A trip around Jaipur

The Rajasthan Tourism Development Corporation (RTDC) arranges daily guided tours of Jaipur city and nearby places for a sum of Rs. 170. After being assured that it was the best way to see the sights of Jaipur city by both the Park Plaza staff & some locallites, we decided to take the tour.

The nearest RTDC office being at Gangaur hotel off Mirza Ismail Rd., we reported there by 08:15 a.m for a tour that was supposed to start from 09:00 a.m.A 33-seater bus, probably considered a luxury bus in Rajasthan, compared to all the other heaps of junk that ply around the Jaipur city, was our mode of transport. Our RTDC guide was Mr. O.P.Verma, who made up for his rather poor English with his wit in Hindi along with some curt replies to the tourists' queries. Mr. Verma started almost every sentence with a history of Jaipur's rulers but his parroting of certain trivia soon became monotonous.

The Birla Mandir, a beautiful marble temple, not far from where we were staying was the start of the tour. Twenty minutes was all we got for our tour of the temple. Adjacent to the temple is a hill-top fort, the Moti Doongri, the residence of Maharani Gayatri Devi.

The Albert Hall, a museum close to Birla Mandir, is closed for renovation at present.

Hawa Mahal, the ubiquitous symbol of the Pink City, turned out to be rather disappointing. Even the RTDC guide wasn't too keen on explaining about it, saying only that it had a lot of rooms from where Rajput ladies would watch processions. Since the Hawa Mahal is situated in a busy area of the old city, there's no place for parking and we had to be satisfied with only seeing it from inside the bus.

Just behind the Hawa mahal is the Jantar-mantar. Jantar-Mantar, the final of the five designed, the most famous, first one, being in Delhi, was really amazing. The fact that our ancestors could calculate the time to an accuracy of 2 seconds many centuries ago is just breathtaking. The intricate instruments designed to study astronomy .definitely does make me feel proud of my heritage.

Adjacent to the Jantar-mantar is the City Palace. The present head of the royal family, Brigadier Sawai Bhavani Singh stays there. A part of this palace has been converted into a museum but, photography is not permitted there. The clothes used by the royal family members are displayed here but the best part of the museum is the arms section. The ceiling of the arms room is painted with pure gold and the different weapons, some of them multipurpose really are worth seeing. There is a third room that contains the art collections of the Jaipur kings.

The drive to Nahargarh Fort, a distance of 18 kms, is quite scenic at times. On the way, is the Jal mahal, a 5 floor palace situated in the middle of a lake. Only the topmost is over water, the others being under water. Since it is being converted into a hotel, it is closed for public.

The Nahargarh fort was built by Sawai Jai Singh and named after a prince whose spirit was supposed to haunt the place...

..... To be continued

Dus Kahaniyaan - Review

Once in a few months Hindi Film Industry comes up with a Dus Kahaniyaan, an anamoly in the typical song and dance routine. I was never a big fan of Sanjay Gupta, having barely endured his films such as Kaante, but I really appreciate his efforts in producing such a movie as this. I half-expected to see an anthology film almost as bad as Darna Mana Hai or a Darna Zaroori Hai, assuring myself that atleast two of the ten films wouldn't be disappointing. When I came out however, I had the gratified feeling of having read a Dahl or a Saki's short story collection.

Matrimony was a good opener, Mandira Bedi playing the cheating house-wife who makes a startling discovery. There was a bit of an editing glitch in the story and I'm not sure whether it was in the original print or only in the print at INOX Vaibhav, in Jaipur.

High on the Highway, was a big letdown. It would have probably been better if the director Hansel Mehta had downplayed the drugs a bit. I is quite difficult to have any sympathy for someone high on drugs, walking on the highway and getting assaulted or raped or even murdered. It is almost as if they were asking for it.

Pooranmasi was a like paying a quick visit to the good old days of Doordarshan serials and tele-films. Set in rural North India, it is a reminder of how narrow our mindsets can be.

Strangers in the Night was the best of the lot. The twist in the tale at the end was such that the entire movie hall was speechless when it was revealed.

Zahir, inspite of the message it tried to convey, turned out to be a comedy. The end was totally unpredictable but, you feel like laughing at Manoj Bajpai's character instead of feeling sorry for him.

Lovedale, was a feel good film. The twist in the tale here didn't live upto the mark. There was the element of supernatural here in the story, but, there was nothing scary about it.

Sex on the Beach, was ridiculous. Tarina Patel's cleavage was more watchable than her acting. As for Dino Morea's acting skills, I'm still wondering if they were as hidden as Tarina Patel's real intentions in the movie were. I certainly couldn't find them in the twenty-odd minutes of the plot.

Rice Plate, was an excellent effort. Shabana Azmi and Naseeruddin Shah stole the show. I'm very sure that I've read the original story somewhere before, but the Indianised adaptation was good. I wonder why the person with a deep-rooted prejudice against Muslims had to be shown as a South-Indian Brahmin lady. Shabana Azmi, takes a taxi to Bandra station to go to Pune. Since when did the trains to Pune go via Bandra station?

Gubbare, was one of the few stories which had a totally predictable end. In fact, I was let down by the ending. It was also one of the few stories that had a Hindi title.

Rise & Fall, a gangster story, typical of Sanjay Gupta was a better effort from him this time round. If Sanjay Gupta keeps his gangster stories as short, maybe his films will do better at the box-office.

A different Jaipur

My first visit to Jaipur was many years ago when the bus I was travelling from Delhi's ISBT to Jodhpur, stopped for a couple of hours at the pink city. Jaipur then, came across as a typical North Indian small city, full of loud people with their colourful, but mostly unwashed turbans, and their sun-tanned skin, crouching on the ground & smoking their beedis, unmindful of all the din caused the papad vendors and the vehicle horns sounding all around. Jaipur bus stand reeked of an odour that was a heady mixture of the various eatable vendors hawking their wares and a faint stench of urine and I was glad when the bus finally moved on.
















1) An View of Jaipur's city centre.
2) The Tonk Road flyover at Gandhinagar.

This time however, since lady luck having been kind to me, I found myself being driven from the Sanganer Airport to Park Plaza in the centre of the city. As the cab drove across Tonk road and Prithviraj road, I saw a totally different view of Jaipur. The wide roads, green avenues and some wonderfully designed buildings had me wondering if this was the same city whose bus stand I’d passed through many years before. Jaipur has not missed the development bus but, somehow has struggled to find ways to cling on to the ways of the old. The various bazaars that dot the old city still, are a reminder of how the present Rajasthani still juggles culture and tradition with modernity. The sight of pretty young girls driving their scooterettes through the narrow by lanes of a Bapu bazaar or a Tripolia Bazaar may be the result of urbanisation but the veils/chunaris behind which they hide their faces speaks volumes of their reluctance to totally break free.

The Hypocrisy (Hippocratic) Oath

Why are we loath to put up with any sort of unethical conduct in matters concerning medical health when we openly promulgate such behaviour elsewhere? It is probably only because that we cannot accept that the person who has our life in his/her hands could be unscrupulous to the point that our best interests may have been be compromised. Any medical treatment nowadays is a series of procedures that in trying to eliminate your apprehensions also fills up the hospital’s coffers. It is not uncommon for a succession of treatments and tests to be prescribed for what has been already diagnosed ab-initio, but, we concur with these because it is our health and life that we do not want to risk. But, when the Hippocratic Oath, by which the doctors swear to treat the patients to the best of their ability, is thrown by the wayside for the sake of ready money, it just cannot be accepted anymore.

Dr.Agarwal’s Eye Hospital at 15, Eagle Street, Langford Town, Hosur Road, Bangalore, is supposed to be a renowned eye hospital, though its predecessor in Chennai is the more renowned of the two. My mother badly needed to have a cataract surgery done and we had decided to do it at Nethradhama, Jayanagar, which is the closest eye hospital to my home, until the Nethradhama authorities said that they do not accept the Bajaj-Allianz insurance that I have. So, based purely on geographic distance, we decided to go to Dr.Agarwal’s Eye Hospital on Hosur Road which was the next nearest. As soon as you enter it, you wonder if it was really a hospital. It is run from a house with hardly any staff – two doctors, Dr. Soumya & another whose name I couldn’t get, but, she was addressed as what seemed to me to be Dr. Garima, two nurses, a lab technician and a ward-boy who doubles up as the receptionist. After paying Rs. 300 as the admission fees, we were directed to the waiting room, which was actually the hall of the house. Dr. Sunita Agarwal’s medals are displayed here and so are some newspaper articles of her and her stem cell research. I should have got my first clue then and there itself when all I could see there at 11 a.m was just one more patient, compared to the hustle and bustle of patients that Nethradhama and later Narayana Nethralaya was.

My mother’s eyes were initially tested by what I’m pretty sure was the lab technician and not a doctor – the local slang in the Kannada and Tamil she spoke giving her away. After that we were directed to Dr. Garima who hardly ever spoke and after subjecting my mother to the other various tests, she said that the head nurse would clear our doubts. The head nurse was herself a senior citizen, speaking both Kannada and Tamil with a Malayalam accent and interspersing Malayalam words in both. She told us about how my mother’s eyes were totally dry, painting a grim picture of how harmful dry eyes were and how badly we needed to have a silicon plug installed in each eye at the cost of Rs. 4000 per plug to prevent dryness and no, that wouldn’t be covered under the insurance but it was absolutely necessary! As for the cataract surgery, she said that each eye would cost Rs. 20,000 inclusive of an imported lens, however if we needed a ring to support the lens inside the eye (if the optical muscles were too weak to support the lens), we needed to pay an extra few thousand for the ring and no, it was not covered under insurance. Post, operation, we needed to undergo three sittings of Retinal Diode therapy, once in ten days, the purpose of which was to strengthen the eye muscles, each sitting costing Rs. 2000 each and no, that too was not covered under insurance. She then, told us to wait for Dr. Sunita Agarwal, who was expected at around 1 pm and who would give us the dates for the surgery.

It was during that one hour waiting period, that I realised what a con job Agarwal’s Eye Hospital was pulling off. I talked to the one other patient, an old lady accompanied by her daughter. She had already had the surgery done in one eye about two months ago and had come there for the Diode therapy. Agarwal’s was still not clear about when her other eye would be operated upon. She advised us not to go for the stem cell therapy. Then a young couple came in, with the lady telling the nurse that she had headaches. She was diagnosed with some power after a check-up and then the head nurse started her sermon about Silicon plugs. The young couple were unconvinced and left with only the prescription for the glasses.

Sunita Agarwal ambled in around that time and I swear she reeked of cigarette smell. She hurriedly saw our reports, spoke to the two doctors and wrote a few more points on the report and left, leaving us to speak to the head nurse again. Post her lunch, Dr. Garima, did a few more checks and she had garlic and masala stench on her breath and her hands. She told us that my mother had a slight squint in her eyes (after 57 years of nobody discovering it!) and it could be corrected with treatment and no, it was not covered under insurance. The old nurse came to us again and said that Sunita Agarwal had prescribed us Stem cell injections and it would cost us Rs. 40,000 but it was very good for an early recovery and no, it was not covered under insurance. After we expressed out reservations about it, and after I cut short her sermon about stem cells saying that I knew what they were and that they were unethical, she agreed that it was something Sunita Agarwal prescribed to all patients and very few actually had them. She told us to come the very next day for the surgery. I reminded her that my mother was diabetic, but, she said that it was a minor operation and a sugar check was not needed. She told us that a BP check would be done the next day prior to the surgery and that was enough. When we asked for the file containing the reports, she refused to give them to us. I asked her if the doctors don’t speak to the patients, she mumbled something about language issues when I clearly had heard Dr. Soumya talking in Kannada on her mobile phone. I asked her about the recovery time after surgery, she said that if we wanted, we could have both eyes operated at the same time, when I knew that this was wrong.

Back home, I searched on the net and consulted my friend who is a doctor (but not an ophthalmologist). I found that Diode therapy was something done for damaged eyes and silicon plugs were totally optional and my doctor friend warned me against having the surgery done at Dr.Agarwal’s Eye Hospital, saying that all they did was daylight robbery. I called up my insurance company the next day and got the approval for my mother’s surgery at Dr.Agarwal’s Eye Hospital cancelled. My mother had her surgery done at Narayana Nethralaya, Rajajinagar and she’s had no problems ever since and I have the satisfaction of not having been conned.

I find it difficult to blame Dr.Agarwal’s Eye Hospital. They have their business to run but it sure is difficult to digest the fact that they were playing around with the life and health of someone close to me. Medical ethics are supposed to be of utmost importance to a doctor but I think Sunita Agarwal must have bunked that class in her medical school.

The Other Side of the Coin

I’m certainly not a right-winged Hindu fundamentalist but, I have no sympathy for the late Rizwanur Rahman. It is just that I cannot pity anyone who gets ensnared in any sort of a complicated situation brought about by that silly notion called “Love”. The media and the ideological youth have, needless to say, made a martyr of someone who didn’t do anything to deserve the accolades he’s getting after his death.

I’ve always wondered why we have such a fascination and anticipation for love triumphing against all odds. Maybe it is the effect of watching too many Bollywood movies glorifying “love”. Why can’t we accept that the odds can even out once in a while and the universal “bad guys’, the parents who disagree with their children’s love, also have their own point of view that may have an iota of prudence to it. “He has sacrificed his life for love and country. Its our turn to show it was not futile” – says the first post of a web site dedicated to Rizwanur. Would Rizwanur have sacrificed his life willingly for his love even if he had a prior inkling of the fame he has since achieved? Why do we then keep at it that he sacrificed his life for his love? I also fail to understand the connection between welfare of the country and his death. Do they mean to say that Rizwanur’s death is the next Jalianwala Bagh in the freedom struggle for love? Why does love require a sacrifice to establish its stamp of greatness and why does love make an educated man or woman lose their marbles so that they can’t take in the good from the bad or make judgements that may prove fatal?

The whole matter being sub-judice, it would be iniquitous to brand Ashok Todi as a murderer. It would also be totally unfair to completely ignore his side of the story. Any man wouldn’t want to see his daughter marry below his social standing and for a man said to be worth in excess of Rs.200 crores, who surely must have brought up his daughter in a comfortable if not lavish lifestyle, the mere idea of her marrying a socially insignificant person like Rizwanur would have been sacrilegious to say the least and he did try to wean him away from her with promises and threats. Why blame Todi, for I’m certain that all these “soldiers of love” crying for Rizwanur today, would do the same if they are in Todi’s position tomorrow. Rizwanur knew about the influence his father-in-law had in the corridors of power, but still went ahead with the marriage which makes it hard to believe that he was not just a gold-digger. Had Rizwanur had the sense to listen to his mind over his heart, he would have lived. Should I blame the person who knowingly & willingly put his hand into a snake-pit or should I blame the snake for biting him?

If Rizwanur had been just beaten up, or if Todi had been a Bengali this incident would have been relegated to some obscure column of the newspaper. Had Rizwanur not been from the minority community, would this episode have been politicised? Rizwanur had agreed to convert to Hinduism. Then, why is he hailed as a hero and a champion of the minority community who stood up for what he believed? Is this incident just a sad reminder of the generation gap between parents and their offspring? There are too many hypothetical questions. But, there is one thing I’m glad about - for obvious reasons - that, this incident did not happen in Gujarat.

A Single Soul Deliberates

“One More Wicket Down” was the phrase we used to convey our annoyance when an eligible bachelor of our group got hitched. What started out as a trickle - a couple of them probably unable to resist pressure from their parents, got ensnared pretty early and were proud(?) parents just a year later – has ended up as a deluge of people taking the wedding plunge over the last few months. When I met a couple of my closest friends a few days ago, I realized that we three were the only remaining bachelors in an extended group which boasted of many stalwarts of misogamy who have since cast aside their erstwhile ideals for the unparalleled pleasures of a conjugal life. It is not as if I haven’t had to confront queries as to when I would jump on to the marriage bandwagon, but of late it has become a tad too irritatingly frequent.

For someone who grew up as an inveterate misogynist, I have long since resigned to the fact that I have to yield to my post-adolescence corporal desires. It is not too difficult to douse these feelings in other ways especially in avant-garde cities like Bangalore or Mumbai but the hazardous down-sides of such a jaunt not to speak of the complexity and the deceit involved has held me back to a great extent. The big realization probably dawned when the connubial obligations of my friends began to have an effect on our personal relationships when we could no longer do all the things we used to as a group prior to their marriages and many of the plans made were vetoed by their better halves. It was somewhere along the line that I understood that I needed to look for a relationship myself, more serious than a few young men sitting down and berating their bosses over a beer. The realization did dawn on time, but the trouble had only just begun for the feminine mind was as alien to me as any extraterrestrial’s and my rigid, brahminical upbringing provided me with no clues to deal with it.

I have always grudgingly admired those who have panache with the fairer sex though I have at the same time commiserated with those females who fell for their charms losing many a thing the least of which was their faith in him. And when I did try to emulate them, it was my upbringing and a sense of righteousness that held me back from going for the Home Run. The women in my life have mostly remained just friends and good ones at that and just as I thought that I was ready to make a commitment, an unseen hand has always prevented me from doing so. The reasons for not going the whole distance have been both silly and serious and even though I’ve always known that there is no such thing as a perfect woman, Pandora’s last-released blooper, Hope, has had me in a tangle, wanting more when I fully know that what I offer in return isn’t much.

Dour-Darshan

How exciting would it be to watch a closely fought India-Australia cricket match on TV? Not if it turns out as one-sided as the present Future Cup series or if the match is being shown on Doordarshan. The most irksome thing on DD is the extended commercial break during the overs. The break starts somewhere just after the batsmen has played or missed the last delivery, when the ball is still in play. Never mind if a boundary was scored off it, we’re never going to see the umpire indicate a boundary because, for all Doordarshan’s pledge of public service (for which they went to court demanding free feeds of all cricket matches played in India), the bottom line is money. In the break between the overs, Doordarshan squeezes in three or four Ads at the expense of live cricket while other private channels show a couple of Ads and present the total scoreboard of the batting team or the bowling figures of the bowling team, or even give a piece of trivia about the game. By the time, Doordarshan finishes its break and resumes live coverage, the batsman is walking out with his gloves in his hand or the people are cheering loudly for what was either a four or six and you, with no clue as to what has transpired, are left fuming at this absurdity. The best part is that the DD commentators, sitting in the studio and not in the stadium, also do not have an idea of what has happened and are just as clueless.

It is a good thing that Doordarshan receives live feeds from other private channels who have paid a staggering amount to win the rights because Doordarshan is totally inept at broadcasting any kind of live programme, forget a live sports event. I still remember those days when they had the monopoly over cricket telecast in India; they used to cover a one-day match with about four cameras operated by what I’m pretty sure must have been some primates with no comprehension of the game. A flick off the legs by the batsman to fine leg, and the camera would be focusing on the long-on boundary in search of the ball; and for a ball that had been stopped in the covers, the camera would continue on to the boundary, search a while for the ball and then return to show the fielding team celebrating for the batsman would have been run out while you were being shown the image of the cover boundary.

The last but not least reason why I hate watching a match on Doordarshan is the commentary. It is bad that they don’t have competent English commentators but what they try to pass off as Hindi commentary is utterly repulsive. The pre, mid and post match analysis programme (quite aptly called the “Fourth Umpire”, for it is as worthless as a fourth umpire is in a match), with a wannabe bimbo, Anjum Chopra, thrown in, in an attempt to spice up things, reminds me of eulogy at a funeral where the speakers are forced to say some good things about the dead man who was a rascal and who probably fornicated with their daughters. If Atul Wassan and Chetan Sharma’s cricketing acumen was less, their commentating skills are non-existent. Along with Arun Lal, Dilip Doshi and Nayan Mongia, they could drive a cricket lover to bludgeon himself with a broken stump. From trying to improvise with Hindi versions of English aphorisms like “Catches Win Matches” which got metamorphosised into “Pakdo Catch, Jeeto Match”, a "choti gendh" for a short-pitched ball or with the tried and tested Hinglish statements like “Mid-off ke upar se lofted drive lagaaya hai, Behtereen Shot” or the appalling "Ball ne tappa khaaya aur batsman ne chakma khaaya", their stupid opinions starting with "Mere Khayaal se, Arun..." and time and again showing that they are stuck in a time warp by their lack of knowledge of the intricacies of the modern game, they take the fun out of watching cricket on the telly.

Man or a Mahatma?

Man or a Mahatma?

The right answer is "Who Cares?" but as I report to work on a day, when the whole of India takes a day off from work in the memory of a man who is now more hated than admired, I can’t help but reminisce about how I’ve always been fed beliefs about Gandhi’s follies rather than a portrayal of the sacrifices he did undergo.

Being raised by a right-wing, conservative dad guaranteed that I grew up being fed on a belief that Gandhi needed to be killed. Even before I read about Gandhi’s efforts for our freedom from my history text books, I had a fair idea of his follies like his support to the British during World War 2, his opposition to partition and his insistence that India pay Rs. 55 crores to Pakistan. Studying at a school named after Sardar Patel also meant that there was a definite preconceived notion against Gandhi even in the way our history was taught at my school. Gandhi has always been a derogatory term in my friends’ circle. It stands for someone who isn’t street-smart and is submissive. The cheapest seats at a theatre were nick-named “Gandhi-class”.

Lage Raho Munnabhai changed my perception of Gandhi just a wee bit. I did enjoy the movie like countless others did but I didn’t agree with the view that Gandhigiri could work. Gandhi’s perseverance with Ahimsa probably did postpone India’s freedom by a few years and his dissemination of Socialism has put India by a few decades. Gandhi, contrary to popular belief, was never secular. He was no different from the politicians of today who play vote-bank politics even going to the extent of not speaking a single word condemning the killing of innocent Sikhs and Hindus by the thousands in the then newly-created Pakistan.

But today I am thankful to him. Not for the freedom I’m enjoying but the traffic-free roads due to the holiday declared for his birthday.

A Road Trip

I had to travel to Belagondanapalli, a small hamlet on Hosur-Thally road, about 40 odd kilometers from Bangalore, on an official trip. Though that area is one of the business hubs of Tamil Nadu, I had been cautioned against expecting any semblance of city life. The other city-slickers like me were vehement in their comparison of that place to anything from a barren desert to an overgrown jungle. So, it was with an air of zilch expectations that I started out on this trip in an Indica, with a rather nervous driver, who had the bizarre habit of backing out of an overtaking manoeuvre when it was about 80% completed.

Driving down Sarjapur road (to avoid the traffic on Hosur road), I realised how small a city Bangalore was. We were just a few kilometres from Koramangala, the image of modern-day Bangalore and which wouldn’t have been out of place in any big city of the world with its malls and hip crowd, and all we could see were open fields and grape plantations with an odd marble and granite dealers exhibiting their wares by the roadside. Only the sky-scraping apartment complexes coming up hither and thither betrayed the fact that we were not far from the IT hub of Bangalore. At Sarjapur, we took a right turn to take the Attibele road and it was an apposite time to switch off the air-conditioning and draw in the windows for the atmosphere her was as pristine as I’ve ever seen. An enroute temple in the shape of a mace, dedicated to Lord Hanuman, caught my attention and my friend caught it on his camera phone. Just minutes after Attibele, we crossed over into Tamil Nadu without even a perfunctory check at the border and immediately were greeted by posters and banners of the “Rising Sun” and the “Two Leaves”, a reminder of how politics dominates the scene there.

Belagondanapalli didn’t disappoint me. It was a small rural community, with a few shops and houses. We stopped for breakfast at what we had nicknamed “The Taj Hosur”, which was nothing more than a few tables and stools under a tiled roof. The breakfast was good and cheap, as is expected in most of Tamil Nadu. Even though I would have liked to traverse the fields and chat up with the locals, my work kept me busy for most of the day and on subsequent trips over the next few days to that place, I couldn’t help wondering if I could ever live in such a place, away from the hustle and bustle of city life and decided to give it a try a few decades down the line, after I retire.

The Hanuman Temple, shaped like a Mace.

Sunset over the fields

The "Taj Hosur"

She's the reason I was there

My Mobile Saga

I’ve been using my present mobile for more than four years, what would amount to sacrilege among the present Gen-X who trade their handsets for a latest one almost every six months or so. I’ve decided finally that it is time I traded in my mobile handset for a new one with all those amazing features I don’t really need at present, but, may be needed in the future, most of them being weird acronyms like EDGE, HSCSD, GPRS, and WLAN etc.

I bought (actually my old man gifted the handset to me) my first mobile phone many years ago when the telecom revolution in India was still in its infancy. I was working in Mumbai and my parents in Bangalore insisted that I be in regular contact with them. The mobile handset was a Siemens C-25, purchased in Bangalore and the connection in Mumbai was Orange, which charged about Rs. 4 per minute for an outgoing call and more than Rs.2 per minute for an incoming call, contrasting with the Rs. 0.99 per minute outgoing and free incoming that I’m charged today. It was kind of cool to have a mobile phone during those days when they were still a luxury and I plead guilty to the charges of ostentatiously flaunting it around. Soon, I discovered two major shortcomings in the phone. It didn’t have an internal clock and I couldn’t tell if the missed call I had on my phone was a few minutes or a few days old. I had to erase the call lists regularly to avoid this ambiguity. Since it lacked a clock, it didn’t have an alarm function and I had to rely on an alarm clock to wake for those early morning shifts. Also, I never got the name of the person sending me an SMS – the phone only displayed the person’s number. After using this phone for well over a year, I decided to trade it for what was my dream mobile of that time, the Nokia 3310.

I never did buy the Nokia 3310, even though I did use my friend’s 3310 handset for some time. I rather hesitatingly went for an almost unheard of mobile phone at that time, Mitsubishi’s Trium Mars, much cheaper than the Nokia 3310, a decision which I have never regretted. All I wanted in my mobile was an alarm and good SMS capabilities but, Trium gave me much more. I now had a phone memory to store contacts in addition to my SIM memory; it had games (especially PUSH), a T9 dictionary to help compose messages, multiple language options and the best feature – a speaker phone. Even though the battery life was rather poor, I found its software much advanced than that of Nokia (For example, Trium had the call details for own network as well as the roaming networks separately). It didn’t have downloadable ringtones, picture message features and had a rather awkwardly protruding antenna, but I absolutely adored this phone. After almost 2 years of satisfactory use, it was peer pressure more than anything else that made me go for Nokia though I did have problems with the phone continuing to ring even after the answer button had been pressed. However, considering that this problem started after I dropped this phone from a height of about 30 feet from a cherry-picker, I shouldn’t be complaining.

The mobile phone market had exploded by then and almost everybody had a mobile phone. The markets were flooded with cheap handsets and using a phone with an external protruding antenna was totally uncool. Orange had still not become Hutch and therefore still retained its reputation. It was the golden period of free SMS in Mumbai and Trium had a grave problem of being able to store only 20 messages. This forced me to choose between messages from special persons and messages that were otherwise important. I also couldn’t play all those catchy ringtones others were playing. Though camera phones were the in-thing, most of the Nokia ones were obscenely expensive. So, I settled on Nokia 6610, the main attractions being a colour display, a very large text message memory and FM radio. This is the phone I’ve had ever since. There are minor niggles like the infra-red being practically useless and an almost non-existent internal memory for ringtones and pictures but, there are other priceless attributes like the Profiles which has enabled me to sit through meetings without embarrassing moments, it is much lighter and handy than my previous phone, has a decent battery life (though I’ve changed the battery once last year after 3 years of usage) and it has a four-way scroll button which I was used to in the Trium. GPRS enabled me to check my mails but Orange’s steep pricing made me cancel the subscription and stick to Internet Cafés.

Now, I need a phone to access my mails and I’d also like to store music and have a decent camera. Bluetooth would also be preferable so that I can exchange music and videos with my friends. I have shortlisted the Sony-Ericsson P1i, the Nokia N-95 and the O2 Life for my next phone unless the Apple i-phone or the HTC TytnII comes to India. After a cursory comparison, the Sony-Ericsson P1i looks to be the best bet. Nokia N-95 is probably the most fully loaded phone in the Indian market as of now but I’m not comfortable with the slider design and I don’t mind not having a GPS or EDGE. As for the OS, I’m slightly inclined towards Symbian compared to the new Windows Mobile 6 (as in O2 and HTC). Though I would have preferred a full-fledged QWERTY keyboard instead of tilt buttons, I’m not that much into messaging and will use my computer to reply to mails. I’ve had just three phones in 7 years, and I’ve been lucky enough not to experience any serious problems like phones hanging or software getting corrupt. I’m now ready for a new phone and I’ll wait until the Diwali offers cause a drop in the present prices, by which time, I should have decided on the make.

Penny Wise...

Yesterday, I watched a movie called “Loins of Punjab”, an evening show at the PVR – a bungled up effort of what could have been a much better film with a rehashed storyline and slicker editing. Though the movie was entertaining for its duration of less than 100 minutes, my friends and I unanimously agreed that it was not worth the Rs.210 (special weekend rate for a seat which didn’t even recline) we spent on the ticket, not to mention the exorbitantly charged popcorn and Pepsi (and the parking charges for the vehicle, I quipped). It seems such a long time ago that a film ticket used to cost Rs.10 or Rs.15 in a decent theatre and the up-market ones hardly exceeded Rs.25, but, it was not so long ago. The better part of my college days were spent at various theatres around Bangalore, when Bangalore still was a city for the pensioners. The first genuine mall came up in the city less than five years ago and in these five years, that I have been away for the better part, it sure has changed for the worse.

“Disposable Incomes.” I do hate this phrase, the two words that have been cited as being responsible for much of the woes of any big city today. In Bangalore, the effect is only more noticeable due to the large IT crowd. I don’t work in an IT or IT-related company, and probably make more money annually than most of my IT friends. But, I am flabbergasted at the “easy come, easy go” approach of the IT horde towards money. My friends and neighbours whom I’ve seen growing up in middle-class families, not much different from mine, where both parents had to work to ensure a comfortable living, are now splurging like there’s no tomorrow. The call-centres, IT boom and the BPOs may have given them a financial freedom the previous generation never had but I don’t agree that it has made them financially any wiser than their parents. Of late, it has become a hobby of mine, watching the antics of this affluent pack in any coffee shop or multiplex, flaunting their nouveau-rich status akin to the plastic ID cards they sport. I have never been parsimonious and my fiscally arduous childhood has ensured that I can never be a spendthrift. It is one lesson that I did learn rather early in life and hope I never forget.

Every Vada Pav has its Day

The ubiquitous Vada Pav celebrates its own day today and the small piece of non-nutritious oily vada, full of trans-fat, crushed between two halves of a pav, coated with green chutney, accompanied by a fried green chilly and sometimes hot red chilly powder with a garlic flavour is in many ways emblematic of the city which has made it famous. All through my years in Mumbai and ever since, I have always wondered why Mumbaikars vouch by the not-so-special Vada Pav. The reasons I’ve got is that it is a poor man’s food (costs anywhere between three to five rupees), it symbolises the unity in diversity of Mumbai, that it is a wholesome (read stomach-filling) food etc. I do agree that it is a cheap snack but if Mumbaikars are filling their stomachs by eating Vada Pavs for lunch and dinner, we are looking at a catastrophical case of mass malnutrition.

The vada pav, though a tasty snack at times, never appealed to me in comparison with its “more affluent” cousins, the Missal Pav and the Pav Bhaji. Though they rate the same as the vada pav on the nutrition scale, if not worse, they make a more substantial meal and provide more pleasure to the taste-buds. Time and again, in Mumbai, I’ve heard how the Pav of Portuguese-origin is made mostly by Muslims in a Parsi or Irani bakery (and to think it is the Christians who are called Pav-wallas) to be consumed by a Hindu majority. Despite the fact that this makes for a nice analogy to the cultural divergence of the people who have made Mumbai what it is today, it still is a sad reminder of what Mumbai is today – a overblown population, most of them living in the hundreds of slums that dot the city, struggling to make ends meet in an unforgiving and an expensive city which is pretty much the same case in any major Indian city, but is more conspicuous in Mumbai.

Though the "Vada Pav Day" is just another marketing gimmick by some clever enterprising restaurant, it brings about memories of my days in Mumbai, when a Vada Pav was a daily indulgence along with a cutting chai either under an umbrella in the pouring monsoon rain or sweating in the october heat. I am happy that I've finally gotten out of Mumbai and I hope that I would never have anything to do with that despicable city anymore.

Sick of Spam & Sick Spammers

Nupur Upadhyay has invited me to Desktopdating. I don't know what Desktopdating is and for that matter who the heck is this female fiend, Nupur Upadhyay? It just gets worst - with strangers “Tagging” me, unsolicited mails offering me Viagra and similar sounding substitutes at a discount, mails informing me that my “application” for a loan has been processed or that I had won something in a contest that I swear I never took part in, a more recent trend of marriage portals of a particular community inviting me to join in the hunt, friends inviting me to join some obscure sites with names like “Jaxtr” and “Glitchcast” or the more notorious “Facebook” or “My Space” and the usual dose of pornographic link sites and penis enlargement offers – it has become quite a chore of putting my inbox through a sieve to look for meaningful mails.

The next level of nuisance is now on my mobile phone. In addition to the pesky tele-marketers, I now have spam messages promoting loans and redundant offers, most of them from my own service provider, Hutch, now called as Vodaphone. If changing my mobile number wasn't such a pain in the neck involving the tedious process of informing all my friends, relatives, superiors, relatives and countless other service providers like my bank, I would have given Hutch (Vodaphone) the boot long ago. A sizable chunk of the tele-marketing calls and most of the spam messages I receive come from Hutch. Not only do they pester their customers with unwanted offers, their network coverage must be one of the worst and most of my friends concur with me on this. Hutch probably has the most stupid people on the customer support (though I’ve never talked to the customer support staff of other mobile service providers). When the National Do Not Call registry or some such thing came about, I saw the report in the newspaper asking Hutch subscribers to send a message “DND” to “111”. I promptly did, only to receive a message back saying this service was not available presently. At about 2 a.m, I called up their customer service and got through to a male with an IQ of a dodo. I explained my predicament only to be reminded that I have to send the same darned message to the same darned number. I somehow managed to convince him that it was not working on my number and got an assurance that within 48 hours, the calls and messages would stop. Weeks later, I’m still waiting for redemption from this menace. Hutch (Vodaphone) still sends me messages promoting caller tunes and other services and the others still call me up and I have made myself a promise that Hutch (Vodaphone)will not have the pleasure of annoying me for long.

60 years of Independence

We are celebrating 60 years of freedom; freedom from the British rule & I have finished my patriotic duty in the only ways I could, by wishing my friends through SMS and Orkut scraps and have even changed my display picture to a photo of NASDAQ draped in the Indian tri-colour. I have always regretted the fact that I was not born decades earlier when I could have contributed my mite for my country’s struggle for freedom, maybe by pulling down the Union Jack from the local government office and getting a few lathi blows in the bargain. I’ve grown up idolising the people who really fought for our freedom, not a Gandhi or a Nehru, but those nameless thousands of common people, a vast majority of them illiterate, who followed Gandhi as he walked for 23 days from Sabarmathi Ashram to the coastal village of Dandi to make salt leaving behind their daily routines, who selflessly picketed the local British government centres taking in the lathi blows, who gave up their present-days for India’s future, who spent years locked away in prisons so that we can call ourselves a free nation today and who, after India got a hard-fought freedom, rather gullibly but optimistically sided themselves with the Nehruvian class of socialism only to be cruelly betrayed.

Sixty years later on, Nehru’s mistakes have ensured that one tyrannical administration has been replaced by another that is also a highly dysfunctional one. Today, corruption and nepotism are the norms rather than the exceptions. A woman as India’s president, a woman as the leader of the country’s largest political party and a woman as the chief minister of India’s largest populous state have done nothing to further the cause of women’s rights when we have one of the worst rural health-care systems in the world and one of the highest rates of infant mortality. “Politics” today, is a dirty word, more obnoxious than any four-letter word and the “politician” is someone who ranks lower than a tapeworm in terms of people’s respect. Scams after scams have been unearthed and the guilty rich and powerful have exploited every existent and non-existent loophole in the law to avoid being prosecuted. But, today it is the same people, albeit a bit more literate, who are taking up the cudgels against another regime not much different from the one they fought sixty years ago. Whether it was a candle-light vigil to get justice in the Jessica Lal case, or the sting operations of a hyper-active media or the great efforts to get the right-to-information act passed in the parliament, I know that the persons who were my childhood heroes still live on in different avatars and as long as they live on, we still have the upper hand in this fresh freedom struggle and this time I can finally be a part of it.

He, who will not be named...

It was yet another classic case of media overkill, the media reporting that he was served four chapattis, brinjal sabzi, dal and rice on an aluminium plate, that he slept on a concrete bed without an air-conditioner, quilt or a mosquito repellent, obviously, since he was in jail, that he was first locked up in Barrack No. 10, but was later shifted to Barrack No. 1 for security reasons, that he was getting no special treatment from the authorities of the Arthur Road Jail except for his toiletry and cigarettes (how much of a 'treatment' were the jail authorities getting for allowing him the cigarettes?), that he has been finally moved to Pune’s Yerawada Jail, that he would be attending a course on Gandhian philosophy called ‘Gandhi Darshan’ in Yerawada Jail and would also write an exam or ‘Gandhi Vichar Pariksha’, which is scheduled for October 02. Meanwhile his sister, an MP, has met the Congress chief to discuss her brother’s case. The Information and Broadcasting minister, Priyaranjan Dasmunsi, has expressed “shock and surprise” on the six year jail term that was awarded to him… Well, I’m not doing a PhD on the real life persona of the much-loved Munnabhai nor am I joining the celebs faction in condemning his jail term. All I’m doing is expressing my anguish over the battery of news that is heaped on me. Every one of his sneezes and farts since he went to jail has been reported by the overzealous media and I’ve been subjected to so much news reports of his on every news channel, newspaper and the net that I’m almost in a transcendent state of Nirvana at the amount of knowledge I’ve gained about him in the last few days and that is the prime reason why I'm not naming him here.

A search on Google for news articles relating to his jail term gives out 338 articles from only the Times of India. Why is the media trying to make a martyr out of an oaf who has confessed to hobnobbing with the erstwhile kingpins of the Mumbai underworld? Justice P.D.Kode, probably a fan of his – his undeserving comparison to Gregory Peck establishing it - executed his duties quite impartially. But, is the over-the-top reaction reviling the six-year jail term justified? The justification of his crimes being the result of inanities of youth and a difficult childhood are as nonsensical as they can be. He had celebrated his 48th birthday a couple of days before he was sentenced and was about 34 when committed the misdemeanour. If 34 is youthful senselessness, then he must be in the record books for having the longest ever teenage life. As for his difficult childhood, it is no secret that he was a junkie right from his teens and if every criminal claimed reprieve due to a difficult childhood, our jails would be as empty as George Bush’s personal library. He is not a terrorist, say his supporters. I’m not saying he is. He is a dim-witted fool who couldn’t even properly pick his friends, who, after getting a reprieve due to his late father’s political connections, still continued his association with the same bunch of gangsters, glorifying them in his movies, trying to deify them as individuals who were wronged and later scorned by the society.

“Pray for me”, were the words the media ascribed as his last for some time to come. I just might; not for his release or his realization of his follies, for I know he is incapable of it, but for his continued incarceration and his exit from the media glare and spotlight so that I can get a much needed relief.

POTTER-mania

Too much of a good thing is probably the best way to make it seem bad. I am not espousing Oshoism but conveying my feelings over the current Harry Potter obsession even though I would be the first person to have misgivings about whether the Harry Potter books can be called as a good thing. The Harry Potter phenomenon was touted as the best thing to happen to Children’s books since Charles Dickens and the typical media hype about the number of copies that were being sold, the amount of money the films were raking in and the author going on to be the richest woman in UK gave it just the right publicity it needed. There were exalting reports of how the Potter had infused the kids with an enthusiasm to read books and weaned them away from TV and the net. But then, as the Harry Potter series swelled in number, the books got thicker and the subject matter became heavier, the ennui kicked in. Recent reports have suggested that the books may not have pulled out the young readers as was thought before. The New York Times even reported that “According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a series of federal tests administered every few years to a sample of students in grades 4, 8 and 12, the percentage of kids who said they read for fun almost every day dropped from 43 percent in fourth grade to 19 percent in eighth grade in 1998, the year “Sorcerer’s Stone” was published in the United States. In 2005, when “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” the sixth book, was published, the results were identical.”

I do not hate Harry Potter. In fact I have to admit I did enjoy reading them – all the six books as e-books. With the final book of the Harry Potter series set to be released in less than a day, I’m sort of relieved that I didn't fall for the temptation of pre-booking it. I’ll wait until someone converts it into an e-book and uploads it on the net. I was never a big fan of fantasy and even though I did dabble with reading fantasy novels like one of the Malazan Book of the Fallen recently and the Grimm Fairy tales many years ago, I could never really relate to the hype surrounding the young wizard and his gang of friends. Afterall, I grew up reading Dickens and Enid Blyton at a time when the term “Gay” could be used to describe the carefree kids without having any sexual innuendoes, and their depiction of school life in the English countryside and other adventures gave me more pleasure than reading about a boy wizard and his gaffes at Hogwarts. Even after so many years I still prefer the Rilloby Fair or the Ragamuffin Mystery to the Quidditch nonsense. J.K.Rowling can never measure up to the understanding that Enid Blyton had of children but, to her credit, she was quick to understand the futility of trying to draw the kids away from their Playstations and their TV cartoons for, with the Goblet of Fire, the Harry Potter series ceased to be solely for the Children and probably found its niche among the young and not-so-young adults. With all the buildup to the Harry Potter finale, which is a corroboration of how smart and aggressive media marketing can turn an unremarkable book into a bestseller, I am getting sick of Harry Potter, sick of all the websites, online forums, news articles debating if Potter would die, sick of people who try to find non-existent morals in an ordinary book, sick of people who actually do find morals in it and sick of people who find no morals in it and raise spurious allegations on religious grounds. I know I have to grin and bear it over the next few days and maybe after things quieten down, I can read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows leisurely at some obscure website after knowing how it is all going to end.

Mediocre Mika

A poll on the Queen community, touting someone called Mika as the next Freddie Mercury, got me searching on the net for more information about this new kid. After repeatedly listening to Mika’s music (both on YouTube and on VH1) and hours of wading through the comments columns of the various online Mika forums, I have to admit I’m Laughing My Fuckin’ Ass Off. I’m LMAO not as much by Mika’s music but by his being so undeservedly compared to someone as awesome as Freddie Mercury. Their Asian origins apart, their childhood spent as emigrants, introverted childhoods, their interests in opera, their love of the piano and similar voice modulations in their songs may all be suggestive of both being cast in the same mold, but it would be plain common sense to see that Mika has modeled himself on Freddie. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Mika is the “sincerest” singer I’ve come across. But, to pass a judgement that Mika is the next Freddie is pure misinformation, not just for the simple fact that there just cannot be another Freddie Mercury - ever, but because Mika is still a one album wonder and still has a long way to go to merit any comparison with any decent musician let alone the Queen great.

As for Mika's songs, “Grace Kelly” has a freshness associated with it, something I haven’t seen for a long time (11 million plus views on YouTube and still counting). It is No.1 on the billboards, maybe a deserving position, but I feel that the rating is something it owes to the lack of more appropriate contenders than its own merit. “Love Today” has a nice video and is a bubbly song with a good guitar work in the background and is bearing the brunt of overkill on VH1 of late. “Relax, Take It Easy” (horrible video) and the others are typical pop songs predominantly inspired by Queen though I could detect other influences as well. Just hearing “Lollipop” was almost enough to make me, as Monica Geller of Friends would say, “Laugh So Hard That A Little Pee Came Out.” No, I’m not a Homophobic Bigot, but if you still want to compare Mika with Freddie after hearing such a catastrophical song as “Lollipop”, you need to see a shrink at the earliest. Mika has been very lucky to have a hit like “Grace Kelly” so earlier in his career unlike the long struggle Freddie had before “Killer Queen” came along. Freddie had his inspirations in Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin and Led Zeppelin too, but he never modeled himself or his songs on them and nor was he ever compared with them. Freddie's originality, in his songwritings and his onstage antics, was what made him what he is today, a legend. Freddie, as a performer, was what other singers strived to be, a fact enviously acknowledged by even Kurt Cobain in his suicide note.

Mika’s genre is Pop, maybe too much of a pop for my tastes, and even the inkling of a comparison of him with the multi-facetious predominantly rock star like Freddie Mercury would seriously put the question of ones sanity in jeopardy. Whatever little similarity that exists between them, ends with their voices, unless one wants to include Mika’s Sexual ambiguity as something common with Freddie’s open Bi-sexuality. Mika may have been the best Pop artist to come out in the UK after the Spice Girls, but he merits no comparison with Freddie even in his wildest dreams; he just doesn’t have the versatility or the personality of Freddie Mercury especially on-stage. If Mika can bring about songs that are even half the class of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “We Are The Champions” or “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, I’ll not only eat my words but, give up listening to Queen, for ever.

God's Own Controversy

Two recent asinine controversies vis-à-vis two of the most holy places in God’s Own Country have yet again brought out the rift between the conventional and the progressive thinking populace; the reasons for all the hullabaloo created being neither new nor novel.

The first case of whether women (more specifically pre-menopausal women) can be allowed to enter the sanctum sanctorum at Lord Ayyappa temple at Sabarimala is the more hotly debated of the two and the one argument for which I see no immediate or rational conclusion. The main basis of the controversy, the 41 day vow of celibacy, cleanliness and self-discipline being observed prior to undertaking the pilgrimage, is anyways shirked by most people nowadays. This also negates the argument against allowing women. Why would a woman’s periods cause her to become impure (sic) and lose her cleanliness status? How can a religion which considers fertility to be a blessing, look down upon the menstrual periods which are the very symbols of fertility? I feel it is time the Temple authorities and the religious heads looked into the relevance of such religious practices (incidentally most of them biased against women) if they want to ensure the continued existence of the Hindu way of life. The other counter arguments to allowing women like Lord Ayyappa being a Bachelor God and women being unable to make the tedious journey to the temple are as frivolous as they can be. Lord Ayyappa is a God, for Heaven’s sake and to say that He can be distracted by the entry of a woman who has come to worship him is nothing short of sacrilege.

The second controversy is the existing ban on the entry of non-Hindus in the Guruvayur temple. My take on it is very simple… Everybody, irrespective of their Religion, Caste, Creed or Gender should be allowed entry into Hindu temples as long as their intentions are noble. Hinduism is more a way of life than a religion. A Hindu doesn’t have to live by a strict code of conduct as set by other religions. Yes, there are scriptures, traditional beliefs and practices but whether they are followed is left to the individual’s choice. Also, there were no other organised religions in existence when Hinduism first came into being (I don’t believe in the All Religions Are Equal Bullshit) and I can’t understand why people, whose ancestors were lured away by unscrupulous theories, and who still want to retain the link with their erstwhile way of life, are being discriminated against. The ban on non-Hindus entering the Guruvayur temple is also futile because there is no way of identifying a non-Hindu from a Hindu more so if he is following the temple practice of being shirtless and wearing a dhoti. The Tirupati Temple authorities have devised a better approach towards avoiding such controversies by allowing non-Hindus into the Tirumala-Tirupati temple if they sign in a register stating their faith in the Hindu God. Maybe the Guruvayur Devaswom Authorities can consider such an arrangement. I only hope the Guruvayur Devaswom board realizes that such a magnanimous gesture will certainly do no harm to the Temple’s sanctity or growth of its popularity.

These indifferences of the two temples (and many more temples all across the length of Kerala) make me wonder if God still consents to residing at such places where Man discriminates against his fellow Man. For a state which boasts of the highest literacy rate in the country, these religious intolerances do not bode well and the sobriquet of “God’s Own Country” may very well be a misnomer and I’m pretty sure that for once God will agree with me.

To all the people who have been or claim to have been at the receiving end of either of the two temples’ bigotry, I cannot understand why you cannot worship Lord Ayyappa at any of the dozens of other Ayyappa temples all around you which do not discriminate between genders and why you need to visit only Guruvayur and not the other Hindu temples where there is no religious discrimination. Could it be that you people are publicity crazy or just a bunch of communists trying to find a credulous cause to further your personal welfare or indulge in the now popular game of Hindu-bashing???

Life in a Metro

The products of the Hindi film industry are mostly mediocre stuff, run of the mill love stories or rehashes of long forgotten films with ideas and stunts which are directly copied from Hollywood movies. But, once in a while comes a film from the Bollywood Stables, which breaks out of the typical Hindi film industry mould. It is this kind of a film which comes to pass as a breath of fresh air in an otherwise pungently predictable production progression of poor pictures. I usually have to wait for months for such a film, a film without lovers running around trees or parents conspiring to separate their lovelorn children or lovers sacrificing (sic) their love for the sake of their parents/friends or corrupt politicians and cops and a super-hero who wins against all odds, bashing up hundreds of goons in the process.

Life in a Metro seemed to be a film which broke out the Bollywood mould and it did try to, but somehow fell short. It was typical in a Bollywood sense that it was a rehash of many a Hollywood movie but, they were Hollywood movies of yesteryear and to the director’s good fortune most youngsters in India wouldn’t have watched it. As far as the performances were concerned, this might be Shilpa Shetty’s best display of her measly acting skills after her performance at Big Brother. Irrfan Khan and Konkona Sen were good but, they usually are so. The surprise package for me was Kay Kay Menon. I thought he was just a singer with acting ambitions but he put in a powerful performance. Kangana Ranaut looked good in her new hair style but that was about it. The Dharmendra – Nafisa Ali track was not only very awkward but also lacked the spunk and passion of a love story. The one emotion missing in it was Anger; no woman would so easily forgive and forget her lover who stood her up and abandoned her for his own selfish reasons. And finally when Bollywood showed a couple in love, making out on the bed, it turned out to be a 70+ Dharmendra and 60+ Nafisa Ali! The tongue in cheek backdrop of a BPO/ call centre makes an attempt to play on the audience’s perception of such places as a hub of all vices. The director also apes the new Bollywood trait of introducing homosexual characters who are afraid to come out of the closet; atleast he avoided the making a mockery of the gay character. One of the main flaws was improper presentation of one central character of the movie, not the misfit Shiny Ahuja, but the city of Mumbai. Mumbai was represented by the incessant rains throughout the film with the Metro band popping out now & then to play their stuff. There was no typical hustle-bustle of the Mumbai crowds portrayed either on the streets or in the railway stations and knowing the fast capitalist life-style of Mumbai I doubt if Mumbaiites have time for an extra-marital affair in their chock-a-block lifestyles.

The film was doomed as soon as the director decided to make a film about extra-marital affairs in India, without comprehending the maturity level required for such a topic to be presented and the need for a necessary amount of skin show which would be essential to the story. If the Shilpa-Shiny situation had been shown as Shilpa giving in totally to her passion, or if in the final scene, if Shilpa had walked out on her husband, I would have got up and saluted the director. Instead, he chose to play it safe for fear of offending the moral sensibilities of the majority which still cannot digest a woman looking for and finding love outside wedlock or dumping her husband even though he is a serial-cheater. The idea was right, but all it took was yet another cowardly director to spoil the broth.

At the end of it all, I’m still waiting for a non-typical Bollywood movie this year.

Disclosure

A modern maxim goes “Never Judge a Book by Its Movie” and in keeping with this doctrine, I avoid seeing a film that has been adapted from a book until I have read the book first. This practice has stood me in good stead over the years and though I have been disappointed time and again by movies that have failed to live upto the expectations, I always take solace in the fact that I have atleast enjoyed a good book. It is incredible how such a staggering number of excellent books have been made into mediocre movies. However, after many years, I have been proved wrong (or should I say vindicated?).

I first saw the movie Disclosure in a screening at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai (Madras, back then) in 1996 and subsequently, a couple of times on television and enjoyed it each time. So, finally when I read the book a few days back, my high expectations were shattered. I can recall a lot of cases where the book and its big screen depiction have been good but this is the first incident I’ve encountered of a movie being a tad better than the book.

Michael Douglas and Demi Moore (Tom Sanders & Meredith Johnson respectively) have made such an impression on me that I picturized them mouthing the dialogues as I was reading the book. When Tom’s 4-year old daughter says, "Boys have penises, and girls have vaginas,” a dialogue which was not part of the film, I could imagine the look Michael Douglas would have given. The only reference to the Penis in the movie comes from Tom’s wife, who had a strong role as an ardent supporter of her husband but, has almost no role to play in the book. The description of the Virtual Environment System, which has been shown so impeccably in the movie is lacking in the book. Unless one had seen the movie, it would have been hard to imagine how such a system would look like. The character of Cindy, Tom’s secretary, a significant person with a meaty role in the movie is weak in the book. The mediation hearings, Cindy’s role in the hearings, Tom’s triumph and Meredith’s coup are all again depicted much better in the movie.

Personally, I don’t feel the book is that great a read (ok, the concept about Sexual Harassment being all about power and not about gender was good) and I would recommend the movie over the book any day and then, there’s always a first time for everything.

Lies...

Tommy Hilfiger appearing on the Oprah Winfrey show busted one of the biggest rumours doing rounds for the past few years. Apparently, he had never appeared on Oprah’s show before and his supposed statement, “If I knew that Blacks and Asians were going to wear my clothes, I would have never designed them.” turned out to be yet another Urban Legend, albeit an expensive one for him, considering the financial implications his made-up statement must have had on the sales of his products. The e-mail forwards (of which I was a recipient too) going around claiming Hilfiger’s racist remarks may not cease for a while and it was appalling to see an ad in the Times of India exploiting the false statement to sell some product without even a disclaimer that the supposed statement was false. This Tommy Hilfiger episode was the latest, I realize, in a long series of lies that we have been systematically fed over the years.

The Great Wall of China was supposed to be the only man-made structure to be visible from the moon. I remember quiz contests which had this question with its ostensible answer and I, myself, probably gave the answer in a quiz or two. It was one of my favourite bits of trivia in school and until a couple of years ago. Then, I discovered that it was a completely fictional bit of information, which owed its source to a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not cartoon. In fact The Great Wall would not be visible even at a height of just ten percent of the distance between the Earth and the Moon. It was another unsourceable lie concealed as a fact.

There were nine planets in the solar system when I was in school and in keeping with the tendency of schoolwork increasing with each year, I half-expected the number of planets in the solar system to go up too. Then one fine day, last year, the International Astronomical Union decided to expel Pluto from its status of a planet. The names of the nine planets I had committed to permanent memory, at some point of time when I was in my primary school, became somewhat incomplete now that Pluto was plutoed out. I can never understand how a celestial body which orbits around the sun, has an atmosphere and has its own moon can cease to be a planet. Whether the International Astronomical Union has the right to define what constitutes a planet is debatable but the school texts will, in all probability, soon be amended to show only eight planets orbiting around the sun and it will mean that I have been fed yet another lie.

Just not cricket...

The World Cup is over and the consistently better team won.
But Cricket has lost. Period.
The Aussie win, their third time in succession and the fourth overall, has tarnished Cricket in an odd, monopolistic way. I’m not saying the Aussies should have reduced their standards and played like mere mortals but, with grudging acquiescence of their superiority in the game, and with a tinge of envy, I berate the way they played the game, a way no other team can even hope to play, and a way which, if continued, will cause an already dying sport (maybe even in the Indian Sub-continent) to come to a swift end. The Aussies won every match by a considerable margin, their resources not being stretched even once in twelve matches they played and in the process made fewer fans than they would have deserved. However, it is ironic, and I pity the Aussies for it, that this World Cup will be remembered for a lot of things, the least of which would be the Aussies’ domination and their third straight win.

There was no spark left in the world cup after the first week itself, once both the sub-continental giants crashed out and the remaining 40 odd days of cricket were just an obligation. The four semi-final slots were decided even before the super-eights stage started. South Africa and New Zealand may have made it to the semi-finals but they were never going to be a challenge to the cold-blooded efficiency of the men from down under. The only teams who could and would have troubled the Aussies (and the Aussies will probably reluctantly admit to it) were the two Asian teams, who did not even make it to the super-eight stage, because they had a certain something which no other team in world cricket has – Unpredictability, a trait which was very much evident in the way they lost to so-called minnows.

A day after the conclusion of the World Cup, a leading Australian commentator & ex-cricketer comes out with a statement ridiculing the number of associate countries and insisting that the WC should only showcase the best. Sorry mate, but the most interesting match of the WC was provided by the minnows - the Zimbabwe-Ireland Tie and if there weren't any minnows, your country would probably have lost to a South Asian team and we would not have had the ignominy of having to watch Bangladesh & Ireland playing what should have been a colossal contest between the sub-continental adversaries. I can’t think of anything positive that came out of this 49 day, 51 match burlesque of Cricket (except perhaps Ireland getting into the ICC rankings) but the list of negatives is endless – The Longest schedule ever, Poor turnouts, No typical West Indian calypso music, poor infrastructures, under-prepared pitches, pathetic television coverage (never got to see the last ball of the over being completed and the first ball of the over about to be delivered due to the commercial breaks), Indian cricket down in the dumps, Windies cricket in pretty much the same place (been there for a long time now) and Pakistan cricket in an even worse condition, the umpiring joke of the finals, one sided matches, gutless cricket, financial losses for the sponsors, premature retirements, pre and post-match mindless gibberish by the Experts and a murder (not just of the game).

I envy, rather than pity, the late Paki Coach. He was lucky that he did not live to see his (and my) favorite game in such a pitiful state.
RIP, dear Cricket.

A Tough Decision

This week, I had to make a decision, which I found the most uncomfortable I had to make so far. And no, it did not concern a woman. It was, in hindsight, a pretty simple career decision, but which I complicated by thinking too much of things that were flimsy, to say the least. I got a good offer from a new company, not as established as the one I’m working for right now, but it was a better paying job with better prospects for career advancement. The decision should have been simple enough.
I had made the decision to join the new company even before they offered me a good package. But it was when I realized that I had to put in my papers and leave behind all that has been a part and parcel of my life for more than the last five years, that I developed cold feet. It was not just that I was leaving behind people who were much more than just colleagues; they were friends. I knew I’ll keep in touch with them over phone or through Orkut, but things would be different. We would have no office politics to discuss, no seniors to cuss over mugs of Beer, no conspiracies to cook up – it’ll be just an exchange of courtesies.
I would have to join as the junior-most person of my grade in my new company, even though most of my colleagues there would be ex-employees of my present company, some of whom were my protégés at some point of time. I would hate to work under some of those people but I keep reminding myself that I’m far more experienced than any of them. This is in contrast to my present position, where I have delegated most of my responsibilities to others and the majority of my work is to supervise them doing the job and going to extremes to keep myself out of their way so that the work goes on smoothly.
The main reason however, I think, was my qualms about settling down to a new set of people, new rules, new office timings and a new work culture (the latter being more relaxed than to which I am used to.) My fears were compounded by the fact that I’m more of an introvert at heart. I decided to talk to my boss and his boss about my decision and after reminding me about how my present company was loath to appreciate proficient people like me, both of them were vehement in their suggestion that I leave as soon as possible. My juniors amongst my colleagues were more cheerful and encouraging but what their motives were, I could not discern.

Looking back, I realize how silly my apprehensions were. Starting ab initio is a small price to pay for all that I would deservedly get in the imminent years. I’m planning to resign tomorrow and join my new company in a couple of days time. There would be new friends, new politics of a different kind, new people to cuss and new responsibilities to delegate to others. Hopefully, it would be a better place to work and this might be the start of a very rewarding career.
Touchwood.

Being Nasty… & enjoying it

I’ve been actually looking forward to getting calls from telemarketers ever since I decided to spice up the conversation by wasting their time as they are wasting mine.
Most conversations would begin as, “Good Morning, sir. This is Aarthi, (or Bhavana, Caroline, Divya, etc.) from ICICI (or HDFC, ABN-AMRO, Citibank etc.) I cut them off here, repeat their name and say, “Hi, Aarthi. A very Good Morning to you, too. How’re you?”
Most callers are happy to hear their name back though some of them are very professional and stick to their point of soliciting for a Personal Loan or Credit Card. These persons are quickly rebuffed and the call ends. But, a majority of them deviate from their purpose and do reply. And it is these people who make my day. Maybe they are happy to take a break from their monotonous existence or, think that they can convince me to go for their products or, like most females, are just plain dumb to realize that I’m having fun at their expense.
I talk about the weather (most calls are from local nos.), about their shift timings, ask them politely as to how they got my number (most of them mention a database – I’d like to strangle the fellow who made the database) and which part of Bangalore do they stay in. I’m surprised at how many people are happy to chat with me instead of going about their business. And finally, when they do come to the point, I just say, “Sorry Aarthi, I don’t need a personal loan right now but I’ll call u first when I need it.” Or “Sorry Aarthi, I already have a credit card of the same bank, but it was nice talking to you.” The call ends there but, I bet they are more cheerful when they dial up the next number. This is my idea of social service - bringing a smile to the face of some poor girl who is sitting in a cubicle for eight hours and talking to surly people.
If the caller is a male, I cut him off rather brusquely. Call me chauvinistic, but I just have no respect for a male sitting in a cubicle all day, wasting his life, trying to talk people into being interested in his products. If the caller is a female and refuses to fall for my bait, I am rather scornful and make it show in my words and when they disconnect the call abruptly, it makes me feel smug for a few minutes.
I have noticed that over the last few weeks that the number of calls I received from telemarketers have gone down from about 4 a-day to about 4 a-week.
Hmmm, I wonder why!!!

Iron Maiden Concert

The first live concert I ever attended, happened to be that of a heavy-metal band whose songs I considered to be too much noise and too little matter.
Iron Maiden came, conquered me and left. Fear of the Dark was the only song of theirs I'd liked before, now I could add another 3 more songs to the list. The Number of the Beast, Aces High and The Trooper were simply superb and the first job I did on coming back home was to search the net and download these songs.
For a person who usually preferred Soft-rock and only sometimes Hard-Rock, Heavy Metal was a nice surprise. I would never have contemplated going to a Rock Concert had it not been for my friend from Kolkata who asked me to get the tickets from Planet M. I told him I was busy and may not come but he was even ready to go to the concert alone. Then a person here and a person there, couple of them all the way from Mumbai, and we ended up as a group of seven. A stop over at Styx for a Tequila-shot and a pitcher of KF Premium, some Lunch and we were off to Palace Grounds.
Smuggling in the Digital Camera and the Cigarettes was an adventure in itself. I really enjoyed booing FTN, a mediocre band who started the evening's programme. Parikrama, whom I heard for the first time were impressive but Lauren Harris (daughter of Iron Maiden guitarist, Steve Harris) failed to impress me.
The smell of Marijuana was in the air and people all around were rolling out their stuff & making "Joints". The mood was perfect to welcome Iron Maiden. The crowd were chanting, "Maiden, maiden".

Maiden were awesome. Bruce's energy was contagious. He was running all around the stage. The special affects, including Edd's pictures, the lighting and the Military Tank , were superb. They played for less than an hour but it was one of the best hours the crowd'll have in their lives. Once in a while, when Bruce said, "Scream for me, Bangalore", we would till our lungs almost burst out. Four songs from their new album, "A Matter Of Life And Death" and about half-a-dozen of their old classics, got the crowd real wild. And then the show was over, inspite of the crowd begging for more.
At the end of the day, I was more tired of Standing in Palace Grounds since afternoon than of the Head banging. I bet the organisers never expected a crowd of 30,000. That would explain the lack of proper facilities of drinking water, crowd management etc.

My First Post

I've always maintained that Blogging is a waste of time and am yet to change my opinion on this. I never thought that I would one day own a Blog.
Do I need a blog? Absolutely not.

Why do I have a Blog then?

I can't give a proper answer for this. Well, for one, its not Peer pressure. None of my friends or colleagues have one (most of them don't know what a blog is).
I've been writing my thoughts, experiences, etc. for the last couple of years. I have them stored on my hard disk, in password-enabled Word files. Some of them are really private and I dare not post them on a public platform, such as this, for the fear of offending my friends. But there are other things which I'm going to share.
Another reason may be that this may turn out to be an outlet for my frustations & anger over a lot of things in Life.
Last but not least, I hope to change my status from "Single" to "Married" soon, with a short period of "Committed" in-between and its just an optimism that my own Blog may help me achieve that.