Breather Tag

Blogging has been on the back burner for quite some time now. I don't see the situation improving immediately. So I thought I will do a tag that I have done in parts in earlier tags, just to put something up here. Apologies for not replying to comments, and being tardy when I do and for neglecting this space off late. I promise things will get better as soon as Boss goes on leave :p Kidding, things will get better when I learn to stop taking my work so seriously. Boss has threatened me with a re-prioritizing therapy session if I don't. Failing which he is sending me on a vacation *sob*

This tag is courtesy Mathew.


8 things I am passionate about:

* Never judging people on usual norms
* Finding a reason for everything
* Freedom of expression
* Freedom of speech
* Music
* Googling
* Family
* Relationships

8 things I want to do before I die:

* Sky dive!
* Write a book!
* Travel around the world!
* Watch a show on Broadway!
* Somehow draw the Indian electorate out of its apathy!
* Do something for the environment!
* Say "Insurance is the subject matter of solicitation. Read the offer documents carefully before investing" in 5 seconds like that guy in the insurance ads.

8 things I say often:

* Oh my god!!
* You are kidding right!
* Bitch (friends only)
* Momsy! (drives my mom up the wall)
* Daddykins ( He just loves it. Reserved for special occasions like when I want something expensive)
* Retard!!! ( usual form of addressing second bro)
* Baby dolly, chweety pie, lambikins!!! (my doggies)
* Ente karthave!! ( an imitation of mom that has stuck)

8 books I last read

I have already listed some here, plus 'From the Holy Mountain'

8 songs I could listen to over and over again:

I am listing some songs I have never mentioned at this blog before.

* Afro Celt Sound System - Persistence of Memory
* Jason Mraz - I'm Yours
* Amazing Grace by Nana Mouskouri
* Thievery Corporation - Richest man in Babylon
* Song sung blue - Neil Diamond
* Guantanamera ( any version of this song) and Volare
* Pathra bareyala illa chitra bidisala - Aramane
* (I Just) Died in your Arms tonight - Cutting Crew

and many many many more....

8 people I think should do this tag

1. Mr V S Achuthanandan
2. Prakash Karat
3. Sitaram Yechuri
4. Mayawati
5. Deve Gowda
6. L K Advani

...and all those opposing the nuclear deal. Take a chill pill your retrograde, catabolic, atrophying, backward, backstabbing, double faced, Lilly livered, spineless, infantile, decaying and rotting myopic degenerates!!!!

*whew* That felt good...getting it off my chest!

Stooping low to reach for the stars!?

Obsequiousness, foot scraping, meekness, extreme humility...I can go on, the Thesaurus in MS Word is pretty exhaustive when it comes to offering you Synonyms for extreme acts of self effacement's. Now if you are wondering what I am talking about….I am pointing out to a particular trait among TV Show contestants, especially those participating in music contests. The above traits of extreme humility and self effacement is an almost given among these contestants. In fact sometimes I think the contest is about who can be more humble and ingratiating towards the judges!!! At times judges too behave like it is a necessary talent to have for a contestant. A curt word for someone who was a not up to the mark in humility and lavish praises for the one who stooped the lowest.

We are not living in the gurukul days for god’s sakes. I understand the need to respect someone with more knowledge than you. It is inbuilt in us. But this is taking things a bit too far. I am not talking about touching the feet of a judge. That I a sign of respect in our culture. I am talking of contestants standing stooped with both hands folded, mike in had, when judges are talking. Reminds me of historical movies, where people are shown standing the very same way in front of Kings and Monarchs.

The contestants seem to fear the judges. They seem to lack sufficient confidence in their own talents. It almost looks like they are scared of offending the judges. Which is ridiculous!! And judges too, seem to lap this up. As fair judges of a musical competition, I think they should give more credence to talent and ignore any another aspect of a contestants personality.


But that aint happening too soon. Can you imagine, an extremely talented, but arrogant contestant, getting away on the strength of his/her talent only? I don’t think so. He/She will be cut down to size before she can say ‘Eff off’!!

It is not just TV shows, even in real life, we take this respect a person with grey hair too far!! Even in schools, I remember, if you wanted to get into the good books of teachers, act nice to them. Thankfully most of my teachers were Goans and Anglo Indians. And these people cared a damn about pupils kissing up to them. They admired spunk and girls with confidence. On the other hand, the others…like the mallus specially, believed in cutting down confident girls to bite size pieces. As a society, we give too much importance to humility. In fact it has become a yardstick of sorts to sum up a person.

And when kids who are bought up with such mind set, walk into the corporate world, they are all but shorn of the confidence they need, to make an impact at the workplace. I spend a considerable amount of my energies in mentoring Interns under me to shed their ‘Yes Ma’am No Ma’am' routine. I spend a lot of precious bandwidth in explaining that it is their work that matters to me and not how nice they are to me. They do learn eventually, but a decade of conditioning does leave its imprint in your psyche.

It is time for a change! If we as a nation have to gear up for the brave new world we are marching towards, then we have a lot to change in ourselves as a people, than just dress ourselves with degrees and certificates!!

Children of the Earth

I got out of the office cab on the main road and started walking towards home. It was sunny when we left the office. However dark clouds huddled menacingly in the sky now, making it look like a raging black ocean over my head. Soon, big drops of water started spattering the road off the day's dust and grime. Since my Haversack with the laptop has a waterproof cover, I didn't worry too much about the rain. I walked home getting drenched by the minute. That is when I saw them. A lone woman and six children, construction workers at the site, on the way home. The building she was working on was yet to get off the ground. So she had no roof over head. She was also pregnant. From her looks, I placed her to be from Rajasthan. Construction workers in south India, rarely have more then two kids. The children aged from 2 to 7, were huddled together, as the thin plastic that passes off as their roof, was madly flapping in the wind, leaving them at the mercy of the lashing rain. For some reason, her pregnant state made me very angry. There was going to be another kid here soon, huddling with the rest, braving the elements. Children of the Earth.

I walk home with a heavy step. My mother is horrified to see me. She cannot understand why I will not take shelter under a tree or in a shop. I am fed up of telling her that I love to get drenched in the rain now and then. Very soon I am snuggling under the blanket, after a hot meal, Raasnadhi podi liberally applied on my head, reading William Dalrymples “From the Holy Mountain”. I am a sucker for such books.

My mind wanders to the lady and her gaggle of kids. The rain is raging furiously now. I wonder how she will cook with her stove all wet. Finally I get up and decide to take some food for her and her kids. I pack two loaves of bread, some potato curry and some bananas and set off towards the construction site, amidst howls of protest from my mom. She wants me to wait for the rain to abate. But it doesn't look like letting up.

The lady is still there, standing in the rain stoically. I give her the food and tell her in Hindi to give the kids too. There is no expression on her face. She calls out to the kids and they appear, one by one from under the half constructed stairs, looking at me wide eyed. I stand there. I want to see the kids getting the food. She hands out the bread, two slices a piece and some potato curry to each kid. The kids eat mechanically, shivering in the cold. They wipe their hands on the seat of their pants and look at no one in particular. She hands out the bananas. It is also consumed without expression. I decide to leave before my mother calls the Indian Army.

The familiar stab of annoyance resurfaces when I see her swollen belly. I ask her when her baby is due. She says, any day. I ask her why she has so many children. She looks at me puzzled like I have asked her why the sun rises in the East. I tell her to stop having kids after this baby. She looks around for her husband perhaps. Maybe he will answer this girl’s weird questions, her eyes seems to say.

I leave the place resignedly. The rain still rages on. She and the kids are out there. Waiting for it to abate, so that they can go to sleep. Nothing amiss for them. Just another day in the journey called life.

The vintage rally called India!

An uncle of mine was telling me an anecdote the other day. He was the Chairman of the Fund Raising Committee, constituted to raise money for a free school for children of Construction laborers in South Bangalore. The land was to be donated by the Church for free occupancy. After getting the required funds, he approached a Malayalee ex minister in Bangalore for help with the required permissions to start the school, after encountering red tapism, demand for bribes and other delays you would encounter if you took the straight and narrow path.

The minister did get him the permissions but asked him for a tidy sum as his commission. Uncle was aghast! The sum asked by the minister was more than half of what he had collected for the school. But the minister was adamant. Finally after many negotiations, he agreed to a more reasonable amount.

I am now working weekends for a Non Profit organization. Before this organization entered India, they were advised to grease palms if they wanted to fulfill their goal of making a difference in the lives of the poor. An American lawyer attached to this organization had this anecdote to tell us the other day! After the organization had identified a cluster of villages to be adopted for their work, they were asked to meet the local MLA. When the group visited him, he told them rather pleasantly that they if hoped to work in the villages under his jurisdiction, they would have to pay him one crore. The lawyer expressed his inability to pay such a huge amount as the organization was a non-profit unit and survived on grants. The MLA without batting an eyelid told the lawyer to shell out the money from his pocket as he was a high profile lawyer in New York!!! The work came to a stand still and they adopted another village were the MLA was “cheaper". The village flourishes, while the other languishes and now has barely any residents left.

All the people I have talked to, specially those working for NGO's and non profit organizations, express their frustration at the ancient walls of outdated rules and regulations erected between them and their beneficiaries that only serves as a loop hole for opportunists like the above two men to make money or stall work. Apparently there are millions of dollars of unspent funds lying in various banks, grants that were released for upliftment of the rural poor that will never reach them due to red tapism and corruption. Most NGO’s and non profit organizations in India function because they have realized that it is no use fighting against the system and grease palms to carry on their work.

Two interviews by central ministers, one on the Jaipur blasts and one on the fertilizer crisis in Karnataka, opened my eyes to another startling fact. Most States don’t even know what their powers are. They blame the centre for everything and then central ministers have to point out as the Home Minster put it so succinctly in an interview “Read the laws” The Rajasthan CM didn’t even know that she could have taken several security measures to prevent such an incident because the State had the power to do so.

The above incident only brings to fore the fact that, elected representatives in the States are not even aware of their constitutional rights as a State of the Indian union. Nor do they make an effort to do so. People get elected, attend the legislative assembly if they don’t get a cabinet berth and if they do, then attend office and dance to the whims and fancies of the bureaucrats and occasionally take some populist measures.

India today is like a vinatge vehicle in a Formula One race! A very old vehicle with outdated parts, some new parts that had to be replaced because they were so worn out, trying to keep up with the world that is using the latest technology in its engines. Unless we clean the accumulate dirt in our engines and change what is outdated, we cannot keep pace with the world.

Plastic can now be decomposed!

Oops! Did I step on your self esteem?

The real Aishwarya Rai. Thanks to Philip for the link!

Have you ever watched an Aishwarya Rai interview? It is perhaps the single most tiring thing to watch on TV after the saas bahu serials. After the interviewer finishes his question, you turn to her expectantly for the reply and what do you get? A lot of umm errr hmmm ahem before and after each word in the sentence till you realize that it will take a long time for her to reply and when she does, in between all those umm errr hmmm ahem the reply shocks you with its inanity. Most of the questions posed to her are more intelligent than the answers and the poor interviewer continues with his questioning for the sake of the program whether the reply makes sense of not!

Unlike other beauty contestants, Ms Rai still lives in the beauty pageant. There is very little of her that comes through in an interview. Every word she says is carefully and calculatingly delivered for maximum impact. You can see some furious thinking going on as she talks pausing before each word as though weighing it, leading to a very protracted and labored replies to questions. Her pose i.e the chin up as soon as the camera turns on her, also reeks of Miss India training.

Now she is married to a man who is not only eloquent but knows what he is talking about. The decimation of Ms Rai has begun.

I was watching a CNN IBN program the other day. The program played host to the entire Sarkar Raj Bachchan clan i.e Aishwarya, Abhishek and Amitabh with Ramgopal Verma. While Abhishek handled the questions with aplomb, Aishwarya came off as an air head with her err umm hmm routine. In fact she did not manage to say a single sentence and hubby had to intervene to save her face and airtime. And intervene he did with a grim face and none of the newly wed infatuation he displayed not too long ago. The charm of Ms Rai seems to be wearing off.

There was a moment in the interview when the interviewer turned to Abhishek and asked “How does it feel being the son of one of the best actor in the world and being married to the most beautiful mom in the world.” The “mom” was a slip of the tongue. Aishwarya corrected him immediately, and then realizing that she may have insulted the MIL turned to hubby and said ingratiatingly “Of course he has the most beautiful Mom in the whole world.” The decimation of Aishwarya Rai, the person was complete.

Whether at a Awards function or film premier, Aishwarya stands behind the Bachchan men and hubby even replies to questions thrown at her as she characteristically wastes time on the umm errr hmmm ahem routine.

The fact that she was now a Bachchan was delivered rather bluntly by hubby when he said “My father is the center of my universe”. I gasped and looked at Ms Rai, she sat like a dumb blond without batting an eyelid.

R.I.P Miss Aishwarya Rai. Long live Mrs Airwarya Bachchan.

Was it really worth it? I mean marrying into the so called “First Family” of Bollywood for the sake of the title Mrs Bachchan! Or was this an enormous endorsement campaign? Perhaps the Bachchans and the Rais laugh their way to their separate banks. Nothing else can explain this marriage.

p.s Ms Rai Bachchan, your neck shows your age. Time for a neck lift!

p.p.s I neither like nor dislike Abhishek or Aishwarya. But I am a huge fan of Amitabh’s older movies.

Read this hilarious post about a guy getting his first massage from an aashaan! :))

I’m Reading, Listening, Thinking, Watching...

I have been tagged by Philip one of the best writers to emerge in recent times. If I were to describe his blog in one word, it would be "Refreshing".

Reading: Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People by Mark Gobe (A gift from the boss, who else!)

The World is Flat (Thomas L. Friedman)

Finished reading: The Bridges of Madison County (Robert James Waller)

Listening: To Rise Up. I love the energy in the song. Reminds me of school days when I used to be an expert in some of the skipping moves shown here. ( This song was plagiarized for the AHA advertisements if you recall :p) The next song on the playlist is Tempted to touch!

Wearing: An attitude!

Watching: The punju girl in the next cubicle sobbing quietly into the phone, pleading with her ex BF to take her back. He ditched her after three years of going steady on the pretext that she will not gel with his uber rich family. He gets engaged err he got engaged to someone else on Sunday! Every time she cries I swear I will join the convent! :(

Thinking: And worrying about gals like that Punju gal and how gullible they are and guys like her BF who think nothing of promising the Sun, Moon and Stars to gals just to get them to be their GF till mommy finds them the ideal wife! I am seeing too many cases like this amongst my Northie colleagues. It’s really worrying!

Loving: The intermittent rains. Mangoes. The brisk breeze, the leaves as they fall from the trees and the stars in the sky that become visible when there is a power outage!

Hating: The fact that I saw so many banned wildlife in a pet shop in Bangalore when I went to buy some fish for my aquarium. There were jungle wild fowls, Munias and African Parrots…real bad tempered fellows they were too, the Parrots i.e!!

Missing: A good ghee roast from MTR! It’s been ages since I ate one!

Hoping: To work in the non profit sector soon!

Craving: To witness again the monsoon fury in Kerala.

And now, I tag: No one ;)

Comments turned off. The busy period continues. So apologies for not replying to comments. Blogs updations will also be delayed for sometime *sob*

The choice is out there!

“Will you marry me?” His question caught me by surprise! I hardly knew this guy. He used to drop in home from time to time whenever he was down from the US on holidays as his sister lives in Bangalore. He is a year junior to my eldest bro and his junior at college too. He, lets call him AS, is six foot tall, good looking but an extremely quite gentleman. So why did I say "no"? Because I am a chatterbox and someone like AS would drive me to suicidal depression. All he can talk about is technology, when he talks and that’s occasionally. I may not be spoilt for choice, but neither am I so desperate to say "yes" to the first guy who proposes. Besides...I am firmly committed to single hood till marriage, which will happen in a couple of years only! Period! Unless of course Mr Right walks into my life. But then such things happen only in movies. And I am a realist. I am no more the head in the cloud gal of high school. College beat the stuffing out any romantic notions I had about romance as I learned some eye opener of lessons from watching classmates and friends in relationships.

There are two ways to go about life if you are an Indian gal.

1)You learn from the mistakes your friends make.

2) You don’t learn your friends make and make the mistakes your friends made and wonder why life is so unfair.

I chose the former route long time ago. And hence the resolution to stay single until Mr Right walks by or get married on the appointed day at the appointed time to the appointed guy, mommy dearest fixes. I am sure she will do what’s best for me in her opinion! :p Let me not pretend that my wedding will be some dreamy Bollywood sequence. It will be as ordinary as anybodies.

Coming back to Mr AS. I looked at him and asked in absolute wonderment why “he” of all people on this Earth would have problem finding a gal with his credentials. AS like the Malayalee Christian men I mentioned here, wanted more than just a wife in the girl they marry. He is facing the same dilemma. That’s when I said something that surprised even me!!! “Why are you only scanning the resumes of girls whose parents have you promised you a good dowry? Why not girls whose parents cannot afford such a dowry?” He was taken aback. Clearly the thought had not occurred to him like many highly sought after grooms!

I refuse to believe that there is a dearth of well read and bright young Malayalee women out there. If there is a dearth, then it is of bright young Malayalee women whose folks cannot afford a big dowry. Mr AS was dumb struck at my query. I persisted. I told him that if he really wanted, he could get the best of the best gals if he could only give up the idea of a huge dowry. It is difficult to get both i.e a good dowry and the perfect girl!

AS didn’t say anything. I don’t know what he will do. But this conversation opened my eyes to something that was so obvious but unnoticed. As an addendum to my last post on the subject, I have to add that guys who grumble about stereotypical Malayalee gals are the types that have unconsciously narrowed their field of choice. They never thought of the other option i.e the millions of gals out there who may be the perfect fit, but whose pops cannot afford the big dowry they want.

And I also realized why so many Malayalee couples who have had love marriages are so happy. And that’s because they were not constricted by the considerations that govern an arranged marriage and hence gave themselves the best gift of all….the gift of choice!

You cannot have the best of the world. So quit grumbling all you eligible mallu Christian men who want that bright, intelligent, scintillating conversationalist etc lady! You do have a choice. Now let us see you taking it!

p.s On a lighter note...all you people who make fun of mallu names eat dirt!!! That includes me too, I just realized! *gulp* Congratulations Mr err Kanth! You just made us mallus, I mean all of us proud! Thanks Karthik for this gem!

p.p.s Philip, thine tag will be done soon!