees as a popular statement. And he feels justified, when many of the present women giggle.

With the building society 7 years old, and with both Independence Day as well as Republic Day celebrated, this is the 14^th occasion of flag hoisting, and I have just realized that in a residence of a 100 apartments, with an equal number of men and women, it is the first time a woman will hoist the flag - since she has been invited to. More so, it is being proffered as an honor. The men have deigned to bestow the honor and accept the presence of the women now that ‘Pratibha Patil’ is the new Indian female president. There are also a few snide comments among those present, on whether she as a person deserved to be the president, or whether she is just a ‘rubber-stamp’ president.

Later, some patriotic songs are sung lustily and loudly by all, men, women, children… Sare jahan se achcha; ai mere pyaare watan…. Chhodo kal ki baatein, kal ki baat puraani….

And finally, the same Chairman continues, with a wide smile, ‘And also due to the Pratibha effect, we can assure you that the woman’s role will not be forgotten – we have some breakfast that is being served for the first time’, and everyone then makes a beeline for the free food served.

Let us look at this through the lens of Ann Kolodny’s essay Dancing through the Minefields :-)

1. As long as there was no such announcement of ‘let a woman hoist the flag’, we were all equal through the past few years. There was no history per se of an inequality of genders. Every flag-hoisting occasion, some person was called upon to do the needful: a visiting dignitary, an older resident, the building committee members, and it was never ever interpreted in terms of gender. But that just became sidelined, with the pronouncement of this ‘being the very first time a woman may please come forward’. The past was fictively imputed as a place where women did not have a place or a role (although the women had actually been actively present all through).

Ann Kolodny’s proposition number one: There is no ‘really was’ in history – it is what we impute it because we need it for now. We need to utilize the past for a better understanding of the present. (Thus there is a continual reinterpretation of the past to suit the present)… there is no way of proving or disproving the author’s intentions….

2. The songs that we sang so full of pride, make no sense to the younger generation born in a post-liberalized world. This is a gen that belongs to a globalized world, and has access to technology which knows no borders, speaks a common language (so which then is the ‘pyaare watan’?).

When we sang that most beautiful were your mornings and your sunset the most colorful (sabse pyaari subah teri, sabse rangeen teri sham), also our salaam to the winds that come from your heart (tere daman se jo aaye, un hawaon ko salam), we were harking back to a time when patriotic songs created a fervour that also had an implied ‘other’ – an unnamed enemy.

Instead of churning up emotions against some ‘enemy’ we are now happy enough to have the children imbibe feelings of nationhood. So that, as they grow, they unconsciously listen with pleasure to other such songs. We hope we have taught the how to of appreciating this genre, rather than the song by itself (that really by itself, makes no sense to a child belonging to the 21^st century globalized world).

Proposition number two: The same text can lead to infinitely different meanings at different times… according to our own changing assumptions, circumstances and requirements. (it is often a fairly unconscious process – when we are young, we learn certain interpretative paradigms. And we actually delight in the interpretative strategy than in the text really)…. We are unable to distinguish what we read versus how we have learnt to read/ canonize.

3. When the chairman says ‘You ladies can bear testimony that now that the Pratibha effect is here, it means you are also served breakfast’, someone could point out that it is not the fact that breakfast was served due to the presence of the women which is to be noted, but that families have landed up in high numbers, due to the promise of a free breakfast, that is the important point!

In other words, we read the same point made, but from a different / perhaps even wider perspective. Even more of an indictment was the fact that in the home of the chairman, his wife has been unable to complete her MA degree, due to lack of support from the men in her family – her husband, her dad in spite of wanting to do her higher education some 15 years after marriage. Underlying feeling : ‘what need do you have for this degree anyway? You need to stay at home, stay safe (it’s an unsafe world out there) and look after the needs of the family…. And if women were being presented as the experts in ‘cooking’ roles – thus the served breakfast, it was something the men were seeking to perpetuate, to keep society intact, from their perspective.

Proposition Three: When we evaluate in a certain way, we need to be aware of the inherent biases and assumptions that way of reading entails. In other words, we need to question our context of judgment. This will not diminish our reading, but will enhance it via becoming part of an altered reading attentiveness.

Getting 'Bangalored', getting 'BillGated'

I overheard this angry phone call while on the Staten Island Ferry that my daughter and I took, to look at the Statue of Liberty.

The American was unable to use his credit card and was trying to get it reactivated asap. 'Listen, this is the 10th call I'm making. Bangalore is completely, totally, phenomenally useless, I've called god knows how many times already. I am running out of cash and you've got to do something', he said desperately.

And so, Bangalore was painted at one stroke as worthless (and thus, India? Or is that just my uppity Indian perspective?).

What an intriguing line of thought that opens up a whole range of possibilities on how nations and cities get perceived in this post-modern world.

Funnily enough, I had had to make a similar 'ten calls or more' just a day earlier, in relation to activating the Windows Vista package. On a spanking new HP notebook that was supposed to have had this pre-installed. Like some unaccompanied piece of baggage, I was passed on from section to section (including the disembodying experience of talking to a bodyless voice, or should I say, a simulacrum of a woman who asked questions I needed to voice-answer. It is called something in the new-fangled terminology of nowadays. And let me not go off on yet another tangent of what happened when the simulated voice and I were unable to 'communicate' with one another ). A few times, I actually got through to flesh and blood humans at the other end - 'Good Afternoon, this is Prashant', or 'Vinita'... while for sure, Prashant and Vinita were actually in the middle of the night. Incidentally, Microsoft plays it safe, the voices stick to Indian names and not some fake Westernized monikers of 'Percy' or 'Vin' or something. I was even bounced over from back office to back office: Microsoft to HP to Microsoft to HP once again, in the process going from Bangalore to Kerala to Bangalore to Kerala - I know because I asked whoever I was speaking to..

At no point did I write off Bangalore or Kerala. In fact, my increasing grouse was always against the 'Big Bill' who I felt ought to have made the access to his Vista far simpler and less temperamental, even as he continued to amass his zillions as the world's richest-getting-richer man.

And so. I come back to my original thesis. The perennial relationship of antagonism and ambivalence between the 'colonizers' and the 'colonized'. We continue to live in a binary world of the enlightened West versus the ever- ignorant desis - here, Bangalore; the civilized folks at the center versus the savage and marginal Johnny-come-latelies who have learnt to speak English, the 'rich-getting-richer' First World versus the 'emerging, constantly and perennially emerging (but never quite emerged) Third World, even as we march forward in a globalized world that stays up at all hours to 'synch their times' even if not their attitudes.

Whatever happened to the much touted hybridity and 'multi-vocality' that the 21st century was supposed to be the harbinger of?

Jetlagged,

Piyul

Prateek, Natalya and Nastassia's Poconos dacha - happy times spent here!

AT HOME OUT OF HOME

Did you feel 'at home’ last time you were in any hotel?

Any hotel you go to nowadays, 5 star, 6 star, 7 star, 3 star, in India or internationally, it strives to make you ‘feel at home’ while you stay 'on work'. That seems to be their singular aim, or so they all like to believe .

Isn’t that an anomaly? A hotel is a hotel and a home is a home and never the twain shall meet. At least, not the way the hospitality folks are currently going about it. If I suddenly found a chocolate or a rose on my bed at home, just when I was ready to hit it bone-tired, with a card that said ‘Good Night’, I would first go check the temperature of my spouse. Then have a sleepless night wondering what happened. Likely, he would do the same, if he did not rightaway get a heart attack at finding said card. Perhaps it is different in other homes, who knows. My thoughts are basis sample of one.

Take the DO NOT DISTURB sign... Where is it that you are most likely to see this, in your life? In the hotel rooms you are passing through. Of course, to keep out unwanted knocks. Yet, how many people know you in this faceless hotel anyway? (Unless it is some company convention at the hotel, and this is the only way we can get our revenge on rackety colleagues). If it is the laundry guy or the guy who comes to clean the room, why can’t the system recognize that this is an unnecessary knock EVEN WHEN THERE IS NO ‘D N D’ sign outside the door.

I mean, if towels / laundry was needed, the guest would’ve asked for it, right?

And again. Where is it that this sign is least likely to be seen? Outside your home main door. Imagine putting a ‘Do Not Disturb’ outside your main door. First, my neighbour, who is also my friend in need, is going to get miffed at this weird notice. Each friend and neighbour is going to take it personally , that it was put solely to keep THAT person away. The quickest way to lose friends. Suicide in a collective culture. And we also do not truly want to turn away that important caller, perhaps the courier, even all those bills with last dates for payment coming up. The concept of the post box in which letters are 'dropped' having become defunct some while ago. No postman brings anything important that does not need an acknowledgment signed, for some reason.

A friend of mine, now at the highest possible echelons of his company, orders ‘ ghar ka dal-chawal’ when he stays atthe fancy hotels in the world, and is proud that the regular hotels cater to it too. At a pretty hefty price charged separately (I gagged when I heard it cost equivalent of Rs. 2500/- in one place), but so what, the company is paying, he says nonchalantly.

Precisely my point. If you really wanted to endear yourself, hotel dearest, when you know he is a dal-chawal guy, why not make the just like mom makes it dal-chawal ‘on the house’ and gain the best possible brownie points you ever could?

'On the house' is the quickest 'At home' feeling I can think of.

Piyul

Do you eat the omelette with the yolk in it?

I have figured out a new way to figure out if we are middle class or upper class in India. That MR agencies have yet to include in their surveys.

Do you eat the eggs with the yolk or without the yolk?

Am always impressed with the celebrities who speak of egg-white omelettes they eat in the mornings as covered in every interview by every newspaper's Sunday editions. (Wonder why what celebrities eat is of such interest to us aam aadmi log?).

What do they do with the egg yolks, I always wonder.... put it in a separate dish? chuck it in the garbage bin? give it to the dog? the maid perhaps? apply it to the hair?

And don't they have moms??

One Sunday early in the day, suitably impressed with the picture on the centrespread of a newspaper and write-up, I attempted to make this omelette. Two egg-whites, carefully removed, going by what those with the great hot bods eat. My mom who happened to be around, was scandalized. Why are you removing the most important part of the egg, she demanded. (For generations, good moms were those who gave the egg-yolk to their children lovingly, and kept the sad egg whites for themselves - of course, we are talking of boiled eggs here, and here I was, thinking of junking the central part altogether... my daughter, as it happens, dislikes eggs, so I couldn't even claim some lofty ideals for myself)

I never did get out of that one. As it happens, ended up eating two omelettes. One with egg-whites, followed by the one with the egg-yellows.

And so.

I am convinced. It would be interesting to see how many households in India would not mind eating only egg-whites, and chucking the yolks altogether. It is not the fancy gaadi we drive, or the cost of the apartment we live in, that indicates our 'class' in India. It is the day we'll eat the yolk-less omelette regularly, with the little pinky up in the air. Only then will we shall graduate to belonging to the middle class se oopar ki class. For that'll mean, not just some wannabe nextgen but the entire family convinced of the need to do the 'white' thing.

THAT is what the DTCs, the Tag Haueurs, Lear Jets and the fancy holiday destination brands need to figure out...

Piyul
;-)

Bakhtin and Blogging

He would hate blogging for sure.

Mikhail Bakhtin, that great thinker who died unheard in 1975, believed in the 'naked immediacy of experience' - the molten lava of events as it happens. Not the symbolic representation of one's own experiences as a blog can at best capture. So.

I am in tune with his perspective.

How can the abstract 'word' in a blog capture the centrality of everyday life? Why even try to eliminate the complexity of the everyday world?

Look at the ipod (or its predecessors, the walkmans). Makes the individual into an isolated disembodied spirit- almost a ghostly, illusory reflection of the 'self'. Living in this world yet not in it, living in a bubble of oneself's point of view. The 'i' of oneself is omnipotent in this worldview. 'i' will talk to you, 'i' will listen to you.

The 'i'... it is like its maths abstract representation. The square root of minus one. Unreal. Not existent.

Give me the dynamic, restless creativity of the human being any time, ... the solipsistic world of the blogger is a bit bothersome. Where the dialogic direction is so formalised and disengaged.

My friends Boil, Y2k and Raping... Why do cell phones not spell Anil?

India is one of the largest cell phone markets in the world. Makers are bending over backwards to gain a share of this large humungous pie.

All want to ensure how to make the customers happy. All interested to know what makes this fasttrack consumer tick...

Yet, why is it that no one bothers to find out the most common names in this billion plus country? While texting messages, I can spell all names prevalent in the West, using predictive text, such as say, Jonathan or Mariana.

And there must be a few thousands of Jonathans and Marianas in India, for sure, in our so very plural country.

Even the one single George Bush or Tony Blair get spelt very easily using predictive text. But try Anil. Here is a guy who is aware that he shares his name with at least a million others. But the poor chap, he is always reduced to 'Boil' on the sms. Alternating with 'Coil.

Raping happens to be Rashmi, and doesn't she hate it!

Zal is Y2k. OK, so he has a rather unusual name, but you get the drift...

Piyul

Vijaya Bank is better than Harpic. Truly.

Badal, my very young & happening web designer says this is easy. This blogging. Thousands and millions of people all over the world do it, he reminds me. ‘So just do it’ he says encouragingly, sounding a lot like the swimming coach who tried to get me to dive once upon a time, with almost the same words.

The predominantly young Indian populace of 540 million, age 24 or less, include all these net savvy youngsters fed and weaned on blogging, in this galloping and globalizing country, growing at 9.4% p.a.. But for old fogies on the other side of the age 25 fence (pretty far from the fence too)… you know the rest.

A beginner has essential rights. One of them is to behave as a beginner. E.g. finding excuses not to do it. I need to find time from allocating and overseeing work, doing my studies, various home tasks, what with the Indian system of being part of a household consisting of the bai, the mali, the driver apart from the residents.

This morning, my bai said ‘Didi, Harpic theek hai, lekin it is Vijaya Bank that cleans the loo best. I have been asking you to get it for such a long time.’ She insists that is the name, and it sounds potentially ominous, in relation to soon to be less clean loos in the home.

I did go across to Haiko the local supermarket, and quietly searched for Vijaya Bank, in the soaps, detergents and home care aisle. When I tell her there is no such brand, she is indignant.

‘Of course, there is. I bought it myself the other day, from the corner Reliance Stores. For the other home I work in’.

Somehow, it was easier to go to the newfangled self-help retail supermarkets such as Haiko to look for a 'bank'. No one would be looking over my shoulder at my purchases, but to go and actually ask to buy it, in a mom and pop joint that we call the baniye ka dukaan, well…

A chore is a chore, and loos need to stay clean.

I go to the tried and tested Reliance Stores, where Girdharbhai was presiding as usual. ‘Do you have Vijaya Bank?’ I ask nonchalantly in my best I-always- ask- for – Vijaya- Bank inside- a – bania- dukan voice.

Girdharbhai did not bat an eyelid. ‘For washing the toilet, hai na? Sure, I have it. I’ve heard it’s quite good’ he says empathically. Like a good bania shop owner, he has an opinion on most matters related to the home.

Wow! So, yes, I’ve now got Vijaya Bank home. And yes, it seems quite good for its intended role in life.

And yes, I recommend it whole-heartedly. Go ask for it.

It’s just spelt a wee bit differently. It’s Easy Off. Bang. So there is a brand called Easy Off Bang. I am hoping saying it a few times will make it fall off the tongue smoothly. . Apparently some companies do not believe in keeping us market research agencies in business with nomenclature research and all that stuff. Or perhaps they did research this name, who knows. Everyone but me had heard of it. And then, when both Harpic and 'Vijaya Bank' belong to the same company, it does not really matter either way, does it?

And come to think of it, I would rather ask for Vijaya Bank, than Easy Off Bang next time to Girdharbhai. When both sound like some heist I’m participating in, a bank is the more sober version of the two. Easy Off, Bang de do versus Vijaya Bank le aao.

In the era of blogs and chatting, and scrapping, what’s in a name anyway? If Kewl can be cool, and my can be mah, why not Vijaya Bank expand its monetary role in life. Phonetic spelling is the key to the future..

Last word: Let’s hope my blogging experience turns out to be more successful than the diving one ever was.

Piyul