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