There's something about TOI

I never thought it would come to this but I have to admit that I found myself missing the Times of India. My hotel in Kochi gave me a choice of either the Hindu or the Indian Express both of which I found dreary.

The Hindu is still the same drab old paper that I remember from years ago and I found that it has even more advertisements than news articles. There are hardly any supplements on weekdays and though my relatives in Chennai swear by it, I found it boring. The Indian Express, on the other hand, has improved from the time we used to get it in our home before we switched over to the Times of India but somehow, it lacks the spunk. As someone who reads the newspaper for more than half-hour daily, Indian Express didn't have more than a few minutes worth of news.

On the flight back to Bangalore, I finally got hold of a Times of India. On seeing the lead story in the Bangalore Times about a film star's wedding and the half-naked women on the last page, I wondered whether this was what I was missing in Kochi, but, when I started doing the Daily Crossword, I got my answer.

The Alchemist

I've just finished the Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. It was an enjoyable tale, the English translation being very simple & easy to read and it certainly deserves the praise it has got. I had heard a lot about the Alchemist, both the raves and the rants; however, after reading it, I would never rate it as the classic it is made out to be. The Alchemist is a nice little story with a bit of magic and a surprise ending but to call it inspirational and try to look for answers to our life's mundane problems in such a book is a sad reflection of the stressful times that we live in. Alchemist is at best a modern-day fairy-tale and as with most fairy tales, one can deduce a moral of following ones dreams and believing in ones destiny. The book is full of clichés many of which are repeated over and over (I just realized that that’s the reason they are called clichés) and the protagonist Santiago’s search for “Hidden Treasure” is as good a cliché as any and to make it worse, the treasure at the end turns out to be of the material variety which makes it a sort of anti-climax, though it may be argued that the lessons of life that Santiago learns in the course of his search are the genuine treasures.

Does the Alchemist need to be mulled over? Not if you are of a sound mind. Then why is the book hailed as an inspirational oeuvre? Why is so much being made of following ones dreams and knowing ones destiny? I would put it down to the modern day mentality of looking for spiritual keys to combat the dreariness of life so much so that they are willing to overlook logic in a book which claims that it is possible to formulate any metal into gold by rubbing it against a stone. I wonder if those people who claim a life-changing inspiration from this book go around trying to deduce the meanings of the various omens or change tracks to follow the career of their dreams. What kind of lesson does one learn from a book that has the main character leave the love of his life and go in search of a treasure that he himself is not sure exists? There were a lot of religious undercurrents in the story as well, Santiago being a shepherd and the omens that are interpreted as well as an undertone of anti-Islamic sentiments, with the Arabs shown as forever being at war.

I have a name for the quest to find a spiritual meaning in everything. I call it the “Bible Mindset”. It is akin to find a meaning in every verse of the Bible and every parable of Jesus. The Alchemist is no different than a parable or a fable and just as every one of Jesus’ parables is supposed to have a meaning sometimes hidden and it is a pity that the spiritually deprived western culture has to try and find meanings in ordinary tales such as the Alchemist.

Is Kerala hyped up?

Is God's Own Country hyped up as a tourist destination?

My experiences in Kochi have certainly led me to believe that it might be. Kerala has definitely been blessed with a lot of natural beauty and Kerala was listed among the top ten tourist destinations in the world, but, it definitely is some skillful marketing that has made it more famous than it has deserved to be. Coming to Kerala, after visiting Rajasthan, where the tourist is treated like royalty, the lack of professionalism in the hospitality industry is glaringly evident. Kochi, inspite of being the economic capital of the state, amazingly, has only a few places of interest for tourists and even these were hyped up.

Other than the natural beauty of the state, there isn’t much man-made beauty around. The Jewish Synagogue, St. Francis church, the Dutch palace & the Chinese fishing nets all turned out to be disappointments. The Jewish Synagogue was a small building in the old Kochi area and except for its historical significance, there wasn't anything there for either a Jew or a non-Jew to see. St. Francis church, India's oldest church, is famous for what was there for about 14 years many centuries ago - Vasco da Gama's buried body. The Chinese fishing nets near the remnants of Fort Kochi stink literally and inspite of being plugged as a wonder, there weren’t much of a wonder. The Dutch palace at Mattancherry, though the paintings are rather poorly preserved, is really worth seeing. Photography is not allowed inside and they don't sell pictures or any literature about the place. The Kerala Tourism counter in the entrance of the palace, instead had books about Agra, Delhi & Fatehpur Sikri. When I asked for a book about the monuments of Kerala that was listed, I was told that it was out of print. Even the guides at the palace gave a skewed up version of the Ramayana while explaining various paintings to the tourists.

The renowned Kerala Ayurvedic massage, wasn't so great even though I had it at a place approved by the Kerala Tourism Board. The masseur couldn't speak English and was keen to get me to write my comments in the guest register.

Cherai beach near Kochi was touted as the cleanest beach in India. One walk down its short stretch was enough to prove otherwise. Cherai is clean but not as clean as some of the beaches in Karnataka and Maharashtra.

The most pejorative was usually the discussions I overheard at the breakfast tables of my fellow hotel guests and the tourists I met at various places. Most of them were disgruntled of the hard sell that they had been subjected to. They talked about the generally bad experiences they had, the auto drivers and taxi drivers who robbed them blind and the not-so-great massages. Kerala may attract many more tourists with ad-blitz and suave promotions but it needs to do a lot more if the tourists are to keep coming back.

The Wedding Bells Toll

As 2008 rolls in, I look forward to a lot of changes in my life too but the change I'm expectantly dreading is the one that'll change my status from single to married.

After all the nagging I received from home & well-meaning relatives at not being competant enough to find a life-partner myself, I had to give in and let them try to arrange a match for me. However, little did I know what an ordeal it would turn out to be. I had to agree to quite a few silly rituals like having my horoscope prepared and distributed around to various relatives and creating a profile on one of the popular wedding portals on the net.

There were some mundane initial responses to the profile, of course, but, I had over-estimated my worth in the marriage market. After about a week, and numerous rejections later, realisation dawned that the entire process wasn't a walk in the park. It took me a couple of weeks to realise that honesty may not be the best policy in this case. So, I edited my profile to make it more appealing to the average brahmin father of a girl still hanging on to his middle-class values or trying to find a match for his daughter better than the one his wife found over two decades before. After some vital changes to the profile, the number of acceptances to my "expressions of interest" did significantly increase but I wasn't making any further progress, the principle reason being that I wasn't a premium member of the matrimonial website. Not being a paid member meant that I could only send across "expressions of interests" hoping that the other party was a premium member who had paid so that they could contact me. After about six replies to my "expressions of interests", the wedding portal informed me that I could no longer send any more unless I paid to become a premium member.

Four thousand rupees later I got the privileges of personalised "expressions of interest" and a twenty-four word advertisement in a leading south-Indian newspaper. The only difference it made was the number of rejections I got increased though a couple of profiles looked promising.

The first one was from a Bangalore-based girl, whom I'll call AA. I had received a e-mail from her mother asking me to view her profile. Her profile showed her to be a typical South-Indian brahmin girl & with all the values associated with being one. She was into finance & earned over Rs. Six lakhs per annum. I mailed her asking her the password for her photos. She gave it to me also giving me a few more of her personal details like her having one twin sister who was married, the name of the company where she worked etc. I remembered that I had seen the company on one of my friend's list of communities on Orkut. So, I logged on to Orkut, wondering if AA was on Orkut. I found her easy enough and her profile had something interesting too. Her photos on Orkut showed her to be quite different from the photos she had sent me the password to in that she wore glasses, was a bit overweight and her orkut profile had her height a bit shorter too not to mention her drinking habits as a social drinker as opposed to the teetotaller she had mentioned she was in her matrimonial profile. I don't consider myself shallow but somehow the whole thing starting out like this on a basis of deception put me off and I politely declined her proposal.

The second proposal was the girl's mother calling up my mom at home & giving my mom the girl's matrimonial profile no. The girl, VS, was a software engineer working for Infosys in Chennai. She was the first of three sisters. I found her too on the Infosys community in Orkut. Though she didn't have any photos of hers uploaded, the testimonies of her orkut friends & her sister (calling her lazy, a spendthrift etc.) and her choices of communities provided me a great deal of insight into her personality. I didn't bother to mail her any further.

These two incidents made me remove all my personal data from my Orkut profile. I even spruced down the no. of communities I was member of, since, learning from others' mistakes is the best way to learn. Social Networking sites are great to keep in touch with old friends but I also discovered, albeit by chance, that posting of personal data on these sites, might just not be a prudent idea especially if you are not being totally honest in your profile on matrimonial sites.

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.