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
;-)