The damning note!

First of all let me say that my heartfelt sympathies are with this family.

Secondly I have to say that I am getting more and more concerned with suicide notes! There is an increasing trend to blame someone for suicide and invariably that person get arrested without even an investigation. If newspapers are to be believed, a death note or statement before death is infallible (not verified if true). This makes anyone vulnerable to people with chronic depression who may kill themselves under the mistaken assumption that someone was the reason for their depression.

Why I am expressing concern is because of two incidents that happened with people I know. First was my senior in college who has a small design studio. When she sacked one of her employees, he attempted suicide leaving a note blaming her. Luckily he survived and it did not become a police case as his parents never saw the suicide note. And bribing the hospital staff ensured that the case was admitted as accidental poisoning. I will never forget the trauma my friend went through. All she did was fire him because of complaints from female staff of inappropriate behavior and two warnings that he failed to heed. If the suicide note was discovered then she would be in jail now charged with abetting the suicide. I am told there are thousands of people in jail for the same.

The other instance happened with my best friend. There was this boy from an uptown college who used to hang around our college gates and follow her around while we girls went shopping or to eat. Our first method of getting such people off our backs is ignoring them. We ignored him for some time as he kept his distance. But he kept hanging around college and following her around. Fed up she told my brother and he confronted him and warned him to stay away. This guy also made a weak attempt at suicide blaming my brother as the reason! Luckily his parents were reasonable people and understood the situation. But the situation scared me and I am forever wary of guys now. And I am not alone. Amongst my college mates there are instances of girls who have married guys under threat of suicide notes!!! And many have had the experience that my friend have had.

I remember a cartoon that came as a forward in which a girl is shown trying to stop a car. A bubble above her head reads: “Stop or I cry rape!!” Apparently this cartoon came out after Rape laws were modified and made more stringent. The suicides situation is similar now. Many people do not do this on purpose. Suicide is I guess a result of depression. But how many depressed people can analyze this. They naturally blame the last incident that pushed them over the edge. And the last incident could be a romantic interest who didn’t return your affection, or her family or an employer who gave you the pink slip.

It is high time we modified our laws so that such suicide notes and last statements are investigated. Or as is the case in Karnataka, many people will be rotting in jail due to an outdated law* that states that a depressed person’s last word is literally the last word in the case.

*unverified

Little acts of kindness

Yesterday I was waiting at the end of the small road in our colony. The road leads to the main road and one has to wait a long time to cross the main road due to the packed traffic during peak hours. And then I saw a blue Santro slowing down and the driver signaled to me to cross the road. Absolutely taken aback at his gesture I drove into the main road and crossed it, stopped the bike and waved a thanks to the guy. He waved back and drove off. I was so touched with this gesture that I could only stare stupidly at his receding back!

Last week I was crossing the road in front of my house and I saw a car coming in full speed down the road. I stopped ready to turn back but the moment the car driver saw me, he slowed down, stopped and gestured to me to cross. I said a thank you and crossed the road. He drove off but he left a very grateful girl on the road.

This has happened to me several times while crossing the road on foot or on bike. People have actually stopped and given way knowing that I am waiting for a pause in the traffic to cross the road. Some have even held up traffic for pedestrians like me. And none of them tried to act fresh or over friendly. They just did their small act of kindness and moved on. I remember every single incident because it made a big impression on me. Random acts of kindness from random strangers.

Many a times I am surprised by guys holding the door open for me. People who feel that they should hold the door for a lady unlike the twits who bang the door on your face.

What makes these people so different from others? Why do some guys try to mow you down or speed up when they see you crossing the road while others slow down to help you along?

When you are so used to an insensitive and callous world, such random acts of kindness leaves lasting impressions on you! Today as I drove to office I saw an old lady trying to cross the road. I stopped the car and she smiled gratefully and crossed the road. I thought nothing of it. Then it occurred to me with a bang that I had done the same thing that others had done for me. I guess it was because I realized the difficulty of crossing a road during peak hour traffic. Perhaps it is realization of others predicaments that makes people help them, because they themselves have been in the same situation.

I hate doors being left to swing on my face. So I make sure I hold the door till it closes. It is when you put yourself in other peoples shoes that you appreciate their position. And these Samaritans who helped me cross the road or held the door open for me were such people. What makes them sensitive and the rest insensitive? Have you observed your maid servant? If she is taking home some food and finds another maid going home without food, she will give her some of hers. That’s because she has experienced days when she did not get left overs and maybe had to do with a bun or a banana.

Being kind to a fellow stranger requires great sensitivity I guess. Or maybe just observational powers and motivation. I have never understood why some people can understand other peoples predicament having been in their shoes once, while others completely miss it.

Sikh stand-up comedy anyone? Click here, here and here! Quite good! And do check out Vijai Nathan too. Links courtesy "long time reader"

A worrying issue and a disturbing trend...

I never thought that I would ever write a post like this...ever. I feel bad about writing this, but then blogs are your vent right? So I will vent about something that has been bothering me for some time now.

When I started blogging in 2005 there were very few bloggers. Most of us minded our business and did what bloggers normally do, and that is use our blogs to write about our little problems, poke fun at managers and just about anything that we needed to speak out about. Comments were rare and none of us were bothered about comments. The comments you see at my earliest posts are recent comments. Then came 2006 and everybody and their neighbors were blogging. Some new bloggers attracted by popular blogs entered blogging to make it big. They missed the point that their blogs was not for others but for them. And the aspiring writers amongst them did not realize that, typing a few words in a blog template does not make you a writer. Popular is what popular decides. The word popular is derived from the word “people”. Period!

Amidst the sea of bloggers is an ocean of non bloggers. They read what they like. They have a mind of their own. And aspiring writers had better be aware of this. So my advice to aspiring bloggers and newbies is chill and use your space for speaking out if it helps you, like it does to me. There is nothing you can do to attract readers. They will come if your writing appeals to them!

However more than writing, there is something more important. And that is respect for fellow bloggers and an understanding of blogs. Blogs are perhaps the only space where you can shed your hypocritical social and political correctness and BE YOURSELF. None of us are perfect. We all our pet peeves, biases, prejudices, viewpoints etc. and blogs are an excellent vent for these. Moreover you connect with people going through similar experiences and get to either give or get advice or support whatever the case may be.

Now I have had more then anyone’s share of anonymous comments. Some good, most stupid. But they were anonymous and frankly a comment without an identity doesn’t matter and I have shrugged it off. There were some instances when people took pot shot at my comments at other blogs, but again in very agreeable language. But off late I am noticing many bloggers, specially (a) newbies (b) once dormant and now active (c) dormant and only commenting kind of bloggers taking on the mantle of policing the blogosphere, chiding bloggers for airing their viewpoints, attacking commenter’s virulently for their viewpoints and going around telling bloggers how good bad or downright stupid the quality of their writing is!

These are vermin’s of blogosphere and are a danger to a community that has coexisted peacefully even though they express very personal views in their blogs. The very nature of blogs requires complete respect for a bloggers blog and his right to expressing his/her views or the purpose of blogging is defeated. If you do not like a post, ignore it. If you want to disagree, do it in an agreeable way. If you think a writer is dissing India and you don’t agree, you can always say that you respect his/her views and that you had better experiences! There is no need to get personal and judge the blog and commenters as negative or complaining or anything else! Or you could blog about your optimism for India in your own blog! That is what it is about…to voice “your” views!!! (Please note India is used as an example only) Stop trying to change the bloggers mind!!

And for the critics of bloggers writing skills or English or topics I have only this to say. Just because we express ourselves in the English alphabet and “write” our viewpoints instead of saying it, doesn’t mean that we think of ourselves as Shakespeare’s or Arundhati Roys. So stop going around dissing bloggers writing skills. Would you tell a blogger bemoaning a loss in his blog that his English is pathetic and he should just shut up? Hope you get the point here.

This culture of intolerance is worrying me. I can hold my own against it. But there are many who can’t. Unlike these morons I cannot go around telling these people to ignore the morons and carry on blogging. So I am writing this post, hoping that at least one person on the verge of closing his/her blog because of the above mentioned people, will read and retract their decision.

Ever wondered whats with Chennai auto drivers? The answer is right here!

The murky depths of injured egos

I 'had' a lot of respect for Markha Butt. A respected TV Journalists with a fan following that rivaled that of some film stars. But it’s been a long time since a Kargil or an Earthquake. Photo ops are getting rarer and the lady is getting older. For someone who made a name as a field journalist, reporting news from dangerous terrains and conditions, the newsroom doesn't give her the mileage that a bunker on the border did in the past. The lady is getting fat and past glories are getting dimmer. The pleasant smile is a little tight and the lady showed a short fuse when a blogger reportedly wrote about her personal life. The result? A stung Markha decided to take the blogging community head on. Her program titled “Should blogs be regulated?” was perhaps the stupidest programs she made in her life. The program exposed her intent and quite surprisingly, the people she had handpicked to appear on the program, debunked her hysteria leaving her looking like a fool. Watch the program and see how see hops from expert to expert for support, only to be left bereft and exposed as a hysterical woman in need of a strong tranquilizer.

The forced smile and condescending laughter and nervous movements were too tale telling. This was a vendetta program! And for a vendetta program, she played her cards all wrong. Right from the experts she picked, who turned out to be very mature and level headed and well informed, to her constant and persistent attempt to elicit some kind of damning comment on bloggers left her agenda exposed! What a come down for a reporter of her repute!!

As an experienced journalist she should have waited to cool down before she launched her tirade against bloggers. Acting on the spur of the moment has its consequences. And I don’t need to spell it out. We have all learned these lessons during our teen years. Impulsiveness is best left out of the camera eye unless you are planning on committing a national faux pas. I guess her record and standing as a reputed journalist must have prevented the program from scrutiny before airing. Because no news channel worth the mention would allow such a program to go on air! I am surprised the blogging community missed this. Or perhaps that’s what they think of Markha Dutt, as an also ran not worth bothering about.

As a public persona, Markha has to get used to the public having their opinions about her. She has to get used to being written, discussed, dissed or praised. After all film stars go through it every single minute of the day. You don’t see them asking for regulation of film magazines do you!! And suggesting regulation on a medium for something as harmless a gossip, shows that the lady has been stung badly. What is pathetic is that she gave credibility to the rumors with her back lash! Sad!

But then programs like these can have repercussions in the future. The government that is trigger friendly when it comes to shooting down liberties that anyone with a couple of slogan shouting demonstrators ask for, can turn the clamps on bloggers and then many bloggers will have to shut shop, because everything and everything we write will be hauled to the courts, when threats disguised as comments don’t work!

Full video is here!

Kerala Talkies

Today is Ganesh Chaturthi. A very happy Ganesh Chaturthi to all who celebrate. The evening was replete with devotional film songs wafting in from the various small temples around my place. The songs were not too loud and strangely, makes me nostalgic. I have heard them a hundred times before. It is the same old Tamil film songs, played on special occasions, which is about 100 in a given year, melodious and soothing.

The songs remind me of my village in Kerala. My childhood holidays in Kerala are memories with the background score of songs coming over loudspeakers through the dense rubber and coconut tree growth to our house. The songs signaled a “Talkie” or a village movie theater, which is the hub of activity in the evening in an agrarian community like ours. I never saw the Talkie. I had only heard about it. Sometimes I tried to go to the terrace to see it. But all I saw was a thick carpet of coconut canopies. Sometimes a smoke spiral signaled human habitation, a kallu shaap perhaps, but I never saw the talkie. Families like ours were not supposed to go to the talkies, even if the movies were good. As a kid I never understood this unwritten rule of an agrarian community.

Every week the posters at the small shops in the village changed. Many of them had an “A” written on them. I wondered what the "A" meant. The posters were usually white with outlines of women in what looked like towel wrapped around them. However many of the posters were of old Malayalam movies or flop films of superstars. A small theater I guess could not afford anything else. Whatever the movie, come evening the workers would excitedly gather around the well to wash and discuss going to the movies. I envied them and often asked my grandma and uncles and aunts why we couldn’t also go to the talkies. My grandma would snort and call out “Leelamme, look what your daughter wants to do”. My dad’s mother on the other hand, would chuckle and say that the movie theater was for very poor people and you had to sit on the mud floor and watch. She would then distract me with something. Both grandmas were poles apart as the families.

The talkies fascinated me. The music reverberating from them was soothing in the misty evening air. It could be heard when we were frolicking in the thodu too. And its invisibility gave it its aura of mystery. I imagined it be a Church fair kind of setting. From the kids of the ladies who worked in the house, I gathered that it was a fun place. From them I heard that watching “family” movies in a talkie was fun. Most of the people knew each other and the camaraderie made the movie more enjoyable. After the movies, sometimes the ladies too joined the men for some kallu. Moments of great contentment and satisfaction in the lives of these simple people.

I wish I could go to a talkie and watch a good movie, the kind women went to. It is still a mystery place for me. Maybe I will come back with all the myths in my head busted. Maybe not. But I know for a fact that it was a happy place for many people in the past and even today.

The subtle art of time management

There is a small group of people found in every office that I admire. These are not your super achievers or diligent workers but people who have nothing to do but know how to look busy without anyone suspecting a thing. They spend their weekdays doing more or less nothing but convince everyone that they are putting as much effort and doing as many tasks as others. Even their Managers think they are doing hell of a lot and think twice before giving them “more” tasks to do. Sometimes I wonder how that happens as I for instance know what every billable minute my subordinates are doing.

My department consisting of product managers, has one marketing and communications manager (yours truly) and one training manager ( RP). Now RP sits in Delhi and has two people under her here in Bangalore. Both the girls sit next to me and I see them while away their time, talking on the phone (VOIP) and putting in barely an hour of work every day. My team consisting of three people is almost always totally working with their nose to the grindstone so that we can go home at 6pm, the mandatory requirement in our office. Weekend work is also not permitted. So we “actually” work every single second of the eight working hours in a day.

It can be argued that we have much more work doing various marketing activities for the eight product managers, while RP has to only schedule and coordinate the training activities with the training vendors. But then both the girls are champions in appearing busy. I noticed something about them that makes me admire them even more. Both have a lot of time in their hands. Hence both have scheduled the few tasks they have, to fit the working hours in a day. They then go about it leisurely, taking in a break here and there to fill in the gaps.

For example M, one of the gals was told to give the complete details of the August 2008 trainings she was in charge of. Since the training is done by training vendors like Aptech and NIIT, all she had to do was ask them for their Excels, put them in a master Excel and send them across. She took a weeks time from her Manager to do what could be done in an hour, citing various factors that require time like calling up vendors, following up with them for the latest training lists etc etc. Thus she made heavy duty of a simple task and won herself one whole week of legitimate time that she showed as productive time. Bravo!!!

Now I am beginning to notice other people in this category too. All of them know how to spread their meager work across the eight work hours and thus look like they are working every single minute like the others. What the Managers don’t notice is that the amount of work that is put in. They calculate finished tasks!!

Hats off to all you people who manage to pull this off. You save endless acrimony for no fault of yours. Everyone cannot have the same work load. But people resent those with less work getting the same amount of pay. People like M with their “time management” skills tend to remove this area of friction by their tactics. This actually makes for fewer tensions at the work place!!

But there is a flip side to this too. It was with amusement that I read the mail sent to me by RP asking if someone from my team could lend a helping hand to one of her girls. According to RP, her girls were “very busy”. The mail was cc’ed to the Boss. I replied to the mail with an Excel sheet which showed minute by minute the various tasks my team mates were doing...just to show that I couldn’t spare anyone. RP was shaken when Boss followed up that reply with a demand for the same kind of details from RP. A week later she submitted her Excel Sheet and I read with growing admiration as she put the measly tasks that her teams had to do as a war exercise. Here is an example:

M – Work Schedule for this week
Complete Training Schedule of August 2008 for IT and Developers
Work Started Aug 25th. Task completed Aug 29th.
Details: Coordinating with Vendors for lists, Follow ups, Clarifications, Correcting errors, Matching names, emails, phone number etc, Instructor bios etc etc etc…

Boss replied curtly that she would have to manage her team mates work within the resources allocated her and that’s all he could do. RP heaved a sigh of relief. She learned a lesson not to open a can of worms she cannot handle, and I thanked my stars that I wouldn’t have to contend with my people grumbling about RP’s people having less work. We all went back to our routines and peace was back in our lives. I think a lot of us have to learn that work is not all about completing tasks admirably and adding to the profits of your company. It is also about accepting certain indigestible differences at work place and swallowing it for the greater good of our sanity!

Have a nice week folks.

Shackles of another kind!

Our maid, Lakshmi was screaming at someone on the road. I peeped over the compound wall to see what the commotion was all about. On the road stood Lakshmi, arms akimbo looking at a very frightened girl called Maya. Maya works as a stay in maid in my neighbor’s house. Lakshmi had apparently caught Maya and her boy friend smooching at the dead end of the road. “Do you know you can get AIDS?” hissed Lakshmi. Maya looked scared. Apparently she knew of the malady. “And then” continued Lakshmi hissing “you will die a slow and painful death” Maya looked absolutely horrified and scared.

Lakshmi had cause for concern. She was a mother of a teenage daughter and a son. She met her husband when she worked as a stay in maid herself. She was pregnant by the time she was 16 and was kicked out of the job soon after. Her parents married her off to the father of the baby and since then she has been toiling as he is a drunkard. This story repeats itself even today. Most young maids in our colony have boy friends, who are unemployed boys, looking for a sound financial investment for their future in these girls. Almost all the girls I know in this category have got pregnant and were married off to the father of the baby. It is not even looked upon as shameful, but as natural. Then the dashing guy, armed with her salary starts drinking and these girls join the multitude of women living with alcoholic husbands struggling to make ends meet.

Maya looked at Lakshmi helplessly. She was clearly not equipped to make any decision here. Lakshmi continued in a milder tone “at least insist that he wears protection” she advised. Maya looked at her bemused and blurted out “then how will we have children?” Lakshmi slapped her forehead in irritation. “Ayyo!” she exclaimed. "Before you get married, get him tested” she exclaimed. Maya thought for a moment, nodded her head and walked off with the groceries she was sent to procure.

I was maha impressed by the whole incident and narrated the same to my mom. Mom immediately called Lakshmi inside for a tete a tete. From Lakshmi we learnt about the huge misconceptions that exist amongst slum dwellers about AIDs. It is considered a deadly disease, but no one knows how to prevent it. Protection is expensive and men are not willing to spend precious money on the same. Wives who do not cooperate are beaten or abandoned. Like alcoholic husbands and abuse, they take AIDs as fate. If the women want protection, then they have to buy it themselves. The husbands are pretty clear that they are not “wasting” their money on the same. And many women know that, they had better protect themselves as there will be no one to look after their kids if something happens to them. The husbands will merely marry another willing victim.

Lakshmi abandoned her husband a long time ago, when my mom advised her to. She never regretted the decision, as a huge financial liability was lifted off her shoulders with his departure. She was able to put her kids through school and was forever free of beatings and abuse. My mom on the other hand was free of the frequent hospital trip to repair her after the brutal beatings. Today she acts as a one woman NGO, advising girls of the dangers of AIDs and the importance of protection. I do not know how successful she is, as gullible young girls are not wont to listen to preaching’s when they are flattered by the attention of their men. But Lakshmi tries. She says the girls are smartening up with television becoming affordable and the resultant information flow to the slums.

Listening to Lakshmi, you are made aware of the age old traditions and beliefs that cripples able bodied women into helpless slaves. Just changing laws is not going to break the shackles religion has placed on the society. Because as long as these women are bought up on mythical stories of women who sacrificed their lives for their husbands, they will worship their men as Gods! Religious leaders, have to play an active part in cleaning the misconceptions instead of harping on “our culture and traditions being decimated by Valentines Day celebrations!”

The Quote Tag

I have been tagged by a notorious assassin and serial killer who I suspect, likes to live life in the danger lane!! Read his blog at your own risk. You may be thrown out of office for laughing hysterically at some of his victims!

The tag is called “The Quote Tag.” Now, tagging me with a Quote tag is like asking a mongaan irunna naayi about his problems....I love quotes!! And asking me to quote "only" 5 is like telling Paris Hilton to live on a budget!! This is the Height of Frustration for me!! So this might be the most difficult tag I will ever do!

( Mr Thomas Sebastian, count me in among the numerous people plotting revenge against you. I am right now making a tag exclusively wonly for you called “The Five Crushes Tag". I am already smiling in sadistic delight at the thought of you tearing your hair out in frustration because you can only jot down 5 crushes tee hee)

The Tag

Jot down 5 (arrghh) of your favorite quotes from the various books you’ve read. If you don’t have the books with you now, Googling (Wikiquotes and the like) can be used to find them. Tag five people and acknowledge the person who tagged you.


1. “For two people in a marriage to live together day after day is unquestionably the one miracle the Vatican has overlooked.”

-- Bill Cosby

Now, I am neither married nor cynical of the same, but this just cracks me up!!!

2. “Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace."

-- Oscar Wilde

Please don't think I am a pessimist folks...I am an optimist as you can see by this quote.

3. "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

-- Teilhard de Chardin

4. Toohey: “Mr. Roark, we're alone here. Why don't you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us.”
Roark: “But I don't think of you.”

-- The Fountainhead

I love this quote because this is exactly what I would say to the numerous relatives who disapproved of my Dad's liberal way of bringing me up. "Do you know what they are talking about you?" they would ask. To which I replied “Why would I want to know what they are talking about me!!" genuinely puzzled. And this is what kept me blogging all these years. Most people do not know about the numerous Anon comments and mails I get saying "Are you aware of the consequence of what you have written!!' To which I always replied 'Why should I be!" Period.

5. "Love doesn't make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile."

-Franklin P. Jones

Here's wishing that all of us find the love that will make this ride worthwhile!

This is a simple tag, that I complicated with my rambling :p So the people I tag need not do the same. All you need to do is write down your favorite quotes. :)

I hereby tag the following with the “The Quote Tag”-

• Neena Padayatty
• Emmanuel
• Josmy
• Abraham
• Mind Curry
• Karthik
• the layman

Listening to this melodious song. Have a great weekend folks!

The un-encashed freedom cheque!

Yet another Independence Day approaches. We had a colorful celebration in the office today with competitions like, 'My Pod’ which is a euphemism for 'most distastefully decorated cubicle". People showed how (un)creative they were by decorating their work stations with trillions of tricolor Indian flags in varying degrees of slants, from 10 degree to some really acute and obtuse angled slants, while some hung it upside down.

By evening I was ready to puke at the sight of the tricolor. It was everywhere!! Some people had used their genius creativity to make designs of the flags. They looked like tricolor mosaics and people were heard asking “What is that? Oh! That’s a circle made of flags yeah? How umm nice."

Just when I was fighting the tricolor overdose induced nausea, came the round of sweets. And you guessed it right, it was tricolor. Sigh.

Some people decided to go off the beaten path! I heaved sigh of relief!! They bought tricolor streamers!! *barf* Yet another group too decided to do something different, They bought tricolor brooches. By afternoon, the facilities team, not to be outdone, lovingly plonked a tricolor flag on every table. And lest we complaint of damp Independence Day spirit in the office, they topped it up with garlands made of Marigold on the workstation walls!

I suddenly felt pity for the British. So this was the reason they ran away!!! So much tricolor would have been a deadly assault on the sensitive British senses. And they used vegetable dyes in those days!!

Lunch was interesting. Tricolor pulao, and tricolor Koftas and everything else had a generous helping of white or orange and green in it. Dessert was tricolor cham cham! I was gagging! The assault of the tricolor was suffocating. And there were Nehrus and Tilaks and Rajendra Prasads walking around, talking of sales figures and year end targets. Very unnerving I tell you!

And the gals...you wont believe this…were dressed in white salwars and tricolor dupattas!! Yours truly stuck to a white salwar kurtha and white dupatta ( HR orders to wear ‘ethnic’). Someone lovingly stuck a tricolor bindi on my forehead and my tricolor misery was complete!

Outlook Express was a tricolor churning machine for the day. Every other mail came with images of Gandhi, Baby, Dove, Landscape and Sunflowers painted over with…you guessed right, the tricolor!!! The tricolor sunflower looked like that awful Wipro logo that I am sure Premji was made to adopt under gunpoint! Of course the e-cards had "Happy Independence Day" written all over in tricolor wedding fonts. Is there any limit to creativity? It was overstretched err overflowing in my office today.

Is this what Independence Day is all about I wondered. Then how different is it from Valentines and New Years!

There was a speech from a big boss that I knew by heart and when he paused to answer his phone, I caught myself lip syncing the words.

We must do our bit for the country blah blah. We must be responsible blah blah. Blah duties too and blah like patriotic blah, we must blah and we should blah blah. Then we can blah blah, so that we can progress blah blah into a SUPERPOWER!!”

*applause from khadi clad junta*

I silently thanked the gods that I was lip syncing the speech, or the bhaashan would have continued in a feminine voice while he attended a phone call.

Felt very frustrated by the end of the day. I took the plastic box of tricolor sweets tied with tricolor ribbons and pushed it into my bag. Somehow, I could not appreciate the enthusiasm of the decorators. I wish that enthusiasm was channeled elsewhere, like on the streets where the real India lives. Talk is cheap I know, but I wish the stupid Human Resources had taken us for a day's CSR at some orphanage or village school. At least for a day, I would have felt I did something relevant. I badly want to feel that I have done something. Right now I feel like an empty headed fool with my tricolor bindi and tricolor flag stuck with a pin on my salwar.

Hope this post doesn’t read like a bhaashan. But I am feeling damn frustrated right now to see Independence Day reduced to another commercial celebration like Valentines Day! When will we become a nation of doers and not just tricolor streamers err I mean dreamers?

( I am off to Kerala for the long weekend. Reply to comments will hence be delayed. Have a rocking weekend folks!!)

Bush fire!

The good news:

Sen. McCain's bus crashes in Miami!

The bad news:

Sen. McCain was not traveling in the bus when the accident occurred.

God save America...err the world!

The final innings

Sunday was yet another wedding in the family in Bangalore. Hordes of relations had come down from Kerala. Some had come earlier, mostly the older folks so that they could visit the older folks living here. As I dutifully drove one such set of older people from one house to another, I was stuck by something. The older folks were a changed lot from their much younger version that I had seen when I was a kid. The years had smoothed away the rough edges, leaving beautiful people, devoid of jealousy, rancor and other human weaknesses that keep people apart. And replacing that was genuine happiness in meeting people, genuine happiness in their happiness, genuine concern at their well being and genuine happiness at their successes.

There was a lot of peace and calm in the car and it seemed to radiate to me. Another thing that stuck me about this generation was an obvious yet unnoticed facet of their life. They were all islands of two, with siblings around their age, similar islands stuck in a time warp that would have begun the day they got married. These were couples who had left their home and hearth as young men and women and come together to raise a family and then bid goodbye to their kids as they set off to seek their fortunes in the corporate world. Yet they were due to some societal compulsions, still living like a couple even though they could now afford to give time to people they could not earlier due to family and work commitments! And since all the older folks are in the same dilemma, it leads of a lot of islands living in avoidable loneliness and emptiness.

This post is not about, older folks being left alone, so please hold comments on the same! This post is about making a conscious change in older couples lifestyles after they have finished their parental and family duties. This post is about reconnecting with people you left behind or parted with, when you stepped out into the world.

I am not saying that couples should split and go back to their parental family members. But after we fly the coup, we should liberate our parents too, instead of keeping them locked up as guardians of the family property and thus condemning them to live as islands! It is surprising to see the number of lonely old couples in one extended family itself! If they could connect, their loneliness would be over for good and the company of people their age, will act like a friends circle, giving them a social life as well! Right now their only reprieve from loneliness is weddings and other family functions

And if it happens, wouldn’t old age be a looked forward to event? It would, for me. The very thought of spending time with my parental family members in my old age is a very warm and happy feeling indeed!

While I was discussing this with my mom the other day, she told me of a couple who were kept apart from their family as their kids feared that the family may brain wash them into parting with their property! The couple now live alone in Mumbai instead of their ancestral tharavadu like some of their retired siblings, exiled because of a Mumbai apartment, wasting precious years of what’s left of their lives away from their families. Such a sad situation! What a waste of time…and life. It’s high time we loosened the “family” grip from older people so that they can have a life of their own.

Getting back to the post...at the end of each visit, I watched the older folks, take leave of their siblings, tears in their eyes, making resolves to visit more often and eking out promises to call more often. And I felt bad that they have to say goodbye at all. If only they knew they had a choice! *sigh*

p.s it is obvious I guess, I love ze olde folks to bits! Just being with them is like living in a nicer world.

Dedicating this song to all those people, who are still young at heart!

Johnny Walkers!

A week ago, on July 11th to be precise, a piece of forbidden meat was found in a mosque in Bangalore. There was panic as news spread. Everyone expected the injured community to retaliate. But nothing of that sort happened. People have long realized the futility of reacting to incidents instigated on purpose leading to misery to the common man, inflicted by the common man.

Some months ago, bombs ripped through Hyderabad destroying a mosque and killing several people. If the terrorists expected a communal riot, they would have been disappointed.

The Mumbai blasts the terrorists thought would bring Mumbai to a stand still. But this is India babua…we cannot afford to be afraid. And even if we are, we cannot afford to stop and quake in fear. Life goes on for us. Those who stop will get left behind. Fear is a precious commodity for us.

Therefore your bombs and grenades will not stop us. It is not because we are a brave people. But because we are survivors. And survivors have long back realized that walking away from adversities is the best way to put a distance between it and us.

The recent Bangalore blasts were nothing but saber rattling. A desperate attempt to show that they are not beaten. But the fact is that you are. What do you do a nation that doesn’t stop! What can you do to a nation that keeps walking?

Your bombs will kill a few of us, injure as many. But the survivors will walk on. We have no one except us to look after us. So we cannot afford to stop and cry. We have ourselves to look after and that is a big job.

I hope the neighboring country that fosters their energies to destroy us and their masters who keep fuelling their armory making a deadly cocktail of virulent religious fundamentalism served by the Big Brother himself, realize that they are trying to scare a people that cannot afford to be scared. Short of complete annihilation, nothing will stop us from picking up the pieces if our lives and keep moving on.

Unrelations!

Rose, my cousin sister was still single. She is my mom's niece in a sort of way, though in a pretty convoluted way! Her Dad is a proud man. He doesn’t like to mix with us as he feels we are high brow or the more apt term would be “show offs.” Our fault…is that we have cars, which according to him is extravagance and that we have parties, which according to him is moral degradation and many other perceived or non perceived faults. He is the typical PLG.

But he is family and hence we cannot cut off ties with his kids because of him. When we drop in to their home, their attitude is one of restraint. Gifts to the kids are ignored and not acknowledged as though it was unnecessary and after polite talk, we take leave of the excruciating atmosphere. The kids watch us go with sadness. Victims of family insecurities.

With the parents botching up one proposal after another due to their stupid pride, Rose seemed doomed to remain unmarried at 29. This is when my mom decided to step in like she did countless times before. And when my mom decides to step in, it means her slave laborer i.e yours truly is the person who actually does all the menial work.

So I made the Kerala Matrimony account, scanned prospective grooms and passed on the scanned and filtered proposals to Rose’s brother via email. Every single proposal was found faulty and the attitude of the parents was that we were trying to send their daughter off with some loser.

Ignoring them,, my mom persisted err told me to persist. It was kinda fun reading the proposals and the atrocious English and me and pals had some fun times giggling when mom was not looking. At work too, the Kerala Matrimony log in was our ticket to much merriment and laughter!

Sometime back we got the good news that Rose was finally getting engaged! The boy, her cousin brother informed my mom, was from Changanassery and they found him via a newspaper ad. When the details of the boy arrived, I was amused to see that it was one of the prospects that we had got through Kerala Matrimony. Anyways, we didn’t want to spoil the parent’s party by making them acknowledge that it was my mom and her slave driving that got them a groom.

Rose gets engaged today in Pala. I am very happy for Rose. The wedding is in Changanassery, the groom’s place, as per our customs. We are not invited. They did send word through Rose’s mom’s sister. But protocol demands that the parents call us and invite us. So we gave it the miss as it is obvious they want it so. If you think, we are sobbing like ladies in Hindi movies, then you are mistaken. We are too busy doing high fives. Besides we are used to such attitudes from Rose's parents!

And as my Dad tartly observed as he handed me a beer today, “Poor Lonai (Rose’s dad). Caught between the devil ( my mom) and the deep sea ( me). At least he should have acknowledged it. Now If something goes wrong, he cannot blame the devil or the deep sea” (This was said in Malayalam and I may have missed the essence while translating! :p )

And so we toasted to Rose and Jose’s good health. Wishing them both the very best life has to offer. Happy times, strength to get the bad times and lots of happy events to tide over the bad. God bless!

p.s I had to regretfully err under gun point close the Kerala Matrimony account. It was an out and out entertainment channel for us, with more variety in programmes than all our mallu TV channels put together! :p

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.

* Jason Mraz - I'm Yours
* Amazing Grace by Nana Mouskouri
* 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!

Rant!

My cousin brother J, his wife A, mom and eight month old son were visiting us last week. J completed his MS in the US and is placed with a company in the US. His wife studied in Kerala and was working in Kochi before marriage. They were staying with us so that they could visit relations here and grab a holiday in Kodaikanal before heading back to the US.

During the one week they spent with us, A drove all of us crazy! Before she landed up in Bangalore, she called up my mom and told her that she needed Mineral water to sterilize the baby’s bottles and utensils. She wasn’t too sure of the Aqua Guard water we use in the house! My mom obliged by asking the Kinley suppliers to ensure a continuous supply to the house while they were with us.

What happened next had me boiling impotently! From the time we picked them from the airport till they left, the lady had everyone on the edge and that included her mother in law who accompanied her to spend some time with my Mom!

From the airport to the house, A regaled us with tales of troubles she encountered when she landed in India a week ahead of hubby with the baby. She had apparently flown Lufthansa who were very helpful to passengers like her traveling with a baby. The domestic leg of her travel i.e from Bangalore to Kerala was undertaken in Indian. And the stark contrast in service between the two carriers gave A enough fodder for chit chat for the week she was here and visiting relations. My tart inquiry as to why she didn’t travel first class in Jet or Kingfisher was met with a smooth excuse. Her mom in law mumbled under her breath that A was trying to save money by traveling Indian.

After that it was pure hell. From complaints of lack of oxygen in the air in Bangalore to the crowds and inquiries if the stuff my mom cooked was organic and the content of fat...she had everyone on tenterhooks. My brother countered her questions tongue in cheek till a well placed kick under the table from mom ensured he kept quiet for the sake of family peace.

My mother, the gracious hostess she is, put up with A with the patience of an Indian Electorate waiting for good governance! While A sterilized the babies bottles and washed his plates in Kinley and ensured that the baby ate nothing but the pureed bottle food she had bought from the US, her mom in law ensured that the baby ate rice and fish curry when the parents were out visiting! By the time they left, the baby was refusing to eat the bland pureed food! A almost fainted when she came to know that the baby had eaten the unsterilised Indian food and crawled around the house in her absence! And guess what! The baby never fell sick or had any problems with that! Don't get me wrong. A is a really nice girl. But she seems to have trouble acknowledging the lifestyle she left not so long ago!

This is not the first time we are having visitors from the US with small babies. Most of them are fussy. But A took the cake. Nowadays during weddings and other get together, the joke is almost always on the NRI relations and how soon they forget the India they left not too long ago, like two months in some cases!!

I wonder if it is really that risky for an NRI to live in India after living in the US!

p.s Sorry for the delay in posts and replies to comments but if life were a Ferrari then Schumacher would be my driver. Right now trying to over ride the brakes! *sigh*

Choice!

Abortion! An issue that I want to take a strong stand on yet cannot! There are two schools of thought about the topic “in my head”.

1. You protect your life and your right to live with laws that punish people who take other people’s lives. Wouldn’t you like to afford the same right to a human fetus?

2. There are many girls who get pregnant unwillingly like rape victims. Don’t they have the right to set right what has been done wrong to their body via an abortion?


Both these arguments hold water. For the second group of people selective abortion can be advocated. BUT that would vitiate the principals of Thought No 1. That is the right to life. After all how many of us here had a choice to be born whether as a product of marriage or otherwise?

What do I think of abortion? I think it is abhorrent. It is like killing a child! It is murder! Because I think it is hypocritical to talk of human rights and political correctness and think naught of the unborn defenseless child!

On the other hand no one should take away the right of a woman who has been raped and unwilling to carry the product of that encounter as a constant reminder of her humiliation!

And in this debate we forget the tiny fetus that has absolutely no right or voice over its life! We were all tiny fetuses once upon a time! If we didn’t endure the pain of being chopped up or chemically killed it is because our parents or procreators chose not to.

Though I would not judge a woman who wants an abortion because she is pregnant after a rape, my heart will still cry for her unborn, condemned to dying because it was a fusion of lust and not love! Nature didn’t differentiate between the two when it created human procreation. Or we would all have been spared this discussion! What an interesting idea though! If a child were to be conceived only from two people who were in love, humans would have been extinct by now :p

In a country whose rivers are overflowing with female fetuses, posts like this are I guess laughably immature!

This post might seem confusing. It is…because I am confused about the topic!

Please note, this post does not have anything to do with my religious views or religious principles governing the matter.

The girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes!

I am speechless!!

Thanks Karthik for the link!

Famine and Plenty II

How many of us here were told to eat up our food because “there are so many poor people who do not get food!” I guess all of us have grown up to that refrain! It was not just prudence but empathy for the poor and an effort to avoid wastage!

Mr Bush recently accused Indians and the Chinese of depleting world food reserves due to the increase in purchasing power of the average citizen of these countries. Indians were incensed at what they think is Bush trying to tell Indians to eat less so that the US can eat more. Without delving on the merits and demerits of his statement, I decided to take a critical look at something I had blogged about earlier too.

Ten years ago when we attended weddings, the left over food was usually packed and taken home and distributed to relations and neighbors. Wastage was unheard of! Today if you were to visit a Kalyana Mantapa or Wedding Hall in Bangalore, the amount of food thrown in the dust bin will leave you sick in the stomach! Except for the lower middle classes no one thinks of taking leftovers home because it is passé besides leftovers are in such large quantities and also spoil easily! What is ironic is that at such functions people have to pay per plate consumed and then the leftover is thrown away!!

There is a Kalyana Mantapa near my home and I have seen the changes in food habits of people over the years by just observing its dustbin! Ten years ago the dustbins here were a repository of used banana leaves! Today those very same dustbins are overflowing with mounds of food and plastic ware and attract dozens of stray dogs and giant rats!

Go to any hotel kitchen and you will see the afternoon buffet spread in the dustbin by evening! Some years ago, buffets were confined to star hotels and smaller hotels and restaurants cooked against orders. The demand for faster service and increase in customer’s has made many hotels adopt wasteful tactics like pre cooked food which is thrown away if a particular dish is not ordered by customers! The high returns in the food business offsets wastages!

Smaller hotels attract customers during weekdays with Buffet spreads and these also lead to a lot of wastage as the number of customers is not predictable and subsequently the left over food has to be thrown away if the patronage was low! Indian cuisine, especially the type that is sold in hotels is resource intensive unlike Continental cuisine. This affects other commodities like Gas, Edible Oil and water and the vicious chain is complete.

There is an order of Nuns in Bangalore who collect left over food from Hotels and Wedding Halls and feed the poor. But what they collect is just a drop in the ocean of waste! It is humanly impossible to collect the entire amount of leftover food from eateries in a given day!

Whatever the US may do and no matter how much they waste food, we Indians should not use that to justify ourselves! We have a large section of the society that lives hand to mouth! While I am not advocating that we live frugal lives because of that, a little bit of thought to the poor like in “not wasting food because there are so many poor people who do not get food” would be immensely helpful!

Urban islands!

I saw Achchuvinte Amma the other day! A tolerable movie with gaping holes in the script. This is not a movie review. But something in the movie has been bothering me for some time.

There is flashback scene in the movie on Urvashi’s childhood when her caretaker, an old lady dies, leaving her at the mercy of her male employers, each one of whom tries to satiate their lust on her. The young girl escapes each time thanks to her street savvines and finally ends up in a weaving unit in Tamilnadu. At the unit she meets several girls like her or in similar circumstances. Soon the young Urvashi realizes that this was a kind of holding place for girls before they are shipped off to the Red Light area of Mumbai. The young Urvashi escapes, taking with her a two year old girl, also being held for trade at a later date.

I don’t know how many people dwelt on that scene or paused to think of the very powerful statement that the director unwittingly made with those scenes. I don’t think many! After all girls being bought and sold for flesh trade is stale news now. What doesn’t affect us doesn't bother us and we as a society do not believe in getting involved in anything other than our own family or professional affairs.

Instances of girls being sold in the flesh market are talked about in living rooms and around coffee tables. We cluck our tongues at the government’s inaction to curb the menace. Every thing and anything that ails the society is the government’s responsibility. No wonder governments themselves are under such strain in India!

With a population that does nothing or gives nothing back to the society (except taxes), but believes only in taking, no government will be able to cope up! We want our governments to function in splendid isolation so that we do not have to dirty our hands and expect wonders from this arrangement.

So what am I saying? That we leave our work and start doing social work. Yes! But you don’t need to leave your work for that. A little bit of involvement will do wonders to our country. Like in respecting public property as our own! And the right of our fellow citizens to all that we aspire for ourselves! The parasitic existence that we live now has to stop, if this country has to change what we want changed.

How do we go about that? I don’t know! But this giant populace has to get off their butts and start getting involved in matters other than their own!

If aliens were to observe India from space, what would they see? As dawn breaks over the country, massive hordes of people scurry out of their homes and stream into their workplaces. And as the evening falls, the hordes scurry back like mice to their holes. After which there is no movement visible outside the holes except perhaps for trips to the grocery store! We live in holes and do not get involved beyond our holes. It’s no wonder that people living out of the holes have a free run of the road! And we expect to outsource our social wellbeing to these people!!!

It is no wonder we are moving further and further away from each other!

Higher Education!

After writing this post and the creative suggestions that were made in the comment section...I was pleasantly unsurprised to see a commercial in Kairali TV for .....*hold your breath*......Institute of Heavy Machinery, Kollam!

Apparently the Institute teaches students to drive and operate vehicles like Earth Movers, Lifts, Tractors etc. How ingenious! And how predictable that a mallu is involved here!

The ad shows a fat, but apparently under-the-mistaken assumption-that-he-is-fit Principal of the Institute operating several run down PWD vehicles. He looks rather sincere though and jumps down from the vehicles without too much problems or losing focus of the camera.

You wanna make some easy money? Dare your friends to see the ad with a straight face....and collect the cash in Hydraulic Excavators...which btw is not part of the curriculum.

What next? Institute of Maidservant or an Institute of Ironing Clothes? I wouldn't be surprised if they are already existing! brr

I am off for a much needed vacation folks. The other blog will be updated as usual on Sunday. Catch up with you all later. Ciao!

Love or companionship?

AV and AM met a couple of years ago when both were working for a company making Laptops. She was in Sales. He was a techie. Both were from the same community and soon their friendship blosommed into romance. Soon AM got an admit into a B-School and left for his higher studies. They kept in touch in the intermission.

After graduation AM rejoined the company in a senior position and is now a busy manager! He is ambitious and works long hours. Soon their regular meetings fizzled out to occasional meetings for coffee and their social life came to a stop.

Sometime back, AV made the difficult decision to call off this relationship. AM is an extremely nice guy. I will vouch for that! At 26, he is a very mature person and the kind of guy you can rely on for anything. He is still the same...but busier.

AV's decision shocked all of us. We were aghast, because no girl in her right mind would leave a guy like AM!!!

But AV had a point. She didn't want to spend her life waiting for AM to come home and live a solitary life after marriage. Its bad enough that she hardly sees him these days! Then why should she take the inevitable into marriage!

AM understood her position, but he is helpless! He has his career path clearly charted for him. And that does not include a wife or free time for some time.

Though AM was extremely hurt, he bid goodbye to her and wished her luck!

AV got married six months ago and she is a happy girl. Watching her, one of my married female colleagues wondered if the new Indian woman, would ever be happy only with the title 'Mrs'. I think not! Just the 'Mrs' tag is no longer attractive even for me or my peers. I'd rather have a Mr with it...like AV!

Love or companionship? Companionship definitely! What will we do with empty love!

Making news!

This year when the Hogenakal water dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka sprouted up, most of us of old Bangaloreans cringed at the thought of another round of protests and Tamil channels being blocked, Tamil movie posters being pulled own and other childish acts that vested interests seem to wait to rabble rouse!

However nothing of that sort happened! A pleasantly surprised populace watched as the Cable operators from both State resolved not to let their business be affected by politics and most political parties except the BJP decided to exercise restraint and let the law take its own course. This is unheard of in Bangalore and Karnataka! We are so used to violent protests at the very mention of the word “Neighbor”!

Most of us watched in disbelief as not a single incident of violence or protest was reported on TV except for some mature statements by people like S M Krishna! People seem to have changed overnight! It was evident that at last, people have realized that the bogey of outsiders threatening the culture and language of Karnataka was only doing harm than good to the State’s image specially since Karnataka generates most of its revenue from Bangalore! For people like me who have grown up here, it was a huge relief to see this change.

Therefore I was really shocked and taken back to see a program aired on prime time by CNN IBN about Bangalore and Karnataka. The program has been clearly put together by someone sitting in Delhi or Mumbai unaware of the changes in Karnataka, deciding to cash in on what he/she thought were burning issues!! The entire program is made up of old issues dredged up from news archives, garnished with commentaries and interviews with old hawks and trouble makers and can be positively harmful if such people realize their power in giving fodder to news hungry channels like CNN IBN!

It is true that every Kannadiga loves Kannada and wants Kannada to be preserved! But instead of talking to doyens of Kannada literature, the program interviews people who made it to the news till some time back by blackening English sign boards, demanding 85% reservation for Kannadiags in IT and BT companies and throwing stones at movie theaters showing Tamil films!!!

There is absolutely no effort or pretense in this program to catch the pulse of the people or report facts! If CNN IBN had made the effort, they would have found out that the situation is changing in Karnataka! Linguistic chauvinism is on the wane and people are realizing that there are better and mature means to solving disputes with neighbors than resorting to Xenophobia and violence!

However no such effort has been made by CNN IBN in the making of this program and the show talks about how the people of Karnataka want to assert their Kannada identity over Bangalore and their discontent with the modernization ( read pubs) of Bangalore!

After watching this program, I was reminded of the movie ( I forget the name) about a News Channel tycoon who decides to ‘make news’ so that his channel will be the first to report it! That movie was a pot shot at the CNN! How ironic that CNN’s Indian arm, the CNN IBN is actually doing that? Who could have predicted that?

I guess for lazy channels like CNN IBN, News Archives is "the" hot and happening place for “making news”! So what next? A program on the Khalistan movement? Or the Tamil separatist movement? How many dying embers will they rake up to a fire in their quest for viewer ship? I dread to think of the topic of their next Prime Time program!

For a population that labors from 9 to 6, news channels are the only window to the outside world! And news channels like CNN IBN realize this very well! And in their quest to fill in air time, they will not hesitate to stoop to any levels to "make news" !

Its all in the family!

There is this old uncle of mine, lets call him John. Now John is among my favorite Uncles. Recently my mother revealed that years ago, Uncle John had taken a portion of her family property through doctored documents. He was exposed and the property returned back to my mother’s family many years ago. But all these years when we visited him and his family I never had an inkling of what had transpired between him and my mother’s family.

When my Dad came to know that my mother had told me this family secret he was annoyed. He felt that I would not respect this gentleman like I did before and he felt that "children" should be kept out of family politics. My mom, who usually backs down when it comes to my Dad’s policies like this, held her ground this time and argued that it was time that I knew the truth. She felt that I would still treat him the same as I was capable of independent judgment now!

I was shocked to hear about this facet of my Uncle! And unknowingly my mom opened a can of worms and soon a lot of family secrets came tumbling out of the closet of secrecy! My head started spinning as I heard the tales about people I love and their part in the small intrigues that most families harbor.

Though the family secrets shocked me, what really amazed me was the family’s attitude to erring members!! No matter how big or small the crime, it was forgotten after resolving it, with no trace of bitterness or revisits! I realized that no matter how horrendous the crime, a family member had to be forgiven and accepted back into the family fold. Of course one has to be cautious with the knowledge that one has about people in the family and their weaknesses, but one has to forgive too because there is no other way out here for errant members except complete ostracism from the family!

For the first time in my life I felt in awe of my extended family and their willingness to turn a kind eye to the mistakes of the weak among them and keep the family bond strong despite so many unsavory aspects amidst its members. What I took for granted i.e the extended family, was a result of a lot of hard work, a lot of giving and taking and forgiving! And I am glad that these people worked at it than taking the easy way out, i.e breaking off relations and depriving us i.e the youngest in the family the privilege of knowing and growing up amidst this huge sea of very nice but very human people.

I would like to believe that this revelation was my mom’s way of telling me that I am grown up now. However the look she gave me when I told her that I wanted to drive to Goa alone with a few friends, would have melted a bar of cast iron! *sigh*