Reflections on cyberspace!

The Holiday Season

2011-12-25T09:03:00.004+05:30

So what is it about the holiday season that has us all perked up? While in the USA, and most parts of the outside world, holiday season dawns around Christmas and New Year’s. But in India, holiday season translates into the break that we get around Diwali. But of course we are Indian and we love to celebrate! So with the same fervor as we celebrate Dusshera and the Festival of Lights... we also hop around when New Year’s comes along. People apply for offs in their offices, make travel plans, get excited on Christmas eve and are part of a big party on New Year’s night.

Getting drunk and happy is a fad, new winter clothes are purchased to flaunt, families go on an overdrive and install Christmas trees (‘install’ too mechanical a word?), teach their children about Santa and his stockings, have family dinners and rum cakes. All a big package of happiness. While on most years I am clueless about my plans and hate the festive season... this year I am happy.

When I was a child, my relatives from the great United States of America gifted me a huge 5-book collection of Santa stories in a giant book jacket... packed up like a gift. That green, 100 by 100 inches box (I am not kidding), was the most prized possession of my yesteryears. I held it close to my heart, showed it off to my friends and read each book carefully... turning one banana leaf discreetly after the other, to absorb and memorize each line. I learnt about Santa, his habitat, reindeers, mistletoes, stockings, chimneys, sleighs, Antarctica, decorations, confetti, rum and fig cakes... all from those five precious books. The last page of the fifth book had a full two page rendition of ‘Jingle Bells’ and my toes would stand up for a tap dance each time I read it. Now as an adult, I might have misplaced my box-set... but fond memories remain. The feel of those creamy pages and the smell of freshness linger in my head. I was blessed with a colour-filled and playful childhood. Touché.

Having attended a fancy school where conversing in English right from the first grade was a fad (we were punished if someone was heard talking in Hindi), the Christmas (and subsequently New Year’s) festivities lingered on. In my fourth grade, I would hang a sparkling white stocking with my gift wish-list scribbled and stuffed inside it, on the doorknob. But to my disappointment, there would be no gifs in the morning. That was because my parents were blissfully unaware of any such activity going on in my room as me and my brother both had a separate room to ourselves. So sadness dawdled there.

But that didn’t stop me from pestering my father to get us the most baroque New Year’s reservations. While in some years he would succumb to that demand and spend oodles of money getting us a good spot... in the others, we would have street golgappas at midnight, or be snuggled in our beds watching New Year’s programming on TV. In one of those years, SaReGaMa was big and I have clear recollections of watching Anu Kapoor usher us into the New Year with his cheerful voice.

Last year, I was lucky enough to spend both Christmas and New Year’s in the Big Apple. The place to be - NEW YORK CITY. Eat your hearts out. Amazon Kindle as my gift, Times Square on 31^st midnight and an American Diner for dinner. Total and absolute bliss. In the Americas, this time of the year is angelic. Most major tech companies launch their line of new advanced tech offerings to woo the buyers. And it’s a shopper’s delight to indulge in the joys of the latest iPhone or iPad, Amazon Kindle Fire or Barnes and Noble’s Nook. They are everywhere and if you don’t bag one, your New Year’s sucked.

The ‘Food’ around Christmas - means different things to different people. To me, it’s a lot of cakes and wines. And chocolates! Who can forget the chocolates?! Molten, brown, white, dark, bitter, sweet, Belgian, desi, etc. No end to this list. The more the merrier. Ho ho ho.

The ‘Clothes’ – India or abroad, there are HUGE discounts on clothing in this season. Latest fashion brands selling at cheesecake rates. Or hot bread rates. Or hot dog rates. Best time to hoard them, wear them, buy some, throw some more (money) and hoard some again for the rest of the winters. Victoria’s Secret, Louis Vuitton, Van Heusen, Gucci, Jimmy Choo and Ray Ban. Time to get the best deals on everything!

The ‘Movies’ – Oscar and Grammy nominations are released. And the best movies of Hollywood hit the screens in this month. For 2011, the list is as impressive with – Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol, Sherlock Holmes 2, The Descendants, Ides of March, The Iron Lady, etc. I have watched the ones that have released and have plans too for watching the rest of them. The list last year was as glorious with cinematic gems like – The King’s Speech, The Black Swan, Rabbit Hole – being doled out. Then too, I watched each and every one of them, including a Spanish film ‘Biutiful’.

So in conclusion, as I sit here in the yellow glow of my room’s lighting, snug in a blanket on a crisp white winter Christmas morning, I revel in the celebratory aura that hangs in the air. I shall visit the fanciest mall in Delhi to gawk at their biggest Christmas tree, have a rum cake, walk in the evening cold and finally end the day with a few drinks to warm up. Merry Christmas to ye all :) Tons to do this year!

The whole Indian wedding tamasha

2011-10-02T12:33:00.003+05:30

Unlike several other countries in the world, the meaning of ‘wedding’ in the Indian context is very different. It encompasses every other factor, other than the willingness of the boy or the girl. In the ‘arranged wedding’ scenario, a concept largely ridiculed in the west, the boy and the girl are simply expected to wed as strangers and then fall in love. If any differences or incompatibilities arise later... the duo is expected to reconcile to them within four walls. Because like the couple once obliged to fall in love with the person of their parent’s choice, they are also expected to tow their lines in terms of what KIND of person they have to get used to.

I am not suggesting that such matches are always forced or that they always end up failing. A good amount of them even manage to work. But all elders in this country have got to understand that there are only a certain ‘type’ of people you can expect to put up with this arrangement. I am a journalist and I have always lived life on my own terms. Owing to adequate financial independence that I have experienced in recent years, I feel I am fairly equipped to pick my own match. And to stick to that choice and live it through, because at least at the end of the day, it is still MY decision that I am putting up with. And the decision was not made for me by somebody else. It can go wrong and things can fall apart, but that way I have at least not smothered my wishes, just to be ‘socially acceptable’. Nor have I wrapped myself up as a candy to be presented to a ‘market’ of suitable boys (don’t know what mind-fucked people come to do that kind of bidding). And I would own full responsibility for my actions.

Which brings us to the moot point of which ‘kind’ of people agree to enter the ‘arranged marriage’ scenario. This is the breed that has either loved their family way too much, more than anything else, to ever fall as much in love with anybody else. Or the variety that feels it is not in their ‘culture’ to disregard what their parents ask them to do. Now the second variety worries me the most. Because these are the same people who can never say ‘no’ to anything that is asked of them. ‘Marry him/her’... yes. ‘Have babies with them now’... yes. ‘He is cheating on you? Put up with it. Marriage is all about compromises’... yes. ‘You feel you are incompatible? Manage it... it’s your life and he/she is your spouse. Get used to them’... yes. The ‘yes-saga’ has no end but lifelong implications of this can be catastrophic. People tend to become subdued, reserved, irritable, irrational, non-objective... and ultimately end up sleeping in different rooms. Because in their words... their natures ‘never matched’. I might sound a little extreme but the crux of my argument shall come to life only if such extremities are cited.

On the other hand, people who marry out of ‘love’ are less likely to end up in different bedrooms. They have known each other, had their say, known their expectations and most importantly, the onus lies on them to make it work. Because they made their own choice. The learning of making a love-marriage work is the learning of a lifetime. You live with your ‘decision’ everyday. Wake up with them, sleep with them and grow with them. The learning might be sweet or it might be bitter, but it is of your own making. And it shall always remain that way. Everybody makes mistakes in their youth and the Indian parents need to allow their kids to make those ‘mistakes’ once. They might work or they might not. But there is never the added pressure of not having other avenues or exits. These ‘mistakes’ teach one to be independent in life, and responsible, for all things that happen to them or are made to happen.

A marriage is more than just about maintaining social standing or stature. And children are more than just mere badges that parents can pin-up on their shoulders. Nor are children means for parents to live the kind of lives that they never lived on their own. The two parties in a married couple eventually have to cope with their own lives, and the easier it is made for them, the better. At a basic level, the voices that advocate ‘own match picking’ need to be heard. Being ‘liberal’ has always been the way forward and by holding old customs or traditions very close to the heart, folks today are being insensitive to the needs of the times. They have to be more supportive and respectful of their children’s wishes. Times have changed and they can’t dictate rules about how lives should be lived. Honour-killings should be stopped and a thought has to be spared to what makes your own flesh-and-blood happy. For there is no substitute for consensual coexistence to give life to the ‘happily ever after’...

The Big White American Blizzard

2011-07-15T13:22:00.007+05:30

To catch the snow in New York City had been my muse since 2002. That was the year I had to return from a trip just as the city was about to witness the first snowfall of the season. That wish got fulfilled in 2011. Just as I was returning from a dream-like visit to WWE Raw Worldwide in Madison Square Garden (New York) to our temporary set-up in a New Jersey hotel, it snowed. But little did I know that almost a decade worth of wait wasn’t going to ensure an easy night in the face of an actual snowstorm... and I was not prepared for what ensued.

6.30PM

Borders Bookstore, 7^th Avenue and 33^rd Street, New York

The first few flakes of snow appeared as I sat at Borders and sipped hot coffee. There was also a hot muffin keeping me company. Looking out of the big glass pane, I thought about how beautiful Manhattan looked, how the thin sheet of snow was slowly covering the parked cars and how chilly the air was outside. I was waiting for the entry gates to open for WWE (more on that experience in a later post). The multi-storeyed bookshop was abuzz with people mostly waiting to attend the same event. I sat peacefully, enjoyed the snow and savoured my hot cuppa.

7PM

Madison Square Garden, New York

I stepped out of Borders and started my short walk towards Madison Square Garden. The air was indeed freezing and I had to cover myself with a sweater, flaming pink jacket, earmuffs, thick gloves (only available in NY... for NY), socks, heavy black boots and a very woollen muffler to keep myself from getting a frostbite. The walk was short, but bitterly cold. The sight of the blooming city kept my spirits alive amidst the rapidly increasing snowfall. At this point I will admit that the worrying thought of having to drive our car through the mounting snow did cross my mind.

10.30PM

Another short walk from Madison Square Garden to Penn Station

The plan was to take a train ride to New Jersey, pick the parked car, and drive to the temporary hotel before passing out fitfully in the cosy bed. Upon stepping out from Madison Square Garden, the sight that greeted me was of snowy white bliss, yes, but also sheer horror at the almost six-inches of snow that has fallen in a little less than 4 hours. And still mounting/counting. While the thought of spending the night in New York and avoiding a dreadful drive in the snow did cross my mind, the monetary considerations of implementing this idea held me back. And the car drive was unavoidable... the quicker the better, before an entire night of heavy snow totally buried the car under clusters of sinfully white ice.

I reluctantly boarded the train to New Jersey (NJ Transit trains, they call them) and waited for it to move. The same crowd from WWE followed me into the train. To see warm faces was reassuring, but the scenes outside when the train started moving were deeply depressing. Empty roads at almost 11 at night. Snow-sheets draining out almost all signs of activity, or even life, from an otherwise pretty countryside. I crossed my fingers and prayed for the best. The ghastly images of my car covered in snow filled my mind and I tried to push them away. I wasn’t equipped to deal with this. A midnight maverick adventure was about to go horribly wrong. Well, almost.

The train came to a screeching halt at the station and I quickly gathered my belongings (including a sponge ‘No.1 John Cena’ hand figure that I had waved shamelessly through the game) and stepped out into the station. The sights that followed were no respite either. The snowfall had quickly assumed the proportions of a blizzard now. The walk from the train station to my car was almost the longest walk of my life. And the first emotions of dread were starting to creep in. To walk against the freezing wind was impossible and I dragged myself on, with my boots sinking deep into the mountains of snow. I also encountered a policeman screaming at a couple, and also helping them alongside, to wade through the snow. I secretly hoped that I wouldn’t require such help tonight.

The sight of the car was no consolation at all. The deep-blue sedan was pristine white and loaded with snow. The storm wouldn’t stop blowing and even opening the door of the car proved to be a chore. I stepped in and the poor four-wheel-drive sedan wouldn’t move. It was stuck in the snow. After much effort when it finally did move, it graciously went and got stuck right in the middle of the raised boom-barrier. And it was a rented car and I started getting worried for its well-being. The parking attendant (already battling the blizzard himself and helping people leave from the other exit, while mounting curses left, right and centre) finally came to my help after almost 20 minutes. By now, I was scared as hell and fantasising about my warm bed and the safety of four walls. A mini ice-cleaning truck came to the rescue to shoved some snow away from the car’s path. The parking attendant hurled accusations that sounded something like ‘you should read weather forecasts before stepping out in a blizzard like this!’ Point mindfully noted, sir. But what about tonight?

After great difficulty, the sturdy car finally hit the road. But this was just half the battle won. Or maybe not even that. Once the ride began, and it was going to be almost 30-minutes long, my heart sank further upon seeing the conditions of the road. They were deserted. The lady on my GPS sprung to life and started dictating directions. The funny thought of satellite links going haywire and me getting lost in this strange country on the road crossed my mind. I sensed mind-numbing negativity inside me.

Soon I hit the interstate and that’s when the jams started to appear. First I encountered smaller jams, and then bigger ones. One or two broken down cars parked at the corners of roads. In this maddening chill, with crazy temperatures. Would the cars have enough fuel to make the heaters last overnight while help arrived the next morning? The car in front of me hurled a shovel in the direction of a broken down car on the right, with a lady standing in the snow hoping for some help to come by. ‘Help yourself’ was the mantra that night. My heart couldn’t have sunk any lower, but I retained faith in the deep-blue car.

The road brought along crazy turn in the snow and involved following a jeep with a family for directions. While the GPS didn’t conk off (phew!), it also didn’t help much once the jam began. The biggest, longest, toughest jam of my life. The car got stuck, almost 20 minutes away form the hotel, in a jam. It was midnight now and the traffic didn’t move even an inch for almost 3 hours!!!

Stuck in a foreign country, in temperatures hovering around -14 degree Celsius outside the car, with no help whatsoever, with just a mini cleaner to remove the snow from the windshield and a full tank to at least keep the heater on and whirring.

Now over to what the media does when these blizzards hit. The radio was blaring and I was on the lookout, ears perked, waiting for some good news to make an appearance. I kept listening on and on and on... endlessly... for some good piece of information. That didn’t happen. What I did hear was this –

‘John, so the residents of the New York/New Jersey area are battling a harrowing blizzard.’

‘Yes Tara, our records tell us that this the worst storm the area is battling for this time of the year, in the last 20 years!’

‘Wow John, that’s pretty bad! And despite weather warnings, the area was not prepared to deal with this kind of snow.’

‘For the people stuck out on the road, its a new record ($%&#$) and the traffic is showing no signs of moving on the interstate. We can’t say how long this will last, and we can only comment once it stops snowing. But this is a new record (&@@$%) and the New York/New Jersey area will have to fight a long night ahead.’

Ok, enough! I was simmering with anger... about to burst. We were stuck away from homes and hotels, out on a highway, without knowing how or where this night would end... and the radio people are busy creating records! Plain disdainful.

3AM

Some Interstate highway, New Jersey

During the course of this wait, my feelings metamorphed from anger, to disdain, to denial and then to a reluctant phase of acceptance. This was my fate tonight, stuck in a car, no food or water, no washroom to relieve myself, sub-zero temperatures outside and a non-moving jam. And of course, loathsome radio anchors. Fabulous. Price I paid for watching WWE. My only solace was the other cars stuck around me with their families. I turned off the radio and slipped into an erratic sleep pattern...

And then I heard a horn. Then another. And another! It seemed that the traffic had finally started moving. I was ecstatic and the fingers hurt from being crossed so tight! The blocked cars were indeed moving and I moved with them. The roads, to my sheer amazement, had been cleared of the snow. With salt-sprinklers and snow-shoving trucks. As I moved along and noticed the clear roads, I wasn’t angry at the authorities anymore. I was only amazed at how just in a short span of 3 hours, such long stretches of roads, covering miles and miles of distance, had been cleared before allowing the traffic to resume. I was jubilant and relieved. Soon enough, the hotel appeared at a distance. Life was good! The road exit that lead to the hotel had been cleared too. The drive towards the parking lot was a smooth one. As I looked up at the window of the room I was going to sleep in, I almost already passed out of exhaustion...

3.35AM

The Hotel, New Jersey

Once the car was parked, I picked up all belonging and made my way to the room. The receptionist gave me quizzing looks and with a smile on my face, I said-

‘I was at WWE tonight. And then got stuck in the snow.’

I also remember raising my sponge ‘No.1 John Cena’ hand towards her in greeting. Once in the room, I fixed myself a frozen parantha and some warm milk, and had it while browsing pictures clicked during the day on the camera...

I was finally home.

Santa jingles...

2010-12-11T20:58:00.003+05:30

Take two... my second attempt at writing this post. First draft lacked structure and sounded random. Writing television news has changed the way I write. My sentences are shorter, English is simpler and I am almost always writing for some imaginary audience. No more, not here... no sir.

Writer’s block had yet again jammed the grey artilleries in my brain. The juices aren’t flowing like they once used to and the mind requires some literary exercise. I haven’t written for this space in a while and I feel lost. Lost in the crowd and lost in the flurry of action & activity that defines my life right now. Little time to smell the roses and even lesser time to replenish the essentials that wholly constituted my life before the madness began. But I vowed to myself to not get lost in the maddening crowd... and I am back at my favourite place to reflect some more on life and times. Blogging helps me channelize my thoughts in a crystal-clear way...

Life has simplified a bit. There are fewer things that demand attention. Friends have become busy and the pressures of maintaining an active social life have soothed. Not that I didn’t enjoy mingling with my favourite people. But everybody is hooked now, as am I. And luckily, the bonds have remained... only to be rekindled on stolen trips back home or wherever these hidden treasures reside.

But while things have simplified in some respects... a greater investment of my time is needed elsewhere. The quality versus quantity debate seems to have crept into the picture and I know I have grown up. The last year or so had been fast and energetic. My endurance, patience and comfort levels have been tested like never before. On the personal front, things have evolved too. I have become more content and satisfied as a person. Existing bonds have solidified. Temperaments and rationales have passed the test of time...

Life has come a half-circle, as opposed to a full one, and I feel ready to experience more. Christmas and New Years are just around the corner and Santa has also popped out, buzzing with jingling bells in my head. Emotions have passed through the prism of time and split into a rainbow of jubilation and exhilaration.

Random, erratic thoughts are the essence of this post... but I shall be back to write and share more. Stay tuned ;)

A new perspective on Tharoorgate…

2010-04-19T23:41:00.002+05:30

Victimized by voyeuristic television news channels and penalized for his liberal utterances on Twitter, Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor was forced to resign.

A saga that was first publicized by Headlines Today, about his alleged affair with Dubai-based Kashmiri Sunanda Pushkar, spilt over to something much bigger. I am sure when the channel first rolled out this story last week, the intention was just to stay in tune with the general flavor of its content (entertainment based) policy. When Lalit Modi picked up a cue from the dole-out and tweeted about the specifics of the Kochi franchise of the IPL, the matter gained ugly proportions. The slug-fest, prompted by Modi and Tharoor, and carried forward by all four major English news channels (one look at their prime-time discussion shows would have proved my point), resulted in the inevitable ouster of Mr. Tharoor.

It bothers me to see him go. Because the way I see it, and a lot of other news mediums don’t, is that I see it as the end of an era of new-age politics even before it began. An epoch where everybody in the position of power would be allowed to speak their mind and express earnest opinions on even social networking platforms (like Twitter). Not one person in this country seems fully satisfied with our governance mechanism. All of us love to hate the government and everything that it does. When a politician comes along as a new beam of hope for a change in standards (think Obama and Al Gore), instead of appreciating him for what he stands for, we join the chorus of news channels in beating him about the smallest slip-ups. Yes, change is uncomfortable. But change is also essential. Especially when you dislike things the way they stand.

We envy foreign politics for the quality of their people and their connect with the audience. When one of our own politicians makes an attempt to reach out and divulge his correct views on government’s policies and procedures, we shred him apart for being imprudent. Where is this country headed in given circumstances? As people, we appreciate newer concepts like ‘younger politicians’, but bash honest opinion-givers because they deviate from the norm of towing the servile line?

Did we, or them, expect the former dipomat in Tharoor to stoop to the levels of a Narendra Modi who uses forums like Twitter to further his political propaganda? Does he even have a political propaganda? Doesn't that set him apart? And whatever happened to the good sense of our television news channels? One channel might be reckless in its depiction of certain personalities. But if the rules of ‘competition’ dictate that every other channels needs to pick up the bait from here and be equally foolish in their conduct, then I abhor such competition.

For those of you reading my post and nodding in disagreement, I shall come to you for your views when eventually the IPL is banned for proving to be a breeding-ground for ‘match-fixers’ and ‘fiefdoms’. Because trust me you, if a Lalit Modi ouster is on the cards, the reputation of the IPL wouldnt be left unscathed either. It's future could be put into jeopardy.

Tharoor, till the very end, maintained high standards of dignity and composure. Without once denying his close friendship with Sunanda Pushkar, he gracefully offered to resign when he realized that things weren’t going his way. He might have over-stepped his powers as the MoS in the Kochi franchise auction, but he managed to retain his standards of correct conduct. Pushkar in return agreed to give up her Rs.70 crore stake to uphold Tharoor’s position. The Congress, already up in arms and tired of Tharoor’s constant tweets that contradicted their government policy, took this as an opportunity to show Tharoor the door. Of course being a shrewd party that it is, Lalit Modi’s head is lined up next for the guillotine.

The ouster of Shashi Tharoor was sad. With him we lost an educated, refined, polished and erudite politician. Something that our country, standing on the brink of political dubiousness, badly needed. We all seem to realize that development is difficult with the given quality of our politicians. With Mayawati who doesn’t tire of building her own statues, to Varun Gandhi who spews venom each time he opens his mouth, to Karunanidhi who is unable to untangle a messy succession battle, to Narendra Modi who is confused about which community card to play next to expand his voter base, to even a P.Chidambaran who is facing the ire of critics for his failed Naxal strategy after the Dantewada massacre – we are all confused about what we want from the ‘ideal Indian politician’. The UPA government which has so hopelessly failed to either control the spiraling food prices, or even failed to punish an obvious-accused like Ajmal Kasab, has fuelled our desire to scribble more furiously in our mental ‘complaint registers’. With Shashi Tharoor came the ray of hope of a new age of politics where politicians would have been free to drop all pretensions and speak their mind openly. An age where politicians reached out to the people and felt free to share their opinions about things that mattered. We need politicians who dare to deviate, those who refuse the tow the proven line with blindfolded eyes. We need thinking politicians who look beyond themselves towards the greater good of the nation. And we also need politicians who come equipped with a global perspective to take us forward. Tharoor might not have been the ideal politician, but he was definitely a beginning. By losing him, we've done a big disservice to ourselves.

Television channels, so consummated by the short-term joy of higher TRPs, offered cheap thrills to the people in the name of the ‘Tharoor-Sunanda-Modi’ saga. A host of benami IPL transactions still lie under the wraps. It is unfortunate to see this melodramatic saga of public muck-fest conclude the way it did. It is even sadder to see the (as somebody pointed out) 'conditioned' editorial chiefs of our television news channels undeterred by the damage that they have, knowingly or unknowingly, caused to the long-term goals of our country. They sabotaged a new dawn of Indian politics by stealing an example who could have been an inspiration to many others like him. Here in India, it is almost a crime to be erudite and educated. Maybe as a nation who cant move beyond envying western culture, but is unable to acclimatize itself to a liberal way of governance; we deserve to mire in the shackles of poor-development. I feel truly saddened by the complete lack of perspective on the Tharoor issue…

Post Script - By this post, I do not imply to absolve Tharoor of the charges that have been pressed against him in the Kochi franchise. But think about what would happen if we applied similar standards of judgement to our other leaders. Maybe this country would be left leaderless. Cruz remains, we cannot overlook Tharoor’s goodness.

Shoghi-Shimla-Kufri Trip 2010

2010-02-22T11:52:00.015+05:30

It gives you a high when you begin your year in the valleys with close friends. I started mine in the with a train trip to Himachal Pradesh…

Jan 1, 2010
Kalka Shatabdi leaves Delhi at around 7.30am in the morning. We reached at the nick of time, thanks to a very slow taxi-driver who despite our constant protests, insisted on stopping at the red-light outside the New Delhi Railway Station. Once boarded, and we were traveling first class, I remember looking out of the window and seeing beautiful landscapes slip by. Amidst the pink ambience of the interiors of my train, it was a joyride all the way to Kalka.

Upon reaching the destination, a taxi took us to Shoghi. The driver this time was a Sikh who, I distinctly remember, stopped at a highway dhaba to fill up his stomach with tandoori chicken (or was this detail a fabrication of our idle minds?).

Shoghi was beautiful. Valleys were steep (:O) and we were staying at the emerald-queen of Shoghi vacation stays, Parkwoods Rustic Resort. My cottage was plain wood and basic, the bed was wrought-iron, and the bath-fittings were decent. Everything run on LPG… right from the geyser, all the way to the heater (prolonged use of an LPG heater can give you a headache, by the way).

While the day was spent in settling down, advent of the night saw a bonfire. Argumentative as we are, discussions followed. Tempers flared. Drinks flew around. Ashes left a weird stench in my locks. Retired for the night post 1am… slept almost immediately upon hitting the bed.

Jan 2, 2010
And woke up early. With a throbbing headache. Picked up a high-resolution Canon camera and stepped out to shoot after popping in a crocin. The high valleys and hammock, the scattered pine-cones and the early morning mist, interesting flowers and beautiful hills. I clicked some of the best pictures of the trip here. Wooden huts with chairs and tables outside. The grey ashes of our previous night’s bonfires were still fresh.

In the afternoon, we set out for a mountain trek. It might interest you to know that the author of this post suffers from vertigo. So basically for the most parts of this 1.5hrs trek, I was a nervous wreak. At one point, I even remember asking our trek-guide if anybody had ever slipped from these valleys and died (:O!). He was kind enough to just smile. Others laughed (grrr :P).

Post-trek came the body massages. Callous village people were called to ‘massage’ us with mustard oil (think: dara singh champis). After my turn, I was impatient to take a bath and get all the mustard oil off me. What an ordeal. For everybody traveling to Shoghi, please skip the oil-massages.

The beautiful night saw another orange-aura bonfire. Food was delicious, I got served Top Ramen on request. Someone was kind enough to hand-feed me because I was feeling whimsical. That same someone lit up the night with resplendently-sung soft Hindi songs and ghazals. I made a video. This someone made the trip worthwhile. There were no arguments this night. Only discussions about a game of Scrabble played earlier in the day, and some nostalgic school talks, and lot of reminiscing. I slept like a baby that night too.

Jan 3, 2010
A cab was called to ferry us to Shimla (15kms away from Shoghi). Although distance wasn’t much, the route felt longer with all the circular mountain tracks of Himachal Pradesh. This time the taxi guy was calmer (and not a Sikh!). A friend insisted we stopped along a grocery shop on the way because he had to (had to!) buy his cans of Diet Coke. Almost his staple diet, I’d say.

In Shimla, we zeroed in on an ITC hotel for our stay. The wooden interiors were missing, but this place was more swanky (obviously!) that our Shoghi place of stay. A walk on Mall Road proved good. Some scandalous pictures were clicked on Scandal Point. The clouds overpowered us mid-way and it started to pour. Amidst the cloud-walk, we foot-soldiers struggled to find a shelter. Café Coffee Day was encroached upon after satiating our hunger with hot pakoras on the road. I splurged on a sinful, but fuzzy serving, of Chocolate Excess. Temperatures outside were sub-zero. I could almost see virtual cats and dogs in the rain.

After a cozy-cum-splashy walk back to our plush hotel, our jeans were wet. Snacks and food made an appearance in our beds that night (aka room-service). Scrabble was out again, I won a wonderful game. Proved some girl-power. A card-game of Bluff was the highlight of the night. Needless to say, yours truly won again.

That night I slept late… a stench of onions with chicken tikkas stayed in my head.

Jan 4, 2010
Early morning cab to Kufri. Snow has bestowed dear Earth with whiteness. We were going to Kufri to have our share of snowball-fun before catching the train to Delhi. Kalka was 4-hours away from where we were. Cab-ride was fun. Everyone jumped at the slightest sight of snow.

Cars were skidding, we decided to step out and play foot-soldiers again. The walk up the mountain was fun. Our pony-rides to the top of the mountain were more fun. Angers flared as we got a little late in returning to the cab. Some feared we would miss our train.

And train we did miss. But what followed later could have been worse. Destiny put all its forces together to get us late. On the 4-hour drive back from Kufri, we found ourselves stuck in a 6 kilometers long highway jam. No place to run. Hard mountain on one side, deep valley on another. Someone checked his watch 30 times in 30 minutes. Consequently, we missed our train by just five minutes. Cab guy was kind enough to arrange another cab to Delhi for us. Charged us quite a bit (scoundrel?). We hit town post 12am, I was in bed by 1.30. Before I drifted off to sleep, I smiled selfishly at a year begun adventurously. Lo and behold outside-world, you have enough reason to be jealous :) Amen.

P.S. Television writing in college has screwed up my sentence-length!

Amazon Kindle's' my literary tastes!!!

2009-11-29T10:50:00.008+05:30

Prologue
If you're one of those people who grew up reading good books and still can’t live without a good title on your bed-side table, then this might interest you. Amazon has come up with a new E-book console called the Amazon Kindle. It is a gadget by Amazon.com for reading e-books as well as other digital media like newspapers and magazines.

Advantages
Several things about this device impress me. First is that it is simple and sleek to use. Make an account on amazon.com and punch in your credit card details with it. Order your kindle online and once you get it, just plug it in and order a book. It downloads in under a minute. Kindle's 6-inch screen and e-ink format makes the reading experience almost like a real book. Its 2GB memory can hold nearly two thousand titles. At just 289grams, it is the lightest console in its category. The Wireless internet is called WhisperNet, and it works in most countries including India via AT&T's partner mobile networks. Amazon claims a two-week battery life with wireless off. The new Kindle also has a "text-to-speech" which reads out text loud. This feature makes it useful for the visually challenged or simply lazy!

Shortcomings
Although the Kindle is good in most aspects, some glitches would make you reconsider a buy. Priced at over Rs.19,000 including device cost and shipping, it is a little overpriced for Indian buyers. Upon subscription to various magazines and newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, there is an additional monthly charge that has to be paid. On international roaming, a charge of $4.99 per week has to be paid despite non-usage. That fact alone makes it an expensive buy. Another shortcoming is the absence of any back-light. This makes it impossible to read from the Kindle in the dark. There are no Indian newspapers on Kindle yet, but I hope that would be sorted soon. Also, there are no Indian authors in the over 3,00,000 books available online on Amazon.

Technology of E-Ink
The display of Kindle is almost zero-power and lasts for 15 days. It is made possible by a new technology called E-Ink. It makes displays that are low on power usage flexible and readable in most of the lighting conditions. While it may look like normal ink on the display, it works by filling millions of micro-capsules or cavities. By using 5200 times less power than liquid crystal display, electronic ink only needs power when changing its display. Infact a digital book can display the same text for weeks without any additional charge applied to it. This makes it the closest thing to a printed book.

Competition
The e-book market is heating up. Amazon faces competition from several quarters to retain the top-spot. Sony introduced the E-reader in the market before Kindle. After staying on the second spot for a long time, it is now launching two new models - Reader Pocket and Reader Touch - to take over Kindle. Barnes and Noble, Amazon's biggest rival, has come up with its own e-book reader device called Nook. It sports a touch screen feature and allows book-sharing option too. The Korean major LG has also introduced the world's first solar power book reader. Its 6-inch display incorporates a thin-pin solar cell which minimizes the risk of running out of power during an engrossing read on the beach. And with rumors of Apple and Microsoft joining the fray by 2010, consumers are going to be spoilt for choice.

Epilogue:
With the ease of use and portability, some people like Prasanto Roy of Cybermedia are calling this ‘the future of the book’. Whether that holds true or not, only time will tell. Meanwhile, if you’re planning to make a purchase… let me know and I will assist you with the formalities!

A Princess Remembered

2009-08-30T10:29:00.007+05:30

Maharani Gayatri Devi
23 May 1919 – 29 July 2009

Vignette…
Born in London as the princess of Cooch Behar (West Bengal), voted by Vogue magazine as one of the ten most beautiful women in the world, third wife of the last ruling prince Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II of Jaipur, a pioneer in women’s education in Rajasthan, an avid equestrienne like her husband, a Guinness record holder for the biggest landslide Lok Sabha victory of 78.25% of the total votes cast during her term in governance in 1962 (C. Rajagopalachari’s Swatantra Party, running against the Congress), brand ambassador of Nakshatra diamond jewellery for their royal princess collection, and the owner of a Rs.2000 crore legacy after her death – are some feathers in the cap of an enigmatic Rajmata of Jaipur, Maharani Gayatri Devi.

A walk down the imperially embedded corridors of royalty…
My first impression of the lady was to see her show up meticulously for each school function. As it happens, I am an alumnus of Maharani Gayatri Devi Girls’ Public School in Jaipur. The school was founded by Rajmata in 1943 and subsequently the management was handed over to the double tier staff. Like most aged educational institutions, the school started off with just 30 students in the first batch. Overtime, the numbers have increased to encompass about 2500 students studying at the institute at one time.

During my younger days in the renowned institution, I remember seeing Gayatri Devi grace each occasion with her presence. She used to turn up in a convoy of white Ambassadors on both ends and a glistening swanky sedan for herself in the middle. Draped in crisp chiffon sarees, she would wear spotless white pearls for jewellery and cover her head in keeping with the tradition. Others of the royal family, including Rani Vidya Devi, often accompanied her on various occasions. When asked to speak on the stage, she would speak passionately about women, the importance of their role in the society, the importance of good education and the power of knowledge. Citing examples from her personal life, she would speak to us about the struggle of growing up as a woman and would constantly encourage us to take life head-on as it comes. She discussed the challenges of her own life, and would talk to us about her lost husband and son in a ceremonious manner. We would listen to it with unwavering attention.

The one thing that she never spoke about was the valour that she displayed when the Indira Gandhi government locked her up in Tihar Jail for five months in 1971 on charges of tax evasion. Eventually she was released for lack of evidence. Humility and modesty infested her in good measure. Upon her release, she quit politics and went on to write an autobiography. The book was called ‘A Princess Remembers: The Memoirs of the Maharani of Jaipur’ and that’s where we get our knowledge about her days in prison. It also talks about her responses to the several challenges that she faced as a maharani.

The diamond-studded battle for good health…
As part of the privileged lot who got to see her up close on various occasions we also, sadly, bore witness to her deteriorating health. For the first time in the history of the school since its inception, on my passing-out ceremony in 2005, she delivered a sitting lecture out of a chair. That night she explained that this was such because she ‘had no strength to stand for more than a few minutes.’ The end of that farewell ceremony was a detour from tradition too. While the norm was for her to sign each student’s kurta at the close of the night, that day the maharani could sign just a handful before she assessed her health was frail and decided to take off with other members of the royal family. Right then, we knew that something was not right.

The heartbreaking end and a timeless legacy…
The lady who gave us subtle lessons in sophistication by her elegant displays of royalty suddenly passed away on 29th day of July this year due to chronic health troubles and an ultimate lung failure. It would be wrong to say that we didn’t see it coming, but the abruptness of the event took us all by surprise. When the denial mode ended, the vacuum was filled by a deep sense of remorse at the tragic loss.

Along with being a lady of substance who underlined the role of women in the today’s society, she was labeled a rebel in the royal houseold because of her non-conformist behaviour and varied interests. Her rollicking romance with Sawai Man Singh before marriage, her interest in sports, her exceptional work in politics, and her unbound thoughts on the way a modern society should work helped define her as a person beyond convention. When we were in her presence, we shone in the light emanating from her glittering persona.

To walk a golden line of balance after the demise…
The aftermath of her death has been disheartening. A property dispute has broken out in the royal family. The three main claimants to her assets are – her grandchildren Devraj Singh and Lalitya Devi (born to late Jagat Singh and Priyanandana Rangsit) and her step son Bhawani Singh by the law of primogeniture (the eldest son of Sawai Man Singh with his marriage to Marudhar Kanwar). The absence of a real will is causing turbulent waves within the family affairs of the various fighting factions. A public will to be displayed to the media on 9th August never came up. Devraj and Lalitya came up with a corny one-page will of their own recently.

The disputed assets are the Ram Bagh Palace (worth almost Rs.500 crore - leased to Taj Group for running a luxury hotel), Jai Mahal Palace (another Rs.300 crore), Moti Doongri Fort (Rs.100 crore), Lilypool (the palace complex where she lived), City Palace (Rs.200 crore) and Sawai Man Singh’s clubs and investments (Rs.500 crore). In addition several pieces of art, diamonds, jewellery, designer clothes and other personal items are up for grabs too.
(Source for listing assets: India Today, 7 September 2009)

The sooner the dispute gets resolved the better. Firstly, because is brings a lot of disgrace to the blue bloods of Rajasthan. And second, because Gayatri Devi would never have entertained her descendants quibbling over property. It’s a family of plenty, and hence whatever comes out of the battle will be closely watched by the public. Till then, we should focus on remembering the maharani for what she was - a living legend and a voice to many. Count this as my untimely tribute to the lady of grace, poise and personal strength.

Thus spake Democracy…

2009-05-17T14:34:00.008+05:30

The election drama that began a few weeks back when the poll dates were announced by the EC ended in a fitting climax today. The Indian voter came out to vote and made his voice heard. In an India of rickety coalition politics, the voter braved the scorching heat to decisively vote for a stable government.

Stability was the keyword that was reflected in today’s verdict. While psephologists across the board were busy churning out unsure numbers, the voters stunned them all by passing a near-majority verdict in favor of the UPA. The Congress in alliance with its partners (DMK included, SP excluded) closed at the 261 mark, just 11 seats short of a simple majority. Most exit polls were proved wrong with Congress garnering 206 seats alone and emerging as the single largest party.

Game changers and Surprises

Tamil Nadu
The southern state that had expected to see a resurgence of Jayalalitha’s AIADMK lost ground to Karunanidhi’s DMK yet again (once before in the assembly elections). The victory added a major number of seats to the UPA’s kitty. Jaya’s hopes to be a kingmaker in central politics were rudely shattered. As was the three-woman-syndrome.

Uttar Pradesh
Behenji Mayawati disappointed with a weaker than expected show in the state. Placed behind Congress and SP, her party BSP failed to garner any major seats in the 80-seat state. With misplaced Prime-Ministerial ambitions, seems Maya overlooked the essentials of winning on home turf. Her extravagant birthday ‘bash’es only made things worse. The three-woman-syndrome was further weakened. Congress on the other hand, managed to gain equal footing as Mulayam and Maya. Its decision to go it alone in the state seemed to have paid off. No castles in the air, here. The UP verdict was a rightful slap on the face of regional politics.

West Bengal
We saw the Left biting dust with the Trinamool-Congress alliance racing past them to gain major seats in the state. Karat and Yechury’s Third Front lost ground with this defeat. Congress must be patting its back for staying put with Mamata Banerjee in the race. Seems at least one lady out of the three-woman-syndrome managed to play well in the battlefield.

Kerala
Kerala, usually an alternate swing state, swung in the direction of Congress this time. Shashi Tharoor won Thiruvananthapuram with a heavy margin. The Left front bore hefty losses. Although also facing Assembly elections, the results there were slightly different.

Rajasthan
Compared to last time, the Congress gained almost 16 seats in this 25-seat state. With a tally of 20, it lost only 4 seats to the BJP (17 down from last time) and 1 to an independent. This was a tectonic shift that contributed to swinging the scales in the direction of the UPA at the centre. The result was much in line with the Assembly elections last year where Congress had displaced Varundhara Raje’s BJP government and made heavy gains.

Delhi
Astounding as the result was, the Congress swept all 7 seats in Delhi this time. From amongst the winners, Kapil Sibal and Sandeep Dikshit registered the largest margins of victory from their Chandni Chowk and East Delhi constituencies respectively.

Gujarat
Modi’s BJP won the state, but the difference in seats from the Congress was smaller than what was expected. UPA seemed to be closing in on the NDA in this key state as well. Not a spectacular landslide as was projected by many psephologists.

Madhya Pradesh
A scene similar to the one in Gujarat played out here. BJP won the state but the actual margin of victory was narrower than what had been projected by several political commentators.

Other states

Orissa
Naveen Patnaik’s BJD swept this state, both in Assembly and Lok Sabha elections. The BJP paid heavily for its disassociation with Patnaik. In Orissa, it was almost a one-man spectacle.

Bihar
Another one-man show state, Nitish Kumar reined major power here by winning 32 seats (12 of the BJP) out of the 40 available in this state. Lalu and his supposed ‘Fourth Front’ faced a serious browbeat. Last we checked on him, he was regretting his decision to break away from the UPA.

Andhra Pradesh
The Congrees, once again, beat popular sentiment by delivering a better than expected performance in the state by picking 35 of the 42 seats that were up for grabs. Film star Chiranjeevi’s Praja Rajyam Party also put up a decent show.

Maharashtra
Congress was way ahead of the NCP here, something that came as a dampener to Sharad Pawar and his Prime-Ministerial ambitions. NDA only did marginally well than was expected. In South Mumbai, Milind Deora thankfully beat the threat posed by ABN-AMRO’s Meera Sanyal (if you look at the numbers, it was in fact hardly a fight) and registered a clean sweep for the Congress. Priya Dutt also won from Mumbai North Central constituency.

What worked for the UPA?
The obvious answer to this question is its projection of itself as an alliance concerned with developmental politics. With main focus on infrastructure, the UPA won over several hearts by its promises to build the nation. Another factor that contributed to its win was its secular image. Indian voters did not want communal parties to rule at the centre to aggravate an already cumbersome mess created by class politics. Aggressive campaigning by the Gandhi scions also helped the UPA in scoring crucial points. People’s need for stability in governance at a time when grave dangers like volatile neighbors and economic recession were facing the country also compelled voters to turn in the Congress’s direction. Tired of the challenges thrown by coalition politics, the voter recognized the need to vote a national party back in power. In light of BJP’s eroding goodwill, the only sensible option was that of the UPA. Congress also managed to play the NREGS and RTI cards well. Along with these factors, what also worked for this alliance is what failed to work for the other alliances.

What went wrong for the NDA?
The confusion that erupted regarding the Prime Ministerial candidate must have cost the BJP quite a few votes. With Modi’s increasing unpopularity after Godhra, the people got averse to voting for the party with the fear of seeing him occupying the PM’s post. Varun Gandhi’s hate speeches in Pilibhit also corroded the party’s leftover secular credentials. Generally, as well, people refused to vote for the BJP due to its communal image and a no-apology stand regarding 2002. A break up with major coalition partners like the BJD in Orissa also cost the party dear.

What went wrong for the Left and its Third Front?
The flip-flop between offering a non-Congress non-BJP alliance, and also offering any support to the Congress to ‘keep the BJP out of power’, came back to hit the Third Front hard on the face. Never really a force to reckon with, the idea to provide such a front failed miserably when the results were announced. Compared to last time, the Left lost almost half its seats. The unpopularity could be due to the Left’s opposition of the Indo-US nuclear deal and its subsequent withdrawal of support that led to a show of strength. Also the voters this time seemed to oppose any kind of extremist ideologies, left or right.

What went wrong for the Fourth Front?
Lalu-Mulayam-Paswan’s Fourth Front proved to be the ‘shame of the season’ with a dismal tally of 27 seats, as opposed to 64 seats last time (approximate figure, keeping in mind the delimitation changes). In a scenario like this, I am sure the trio must be condemning the day they decided to break forces with the UPA and embark on a political journey with three separate Prime-Ministerial aspirants running amok.

Crux of the discussion: What do the results imply?
All “Prime-Ministers-in-waiting” were shown the dust with people opting for national parties instead of regional ones. The two biggest parties that emerged were the Congress and BJP, much to the surprise of glorified psephologists who had predicted the trend in favor of a hung parliament. The ‘landsweep’ by the UPA proved all conservative estimates wrong. The Congress must be patting its back for going at it alone in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. The Trinamool and DMK alliance too bore fruit.

The voters were smarter than what we would have thought them to be. Undeterred by showy campaigning, they took the spotlight away from regional players and put it back on national parties. By doing so, they cut oversized political ambitions back to size and ensured stability for the nation. Now, once the UPA is sworn back to power we hope that it delivers on the promises it made in these elections. The people have put immense faith in Dr. Manmohan Singh by voting him back, and what awaits him is the onerous task of fulfilling these expectations. We hope that he has a successful tenure as a re-elected Prime Minister and manages to live up to the task entrusted to him.

Six Degrees of Separation

2009-05-01T15:36:00.013+05:30

Aloha everybody!

This place has been barren for so long that I now realize that people will stop visiting it soon if I don’t post something new. What better than a heads up on what I’ve been up to? Currently in Rajasthan with family, your author feels baked like a cookie in the scorching desert sun. Temperatures @ 45 degree Celsius are 7 degrees above normal for this time of the year and I am very certain that global warming is fast catching up. Winters this year were unusually short and the summers are proving unbearably hot (that rhymed!). Anyway, yours truly has never seen warmer years.

Next, a lot of my time is being spent on the two IPLs:
1) the Indian Phoren League and
2) the Inland Political Lacuna.
These are the flavors of the season and I am leaving no stone unturned to get generous ‘bytes’ on both.

Six degrees of separation?
If I could, I would rename it the ‘Two degrees (or maximum three degrees) of Separation’. Beyond that the connection is indecipherable and it’s all a mumbo-jumbo of “face book”ings.

So anyway, this happened when I was traveling back to Jaipur from Delhi in a Volvo last month. The journey is almost 5.5 hours and disinterested as I usually am, I quickly lost interest in my surroundings, and switched on my laptop to play Pacman. After exhausting ten minutes there, my babylike-attentional memory needed a change and I switched to an episode of Prison Break. Ten minutes into the episode, I was starting to yawn (it could’ve been my sloth, or it could’ve been motion), when my co-passenger got inspired and turned on her own laptop. The activity caught my attention and the yawns momentarily stopped. She took out a hard disk (like me), plugged it in her computer and started watching ‘Friends’ (again like me!). In that instant I realized that there was conversational-potential between the two of us. As soon as she stopped watching the episode for a couple of minutes, I pounced and started a conversation:

Me (pointing at her hard disk): “So you have a lot of Friends in there?”
Interesting Co-passenger: “Yup, I got all the seasons with me.”
Me (excited, cause I am a huge Friends fan too): “Hey that’s great! I have them all right here in my disk too and I never get tired of watching them!”
Interesting Co-passenger (excited as me now): “Really?! Neither do I. Must’ve watched all of them almost n number of times! I even remember the dialogues now!”
Me (almost wiping away a tear of joy): “Cool so do I! Awesome. So what else do you watch?”

The conversation proceeds in similar fashion and we realize we watch almost the same kind of soaps. We thought about exchanging movies but there wasn’t much scope as we both had almost the same titles. Next, I asked her what she did and she told me she had started working four days back. Fair. When asked about education, she tells me she’s an English graduate from Miranda House and is two years my senior. Fair again. She asks me about my college and as soon as I say Daulat Ram, she quickly springs up and asks: “Do you know Titir?”

Ofcourse I did. She was my Dramatics Society senior in freshman year. I tell that to my interesting co-passenger and she tells me that Titir now works in her office. Wow. Same interests and now a common university connection… seems my college senior is her colleague. I am bemused, but not stunned, because Delhi University is a vibrant place to be and due to its vastness alumni keep bumping into each other. We discuss Titir for a while, and then I ask her about her interests. Turns out she was an active participant in inter-college events (so was I) and enjoyed Dramatics. Although she was the President of her college Dramsoc in the final year (and I had been kicked out in the first year itself due to my ‘tragic’ acting skills), we hit another note and the conversation refuses to end.

I had cleared Hindu for English honors, she had graduated in English. I am interested in media, she is dating a media person. My family stays in Jaipur, her job has taken her to Jaipur for two years. I am a social butterfly, so is she. I help her draw out a two page MS Word sheet of all the places she should see in the city. She thanks me for all the help.

Bus stops at midway, we get down together. We keep chatting… until the 20 minutes stoppage becomes 40 minutes. The angry bus horn outside breaks the spell and we run to catch the bus (and face the ire of a very angry bus wallah). We settle down, keep talking… laptops are back in the bags and almost 3 hours of the long journey are already over. Conversation refuses to cease.

We speak of college; try to establish more common links. Talking of Miranda House, I happen to mention that my mom is a graduate from the same college. This is when it turns more bizarre.

Me (conversationally): “So you know my mom passed out of Miranda too.”
Interesting Co-passenger: “Really? Which course?”
Me: “Philosophy honors.”
Interesting Co-passenger: “Oh wow! My grandma (she meant nani) used to teach philosophy in the college till the 80s.”
Me (thoughtfully): “Hmmm”
Interesting Co-passenger: “Hey which year did your mom pass out?”
Me (calculating on fingers): “Sometime around 1985, I guess…”
Interesting Co-passenger: “That’s when nani taught there!! Shobhna Sarin!! Any chance she taught your mom too?? She retired in 1987. Has your mom ever mentioned her?”
Me: “The name does ring a tiny bell. But I don’t know for sure. Want me to confirm from mom?”
Interesting Co-passenger: “Yes, if you can!”

I called mom and wonder of all wonders… Shobhna Sarin HAD taught her in college in yesteryears!! Mom is thrilled… so am I… and so is the interesting co-passenger. I make them both talk and ma takes a quick lowdown on what her (strictest) teacher is up to these days. Interesting co-passenger sweetly sings it all on the phone to her. We hang up… and the excitement in the air is tangible. “Small world” is what we both exclaim!

I feel overwhelmed… less because of the similarities (same interests, friends, mom-grandma relationship) and more because of the fact that my interest hasn’t waned in almost 5 hours. This doesn’t happen too often! Destination is nearby and the time to de-board is drawing closer. Discussion is still as furious as ever. The past five hours have flown away in a jiffy. Mentally, I am labeling this my ‘shortest bus ride ever’. Thanks to the interesting co-passenger.

Jaipur arrives, we get down, exchange numbers and part ways. So much still needs to be discussed and we promise to meet up for coffee once the dust settles (she is new to the city). I have a grin on my face and so does she. When I reach home, ma tells me she spent the entire afternoon reminiscing about the teacher and the life that was college. My grin gets wider :)

Post script: (By now you know that P.S. forms an important part of my life. One, cause my disinterested brain refuses to concentrate for more than a fixed duration of time while writing my posts, so I always end up missing one thing or another…. and two, because the more I do it, the more these postscripts become ‘my thing’). So what was I saying… ah yes… this is a small world. We never know who we might come across while doing our routine chores in life. Be it traveling in a bus or sitting in a party (yes, its you I’m talking about :))… new relations come and hit you when you least expect them to. I (being me) can never rule out the possibility of bumping into someone familiar just round the corner. The bus incident is funny and the more I days I spend living on earth, the more I realize that my life is destined to be a series of many such incidents. As I say… its just two degrees of separation between us. Maybe three. Beyond that, its all “face book”ed :)

LS Elections 2009: Tackling stereotype, giving BJP some light

2009-03-30T19:12:00.004+05:30

This election season stands out from the previous elections in many ways. For one, we are seeing a shift from ideology based alliances to convenience based associations. Second, the hype generated by shifting the IPL to South Africa to ensure security is putting the spotlight back on a supposed incident-free exercise of our democracy. Third, blame it on soaring ambitions, the number of contenders for the Prime Minister’s post seem unprecedented in the history of Indian elections. Fourth, political back-stabbing is at its all-time best. Fifth, the tectonic forces changing political equations are so strong that it is becoming increasingly difficult to predict the outcome when the results are declared the 16th of May this year. What is even more peculiar is the common knowledge that the jig-saw reshuffle will continue for much longer than the month of May and the new government will still stumble hard and fast to make way for re-elections.

Other less significant reasons that make these elections noticeable include a former UN diplomat Shashi Tharoor (former under-secretary general) contesting for Congress from Thiruvananthapuram, a certain Varun Gandhi making communal speeches in Pilibhit and landing up in jail, the subsequent Gandhi-family feud, the context of Mumbai’s 26/11, NREGS, global recession and economic crisis, post-sixth pay commission era, reservation debates, 123-nuclear agreement, the election of Barack Obama as the new US president (and his Afpak policy that directly impacts India), the upcoming Commonwealth Games in 2010, the showcase of wads of currency on the floor of the Parliament last year, the incessant terror strikes, the Talibanisation of Pakistan (Swat, now maybe Peshawar), soaring-to-sublevel inflation, attack on women in a Mangalore pub called Amnesia, the upsurge of outfits like MNS and Sri Ram Sene, pink-chaddi campaigns, Rahul Gandhi, etc. Public awareness is scaling high and the need of the hour is more accountable leaders. With the junta giving a green chit to a ‘none of the above’ voting option, the leaders are sitting up straight and taking action.

BJP’s dipping graph
Until as early as a few weeks back, another Congress-led coalition seemed to be the fore-runner in the race to the Parliament. After winning the crucial state of Rajasthan and even Delhi in the assembly elections, this belief was only strengthened for most of us. When a crucial ally like the BJD stranded the BJP mid-way, the sentiment was high that it was the end of road for the saffron brigade. Images of iron-man LK Advani pumping muscle by lifting dumbbells were serving no purpose. The right-wing allegiances proved to be the party’s nemesis. Talks of rebuilding the Ram Mandir were being dismissed as airy-fairy nonsense.

Crutch-less Congress
Just when the Congress was gloating at the steady demise of its opposition, the bee of bad luck came and stung the party too. The Left, after being dropped as an ally in the trust vote last year, under the leadership of AB Bardan and Sitaram Yechury formally inaugurated a Third Front. The non-Congress, non-BJP front was projected as a platform to host all parties with disturbed equations with the two biggies. The front found support from many former allies of the two parties. Then more recently a Fourth Front took shape after RJD, LJP and SP (under Lalu Yadav, Ram Vilas Pawan and Mulayam Singh) decided to take charge of the states of UP and Bihar. Mayawati’s BSP decided to go solo too. Congress was left out of the calculations. The biggest blow came in the form of PMK withdrawing its support and joining Jayalalitha’s AIADMK in Tamil Nadu. (Read more on alliances here).

Present Scenario
We all like to back the winning horse. When fortunes seemed to be turning against the UPA, media ire (for once) shifted towards the party. The otherwise calm Congress felt the jolts and straightened its back. With regained confidence, the BJP had a lot many things to say. It was interesting to watch Congress articulates like Kapil Sibal and Jayanthi Natarajan toning down the smirks and giving straighter answers. Others like Abhishek Manu Singhvi had slipped into rhetoric about the party’s dwindling fortunes. A nastier Manmohan Singh was seen dropping the façade of a subdued minister (on directives flowing from 10 Janpath of course) and lashing out at BJP’s PM-in-waiting Mr. LK Advani. Last I checked, things were as uncertain as ever.

My View
For a party that is trying to learn from past mistakes, the BJP ought to be treated with a little more respect that what we otherwise bestow on it. When the Hindutva plank failed to translate into votes, the party revised its strategy to developmental politics and addressing corruption. With strategists like Arun Jaitley and Sudheendra Kulkarni, the party still has a future reserved for itself. When Varun Gandhi first sprang up to spread communal hatred, the first reaction of the BJP was to distance itself from his beliefs. What subsequently followed was simply crisis management. (As noted earlier, alliances in modern India are a result of convenience and hence the divide that arose within the party over the issue was not unusual).

Then if one were to talk about the NCP, the track record isn’t exactly flawless. The biggest mistake that will hurt the Congress dearly in the elections is the inability of its ruled states to provide security for the next season of IPL matches. It is clear that Lalit Modi’s known intimacy to Vasundhara Raje cost him his presidency at RCA. It also sadly led to the repudiation of his brainchild, the Indian Premier League. Uncannily all Congress ruled states namely Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Delhi communicated their inability to provide security for the event. A party that doesn’t think twice before mixing almost-sanctified sports with complicated politics at least needs a rethink.

The Commonwealth Games are another issue that needs to be analyzed. The third-term Congress in Delhi is finding it difficult to get ready in time to host the event in 2010. If our worst fears were to come true, the games would be transferred to another country due to the UPA’s inept disability, widespread corruption and disrespect for deadlines.

Next, the incidents of terror that this 5-year term of the government saw are aberrant. Never before had it taken so many jihadi attacks to make the government realize that its security measures were inadequate and its citizens unsafe. Border infiltration is peaking and it took a 26/11 for the Congress to dismiss its wardrobe-friendly home minister Shivraj Patil and reinstall P Chidambaram to take care of home affairs.

Criminals like Shibu Soren were offered Chief Ministership in return for trust votes. Morals were up for sale. As was proved by a CD unearthed after the shameful wads-of-money-in-parliament incident, money was offered in return for votes. Others accused in 1984 anti-Sikh riots like Jagdish Tytler, Sajjan Kumar and Kamal Nath have been made nominees for different LS seats in the coming elections. And these are just the cases that have been bought to book. The number of skeletons hidden away in the closet is anybody’s guess.

When Mangalore happened, Congress CM Gehlot from Rajasthan came forward and revolted against the ‘mall-culture’ (whatever that means). He brandished his intolerance towards two people holding hands in public and even increased the duties on liquor in the state to ‘discourage the culture of pubs and bars’. That aside, Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit (instead of admitting a lapse in security and stepping up measures) labeled all working women who came home late from work as ‘adventurous’ after the infamous Soumya Vishwanathan murder case. Now she has pitched her son Sandeep Dikshit to contest from East Delhi in the LS polls.

UPA, the same party that blames the NDA of being communal and polarizing the voter base, is guilty of recommending and implementing the infamous OBC quotas in institutes of higher education under Arjun Singh. The uproar and dissent that the move generated is still fresh in the minds. It is because of this inducement that the Gujjars in Rajasthan came forward and demanded a status change for themselves as well (read about how the author faced the wrath here and here). The incompetent handling of the issue cost the incumbent BJP heavily in the assembly polls. Meanwhile, the Congress was busy proposing (and in some cases implementing) quotas for Muslims in education and jobs too. So much for blaming the NDA of ‘dividing the society’.

Rationale for this post
I pen all of this down because I get slightly perturbed when I observe how people are completely writing off the BJP this season. Sure the party has had its share of gaffes and wrong alliances during the process. But who doesn’t? And sure it projects itself the wrong the way when it endlessly elaborates on the Congress’s mistakes instead of telling the people what it can do for them. But we need to accord the party some patience in terms of hearing and understanding what they mean to tell us. Advani’s challenge to Manmohan Singh for a presidential-style debate needs to be heeded too. Only a party that is sure of its agenda can come forward and dare to debate in public. I see people ridiculing the ‘Advani for PM’ ads on the internet as being rampant. Say I ask them if is it bad to be tech-savvy in the 21st century? At least he’s getting us to notice that he’s contesting through the most frequently used medium. Our attention captured is mission accomplished. Now assuming that it would irk some people was, admit it, unforeseeable for the old chap. My only appeal to the readers of this blog is to patiently hear the BJP out and not base their opinions on the old stereotypes. The changing face of the BJP, and more importantly the Congress, needs to be looked at carefully before we make up our minds.

Post script
Don’t get the author wrong, she’s not a blatant supporter of the BJP. She only believes that casting our votes on the biased images that we might have of our leaders would be unfair to people trying to usher in change. The Congress has been the mai-baap of Indian politics for a long time… but we need to be aware and educated about other party options that we might have. I know the Left wing and other independents would agree with my view. Although if you don’t, feel free to vandalize my comment section with your opinions. Bouquets and brickbats invited alike.

Glory: lost and found

2009-02-23T23:47:00.012+05:30

Soul-curry. Inspirational and mesmerizing. That’s AR Rehman’s music for you. After a string of popular songs (Vande Mataram - 1997 being my favourite), his efforts were finally recognized on the global platform in this year’s Academy Awards that were announced in Kodak Theatre today. So what if it took an English director for him to find his path of glory, the legend had already been recognized on home turf a long time back.

Gulzar, who gave us some of the most beautiful lyrics in Bollywood, rightfully shared the honour for Best Original Song with Rehman. The media channels, spiraling in a tizzy, gave little space to the modest lyricist who missed the ceremony. From home, he congratulated Rehman and said he was happier for him than he had ever been for himself.

Awards for Best Lead, male and female, went to Sean Penn (Milk) and Kate Winslet (The Reader). Having seen both movies, I have no qualms admitting that both their performances were ground breaking. After multiple non-converted nominations, it was about time that Kate won the gold statuette too!

Fact-of-the-matter: After 26/11, this was Mumbai’s chance at redeeming itself. The eight awards that Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire bagged gave the crestfallen city some reason to cheer. While the debate rages on about Slumdog’s depiction of Indian poverty, there’s no doubt that the team deserves the honours it has received. Resul Pookutty won the big O for Best Sound Mixing and almost broke down while accepting the award. Danny Boyle ended the dream run on a positive note by thanking Mumbai for giving him his story and characters. Indeed a big day for the city. Congratulations to all the winners.

Post-script: ‘Smile Pinki’ won Best Documentary (short subject) as well.

I was clicked!

2009-02-18T16:05:00.005+05:30

So the day was Valentines Day and I was on my way to Khan Market for lunch. Like most times, I was traveling by the delhi metro. Due to a recent expansion, the metro was full when I boarded. As a result I had to stand by a glass separator that disjoins the seat from the door. While I stood by the door on one side of the glass… a funny looking, 30 year old-something, fidgety man sat at the other side. He seemed deeply engrossed in his cellphone and through the glass separator I saw that he was playing a mobile game. At Kashmere Gate station (a major stop where a lot of shuffling of crowd happens), he suddenly got up and offered me his seat to sit. In my mind, I thought ‘what a sweet guy to vacate his seat for a lady!’ and sat down. Two more women came in to fill the adjacent seats that had just been vacated by people getting down at the stop.

All was well until I noticed that the 30-something old man’s phone camera was conspicuously pointed in my direction while he stood there in front of me. Although the thought that he might be clicking a picture did strike me once, I quickly dismissed it assuming he must still be playing his game. And there is indeed little room for maneuvering in a crowded train. So I decided to let it be.

After a while he turned, went and stood at another spot a few feet away from me. It was then that a 20-something year old college student, wearing a red sweatshirt, came to me and whispered gently in my ear “He just clicked your picture”. I was baffled and asked him to repeat. “He just clicked your picture. I was standing behind him and I saw”, he said. A little shaken, I poked the 30-something old man who was now standing with his back to me. He obviously didn’t respond and I had to call out to him and poke him a little harder to make him turn. I asked him if he had clicked any picture and he blatantly said he hadn’t. The 20-something guy was still standing there and affirmed that he had seen him click it. The 30-something man offered me his phone and said I could go through his gallery if I had any doubts. I looked at him a little apprehensively trying to see the truth in his face, and reluctantly declined saying I’ll take his word for it. But the 20-something boy insisted that I go through his phone because he was positive a picture had been clicked. On my refusal, he grabbed the phone himself from the 30-something’s outstretched hand and started sifting through his gallery.

Correctly indeed, there it was a picture of me saved at the top of his archives. The 20-something red sweatshirt guy looked at me and said “See! I told you he clicked it!” Wow. I was shocked at the pervert-mindedness and reached for the intercom that would’ve connected me to the metro driver. Before I could press the button, the 30-something guy immediately said sorry and promised that he would delete it. While he was talking, I saw that the 20-something samaritan had already deleted the picture and was checking the gallery for more shots. On finding none, he handed him back his phone with a disapproving look on his face. Both of them got down at the next station. The 30-something guy got down because everybody was looking at him and murmuring, and the 20-something collegian because I assume his station had come. I slipped him a quick ‘Thank You’ before he disembarked.

Post-script: For the next twenty minutes until the train terminated, the women next to me couldn’t stop discussing what a weird place the world had become. They kept asking me if he had deleted the picture and what he would have possibly achieved by pulling off a sly act like that. As if in a response to their own question, they went on to mull how many inappropriate uses were possible of such shots. They also kept reminding me that the sincere looking, red sweatshirt guy had saved the day for me. I kept nodding in agreement and continued shaking my head in disbelief.

Epilogue: Just when you start thinking that the world is devoid of all good people, incidents like these remind you that we still have a few good men left. On giving it some thought, we deduce that the college guy wasn’t going to get anything out of the whole incident. But he still stepped up to raise his voice against something that he felt was morally incorrect. I still think I hadn’t thanked him enough. If by some dumb stroke of luck he happens to read this some day, I would like to tell him that it is because of men like him (and a few others) that women nurture the hope of having a equal, safe society for them one day. A big Thank you once again.

Writers Ball – Jaipur Literature Festival 2009

2009-01-26T22:27:00.010+05:30

25th Jan 2009
Lawns of City Palace
Jaipur

21:30 hours : Amidst the regal ambience of City Palace, I was greeted by a fragrant rose garland delicately flung around my neck by pretty foreign women standing at the entrance, all dressed in our tradition ghaagra-choli. Next I was offered a pair of shimmery laakh bangles to adorn my wrists. A little unsure about whether it would go well with the casual jeans I had decided to turn up in, Sanjoy Roy saw the discomfort and cajoled me into wearing them as they were “traditional”.

I was attending the Writer’s Ball hosted by DSC as the last leg of the 5-day long ongoing Jaipur Literature Festival (Jaipur has been playing host to the event for the last two years) and was pretty thrilled at the prospect of meeting the established brigade of writers, historians and intellectuals in informal settings. Unlike the rest of the festival that was organized at Diggi Palace where the entry was free, admission tonight was strictly by invitation only. That filtered out most of the crowd and I realized that the time was ripe to indulge in some heavy duty interaction with the people who define our literary world. Notable authors who had attended the festival were Dr.Shahi Tharoor (my favourite author whose sight eluded me on that particular day), Gurcharan Das (a Harvard graduate whose next book is called ‘the difficulty of being good’), Gulzar (padma bhushan awardee), Kapil Sibal (noted lawyer, union minister and now poet), MJ Akbar (founder Asian Age), Mohammed Hanif (‘a case of exploding mangoes’ fame), Nandan Nilekani (recent node on the writing sphere with ‘imagining india’), Nicholas Coleridge, Prasoon Joshi (ad-guru and chairman McCann-Erickson), Sam Miller, Swapan Dasgupta (managing editor India Today), Tarun Tejpal (founder ‘Tehelka’), Tina Brown, Vikas Swarup (‘q&a’, ‘six suspects’) and Vikram Seth (‘a suitable boy’, the 1500 pages novel that took him six years to write while he was staying at his parents house). View the complete list here. Although to my disappointment, a lot many of them were not attending the ball that night.

22:00 hours : The ‘ball’ turned out to be a qawwali session but I was trying not to get too disheartened because many authors were still out there somewhere. The darkness and the lack of introductions was a hindrance in making out who was who, but a couple of faces were hard to miss. Tarun Tejpal, with his tall built and imposing personality, was very noticeable. But I had to withhold my urge to go up and chat with him because he looked all too happy standing by the bar counter with his female accomplices. Next time maybe, I thought. For the uninitiated, his latest book is on India and is called ‘the story of my assassins’.

Sitting on a comfortable couch with a close friend, I listened to the qawwalis and continued gaze-skimming through the crowd to find some familiar faces. The Rooshdie (Rushdie, but that’s how its pronounced) fan in me kept seeing a vague resemblance to him in a host of old faces, while my pardner relentlessly reminded me that he couldn’t and wouldn’t be here. I cursed fatwas and fundamentalists.

This brings me to telling you the main theme of the festival this year: Terrorism, Fundamentalism and Pakistan. William Dalrymple, the founder and co-director of the festival, was gracing the occasion with his presence too. A Cambridge graduate brought to fame by a host of books including the ‘City of Djinns’, he looked absolutely at ease under the huge turban that he was made to wear.

22:15 hours : As if answering to my pleas to call the famous ones from the amongst the guests for a formal introduction on stage, Sanjoy Roy (who by then I knew was the Managing Director of Teamwork Films) picked up the mike and started the usual round of expressing gratitude to everyone present. While he did not call the authors on stage, he did thank all 116 of them for attending the fest this time. He thanked the moderators as well for their cooperation (list includes Barkha Dutt and Indrajit Hazra). He also called upon his co-organizer Namita Gokhale, writer of ‘Paro: Dreams of Passion’, who had helped him put the event together. The vibrant team smiled away 1000-watt smiles to the various cameras pointed at them.

22.30 hours : Still unable to spot any famous, talk-worthy faces in the herd of personalities (most of them that night were small time writers), I reluctantly starting dragging myself to the food stalls for dinner. It was then that I bumped into Barkha Dutt who was busy punching keys on her mobile keypad. A brief conversation followed where I realized that the lady was actually very sweet to even complete strangers. It ended with a ‘mail me!’ from her side, and photograph from mine (see above).

A little charged up from the brief tête-à-tête, I decided to put off food for a little more while and kept up my with the task of skimming through the crowd. With a friend and glass of water for company… I noticed that a fusion dance-and-sing group had now replaced the qawwalas. Expectedly, they were pleasing the crowds to a far greater extent than their predecessors.

23:00 hours : By then I was sleepy and tired from a long hard day out in the sun (I should’ve mentioned my long bus journey from delhi to jaipur before). Dinner finally got the respect it deserved as I poured myself rich servings of tadka dal, dum aloo, shahi paneer and pasta. And of course butter naan. Good food, I say, is the best way to end a tiring day.

23:45 hours : One last glance around and I decided to leave the venue to head home. Just as I reached the gate of the palace, I noticed a brawl that had broken out between two drunken men. One face from amongst the onlookers was that of MJ Akbar. I cursed my luck some more for not having seen him inside. Keeping the setting in perspective, I deduced that that was probably not the best time to strike a conversation with him, and kept proceeding towards my car… Yawn. Pack up time.

00:00 hours : I reached home and made a mental note to attend the entire festival next year. I even made an organizer entry in my cellphone to that effect (the dates, as Sanjoy had announced, had worked out to be 19-24 January in 2010). With that thought in mind, I also decided to write a blog post about the night to file my memories… and here you are reading it.

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Fest facts:

- The fest is being called lucky for film premiers. While Ian McEwans ‘Atonement’ that premiered here last year eventually managed to garner its fair share of awards globally… ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ that premiered this year already has four Golden Globes under its belt. The film also promises to be a winner at the Oscars with ten major nominations to its name.

- The fest garnered bigger proportions this year. It was flagged off by the Governor of Rajasthan and the ‘attending-author tally’ had notched up to 116 from just 60 authors attending last year.

- The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) played a key role in making the festival a global confluence of writers by helping Pakistani writers like Nadeel Aslam and Daniyal Mueenuddin with their visas. Kudos to them.

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Mumbai Tarnished

2008-12-22T23:13:00.008+05:30

So much has been said about the Mumbai attacks and its aftermath that it seems almost blasphemous to not write something to that effect on Reflections. For the uninitiated, here’s a quick recap of the events that have now gripped the attention of the entire nation:

On the 26th of November, what started off as stray incidents of firing at Café Leopolds and VT Station (which the media misunderstood as a gang war), soon boiled over to a full fledged fidayeen attack on a city that we best know as the entertainment and commercial capital of the country. Mumbai was under attack again and the targets this time were the elite sitting pretty in high-end hotels namely the heritage Taj Mahal and Oberoi on Nariman Point. To hurt religious sentiments, Nariman House (a Jewish outreach centre in Colaba) was also carefully selected to be included in the list of fire. The perpetrator was Lashkar-e-Taiba/Jamaat-ud-Dawah and the modus operandi was to send a bunch of fidayeens to India through the sea route whose motive was to cause maximum damage before dying in the name of Jihaad. Once the siege ended some 60 hours after the attacks started, 173 were rendered dead and over 300 injured. The list of deceased included some influential names like Hemant Karkare (chief of Mumbai ATS), Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan and Sabina Sehgal (consulting editor, Times of India). Mohammed Kasab was the only one out of ten terrorists to be caught alive and his roots were traced back to a small village in Pakistan. The incident elicited some relevant (and some not so relevant) comments from politicians in India and condemnation from across the world.
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Who is AR Antulay and why he must resign
Abdul Rahaman Antulay is the 79 year old Minister of Minority Affairs, ex-chief minister for Maharashtra in the eighties, who demanded an investigation into the death of Mumbai Action Task Force chief Hemant Karkare. He questioned why an ‘intelligent, awe-inspiring’ officer like him agreed to get into a van with two of his colleagues (Ashok Kamata and Vijay Salsarkar), which is against the protocol, and proceed to a seemingly peaceful spot like Cama Hospital instead of the theatres of action like Taj and Oberoi Hotels. The ill-timed burst of inquisition has invited criticism from most quarters and now has the opposition demanding a resignation from Mr. Antulay for his irresponsible remark.

Now why is the remark ill-timed? For one, it comes at a time when India is trying to pin down Pakistan as the breeding-ground for these attacks. While Zardari must be trying his best to camouflage the civilian lack of control over the ISI by branding the terrorists as ‘non-state actors’, India was doing a good job of collecting evidence for authenticating its own assertions. Ex-PM Nawaz Sharif seemed to be playing ball too. Antulay’s remarks at a crucial time like this gave Pakistan the leeway to spin the arrow in our direction and blame India for not being serious about its crackdown on terrorism. A Pakistan Nation’s editorial blamed India of not trying to establish the truth behind the carnage by refusing to share the investigation evidences with Pakistan. It obviously also questioned the raised eyebrows on Karkare’s death. Clearly Antulay’s remarks were exploited by the Pakistani media to blunt India’s edge in the investigations.

Next, his remarks seemed to add another bead in the string of vote-bank politics that our leaders occasionally play. With the proposed insinuation that due to his involvement in the Malegaon Blasts, Karkare probably fell to a contrivance drawn by the Hindu right wing activists.. Antulay tried to generate himself some political capital within the Congress. In an attempt to build a political constituency for himself he, in a way, tried to divide the nation.

It also, to a certain extent, led to the weakening of the position of our liberal Muslim. Despite being a secular Indian, Antulay seems to have succumbed to the old web of conspiracy theories. The embarrassment that his utterance has caused to the country is reason enough for the Prime Minister to pass his resignation. The Congress, alas, is in a dilemma because firing him will cause them to lose a major chunk of their Muslim vote. Such is the tragedy of Indian politics. Icing on the cake is a regretless Antulay making regular television appearances and emphasizing that he is still ‘proud of his statement’.
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Why Kasab should get a lawyer
Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab is the lone captured terrorist that carried out the Mumbai attacks. Now due to the availability of ample evidence and camera footage proving his crime, no lawyer wants to take up his case with the fear of losing it instantaneously. The few like Ashok Sarogi, Mahesh Deshmukh or KBM Lam who did come forward to take up his defense were scared away and had their homes vandalized by the Shiv Sena. In such circumstances, even the Legal Aid Panel has refused to defend him.

The argument that every accused is entitled to legal defense is an old one. Article 39-A of the constitution mandates equal justice and legal aid to all. Notwithstanding Ram Jethmalani’s statement that “even a hundered jethmalani’s can’t defend him”, we fail to realize that the sooner Kasab gets a lawyer, the sooner he will get convicted. A conviction without trial is invalid and for a speedy punishment for Kasab, a trial in the court to prove his guilt is mandatory. In an open-and-shut case like this, the only question that remains is… who will come forward to defend the indefensible?
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How the response to this terror strike has been different from the previous attacks
First I take the liberty of elaborating on the measures we took to safeguard our security after terror hit Mumbai. Shivraj Patil, the then home minister, was forced to resign due to inaction. Next came RR Patil for dismissing the incident as “a small thing common in big cities”. Vilas Rao Deshmukh filed his resignation next after accusations of repeated inactivity and bringing his son and producer-director Ram Gopal Verma for a tour of the Taj after the carnage. P Chidambaram was given the portfolio of the home ministry while Manmohan himself took over the finance ministry. Such a major rejig in the higher echelons of leadership showed that the government was finally serious about tackling terrorism. Measures that should have been initiated much earlier.

Next, the JuD was declared an illegal organization across the world and all their bank accounts were freezed. Pakistan had to stay in sync with everyone and (forcefully) ban the JuD on its soil too. Least to say, it lead to a furor. Along with these positive measures, some other developments worked to India’s favor. Secretary of state Condolezze Rice on her visit to the subcontinent warned Pakistan that lest it took some serious measures against terrorism propagating from its territory, it would get no support whatsoever from the US in any future endeavors. Other top officials from the United States, like Joint Chief of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, and some major countries seemed to recognize that Pakistani military camps were wreaking havoc on its neighbor and the issue had to be nipped.

The more our media publicizes the issue, the stronger the voices of dissent grow against Pakistan. Tough times call for tough measures and the time has come when the world woke up to the threat the ISI poses to global security. With each passing day, the pressure is increasing from the global community on our neighbor to find us the terrorists that made Mumbai happen. After the UN, the latest reports inform us of a meeting between the Interpol and Chidambaram to tackle the menace. What sets apart these attacks from the previous ones is the fact that Pakistan is witnessing a never-felt-before anger from India. Our proactive external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee went to the extent of saying that the country was not ruling out military action against Pakistan if it failed to act effectively this time around. For once, our politicians seem to be echoing the common sentiment that being silent, tolerant spectators won’t work.

The media seems to be making up for its irresponsible coverage during the carnage by not letting go of the issue this time. The amnesia that followed every attack in the past seems to have weaned out. The Mumbai story follow-up is the headline even almost a month after it happened. Talk shows, editorials and debates are still steamy about who should be held accountable. In a way, the fraternity is seeking an apology for all the blunders it committed while covering the 60-hour onslaught.

The uproar probably stems from the fact that the ambit of victims this time included even foreign nationals and the rich. And that the siege continued for much longer than it should have. Candle-light marches and peace protests staged by the citizens show that the ‘chalta hai’ attitude is passé. When terror comes so precariously close, we realize that the ‘it-could-never-happen-to-me’ syndrome is a thing of the past. Today it’s all about ensuring ones own safety. The stability of our neighbor scales high on our list of priorities to sustain our own interests. The sooner Pakistan realizes that its civilian government has no direct control on the army and ISI, the better it would be for them and for us. Because while denial leads to misconceptions… it is only acceptance that eventually leads to course-correction. And course-correction is what Pakistan desperately needs right now.

De and Maharashtra

2008-11-05T08:49:00.001+05:30

How okay is it to be on a talk show and be a fence-sitter? More precisely, how appropriate is it to be on Devil’s Advocate and not have a stand? This is exactly what happened when Shobha De made her debut on the show and failed to be chose what side she wanted to be on.

Now Karan Thapar is a brutal interviewer. Born in Srinagar exactly some 53 years ago (today happens to be his birthday), he graduated from Cambridge with a degree in economics. He later went on to take a doctorate in International Relations from Oxford and currently heads a firm called Infotainment Television. With these credentials, the least he deserves is a healthy discussion when he calls somebody to interview them on his show.

Shift base to Ms.Shobha De. Born in Mumbai in 1948, she managed to pick up a degree in philosophy from St. Xaviers College, Mumbai. Then to advance her career, she edited magazines like Stardust and Celebrity. Her stint with literature saw her write some socialite novels like Starry Nights and Sultry Days (which I dared to pick up and now advice everybody to stay a hundred feet away from). Never a fan of her writings, I was half expecting her to deliver a decent interview when called to comment on the goin-ons in Maharashtra.

Moving on to the crux of this post… the interview. First and foremost, it is unfair to pitch two people with such drastically unequal credentials in the same battleground. Next, it is even more unfair when the place of supremacy is occupied by the wrong person. That said, Ms.De’s views were quite interesting. Being a marathi, she agreed to the fact that Mumbai was indeed brimming with immigrants from everywhere at every corner. She said it was ‘rare’ to come across marathi-speaking population these days when it came to things like asking for directions, et al (I would personally refuse to endorse such a statement because owing to my frequent trips to the city this year, I know marathi is redundant there). Moving on, though she did say that she was against the means that Raj Thackeray was employing to rid the state of north-Indian migrants… she stressed on adding that she still understood the justification behind these means (does her being a psychology grad have anything to do with it?). Playing a rational human being, she knew that our constitution ensured the right to live and earn in any state one wanted to, but added that others were being unfair to the Maharashtra manoos by taking away their jobs. Just as Karan would fire a red-hot question in her direction, De would spoil his party by agreeing to whatever he was saying and also pitching in her own comments to supplement it. After failing to swing her in either direction even after inundating her with a volley of conflicting questions, he finally gave up and concluded the interview with a polite (and customary) “Pleasure to have you on the show” one-liner.

The interview was pertinent. Both, Karan and De, write in Sunday newspapers (Karan in Hindustan Times and De in the Sunday Times of India). Both their columns had talked about the Thackeray mayhem in their respective columns that day. What had set De apart in both quarters was her lack of substance. Rhetoric is not bad. But that holds good only as long as what you are saying is not simple common-sense. Columnists and novelists are supposed to have a viewpoint. Otherwise it’s no fun reading what they write and hearing what they have to say. De came across as one such person. The benefit I derived from all that book and column reading, it’s a fool’s guess, is zilch.

My view:
What happened in Maharashtra was sad. Not only is it unfair to try to throw out all the immigrants from India’s biggest metropolitan city, it is also reprehensible to commit murders in the name of regional loyalty. About the issue of taking away jobs, it must be emphasized that jobs be given on the basis of merit. Being from one section of the people or not is not a criteria. All the demands that the MNS makes are usually illogical. They are regressive and propagate the notion of a divided India. With so much conflict within ourselves, are we really on our way to becoming a secular nation? Powers of anti-national elements like Raj Thackeray and the MNS should be curbed. His arrest, after throwing an ultimatum to the Maharashtra government and calling Vilas Rao Deshmukh “spineless”, was foreseen. What was not foreseen was the terror and riots that gripped Mumbai city following his arrest. What was even more unexpected was the vandalism that Patna railway station witnessed after the demise of Pawan Kumar, a candidate that got killed by the MNS workers while writing the rail board exam. The bail to Raj that had to be doled out to save Maharashtra from all the violence was unfortunate. The incident elicited strong reactions from politicians across the country. Lalu Yadav called Raj a ‘mental case’. Ram Vilas Paswan and Nitish Kumar joined forces with him to fight the Thackeray menace. Clearly when the philosophies and ideologies of one party (the MNS) start hurting the entire nation, it is best to subdue its powers and order a ban on it. The fear in the minds of north Indians residing in Mumbai renders the MNS no less than a terrorist organization. And then when the constitution gives its citizens the right to live wherever they want, who is Raj Thackeray to take this right away from them? Now is the time to be a proactive nation and give this some serious thought.

Aaj Tak... (ek zamaane mein) sabse tez!

2008-09-23T22:32:00.003+05:30

“Not all that glitters is gold”--- goes the old adage. After the phenomenal success that Aaj Tak met with at its launch sometime around the 31st of December 1999, who would have thought it would end up as a bundle of bunkum some eight years later?

In the age of the Doordarshan, the TV Today Network timed the launch of the channel very strategically. The concept of cable television was new and bored with the monotonously dry bulletins on DD, a more organized news channel equipped with competitive journalists, wide coverage, superior world class technology and resources was more than welcome. Never an ardent news-watcher myself, I would sit down for hours with Aaj Tak and admire the structured approach that was still very new in those days (though the actual credit for those hours goes to dad who refused to watch anything else over the dining table during our meals). Hence, every time the channel won the ‘Best News Channel’ award by the Indian Television Academy, it didn’t come as a surprise to me (they won the award for six consecutive years). In fact I would only join in the chorus.

Now when I look back, it seems the hoopla was just because it was one of the few privately owned news channels in the country. Additionally, it was also because we had no other channels to compare its performance with (DD was hardly any competition, rest were way behind in the rat race). TRPs were not an issue, infact they enjoyed a near monopoly situation for quite some time, and hence there were on constraints on the content that they churned out. Relevant stories were fed to the viewers and the public was finding a new voice to say all that they’d wanted to say for so long. But then in some time, things started going wrong.

Inspired by the success that Aaj Tak had been bestowed with, other channels started cropping up. First Hindi, and then English, the number of players in the field is mounting even till present day. Fast losing out on viewership, Aaj Tak tried every trick in the book to stay at the top, but eventually succumbed to competition and decided to revise its contents-policy to give the viewers what they wanted to see. A clear divide emerged between the Hindi and English news watching population, and Aaj Tak was left with a measly group that demanded ghost stories, irrelevant over-analysis, an intrusion into the private lives of others and a lot of excitement through ‘breaking news’ stories (India TV had a major role in pushing Aaj Tak to the corner too). Surveys say the viewership today is about 45 million viewers tuned in everyday. Although executives like Sanjay Pugalia looked for the exit.

While the advent of Aaj Tak must have ushered in an era of a liberal journalism, it also ushered in an era where channels ran in all directions to garner viewership. As the market dynamics came into action, the pioneer itself fell prey to the dirty game of higher TRPs. In a zest to beat competition, Aaj Tak revised its core competence to ‘infotainment’. Not a bad concept per se, purists argued that the focus has shifted from hard news to human drama stories and celebrity patriotism.

A few recent examples should be fresh in our minds. Lets start with the most outrageous one, the Aarushi Talwar murder case. From presenting live dramatizations to snooping into her house to fish out her private diary and home-recorded videos… no stone was left unturned in slicing open a slain young girl’s life and splashing the most personal moments of it on national television. What’ s more, ‘exclusive’ content was the name of the game and even her parents were not excluded from the ambit of the blame game. The channel happily came up with conspiracy theories going by the few evidences collected from the site of action. In fact the public opinion was made to skew to such an extent that only a court ruling declaring the father to be innocent could later reverse it. If someone had switched on the television in those days, Aaj Tak was full of “breaking news” from all direction, highlighting even the tiniest of findings that their pesky reporters had managed to unearth. The menagerie of the bold sentences on the screen was an eye sore and the sheer ignorance towards other stories of national interest was a shame. And all of this only boiled down to Aaj Tak issuing an apology in lieu of irresponsible journalism in this case.

Another instance was the Large Hadron Collider experiment. Happening some 100 meters under the Franco Swiss border, Aaj Tak was the front runner in making a big deal about the whole ‘world-coming-to-an-end’ theory, even after repeated reassurances from scientists that such fears were misplaced. Consequently, such rumors led to a poor young girl committing suicide somewhere in the country fearing such a dreadful end to the world. The stories, that spanned over full-length days, were outrageous and repulsive.

The Jaya-Thackeray feud is another instance when Aaj Tak crossed the lines of responsible journalism. Over exposure to the case coupled with airing its own assumptions and presumptions as being that of the Bachchans, ended up with not one story being reliable or useful.

The regular ‘documentaries’ on finding ‘Ravan’s mummy’ and on village witches, or the deep scrutiny of Sonia Gandhi’s kundli a day before the trust vote on the nuclear deal in the parliament to gauze the chances of her government sailing through… it seems Aaj Tak is solely responsible for the slow erosion of the credibility that was once attached to its name.
The channel was conceptualized by Surendra Pratap Singh and is currently headed by a stalwart called Aroon Purie acting as its CMD (a student of Doon School, a B.Sc in Economics from LSE and a chartered accountant). It is owned by the TV Today group which in turn is owned by the India Today group which prints some quality material in India like the Harvard Business Review (India edition), Mail Today (a newspaper in joint venture with the Daily Mail) and Cosmopolitan magazine. Aaj Tak also runs other news channels like Headlines Today, Tez and Aaj Tak Dilli. A business channel in collaboration with Bloomberg is also on the cards. With such strong credentials, it seems the channel is ruining itself by airing what it is airing these days. A quick revision of the stories, a re-analysis of the allocation of its air-time to pieces based on their relative importance to the people and a revamp of its breaking-news strategy should do the channel some good. This way, it might just be able to win back the English-speaking viewers and wouldn’t have to resort to quality-less stuff to attract the masses. Turn on the television to see what Aaj Tak is showing right now… and give my article some thought.

Over to the rains…

2008-09-18T09:32:00.002+05:30

2355 hrs
Delhi

Upon somebody’s indirect mention today that my neglect for the blog has spilt over several months now, I feel compelled to come up here and infuse some activity into my dormant space. Time has been a slight issue ever since work started and the biggest sufferer, I now realize, has been the writer in me. So here is an attempt at a quick redress… a warm up of sorts.
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After the few initial weeks of discomfort (severe, grievous, spartan), I’ve finally come in terms with this novel life in the fast lane. The clock is attuned to this new ticking and I’m beginning to appreciate the simple pleasures of life again, maybe even more than ever before. The city was thronged with receding monsoon showers today and I managed some time in the evening to come out in the open and have my share of pitter-patter gazing and wind stealing. For all those still interested… it proved soothing and cathartic. A welcome usurpation of nature after dry days spent almost locked up in a cubicle staring at my computer screen… either finishing assignments or browsing Bloomberg dissecting the Lehman bankruptcy. At a time when bad news pours in from all directions (the Thackeray’s new ploy to gain political mileage by pulling off absurd role-plays, to a super bearish Wall Street, to violence against Christians in several states by the notorious VHP, to a fragile Pakistan getting diffident by the day under unstable leadership, to bomb blasts in saddi dilli, to a mud-sling fest in the US elections)… the showers should at least give the journalists something nice to write about in tomorrow’s newspapers.

I’m deviating. Coming back to the rains… there’s something peculiar about them that make them so popular. Traffic snarls and waterlogging aside… the rains mean many more things to a shower-starved Delhi. It could be their uncanny ability to transport the free minds to more joyous terrains, or exposing the jovial ones to newer pinnacles of liberation… they’re symbolic of free spirit and romanticism. At a stage when life teaches new things at every step… today I managed to discover repose in the midst of a traffic-clogged street. Soothing music, a special presence, pitter-patter noises against the steel of a car and my raindrops-blurred vision to the world outside. The rains surely mean more things to a shower-starved city… maybe the romanticist in me has got something to do with it…

Nuke deal and political mudslinging…

2008-07-21T00:32:00.004+05:30

I just got up after watching an interesting episode of Devil’s Advocate where Karan Thapar interrogated our union science and technology minister Kapil Sibal about his beliefs and opinions on the trust vote due on the 22nd of this month. True to his prototype, Kapil displayed ardent devotee ship towards the congress and bashed the nda in the worst possible manner. He emerged victorious as one of the few speakers unrattled by Thapar’s volley of questions. Right from claiming that he personally knew quite a few young bjp mps’ who supported the deal, to alleging that the repeated ‘U-turns’ just indicated that LK Advani puts his prime-ministerial ambitions over national interest… he left no stone unturned in criticizing the opposition. He personally authenticated the happening of a upa-nda meeting on the 20/21/22nd of December last year (he wasn’t sure about the date) where, according to him, Advani first promised support to Manmohan Singh on the deal after being briefed about the viability of its contents, and later turned his back on these very promises. He quoted Jaswant Singh too where he had once (supposedly), in august 2007, given a thumbs-up on the 123 agreement to everyone - the NSA, the foreign secretary and the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission; at a meeting organized by the pm. After the initial minutes, it became clear that he was taking this opportunity to be on a public talk show to clarify the government’s stand on the trust vote and to show that within themselves the congress is sure of winning a majority on tuesday. He also confirmed that for achieving this purpose, offering monetary inducements to undecided mps is not a part of Mrs. Gandhi’s agenda. I also remember a snide remark about bjp having ‘no real power’ and blindly doing anything to chase it.
(Corollary to this, Thapar took his word and wrote about the two meetings in Sunday Sentiments, his weekly column in Sunday HT.)

Now its one thing to be one of India’s best lawyers… completely another to maculate another party’s image in public based on fanciful statements and assumptions. How much of what he says is fact or fiction, we’ll never know. But the knowledge that a leader as convincing as him moulds public opinion in his favor by confidently delivering half-truths is disturbing. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard him talk at length. Infact a few months back when I was still an inquisitive delhi university student, he had come to the vice-chancellor’s office to impart a lecture on the nuclear deal as a part of the university’s ongoing lecture series (a series that was later graced by amartya sen, his holiness the dalai lama and many a few nobel laureates). Listening to him then and having asked him a few questions on the n-deal myself, I was quite convinced of the importance of India’s go ahead with it. So compelling were his assertions that we in the audience were left with little scope to negate him.

The spell continued for a long time until one fine day when Sitaram Yechury from the cpi(m) politburo was invited to speak in the same lecture series. He, with his speech, managed to shatter some myths. Yechury highlighted what Sibal had so effortlessly camouflaged. Though not an orator of Kapil’s stature, he still managed to drive his point across with reasonable arguments and even distributed (nominally priced) hand-outs at the end of the session to ensure that we took his wiles home to ponder (I retain my copy to this day).

Ironically both stephanians born under the zodiac sign of leo, they interestingly cut across right what the other had tried so hard to enforce. Kapil’s oratory strategy is simple- be elusive about whatever you cant answer and substantiate the elusiveness with examples, facts and figures. In the open Q&A session, he would intimidate any assailant to the extent where he would suddenly be reduced to a joker firing irrelevant questions. Yechury, on the other hand, was a little less shrewd and a lot more politically incorrect. Where Sibal weighs his words in the scales of diplomacy each time before saying them, Yechury is blunt as a knife. Name taking is common. Diplomacy can take a back seat.

While listening to them both seemed highly enriching at that time, now I realize that I had just witnessed a round of political mudslinging. In those hallowed convention halls in the heart of DU, we had been subject to what was soon going to blow up into one of India’s biggest political controversy. Fast forward to present day, in the day of rising inflation and dipping sensex… our political stability hangs by a thread. Whether the upa will be able to sustain a majority and proceed with the nuclear deal remains to be seen. What is apparent now is filthy political give and takes, where criminals like Shibu Soren are being offered chief ministership of Jharkhand by the bjp in return for pledging his mps to them for the crucial trust vote. From Mayawati to Amar Singh, the quest for poaching mps is on. If worst comes to the worst, it wouldn’t be long before Behenji takes over as our next prime minister… flying high on these very rounds of political backstabbing, switched ideologies, public glib-talking, and a few people’s zest to satisfy political vendetta.

Political equations are changing and loyalties are being tested. The upa seems all set to press the accelerator on reforms. It is now taking steps to educate the people about the intricacies of the n-deal and how it’s beneficial for the country (something they should’ve done a long time back). That explains P.Chidambaram taking over Vir Sanghvi’s column in Sunday Hindustan Times’ center page to ramble about ‘deconstructing the deal’ for common good.

It’s hard to remain aloof when all the newspaper headlines, editorials, tv reports and interviews are discussing the n-deal and trust vote. The parliamentary tamasha on Tuesday remains to unfold… but whatever be the result of the big confrontation, it seems the only real losers after the battle concludes, will be us - the junta. A weakening economy and unstable political climate later… god bless a country run by corruptible leaders and power hungry politicians. One word for the contenders of our governance – the fight for power has been shameful.

P.S. More on the nuke deal here.

First week at EY: Sitting duck, hunger struck!

2008-07-01T19:48:00.004+05:30

Sitting idle, working on somebody else’s workstation… the devil’s workshop (almost established as a permanent member of ‘snoreland’ now) compels me to write about my first week in the office. Hmmm. It all began on the 23rd of June this year. Starry eyed… I made my first foray into the corporate world with tiny little footprints on the shores of a humble branch called consultancy when I entered the swanky EY office that day. A little apprehensive, slightly wary and hugely aware of the sense of achievement that engulfed me… I had little idea about what awaited me behind those glass doors.

Orientation lasted a week. ‘Orientation’ here means a plethora of presentations, a townhall on day one celebrating a merger, an inauguration on day two and a birthday bash on day five. It also included opening new bank accounts, understanding the intranet applications, a few video conferences with our people in the US, signing insurance policies, filling up a bundle of forms, a flashy fleet of cabs waiting to drive us home (based in gurgaon) and basically familiarizing us with the various departments and heads of the organization. Oh, not to forget the awesome food… rajasthani to street grub to sumptuous cakes, all within five days… it’s a virtual foodies paradise. This coupled with many new varieties of salads, rotis, paranthas, rice and sweets every day. Only glitch remains the non vegetarian food that still eludes the otherwise yummy menu :(

Today is day two of week two and I finally feel at home. An approachable manager, a friendly peer group and several supportive seniors later… working after college doesn’t seem like a difficult transition anymore. It’s comfortable, it still about manages to retain the novelty factor and it’s enriching. Net net… I think the days ahead look fairly promising.

Footnote: Stealing the opportunity to temporarily overlook the early morning wake-ups at six and the almost two hour long commutes to Gurgaon… the super strong air conditioning and uber sensitive fire alarms [=))] add more spice to the new life. Still, I’m all smiles :)

P.S. Main attraction for me are the foozeball tables on each floor.
P.P.S. I called myself an appendage to zzzzzzland because this week has been reasonably unoccupied. Got to enjoy it while it lasts… expect many new posts on yashikaworld =))

In retrospect…

2008-06-03T09:46:00.005+05:30

A million buried emotions,
Rhapsodic moments stashed away in the past.
Irredeemable, irreplaceable…
Now just eternal imprints on the heart.

Reminiscences recollections,
Stories scribbled on the sands of time.
A gush of waves and all washes away…
Echoes in corridors of mind, still make the heart chime.

City interrupted

2008-05-14T17:47:00.004+05:30

I wasn’t going to write about this. To relieve the horrors of the past isn’t one of my favourite pastimes and I was hoping against hope that the country, along with its news agencies, would soon forget about it too. But turn on the tv and all you see is extensive coverage of the Jaipur blasts that rocked the city yesterday evening. The happenings are splashed all across the newspapers and anywhere I look, I see and hear more news coming in from all directions. It is still hard to believe that a series of blasts shook up the streets I have used throughout my growing up. Holed up in my house owing to a curfew in the old city, I see no better way to spend the evening than by following in the footsteps of our mighty politicians and ‘condemning’ the blasts some more myself...

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A resident of Kanwar Nagar, I was in my car and fifteen minutes away from Manak Chowk when it happened. I was blocked out of my part of the city for three long hours. I had to take refuge at a friend’s house to shield myself from the six other blasts that followed the first blast. I heard the strongest of voices quiver… I saw terror in the calmest of eyes. I soothed the woes of concerned friends n family. It’s the next day and the phone calls still haven’t stopped. I saw the empty streets… and now I’m witnessing a curfew in the walled city that the officials say will not be lifted before 6pm today. SMS hospital needs O -ve blood. I can’t go because I’m under a virtual house arrest inside the walled city…

The aftermath of yesterday’s happenings could have been a lot worse. Being a Tuesday when maximum devotees throng the hanuman temple (one of the blast spots), it could have easily blown into a full-scale communal riot. The prevailing calm, on the other hand, reflects on the levelheadedness of the city that refuses to get instigated by such deliberate provocations. In fact the only apparent positive consequence of blasts anywhere in India is the rare display of unity and brotherhood amongst the people. Grief is the common thread that runs along them all and unites them in their hour of sorrow. It’s emboldening to see them join hands and stand united against the common element of terror. Unfazed and undeterred, they make an attempt to move on together.

The face of terror is ugly. One way or the other… there is no justification for killing scores of innocents out on the streets of an otherwise peaceful city. Was it the tenth anniversary of the Pokhran tests or was it just another attempt by HuJI and SIMI activists to make their presence felt, is one issue. The extent and reach of these organizations is another issue that is disturbing. Was it the Bangladesh based HuJI, the notorious LeT or some other terrorist organization? Investigations are on and time will tell. The chief minister put the death toll at 60 and the injured figure at 150. Mrs.Raje, actually in Jodhpur at the time of the blasts, even announced a compensation of 5 lacs for the dead and 1 lac for the injured. Never enough for the loss of a loved one… this is the government’s attempt to sideline the complacency in security measures that had crept in owing to a clean past of 280 years of no violence. Is anybody ever truly safe? Can we take our lives and the lives of our loved ones for granted? In the 21st century India… no we cant.

Delhi, Varanasi, Mumbai, Malegaon, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Faizabad and now Jaipur. It’s a disturbing trend that the focus of terror has shifted to even non-metros in the recent years. The official death and injury figures are still rising. The victims tales on television make the heart wrench with pain. A few minutes here and there and it could have been me… or somebody else I knew. In a country where life comes cheap and hangs by the thread… what pains the heart is the whole media cycle of extensive reporting in the first few days, brief mentions in the next and finally a complete lapse of memory thereafter. The amnesia ends when another attack lashes yet another city and brings back memories of the last event. What about learning our lessons from one incident and implementing them elsewhere? Why do we need these rude reminders about slack security to garner the attention of officials who refuse to harbour the notion that this could happen in their city? Is it not a shame that national disasters like these can still boil down to a filthy political blame games, like in Jaipur where a fleeting tv footage shows Vasundhara Raje blaming the center for lack of security arrangements? Somebody needs to own up responsibility and stringent security measures need to be implemented. Who picks up the baton, though, is a question that is not getting any easy answers.

I mock the condemnation expressed by our leaders because that is all that they seem to be doing these days. When they can easily beef up security across the country by installing CCTVs and metal detectors at busy places, approving more stringent identity checks in inter-state travels, enhancing security norms and providing increased patrolling… they consider their job done by simply expressing disapproval. (The infiltration on the borders, especially across Jammu & Kashmir, is another deranging concern…. but that is outside the scope of this article). Help and support from foreign countries is not enough and our leaders need to realize that they are as much a part of these tragedies as the aggrieved. Efforts need to be made to protect the lives of ordinary citizens like you and me. On our part, we must stay informed and be alert. Exercising caution is half the battle won.

From the twin tower tragedy in the US to the train bombings in London… every nation has had its share of terrorism. Needless loss of human life is a malady that demands immediate attention. A lot needs to be done in this regard, for there is no shame bigger than a nation’s incapacity to sustain life and make its citizens feel safe.

T20 Cricket - DLF IPL Clash of the Titans

2008-05-12T22:58:00.010+05:30

The first face-off at Kotla Stadium, Delhi

Moochu Singh at the SMS Stadium, Jaipur

19th April 2008

Delhi Daredevils Vs Rajasthan Royals

Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium, Delhi

Braving a nasty traffic jam and reaching the stadium about an hour late… I’d missed most of Akshay Kumar’s stunts, the much-touted cheerleader hip-swinging and some other stunning performances. The only consolation that cheered me up was the debut of my homeland team, the Rajasthan Royals, and in the offing was a probable win that promised to make my evening woes look insignificant. Comfortably seated by 8.20pm on the chairs that my friends had (thankfully) saved for me, I was cherubic and excited about the 8.30pm commencement of the game. One look around and it became apparent that almost everybody present in my stand, and at the stadium, was rooting for the daredevils. Shrugging it off as an obvious consequence of delhi playing at its home turf, I made up my mind to cheer for the royals anyway. That kind of confidence was backed by my faith in the team and the captaincy of Australian skipper Shane Warne. Then of course my Rajasthani roots, that the three years in Delhi had failed to blur, came calling.

As scheduled, the game kicked off at exactly half past eight. With a less than enthralling opening, it became clear early on in the game that delhi definitely had an upper hand and the royals were in for a tough time. Initially at the edge of my seat, I hailed every four and six that the batsmen so sparingly blessed the few royals supporters with. As the game progressed it became clearly evident that the royals were in for a pasting and my enthusiasm, in sync with the enthusiasm of the small bunch of royals supporters in the ground, fizzled out… and though the cheering didn’t stop completely, our vigour definitely toned down.

The abysmal total of the royals at the end of the innings was hardly an inducement to stay on till 11:30 to watch the entire game, and having entered the grounds on a complimentary DDCA pass (thanks to an uncle currently in the US, owing to whose membership of the club I diligently get passes for every event at the kotla), I decided to push off and watch the rest of the match on my television over dinner. The spooky delhi roads at night also helped me take my decision of leaving the grounds at a decent hour. On reaching home, true to all speculation… the royals lost out to the daredevils in a one-sided game by 9 wickets and all my enthusiasm about my home team, and IPL per se, nose-dived. My confidence in the team was shaken and little did I know that it would take three entire matches to be won by the royals thereafter to restore my befuddled faith in the team.

Scene shifts…

11th May 2008

Rajasthan Royals Vs Delhi Daredevils

Sawai Man Singh Stadium, Jaipur

Similar setting and the same teams, the only thing different about this 33rd match of the IPL was the steady progression of the royals to reach the top slot at the tally tables. A much stronger team now under the effective captaincy of Shane Warne and the humble presence of cricketing veterans like Shane Watson… the sentiment on the ground was optimistic. This was rajasthan’s second stint with the team that had raised several questions on its genius in its opening game and the royal hit-back was more than expected. The daredevils were also comfortably placed on the charts, figuring among the top slots, playing second fiddle only to the royals.

The match started with the daredevils batting first and their slow crumbling became evident around the 15th over. Then towards the end, they picked up momentum and dazzled the crowds with a host of fours and sixes. Wrapping up the innings at a decent 156 runs, Warne’s boys had no scope to get complacent. After a weak opening and much after delivering IPL’s lowest five overs score ever, the royals recovered fast and moved on to conquer the score that delhi had set for them.

Watson showcased another brilliant performance but was eventually declared out after a mammoth 74. The team was marching towards a much-deserved victory and the crowds were clearly getting more ecstatic. The cheerleaders were going ballistic, as so were the team mascots (men masqueraded as mascots, actually). So while ‘Moochu Singh’ delighted the crowds with his early victory jigs… Mexican waves and boisterous hooting characterized the home crowd. A lot of romping and thumping later… the royals had clinched the game with a neat 3 wicket victory over the once insurmountable daredevils. This also ensured their ticket to the semi-finals. A perfect ending to a perfect saga of loss, determination and victory of arguably the best team in the IPL so far.

Afterthought:

Just because some Rajasthan Royal’s players don’t find a mention here doesn’t mean that their efforts are overlooked or disregarded. Promising players constitute the team and each one of us supporters are continuously observing, and appreciating, their performances.

A word on T20 cricket:

Thrills, chills and state loyalties aside… my views on the T20 format of cricketing essentially remains the same. In this world of instant gratification… we get what we don’t mind spending (squandering?) money on. Paisa phek tamasha dekh. Have money… will spend on catching a four hour game that offers lots of fours and sixes here and there, glitzy fireworks, raunchy cheerleaders, celebrity endorsement, team mascots and oodles of sponsor advertising. Flashy teams are fast transforming into brands… while good cricket has taken a backseat. Teams now claim victory owing to the scores mustered up by single run-hitters alone. Previously unthinkable run-rates are being achieved and the concept of cricketing legends is being redefined. Case in point being Shane Watson, who up till now has been accredited with three of the many rajasthan wins and has been awarded the Man of the Match title an equal number of times. Does that make him the new T20 badshah? Subjective issue that only time will give an answer to. Many others like him are fast swooping their teams to easy victories and what worries me is the possible overlook of forthcoming talent, as also the gross neglect of the other maladies that might plague the team. Does that make me a purist? A pseudo-purist for sure.

Then again, my views are my views alone and can be passed off as initial hiccups that have since forever marked the beginning of great new things. I’m fully aware of the possibility that whatever is a con for me, might be a pros for somebody else. In fact I’ll refrain from brandishing the whole concept altogether because, and this is an honest confession, I quite enjoy all the T20 games myself. So here’s hoping that all my apprehensions about this format of cricket are proven wrong with the passage of time… and it does evolve to become as popular a form of game as did the ODIs (that FYI, have had their own share of misgivings at their inception way back in the 1970s). With that little bit of information in mind… lets sit back, reach for our beers and enjoy the game! Cheers!!

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

2008-03-24T09:13:00.004+05:30

The Reluctant Fundamentalist
-Mohsin Hamid

The first book review from my stables, for the blog…

Low-down on the author:
Mohsin Hamid is a Pakistani British author. His first novel was named ‘Moth Smoke’ and was published in 2000. His second piece of work, ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’, was published in 2007 and earned him a Booker Prize nomination the same year. An Ivy League graduate, he studied at Princeton University till 1993 before attending Harvard Law School and graduating in 1997. After working with McKinsey and Company as a management consultant in NYC, he soon moved back to Lahore and undertook freelance journalism. Currently he resides in London and works as a part-time consultant.

Storyline:
* Spoilers begin here *
The protagonist, Changez, hails from the Punjab district of Pakistan. He gets admitted at Princeton University, New Jersey at eighteen and packs his bags to come and settle down in the US. After graduating with straight As’, he joins the most reputed valuation firm of his time in New York. He proves his mettle at Underwood Samson and also falls in love with a lady called Erica simultaneously. Erica is a white woman and hails from an affluent American family. She had been with Changez at Princeton and was reeling under the emotional trauma of dealing with the sad demise of her childhood boyfriend Chris due to cancer. Just when Changez’s life graph is all set to skyrocket… the 9/11 tragedy strikes and all goes haywire. Erica, who had been slowly recovering owing to Changez’s presence in her life, is thrown back in time and is reminded of the period when she had lost her boyfriend. One thing leads to another and it all boils down to Erica entering rehab at a far of institute and curtailing almost all contact with Changez. While his love life is on the rocks, Changez visits his family in Pakistan and is plagued by pangs of guilt on his way back because India is threatening to wage war against his country after an unabashed attack on its parliament. A victim of brain drain, he soon realizes that his motherland needs him more than the US and he quits his job to return home. He tries one more time to re-establish contact with Erica only to find out that she went missing some time back and circumstantial evidence point its finger in the direction of a possible suicide. Changez, disillusioned and gloomy after hearing about Erica, is in for another rude shock when he notices America’s indifference towards protecting its nuclear ally Pakistan against India. Its diplomatic impassivity evokes disdain in him and he comes back to Lahore to teach finance as a university lecturer. Perceived as a pioneer in starting a new wave of agitation against the Americans, he bears the brunt of being candid and fearless with a probable undercover assassin, masqueraded in the garb of an American tourist. In the end, Changez is culled for delivering an articulate and appealing media interview bashing America and its unwarranted interference in the affairs of other nations, most particularly Asian.
* Spoilers end here *

Review:
The entire story is narrated in the form of a monologue. It’s a literary feat to deliver a tale this fast paced and captivating with just the support of a single man’s dialogues. Riveting read that demands your attention and at the same time allows you to glide with the words with flummoxing ease. A Booker nominee… this book is a healthy departure from the stereotypical, hard-core Booker novels like those of authors like Kiran Desai and Salman Rushdie. It doesn’t require you to sit with a dictionary and look up every ninth word to make sense of the story. Talking of the story, Changez’s backdrop is highly autobiographical and corresponds well with Hamid’s vital stats.

Exponential human emotions have been highlighted delicately throughout the course of the novel. Take for the instance the emergence of subtle arrogance as a natural by product of talent; the amazement and the sense of achievement that tags along with attending an Ivy League college, joining a reputed firm that pays eighty thousand dollars per year and flying business class for the first time; the plight of falling in love with somebody who is still in love with somebody else and the frustration of knowing that the rival ‘somebody else’ doesn’t even inhabit the planet anymore; the vagaries of an educated mind; the upsurge of love for family at a time when the threat of a war looms large on the heads of the people who matter the most; the feeling of betrayal at seeing the apathy of the country you are serving towards the country you hail from; the occurrence of a terrorist attack that brings the world’s most powerful nation to its knees; the gory aftermath; its toll on the lives of others; a brainflash that washes away all traces of a preceding binge of braindrain; a woman’s dilemma at almost loving two men at the same time and altering loyalties between both; the feeling of defeat at not being able to pull the woman you love out of depression; the sense of pride at showcasing your exotic country to a foreigner; the intricacies of a high pressure job in a even more richly competitive environment; and the trade off between doing the right thing and giving up everything that glistens like gold…

The narrative is smooth and we are reminded repeatedly that it’s a monologue being delivered in Old Anarkali (Lahore) to an American tourist who clearly suffers from xenophobic paranoia. Owing to incidents like the decapitation of Daniel Pearl, the American journalist who was investigating the possible links between Islamist terrorists and Pakistani intelligence services in 2002, his jitteriness is completely in sync with a foreigner’s psyche. Though the concluding pages are unforeseen and unexpected. The candidness and honesty that comes attached with the protagonist (Changez) and his near assassination in the end forces one to reconsider abiding by one’s virtues in extraordinary times. Are we to be on our defensive during testing phases and curb natural tendencies in favor of what is politically correct and pleasing to the people in power? Broadening horizons and expanding the purview… will Pakistan ever see the light of being a truly democratic, secular and sovereign nation? Will the US ever confess that its an imperialist and loosen its grip on the nations that it constantly demands ‘cooperation and support’ from? Will it look beyond immediate gains to consider the well-being of these nations that suffer under its constant, unbridled whims? What does the future hold in store for Iraq? Will the world see more Changezes who give up a golden life in a far off country to come back and serve the interests of their own nation? Will reverse brain drain, as a concept, flourish? How many reluctant fundamentalists do we have amongst us?

The ending depicts the sanguinary side of the rivalry between the east and the west. In an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust, over-optimists pay the price for their overtly hopeful dispositions. Spruced with noteworthy lines everywhere to constantly keep the reader at his toes, I feel compelled to share a few of these lines with you-

· “… it is not always possible to restore one’s boundaries after they have been blurred and made permeable by a relationship: try as we might, we cannot reconstitute ourselves as the autonomous beings we previously imagined ourselves to be. Something of us is now outside, and something of the outside is now within us.” (On Erica)
· “…the lives of those of us who lived in lands in which such killers [terrorists] also lived had no meaning except as collateral damage.” (A reflection on life in Pakistan)
· “... I smiled. Yes, despicable as it may sound, my initial reaction was to be remarkably pleased ... I was caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees.” (On the 9/11 attacks)
· “I had always resented the manner in which America conducted itself in the world; your country's constant interference in the affairs of others was insufferable. Finance was the primary means by which the American empire exercised its power” (A third world national’s views on imperialistic America)
· “Every fall, Princeton raised her skirt for the corporate recruiters who came onto campus and—as you say in America—showed them some skin. The skin Princeton showed was good skin, of course—young, eloquent, and clever as can be—but even among all that skin, I knew in my senior year that I was something special. I was a perfect breast, if you will—tan, succulent, seemingly defiant of gravity—and I was confident of getting any job I wanted.” (On placements at Princeton)

If this has managed to wet your appetite even slightly, pick up this book… it shouldn’t take more than two and a half hours for a comprehensive read. I’ll give a 3.5/5 rating to Hamid’s ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’. Still can’t think of any genre of readers who wouldn’t enjoy this breezy, intelligent and highly engaging piece of fiction.

Afterthought:
I received this book from a close someone who insists that I infuse more opinions in my posts. Here's promising the saviour that I will try...

Mystique of the Bombay waters…

2008-02-15T04:57:00.017+05:30

There’s something about Bombay that draws me to it…

3:30 at night, sifting through my albums, looking for snaps to pass on to a friend… I’m reminded of the two wonderful days that I spent recently in the maximum city. Reflecting on what enthralled my senses the most, the answer emerges almost effortlessly when I think of the sea. From carter road to marine drive… the sea held my attention for unusually long spells, much to the dismay of my Bombay relations who loathed the idea of even setting foot on the beach. So while the world was busy shunning away the waters, I rolled up my jeans and stepped in without any inhibition.

Two tranquil evenings in Bombay, both spent on the beaches, pondering over the vagaries of the everyday world. Standing on the shoreline, I had the hustle-bustle of a very busy metro city on one end… and the comfort of a serene endless sea on the other. Why am I going gaga over the waters? Well for one, having spent almost my entire life shuttling between Jaipur and Delhi, the absence of beaches or any other form of water-body made its presence felt early in my existence. Second, and this realization is relatively new, I recently discovered my love for Mother Nature.

Standing at the shore with the water hitting my legs and then retreating gently while slowly taking away with it the sand from beneath my feet, I shift my weight from foot to foot… staring aimlessly at the seams of the sea blending subtly with the blues of the sky at the horizon. Marine drive, famous as the queen’s necklace, affords the most scenic pleasures that the eyes could ask for. While progressing from evening to night, watching the sun disappear behind the high-risers and skyscrapers that define the Bombay skyline… I pat my back for having reserved an isolated spot on marine drive for soaking in the view that I knew I wouldn’t be seeing again in a very long time. While my friends grumble from behind that Goa has all the real beaches and this place hardly qualifies as even hygienic… I ignore the ranting and continue to revel in the moment. I think about Dharavi, and I think about the Taj. I think about gloominess, and I think about delightedness. I think about what lay buried deep inside the Arabian Sea waters, and I think about the untold secrets that the endless skies held up there for us. I feel like a free bird for whom the entire ocean spread ahead, while simultaneously I also feel like an insignificant speck in contrast to the spread of the whole wide universe. The senses betray each other. While the ears are engaged by the stillness of the sea, occasionally stirred by the sound of the waters hitting the shores… the eyes see the moving cars and constant motion in a city that is touted as never being asleep. There’s something about Bombay that draws me to it… the compounding of two polar fantasies here on the beach might have something to do with it…

Mumbai Reflections...

2008-01-29T02:27:00.000+05:30

Phoenix Towers, Lower Parel

Mumbai 29th Jan 2008

01.33am

Looking down from the 24th floor… seeing life slowly fade away from a city that is touted as an eternal insomniac. Sitting in the lap of luxury, the Mumbai skyline reminds of the view that I saw from atop the Empire State Building in New York a few years back. Fortune favors the brave… and one such legend sleeps peacefully across the hall from my bedroom. Heaving sighs of relief and content at a life well utilized. I feel silent admiration swelling up inside me. Is this how the ‘view from the top’ feels like? Nothing less than pure elation…

Today proved to be a dreamy day. A heady bus ride from Pune(my home for the last 4 days) to Mumbai in a Asiad Volvo… the scenic pleasures that NH4 could afford…reunion with somebody who forms an essential part of me(so I realize now)… a shopping spree at Bandra west… a walk on the Carter shoreline… accommodation in one of the finest places that the city could afford… a skyline view that brings back nostalgic memories of cherished days gone by… a laptop (with a data card, mind you) to work on at the end of the day… the presence of a special someone who I can relate to with illogical ease… affection from previously ignored quarters… and a dynamic somebody else who snores peacefully in her room across the hall. Life has been more than generous of late. Looks like fate is trying to make up for all that I have been made subject to in the recent past… a past that is finally well behind me.

Tomorrow comes with more promises attached to it... more things to look forward to. Leopolds, Marine Drive, Juhu Beach, Church Road and Dalal Street… a package that others would kill for. Add to that the company of the people who matter the most, the sweet taste of independence and the constant nurturing offered by endless luxury. I couldn’t be more content. But if life is as perfect as it seems to be… how do I explain the feeling of incompleteness that envelopes me on repeated occasions… a void that dwells deep inside me even while looking down from the 24th floor of Phoenix Towers, Lower Parel Mumbai…? I still look for my answers…

P.S. Happy Birthday, new phone.

Gujjar riots 2: Revisited

2007-10-30T23:31:00.000+05:30

5th October 2007
Friday
Jaipur

(Yeah, this happened a lot of days back but I’m penning it down today cause my writings had taken a beating due to what was going on in my personal sphere. Now after the wind has passed and the dust has settled in a fashion I highly favour… the pen was bound to come out soon).

The incident happened on a perfectly chirpy day when the air deceits you into believing that all would turn out to be fine. Here’s a glimpse into what happened:

10:00 am:
The news headlines are playing and I’m sitting lazily in my living room, brooding over what plagues our country over a cup of coffee. I’m home for vacations and the nitty-gritties of daily domestic life are playing themselves around me. Mom is in the kitchen fixing us a quick breakfast and dad is on the phone spelling out instructions to the engineer about how the new kitchen that we’re getting done should look like. I’m taking it all in with quiet satisfaction at the fact that some things never change… no matter how long you stay away from home. One quick glance at the clock and I realize I need to go pick Rahul, my younger brother, from school. His exams are going on while he’s also trying to recuperate from a sorry medical condition. In my quest not to be late, I quickly finish my coffee, grab the car keys and am on my way.

10:20 am:
Now going to the school was not a problem. Neither did it intimate me of the dangers that lay ahead on my way back. You see that’s the ‘beauty’ of living in a small town… you never assume that you’ll ever get stuck in anything even remotely close to a riot.

I made it on time and after some quick questions about how the exam was, Rahul and I were on our way back. Now anyone who is even sparingly aware of the roads and routes in Jaipur should be able to make more sense of what follows. We were coming back from M.I. Road, where St. Xaviers is located, and were going towards Hawa Mahal, the area around which I live. At the Ajmeri Gate Chauraha, I was waiting at the red light. The traffic in the city has evolved and one might be forced to wait for two, even three, red lights before he is finally allowed to pass through. In normal circumstances, I would object to such long waits and succumb to road rage. But today was different because of two reasons. Firstly because I was happy about the homecoming; and secondly because I was getting to drive daddy’s new car. Glasses up, a.c. and loud music on, I was oblivious to what was going on outside. Two red lights down, it was my turn to move ahead. Now this is where your ears should perk up… out of the blue, I see this huge mob approaching the road from our left. The trajectory was such that while the cars ahead of me could just manage to slip away before the mob arrived… I was amongst the unfortunate few who were left behind. As the mob blocked the way, I realized I had crossed the red light (so there was no turning back) and couldn’t even move ahead because the mob now surrounded my car. Lathis and banners in place, for a second I thought it’s all over. The next few seconds were spent in turning off the music and trying to come in terms with the fact that if nothing else, I’m at least losing my windshield today. Looking at the slogan-shouting, banner-flaunting crowd… I knew no mercy would be spared. My brother was sitting next to me, not fully aware of what was going on. The bemused expression in his eyes just gave way to his confusion, but not the slightest hint of fear. Adding fuel to fire was a media photographer rapidly clicking away pictures of the two of us trapped in the once-cozy confines of our car.

Hmmm… I noticed I was leading a blue car right behind me (the rest had stopped at the red light itself) and decide to take a left turn from there. Left… the direction from where the mob was coming. I still don’t know what prompted that decision but my only bet was to stick to my guns. The car behind me followed. So far so good… the lathis hadn’t hit the windshield yet. Behind me, the motorcyclists were being manhandled. Their bikes were history and their faces were a huge red web of terror.

I weaved my way through the mob… tried talking to a traffic cop who, unfortunately, was as baffled as me. Realizing he wasn’t going to do any good… I looked around for an exit and quickly spotted one at the far end of the road. The challenge: reaching there unhurt. Then the added responsibility of taking care of my brother was weighing down on me. Glasses still rolled up… I took a deep breath and started moving towards the elusive end. A distance of roughly 60 meters had to be covered but the pack of people weren’t making things any easier. I had covered a good 35 meters when, inevitably, fury found me. A group of protestors, seeing a car trying to get away, turned furiously towards us and were about to bombard our vehicle with their lathis when something transpired between us and them. The fury in those angry eyes toned down immediately when they saw a hapless girl behind the wheel and her little brother sitting with a quiet expression on his face.

Now, call it fate or luck or providence or whatever you mortals like to call it--- but the protestors actually made room for us to pass through and I, grabbing the opportunity before they changed their mind, quickly zapped my way to the exit. Looking at the rear-view mirror, I saw that the blue car behind us had also been allowed to pass because the occupants were a harried looking senior couple. Letting out a sigh of relief… we made our way home without even turning back once. Let bygones be bygones!

Epilogue:
On reaching home, we narrated what had happened to mom and dad who literally flipped out after hearing the whole description. Evening papers later in the day were full of stories about what was going on in the city. For the uninitiated, I wouldn’t mind giving a lowdown on what the riots were all about. These were the infamous Gujjar Riots. Gujjar is a community in Rajasthan that is demanding ST status to increase the ambit of reservations available to their class. The government, obviously not okay with the demands, is resisting the pressure that the Gujjar’s are now trying to create by initiating a spate of unprecedented riots in the state. In the fray are big Rajasthan MPs and MLAs including hotshots like Sachin Pilot and Nathu Singh Gujjar.

Just to bring it to focus, the Gujjar riots have had a bearing on my existence in the past as well. Read more about it here. One sincere request to the people and government alike is to show better cooperation and at least ensure that normal life isn’t affected due to trivial tiffs and disagreements. Its not pretty, its not convenient, and it almost definitely violates the rules of staying together in a harmonious society.

CATastrophic

2007-10-02T12:12:00.000+05:30

C.A.T. - the hype and hoopla that this three-lettered word generates would put George Bush (caught in another dopey act) to shame. Come November and the media enters a crazy frenzy - covering every single move that the candidates appearing for the exam make, making documentaries on what it takes to bell the CAT, presenting the already hassled students with institute profiles, vital stats, health tips, stress-management techniques, et al. As if appearing for one of the world's toughest exams wasn't enough, students are made to grapple with all the ballyhoo surrounding this newly christened 'do or die test' (read: CAT).

Its general knowledge that the Common Admission Test, or CAT, is an all-India test conducted by the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) as an entrance test for the management programmes of its seven business schools (located each in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta, Indore, Lucknow, Kozhikode and now Shillong). We also know that the number of students taking the exam grows with each passing year. With over 2,00,000 students fighting for the coveted 1200 seats that the IIMs have to offer, the tussle to enter the hallowed portals only gets tougher with time. Even with a top 1% score, a candidate must also cross the equally stringent hurdles of a group discussion and a personal interview. All this taken collectively makes the procedure more selective than all the Ivy League Universities put together. Operating in circumstances like these, the last thing that an aspirant wants is media-attention and critical-performance-scrutinization at every step.

Names like Career Launcher, IMS, Time, PT Education, Roots Education, Alchemist, etc. are synonymous with MBA test preparation and are etched onto public memory. Cut throat competition, peer pressure and sometimes parental persuasion coupled with filling complicated application forms and handling challenging sections like Data Interpretation, Problem Solving, Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension define what goes on in the life of an aspirant for months before the third Sunday of november arrives. Add to this taking innumerable mock CATs in simulated surroundings and the mental agitation that surfaces as an obvious aftermath of bad percentiles. All this describes the plight of an average test-taker, though not denying that things can be different for some sections of people (if after reading this line you've broken into a smile, congratulations, you're the 'section of people' I am talking about).

The good part, its not as horrendous as it sounds. The seven-figure salaries, the intellectual stimultion, the 'branded for life' feeling, the institute experience and the useful things that one learns in the process makes it all worthwhile in the end.

One bone of contention though. The 'media hype' surrounding this one particular exam results in a lot of undesirable things. For starters, it results in adding yet more importance to the already illustrious institutes at the expense of their lesser-known coevals. There are other deserving institutes in the fray which the media tends to overlook. With atleast 98-99 percentile as the cut-off for IIM calls, other institutes with even 97.5 percentile as their cut-off are grossly sidelined and their roles majorly underplayed. For the candidates who miss the A+ grade, premier b-schools by even a 0.1 percentile deficiency (and the numbers run into hundreds), its nothing less than spending the rest of their lives in an inferno. This reflects on the extent to which the media generated hype has affected the brand-equity of our b-schools. So much so that CAT is being used as an umbrella term to cover most of the other management entrance exams in the country as well. Acute depression, guilt-pangs, reduced self-esteem, lower feeling of self-worth and a humongous beating to the self-confidence creeps into the lives of those who end up taking the test too seriously and failing even slightly.

The solution to this problem lies in bestowing the other almost equally good b-schools with their due credit and making the junta realize that missing the school of their dream by a negligible margin doesn't make them unworthy in any way. Its all a matter of luck and chance that our contemporaries may get into places that we always thought we deserved to be in. Being too harsh on oneself is not an option and key to a happy life lies in scanning the other options and to continue giving it your best shot. Even getting into foreign institutes might prove to be less mind-numbing!

A parting shot for the media would be to focus their energies on talking-up other institutes rather than putting the spotlight on the already celebrated ones. Some attention to the candidates is good but going overboard with the coverage of everything related to CAT only makes them more anxious and far more jittery...

I'm famous!!!

2007-10-02T12:03:00.000+05:30

Guess who got published on CNN-IBN's online news portal http://www.ibnlive.com/ !!! Yes yes, you're right... yours truely got her own blog there! Thats like taking my passion for writing and expressing one step ahead. Ok I'm providing the link below... check and comment!

http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/author/1276/yashikatotlani.html

And keep visiting!

Erratic disclosures

2007-07-31T14:36:00.000+05:30

‘Writer’s block’--- that’s what was keeping me from updating my blog for so long. Faithful readers noticed the absence and here I am trying to shake off the cobwebs. It was more like a mental block, a state where one is so preoccupied with other stuff that writing is forced to take a backseat. Even with my exams now over, things are still quite hectic but I’m taking out time for what I love doing the most… writing.

First a quick update on what has been keeping me busy. First I went through a series of non-ending exams, then a special someone was in town and later I was home for vacations. Now college is open again and the schedule is brimming with stuff that requires attention. Cat classes, college lectures, NIIT training, CS studies, extra-curriculars… my hands are more than full right now. The MBA form-filling season has also kicked in and days are spent contemplating about which institute to pick and which to ditch. Neha, a close buddy, is going to the US for her engineering and we’re busy planning this little surprise for her before she leaves. Then I’m also making room for other essentials like orkutting(indispensable!), returning e-mails, catching up with friends, going places and basically keeping myself entertained. The quest of staying abreast with current-affairs is teaching me new things. A lot has been happening at home as well and thank god for that cause it helps me keep my senses alive.

Harry Potter--- the book and the movie--- was something I had been waiting for for so long. Saw the movie on the first day of the release and would have written a review too… but loads of those are available everywhere. Decided to save redundancy. The Deathly Hallows--- well, words can never do justice to the brilliance that Rowling is blessed with. Fans must have read it by now, so a review seems quite unessential.

Experienced pure bliss in the most unusual of things- morning walks! With excellent company and pre-monsoon sprinklers… there could have been no better way to start my day. A 5.30 a.m. attendance and a 2 hour-long jog did wonders to my body and mind alike. Location? Central Park in Jaipur---- located in the midst of the most expensive range of flats, Royal Ensign, on one side; the famous Statue Circle on the other; and our very own Vidhan Sabha and Rajpath on yet another end; this place was a joggers paradise. Roughly 4-5 kilometres in radius, half of it also doubles up as a golf course. Polo and golf--- two things the city is famous for. Legend has it that the late Maharaja Sawai Man Singh had won his wife, the uber famous Rajmata Gayatri Devi, in a game of polo. But lets not delve into history books now. Lets keep talking about other more random and erratic things in life…

College is different this year. First because I know its my last year here. Second, ragging. It is being seen as a punishable offence and cctvs’ have been installed in most north campus colleges. Posters and banners scream out and warn seniors against ragging the fuchchas but I doubt that’s making much difference. The freshies want to be ragged and show more prudence than the police authorities by reasoning out that the whole ‘college experience’ concept is incomplete and inadequate without a little friendly ragging. It builds rapport and increases the comfort level between two otherwise unknown classes. Atleast it worked for my immediate juniors and me last year. God knows where things are headed this year with so little ragging. All would agree that no ragging means lesser stories to tell your grand-children when you grow old! (The Bombay junta… no indirect reference to your side of the picture, whatsoever.)

Now a little something about teeny-tiny pieces of advice that I’ve folded up and saved deep inside me in the box of golden words for future reference. These helped me sail out of a maelstrom of emotions.

-One includes “Don’t crucify a human being for acting like a human being.” Noteworthy (thanks Ankush).

-Another goes like “Nothing is as important as it initially seems.” Makes sense (Arunabh, you asked me to spread the word).

-Yet another goes like “Your absence should be long enough so that someone misses you, but it should not be so long that someone learns to live without you.” Wow (Jans, this one from you).

-One more “Hold on to the people who are slipping away.” Is quite common (But was recently highlighted by Bodhisattva).

-Last one "If my mind can concieve it & my heart can believe it, i know i can achieve it." (Gaurav read the post and asked me to include this here).

Am putting these up here for common good. If you like some of these… keep them with you.

Ok this will just keep getting long lest I stop. Will put a full stop here with a promise to return again with another post. I’ve successfully beaten the infamous block and man, am I proud of myself!

So long… Godspeed!

Gujjar riots: Life goes haywire…

2007-06-08T21:40:00.000+05:30

It’s easy for our vote-athirst politicians to trigger off rows regarding reservations. Following in their footsteps, it’s even easier for a certain segment of civilians to get together and create a havoc to attract media attention and to get their baseless demands fulfilled. Now I’m not here to bash the changing role of the media in today’s India, cause that topic deserves a different post altogether. I’m here to ‘throw light’ on the physical and mental traumas that we, the aam-admi, are made to go through during these times of crisis.

Anyone with a speck of alertness is aware of the whole ordeal that Rajasthan was made to go through recently. Now it so happened that I was in Jaipur around that time and was planning to return to Delhi on 30th may for my exams that kicked off from the 2nd of june. A day before the 30th, I had booked a Volvo ticket and was all packed to leave for ‘the city of djinns’ the next day. When I switched on the t.v. at night, first stir of the ensuing riots was hogging the headlines. Not anticipating it to blow up into a full-fledged revolt, I sat back comfortably and relished my dinner.

Next morning, when I switched on the t.v., reports of a blocked NH-8 caught my eye and I quickly called up the roadways office to confirm if my bus was still going. It wasn’t. Infact all the buses from jaipur to delhi had been cancelled… the highways were blocked with the protestors. The magnitude of the protests soon sunk in and I frantically left home to get myself rail or air tickets for the same day in a hope to still make it on time for my exams. Turned out that all trains had been cancelled as well and I was left with only one option to make it back on time- air. The scene at the airport betrayed the hopelessness of commuters who were virtually stuck in the city because of a ‘transportation-breakdown’. Because I’m very frugal with money, I first checked with the low-cost carriers to know if their flights were still going. Some flights had already left early in the morning and the rest were all booked to the brim. Soon it became very clear that I wasn’t reaching the capital today in any case. A call to my travel agent didn’t help much either. Reluctantly, I asked if tickets for the 31st were still available and fortunately got a reply in the affirmative. Timings for Go-Air were very convenient and I decided to opt for the same. My eyes literally popped out when the guy at the counter told me the prices (withheld to condense public outrage)! I asked him to wait for two minutes while I made up my mind. I started scanning all my options--- there was no way I was reaching delhi today by road, so there was no point fretting over that fact any longer. I figured if it essentially has to be tomorrow, then I might as well just pay some extra bucks rather than swing in the air of uncertainty and wait for the roads and rails to clear up (the riots had gathered steam by then and all fingers pointed in the direction of a political deadlock). While I was scrutinizing all my options, a now-familiar voice from the counter pulled me out of my musings and announced- “Only two seats left on tomorrow’s flight, ma’am, and their prices just went up from rs.x to rs.x + 300. You should make up your mind fast.” Shucks! Zap… I asked him to give me a ticket immediately before the prices shot up any further. With the ticket clutched tightly in my hands, I strolled my way back to the car.

Now to explain how much agony the whole episode caused is out of question. There’s no way I can explain how it feels to see days melt away so fruitlessly just 2 days before your exams and absolutely no way to tell how much it hurts to pay 8 times more than what you usually would to get from one place to another. Seeing airlines cash in on our helplessness didn’t make it any easier. The hole in my pockets just got deeper the next day when I was charged another grand at the check-in counter on account of my bag being ‘20 kgs heavier than the prescribed limit’ (dont blame me, I was carrying my exam books and there was no way I was leaving them behind). On reaching delhi, I had to pay another couple of hundreds to get from IGI airport to my place in a pre-paid taxi. And not just me, I saw a host of people going through the similar not-so-obvious torture. All of this… simply because this one class of people were defying laws somewhere and enforcing a bandh on a matter as trivial as shifting from one backward category, already reserved under the tainted reservations, to another…

Hail the politicians.

Hail the ‘intelligentsia’ who prompt such riots.

And most of all, hail us civilians who actually manage to live through the whole ordeal with no apparent fault of ours! Life cant get any ‘fairer’ than this x-(

Times Global Village 2007

2007-05-02T16:50:00.000+05:30

29th April 2007 5:30pm: Sitting idle after the exams, the idea of going to the ‘times global village’ hit me as an excellent one. For the uninitiated, this ad in the Times of India should throw some light on what it was all about:

“16 countries. 50 food stalls.
150 dancers. 900 shops.
1 entry ticket.
TIMES GLOBAL VILLAGE
Delhi hasn’t seen anything like the Times Global Village before! A month long extravaganza showcasing the best of the world in Delhi. From Czech crystals to African bead necklaces, from Pakistani cuisine to the best of the Thai fare, from Chinese dragon dancers to African drummers, this mega event has something for everyone. The centerpiece of the Dubai Shopping Festival for the last decade, it gives you food, shopping, dancing, entertainment, music, joyrides, arts and crafts, masti and magic, from all around the globe.
Adjacent to DND flyway, New Delhi
30th March-30th April 2007. 2pm onwards.
TOI, Delhi Tourism”

Being a foodie and shopoholic by nature, I grabbed my jingling money bag and cell phone and we were on our way. As we arrived the destination, the eyes glazed with the shimmering array of cars parked outside the venue. It was a cloudy Sunday evening and it seemed like the whole of the NCR was here to join in the festivities. Clutching the passes, we pushed our way through the crowd into the main grounds. The entrance was embellished with imitations of the many wonders that the world has seen. Taj mahal, Eiffel tower, the Pyramids of Egypt, Petronas towers, et al--- it was all there. “Good job” we say and move on. Right next to the entrance were three humongous stalls called Lifestyle, Interiors and Delhi. ‘Lifestyle’ was stocked with high-end stuff that only the upper strata could afford. The many sub-stalls were actually shops scattered all over the country clubbed together for this mega event. ‘Interiors’ dealt with the complex aspect of interior decoration/designing and some of the pieces, though prohibitively priced, were plain exquisite. ‘Delhi’, as the name suggests, was a huge conglomeration of Delhi’s most famous shops brought together under one roof.

Enough with the merchandize and we decided to eat. The food was a feast for the taste buds with Hyderabadi biryani on one side and Rajasthani food on the other. International cuisines were also available but people’s aversion to try out new food was apparent. I tried ‘tamarind juice’ from outside the UAE stall and the bittersweet taste (more bitter than sweet) lingered on even till the next day! After a whole round of biryani and kebabs and jaljeera and gol-gappas, it was time to check out the international good stalls.

African, Turkey, Czech Republic, Pakistan, UAE, UK, Thailand and China were some of the many countries showcasing their products. Each was trying to cash in on the things that made them unique and gave their country an edge over the others. Due to time constraints we were forced to miss out on a lot of stuff, but of the few things that we saw, something from Philippines caught my eye. The whole filipino idea revolved around customization and tailor-made goodies to please the customers. At Rs.120, one could get a colorful name-plate done with his name on it to be hung outside his private haven (read:room). An idea brilliant to the core… I wasn’t surprised to see the huge flock of ready customers willing to dish out the money and take back this customized piece from the other side of the world to flaunt in their respective homes. I got some name-plates made too… and went on to check out the other stuff. Well, if I go on to talk about the wares that were on display, blogspot would ban me for data redundancy! But in a nutshell, what I deduced was that for anyone with enough money in his hands and sufficient willingness to try out new things, this place was like a dream come true.

The event was laced with joyrides for kids and stimulated cricket pitches for the cricket buffs. Fun and merriment were almost tangible in the air. When we finally had to push off after it was quite late, we entered the mode of self-reprimanding for not coming here earlier. Like always, the blame was conveniently shifted to the ongoing exams. With hands full of shopping bags and tummies full to the brink, we slowly made our way back to our parked car…

Musing:

Though I don’t really like ‘the times of india’, this initiative deserves a virtual standing ovation. With enough advertising in their newspaper and glaring billboards at all major metro stations, the team ensured a heavy visitor inflow and an eventual rollicking success. Hats-off to the times team for a job (very) well done :)

Magnum opus- Deepa Mehta’s ‘Water’

2007-03-08T17:32:00.000+05:30

Ever since I was a kid, I didn’t like art movies. I thought these flicks made on shoestring budgets were only for the intelligentsia who had strong opinions on the complex human circumstances and relationships depicted in these films. Most names associated with parallel cinema like Ritwik Ghatak, Bimal Roy, Deepa Mehta, Kumar Shahani, and even Satyajit Ray made me cringe. I developed an acute dislike for actors like Nandita Das and Shabana Azmi at a very early age for the mere fact that they acted in these offbeat flicks. I saw my first art movie when I was nine (name withheld to condense public outrage) and hated it so much that I turned my back on such movies forever. Now after ten years of abstinence, I finally decided to give it another shot, and this is how it happened---

Crisp monday morning and I’m sitting in my college’s seminar room waiting for the screening of ‘Water’ to begin. As part of an ongoing movie festival, the college is screening 2 art movies back to back today- ‘water’ and ‘dor’. Now many people I know had watched Dor and had praised it so much that I was already half willing to watch it if given a chance to (but only for free, ofcourse!). Water, on the other hand, is yet to release in India and I hadn’t been previously inundated with any opinions to watch/skip it whatsoever. What prompted me to watch it was its recent Oscar nomination. So there I was, sitting and waiting for the movie to start and mentally preparing myself for 4-5 harrowing hours of no music and sheer boredom. Click… beep… click… and we started rolling….

I am issuing a standard review of ‘water’ in public interest, for the benefit of the masses (that is for the junta reading this blog).

Water
Directed by- Deepa Mehta
Written by- Deepa Mehta
Starring- Lisa Ray, John Abraham, Seema Biswas and Sarala
Language- Hindi
Running time- 114 minutes

Water is set in the 1930’s when India was still ruled by the British… and Mahatma Gandhi’s movement was slowly, but surely, picking up momentum. The movie is based on the lives of widows around that time and revolves around the story of Kalyani(Lisa Ray) and Narayan(John Abraham). Chuhiya(Sarala) garnishes the movie with her innocent presence and portrays the fate of young widows in the India of yester-years. Keeping in line with the Hindu tradition, girls were married off at an early age to older men and were subject to a life full of misery and servitude after their husband’s demise. Chuhiya is an eight year old who finds herself ‘widowed’ at this tender age. She is sent away to a widows’ home in Benaras where she has a lot of trouble coping up with the new ways and the kind of people that she will have to live with for the rest of her life. Kalyani is her only mate in the ashram. Amidst all the toil, they’re shown to have shared a lot of bubbly moments together. Being the only widow whose hair are not shorn, Kalyani is an outcast who’s sent to ‘serve and please’ the sethjis occasionally. Shakuntala(Seema Biswas) is an enigmatic inmate who has an innate tendency to do whatever is right in a given situation. Enters Narayan who is a stanch supporter of Gandhi with liberated views and believes that widows should be allowed to remarry. He sees Kalyani and love happens at first sight. Initially apprehensive, Kalyani soon drops all inhibitions and decides to marry him. The whole widow ashram is furious and Madhumati locks her away in a dingy room. The lustrous tresses are also chopped off callously. Shakuntala plays the iron lady once again and shows Kalyani to a better and more fulfilling life. But as they say, life is not a bed of roses and this is exactly what happens with the gorgeous couple. The fairy tale soon goes sour due to some unexpected turn of events. Despite this, the movie ends on a hopeful note. I’ll refrain from divulging further details because I want you all to go and experience the masterpiece for yourselves.

Water was an exceptionally well-made movie. The serene and spotless white clothes of the inmates, the tranquil banks of the Ganges, the forceful dialogue delivery of the actors, depiction of a widow’s hardships, cravings of the deprived (widows weren’t allowed to binge on fried foods like puris, halwa or jalebis!), prevalence of prostitution in dire conditions, monotonous existence, the innocent and carefree ways of a young child, et al… Mehta creates a magical atmosphere to showcase her story. The candid Sarala proves to be a child-artist par excellence. Ladoos and pets… water has a lot to offer.

The movie was shot in Sri Lanka after mobs destroyed its original sets in Varanasi in the year 2000. It was later shot using both a different cast and title (River Moon) in 2003. The film debuted in Canada in 2005 and is hitting the theatres in India tomorrow. Critics might argue that the movie is derogatory to the image of Hindus worldwide but I beg to differ. Being a girl myself, all I could think of while watching the flick was that how lucky I am to be born today and not in the 1930s. I also couldn’t help noticing as to how far we’ve come from the days when being a woman was no less than being cursed. It made me appreciate the social developments that we’ve made so far and also gave me a taste of what the generations before me might have gone through. All in all, a great package that needs to be seen by anyone who considers himself even remotely intelligent to appreciate niche works.

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After ‘water’ they screened ‘dor’, which again had something to do with a widow, but was much lighter in essence than the former. Time flew while I watched these movies and when I walked out of the seminar hall… my perceptions about art movies had changed radically forever… for good! Hail diversity and intelligentsia. Amen!

Valentine vertigo, veracious me and random panorama!

2007-02-14T02:11:00.000+05:30

A fresh new post… a clean new slate to put forth my views (yet again!).

Note of caution: To the die-hard Valentine’s Day supporters/fans/fanatics--- this piece is not for you. I advice you to bid adieu asap and not turn back even once.

All said… if you’re still hanging around… I fathom you have the patience and willingness to hear me out. The last thing I want to do is to sound sermonizing, so I’ll break this post into tiny interesting fragments… and spruce it up with real pictures (all taken first-hand by yours truly!).

Ridiculous tactics: Picture #1

Ridiculous tactics: Picture #2

PART I
I’m-no-agony-aunt
7th Feb:
I’m working out in a gym and the radio is on to keep us entertained. Running on a treadmill… huff puff… beads of sweat rolling down my forehead. What am I listening to? The RJ goes like “Call 64646… say ‘I love radio mirchi’ and win a candle-lit dinner in orient express with your loved one on valentine’s day!” Hmmm… tempting. For the uninitiated, Orient Express in one of the 50 finest restaurants in the world.
Standard reaction 1--- I’m flabbergasted… has it already begun??

8th Feb:
The v-day fever is catching up thick and fast with the other radio stations as well… offers and prizes are getting dearer (and better!) each passing minute. Switch on the tv and all channels are busy show-casing commercials related to the obvious. Not even the news channels are spared. My good old CNN-IBN also shows a ‘deliver flowers to your valentine’s doorstep (with no extra shipping charges)… call xxx-xxxx-xxx… toll free!’ commercial while I let out a loud groan.
Standard reaction 2--- The denial mode is over… time to start sighing! It’s that time of the year again.

9th Feb:
Things are getting worse. Hoardings in the campus have been changed to the ones that scream out and educate the naïve junta about the attractive v-day offers up for grabs (see picture #1… it’s a classic!). RJs are still going berserk with the prizes and proposals.
Standard reaction 3--- Aaarghh… for how much longer am I supposed to take this?

10th Feb:
A little birdie comes and coos into my ear that SaReGaMa has launched a new album… something by the name of ‘love rocks’ Even amazon.com has suddenly gone crimson!
Standard reaction 4--- I am trying to masquerade my disgust in the garb of a wry smile and slight smirk.

11th Feb:
D-day is drawing closer and I am happy. Why?? Cause I see an end to the gibberish just close by. Although the constant ranting of RJs and the print media advertising still irks me no end.
Standard reaction 5--- Waiting with bated breath for the 14th to come… and go!

12th Feb:
Things are uncontrollable… the dam has broken to make way for what may be called a sea of red hearts and pink kisses!
Standard reaction 6: I try and turn a deaf ear n blind eye to everything but fail miserably at it :(

13th Feb:
D/V-Day eve! I’m out in kamla nagar for some mobile related work and what I see leaves me all the more cantankerous and even disgusted to some extent (refer to picture #2 for explanation). Even the once faithful comrades have dumped me this time… ahem…. I mean even the shiv-sainiks have softened their stand on the ‘issue’. It was only this morning that I saw a news report telling that the sena run Kirti College in dadra is not averse to the idea of joining in the celebrations anymore. Depressing stuff. Heard a sena adyaksh say something you’d be surprised to hear… something about lesser dharnas n processions this year. RJs continue to be on a roll, still doling out prizes with undying fervor… gym time has suddenly lost all charm.
Standard reaction 7: (Un)comfortably numb…

14th Feb:
Need I tell how it’s like?!?!?

PART II
Trying-very-hard-not-to-sound-sermonizing
When I was a kid, the scale of celebrations was much smaller. People felt no need to hire limousines or buy diamond rings to woo their dates/spouses. Ways of expressing love were more personal, less flashy and way cheaper! No… I’m not 60 or over-conservative or a wet blanket, for that matter. I’m young, ultra-modern and extremely liberal. I have nothing against Valentine’s Day in particular… nothing so long as the celebrations are confined to one day and one day only. Agreed that true love needs expression and allocating a particular day to do so is not a sin. So far so good. What irks me is the lack of consideration on part of the moneymaking scoundrels who know nothing better than throwing offers and reaping benefits out of the whole situation. Why load people with v-day talks everywhere, every second of the day, for one whole week before the big day?? It gets a little over-whelming and seems kind of ridiculous at times. And if it’s all about love… what about mother and father’s days that often go unnoticed? In all respect… not fair. I don’t mean to demean the whole concept of celebrating Valentine’s Day… infact far from that… all I want to state is that the whole hype and hoopla makes little sense to me. Hold hands, kiss and get cozy, rock each others worlds… alright… but pleaseeee tone down on the celebrations front a little! The amount of moolah spent is not always proportional to how much you love your companion. Things that really mean a lot don’t always come in boxes…

All my arguments aside… I do believe that the expression of love is the headiest feeling on the whole planet. Go ahead, enjoy the day… but go easy with the festivities before/after the day is over. We have a whole assortment of other festivals to look forward to!

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A few good things:
YES, a few things have been keeping my mood really light of late… take a look:

1) The government IS making a serious effort towards polio eradication… a polio drops table at the entrance of the patel chowk metro station. Strategically placed… very impressive!

2) An airtel scheme especially for d.u. students… the tariff plan is really economical!

3) The rains! Potholes (hallmark of the place where I live!), wet roads, dark clouds, biting cold, thunderstorms, heavy showers… all the makings of a place called ‘heaven’. A welcome respite for the rain starved Delhi.

4) This amazing t-shirt that I saw at out university centers ‘peoples tree’ outlet.

Ad nauseam! Long post… but still got a lot more to write about. If time permits… the mill will churn out another post very soon.

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After-thought: If you’ve read this far… I deduce you don’t have the attention span of a three year old and are capable of putting up with stuff that you might not necessarily agree with or that which can be loosely categorized as ‘purely random, arbit and unorganized’. All I want to say to you guys is… keep visiting :)

Love, demystified…

2007-01-24T08:58:00.000+05:30

The most complex of all emotions, the most prevalent of all feelings… this is an attempt at demystifying the most convoluted inscrutability surrounding mankind… this is love, simplified…

Oxford English Dictionary defines love as “an intense feeling of deep affection.” Look around you and you see a major portion of the people snowed under what I call ‘the crowning glory of our short expedition on planet earth’. To reduce the ambit of love to lover’s or spouse’s love would be like doing injustice to its wide and varied scope and coverage. A quick glance and we see love all around--- lover’s love, spouse’s love, parent’s love, friend’s love, family’s love, love in the nature of narcissism, love with a pet, love commercialized on TV and in movies, love with books or one’s job or basically things/places/professions in general, love at first sight, et al. The possibilities are inexhaustible and the list is endless.

Cupid can strike at any time and what’s worse… one loses all control as soon as love comes calling. They say all emotions can be modulated, all except love. When falling in love for the first time, one feels things he’s never felt before. When falling in love all over again, one learns to appreciate things in a different way. Love is all about feeling affection and passion for someone/something, getting a feeling of acceptance… and it almost always involves a lot of thinking and some serious contemplation.

Now we unknowingly use the term ‘falling in love’(I just did!) without giving much thought to what it actually means- ‘falling’ in love. True… some ‘fall’ in love and later pay the price for doing so. Whom are we talking about here? Jilted lovers, divorced couples, wasted individuals, etcetera. BUT lets change the term a little, and I take the liberty of modifying it to ‘rising in love’. Yes, this sounds more positive and is surely more apt. History is redundant with examples of people achieving big because of possessing what we crave for the most- love. It bestows on us a feeling of completeness, sanguinity, and complacence. Sometimes it takes us to a different plane altogether. Often used as a synonym of obsession, attachment, infatuation and even crushes… we can be flexible enough and let it be confused with all these things because life is not always about watertight compartments. Take a bird’s eye view and we see everything is intermingled and interconnected.

Come Valentine’s Day and we see tiny red hearts and roses ALL around… in shops, on TV, on cards, in the newspapers and on the roads as well. The celebrations are notched up a tad higher each year and V day is now a million dollar industry for the people who were sane and sensible enough to cash in on this growing ‘trend’ at the right time (read: archies). Infact new runners in this rat race are also catching up fast and easy by offering more innovative ways of expressing love. Now, I am no shiv saini or anything… but sometimes the whole hoopla makes you wonder how much bigger will this get? I mean all the money spent on going out, messaging and buying cards and gifts can be put to better use. For the people who say it is the day to celebrate love--- why just confine the celebrations to one day?? Isn’t it an ongoing process?

Probably the only pitfall of the whole phenomena is the amount of effort that goes into falling ‘out’ of love. It takes immeasurable amounts of resistance, restrain, anger and frustration to get over that one object of affection. Love in its worst form takes the form of obsession. Sometimes life’s get ruined, people lose their ability to fall in love again, get wasted, need a counselor, eat themselves silly and shop like a maniac… while in other more solemn cases, they fail miserably at the ‘falling out’ bit altogether. But they say there is always a silver lining to every cloud. This cloud is no different. Agreed that some times it all seems very ugly… but at other times, falling out of love proves to be a bittersweet journey to redemption and self-realization. Love is capable of teaching a thousand lessons at one go… imparting the knowledge of a million books all at once… quite capable of transforming a crazy and impractical lover into a sagacious saint.

The movie industry is probably the one domain that has capitalized the most on the widespread predominance of this emotion. Since times immemorial, the moviemakers have cashed in by showcasing the different facets of love on the silver screen. Almost every movie ever made has got love to flaunt somewhere or the other. In most Indian movies, love is often the underlying base of the whole plot… the whole story is centered on the meeting/non-meeting of the two lovers. Garnish this with some running around the trees, a few songs, some foreign locales, extravagant clothing and jewellery, a few thrills… and you have all the makings of a big box-office blockbuster. This is the formula that big movie directors like Karan Johar and Yash Chopra have exploited and earned millions on. Now I’m deviating from course and will stop talking about the cinema, mainly because the ‘movie-matra’ deserves a separate post altogether.

But keeping in tune with the topic, I recently watched the movie ‘shall we dance’ and made a mental note of Susan Sarandon’s immortal lines that go like---
“We all need a witness to our lives. There are a billion people on this planet. What does anyone’s life really means? But in love, you are promising to care about everything… the good things, the bad things, the terrible things and the mundane things. All of it, all the time, everyday. You’re saying ‘your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it… your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness.’ You can call me a nut if you like!”
--- That pretty much sums up the essence of what we call love. Although here, she’s being specific about lover’s/spouse’s love. But in reality, as I’ve pointed out earlier, love encompasses a lot more than just that... though the degree of intensity might differ greatly. People fall in love with a plethora of other things. Some are in love with themselves (narcissists); some fall in love with physical and tangible things- their cars, books, material possessions; some love their jobs, or their lives; some feel deeply attached to their parents, siblings and family. Love can assume different forms but the whole discussion boils down to one simple conclusion--- love it or hate it… sooner or later, it is bound to happen to everybody. And when the time comes, I suggest you sit back and enjoy the ‘heady’ ride (with a pinch of salt every now and then!) :)

Of Christmas, Carols and Santa…

2006-12-27T12:15:00.000+05:30

First things first, and this is for the regulars, I have been keeping a little busy people… hence the dearth of posts in the past few weeks. The next 2-3 weeks are going to be no different with my exams coming and all, but I’ll try to stay as regular as possible.

Now for the actual post:

25th December 2006:
* Scene 1- My cozy bedroom *
12:00am: I’m enjoying a still night when suddenly…* buzz * --- my phone buzzes to break the silence. It’s a message from a friend wishing me merry Christmas. In the festive spirit, I reply back with a cherry message and good wishes. Things are calm again and now I’m trying to concentrate on work, when I’m shook up by another * buzz * --- one more friend wishing me Christmas. I reply back to this one as well. Concentrate… concentrate… but * buzzes ** rings * --- I’m startled many times over… more good wishes and season greetings are exchanged… and this goes on for one whole hour.

* Scene shift – Connaught Place market, Central Delhi *
3:00pm: The winter vacations have just started and I’m out catching up with a dear one in cp. An awesome music show and a brief session of sifting through Oxford Bookstore later, we are out on the streets looking for a present for my younger brother. He suggests a swiss army knife and we find ourselves looking for a shop that would sell one. One quick glance and you realize that the market scene is quite interesting here: shop windows painted by/covered in oodles of red and white, christmas sale everywhere, fake santas out on the streets giving away sweets to kids, crowds supposedly ‘enjoying the festival’, christmas decorations coupled with small vendors selling red and white balloons. “Marketing gimmick”, is what he calls it all. I’m having second thoughts. I bump into classmates and upon asking what they were doing there… I get a “celebrating christmas!” out of them. I smirk and walk on.

*Scene shift – Today *
So what makes me blog about the whole thing?? Nothing major… this post is just a result of serious distaste, grave revulsion and grim disgust. Whoa! Why all these things?? Well for one, and I want to make it very clear that I have nothing against christmas whatsoever, when did the majority of our population turn catholic?? Second, if the statistics do support my argument, why are we celebrating the festival with such gaudy pomp?? Why the midnight wishes and christmas sale on the streets? In hope of reaching a satisfying answer, I make a few observations. Maybe the western culture/influence is fast catching up with us and is here to stay. Or maybe we are just a bunch of jovial, enthusiastic people looking for a reason to celebrate. Maybe a drop of the hat is a big enough reason for us to get together and commemorate.

PS. I had to go out the same day cause I was leaving town the next morning.
PPS. No, my intention is NOT to hurt the sentiments of any section/strata of the society. These are just my independent views and may be supported or neglected by some.
PPPS. I’m prissy and I know it.
PPPPS. My astonishment notwithstanding, I had a great day… all thanks to a highly ‘receptive’ company :)

"Dilli Bandh"... life comes to a standstill

2006-10-30T15:02:00.000+05:30

VIGNETTE: Description of an awfully tragic morning: Being late for college and taking an auto in an attempt to make it on time. Riding in what proves out to be a ‘death-auto’ for 13 long minutes. Frantically running all the way to the class only to enter a half-empty space and finding out that all the classes have been called off. Thinking of still utilizing the time by getting some pending work done at the other end of Delhi. Going to the metro station in hope of speeding things up and finding out that the damned metro services from the university station have been curtailed for the day due to some dharnas. Realizing that there is no other way to get to ‘the other end’. Returning home dejected. Thinking of digging your teeth into your favorite cookie, awesome stress-buster, but finding your neighborhood grocer's shop closed.

* Curtains drawn *

Yeah, that was a brief prelude to the kind of morning I had today. Though I woke up at 6 a.m., I still managed to get late for college (a feat only I can achieve!) and decided to squander a few bucks on an auto (which spells ‘luxury’ in student’s circles here) in a desperate attempt to reach the class on time. I had an economics class and the teacher was pretty strict when it came to giving out attendance to ‘late-comers’. So I asked the auto-wallah to speed up… and big surprise: he turned out to be a maverick brave-heart! Maybe he saw this as an opportunity to display ALL his stocked up driving skills (and stunts!) and rode REAL fast…so fast that I had to hold on to my seat to stay in place! Thankfully a few narrow escapes and missed accidents later… I finally reached the college in time (with white knuckles, ofcourse!). I rushed to the class only to find out that all the classes had been called off (yes, including the eco class) cause most of the teachers hadn’t been able to make it to college due to traffic-jams that had become commonplace today. Frustrated and dejected, I decided to utilize the day anyway and thought of getting some work done at ICSI, prasad nagar. So I strolled to the university metro station, patting myself on the back, but what I saw there was no less than adding insult to injury. I saw reporters from NDTV, and other blah blah blah channels, interviewing people; asking them how the ‘closed’ metro line had “affected/hit their schedule”. Taken aback, I eventually gathered that the Delhi University-Kashmere Gate, 4 kms underground metro stretch, had been closed as a precautionary measure (because the traders had decided to gherao the delhi assembly which fell midway on the route) till further notice. For a brief moment I actually contemplated going and whacking the NDTV reporter on the head (I don’t know why though, it wasn’t her fault!) who was interviewing a univ mate as to how he felt about the whole ‘metro line abruptly closing down’ thing. Instead, I walked away from the scene and cribbed in quite murmurs to myself and cursed lady luck for having abandoned me on the very first day of the week-Monday (which is quite unpopular anyway… cause of its ‘inherent quality/ability/trait’ of yanking people out of weekends and throwing them into the tiring hustle-bustle of daily life).

So seeing all my hopes of making some good of the day falling flat on their face, I started back home. Saw truckloads of people being ferried to the assembly… they shouted slogans against the MCD sealing drive… resolute anger and determination marked their faces. All this; while me, dejected beyond measure, tried thinking about the good things in life… but all that plagued my mind were sad thoughts and gloomy tales.

Blink! Hang on… it can’t be all that bad! I just needed to think like an optimist and try to find out the silver lining to this cloud. Hmmm… now what good can this bring? Oh, ofcourse! This was an awesome opportunity for me to snuggle up in my sheets at home, with a nice book in my hand (bought ‘memoirs of a geisha’ yesterday) and dig my teeth into my favorite cookie! Wow! Why hadn’t I thought of this before?!? So with a newfound spring in my steps, I hop along the way to my neighborhood grocer to get a packet of the heavenly cookies, with gleamy stars in my eyes leading the way. Could hardly wait to execute my brilliant plan for the afternoon! But then it happened… lady ‘bad luck’ couldn’t have been crueler… I see (and suddenly remember it was a ‘traders’ strike… and the grocer was no exception) that the shop’s shutter was down with two heavy locks securely holding it in place. And then one more realization, which can safely be called the ‘cherry on the cake’, dawned on me- the strike was going to go on for three days… till the 1st of November…

* Curtains fall *

EPILOGUE: Ok, now I officially put an end to all the cribbing and tell you what I finally did:

I went back home, switched on my computer, and typed the whole ordeal down as a blog entry ;)

P.S. 1: Blogosphere is an awesome place to vent out your anger.

P.S. 2: The above pics was taken first hand while returning back home.

P.S. 3: NO, I haven’t exaggerated anywhere in the post.

P.S. 4: Desperately hope that the coming two days of the bandh prove better.

P.S. 5: Delhi seems paralysed!

Dusshera Innovation...

2006-10-23T02:29:00.000+05:30

The pink city, Jaipur, is famous for many things- food, people, splendor, valour… but the one thing that is often overlooked is the innovative bent of mind that the people here are blessed with. One recent ‘innovation’ that caught my eye was the ‘finish-it-yourself mini dusshera ravanas’. Allow me to elucidate--- I returned from Delhi to Jaipur a day before the much celebrated dusshera festival and was greeted by hoards of mini ravans sitting pretty on every major (and every not-so-major) goods shelf of store-keepers. Ravans ranging from 3-6 feet, costing anywhere from Rs.300-Rs 1000, gleamed at me from every nook and corner of the city. All one was expected to do was to finish them by adding the ‘cracker’ zing… and bang! Your very own mini ravana was ready to be later burnt up in smoke- in celebration of India’s rich historic culture, tradition, values… that still live on in the hearts and minds of united Indians. Philosophy aside… I bought a 3-feet ravana myself (cost me somewhere around Rs.350), finished it with crackers and watched it go up in flames on dusshera night. Cost notwithstanding, the fun it afforded was priceless. Truly an idea which, it seems, could be emulated by retailers of other cities soon. The beginning of a new trend in festival-specific, money-making ideas?? Only time will tell…

I've been tagged!

2006-10-04T04:55:00.000+05:30

Ah people, I’ve been tagged by Priyanka (I’m working on the basic assumption that people in blogging circles know what ‘tagging’ means). Its an open tag so all those who wish to do it can go right ahead! There's an X before all the things I've done… and the other brackets are empty… so all you have to do is copy and paste the thing and edit the X's ...

So hold on tight, the roller-coaster ride begins now!

( ) smoked a cigarette (Detest tobacco)
( ) crashed a friend's car (Crashed?? A car?? No no no! I rock behind the wheel!)
( ) stolen a car (Who dareth say that?)
(X) been in love (Many times over ;))
( ) been dumped (You kidding?)
( ) shoplifted (Never!)
( ) been fired (You first need a job in order to get fired :( )
( ) been in a fist fight (Ahem!)
( ) snuck out of your parent's house (Never felt the need, actually.)
(X) had feelings for someone who didn't have them back (Sigh!)
( ) gone on a blind date (Ahem again!)
(X) lied to a friend (Sorry!)
(X) skipped school (Only when I was down with fever.)
( ) seen someone die (Never! The ‘D’ word gives me the jitters. Brrr!)
(X) had a crush on one of your Internet friends (Tee hee hee… keep guessing!)
( ) been to Canada (Nay. But US… yeah.)
( ) been to Mexico (Nay nay.)
(X) been on a plane (Now how can one go the the US if not on a plane?)
(X) eaten sushi (Yum. Compulsive foodie!)
( ) been skiing-snow or water (No :( )
(X) met someone from the Internet (Er… kinda. But had met before, so big deal.)
(X) been at a concert (But whoever said I enjoyed it?)
(X) taken painkillers (Who hasn’t?)
( ) love someone or miss someone right now (Duh.)
(X) laid on your back and watched cloud shapes go by (Once. Lovely!)
( ) made a snow angel (Are you kidding? I hail from Rajasthan!)
( ) had a tea party (Don’t remember, actually.)
(X) flown a kite (Make that 'kites'. Grew up with two brothers!)
( ) built a sand castle (And it hurts the most to leave this one blank. T, when are we going to goa ya??)
(X) gone puddle jumping (Fun!)
( ) played dress up (Yeah, I know it sounds weird, but NO.)
( ) jumped into a pile of leaves (No again.)
( ) gone sledding (Rajasthan people. Stop mocking… and smirking!)
(X) cheated while playing a game (Er… this is rare… but yeah! Uno!)
(X) been lonely (Sigh again.)
( ) fallen asleep at work/school (Never. Strange, no!)
( ) used a fake ID (But used a fake licence, ya!)
(X) watched the sun set (Therapeutic.)
(X) felt an earthquake (Uncommon phenomena at my side of the world, but yeah.)
( ) slept beneath the stars (I wish.)
(X) been tickled (And begged to be let free… hahaha!)
( ) been robbed (No! And thank god for that!)
(X) been misunderstood (At times! Blame the dunderheads, not me!)
( ) pet a reindeer/goat/kangaroo (Yuck yuck.)
(X) won a contest (What sorta contest? Does BQC count??)
(X) run a red light/stop sign (Occasionally! But usually when a traffic policeman is not around. Common-sense!)
( ) been suspended from school (Never never never.)
( ) been in a car crash (Noooo!)
(X) had braces (Priyanka, run for your life! How dare you tag me and ask questions as absurd as this one?!?)
(X) felt like an outcast/third person (If it isnt about me, it ought to be BORING!)
( ) eaten a whole pint of ice cream in one night (And mounted on 300 gazillion calories? No thank you.)
(X) had déjà vu (Spooky, but yeah. Many a times.)
( ) danced in the moonlight (The moment’s yet to come. Atleast have ‘something’ to look forward to!)
(X) liked the way you looked (Most of the time. And why not?)
( ) witnessed a crime (Does ‘witnessing’ others bunk/sneak out of classes count?)
(X) questioned your heart (Introspection. Yeah.)
(X) been obsessed with post-it notes (Sounds very familiar.)
( ) squished mud through your bare feet (Ewww! Sheesh! You are saying people actually do that??)
(X) been lost (When I was 2. Got lost in Karol Bagh! But mom found me soon enough. Phew!)
(X) been on the opposite side of the country (Travelomaniac! Travelfanatic!)
( ) swam in the ocean (But swam in a pool, alright.)
( ) felt like dying (Nah. But yeah, felt like disappearing!)
(X) cried yourself to sleep (Have mercy.)
(X) played cops and robbers (My nutty bros made sure I did that.)
( ) recently colored with crayons (I’m OLD!)
( ) sang karaoke (Don’t you love your glasses?? Spare them the trouble... and the damage! Hmph!)
(X) paid for a meal with only coins (School friends and coins… old association!)
(X) done something you told yourself you wouldn't (Talk of daredevilry!)
(X) made prank phone calls (But only as a kid.)
( ) laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose (Gawk! NO! How unsophisticated! Yeah… I’m too uptight!)
( ) caught a snowflake on your tongue (Boo hoo hoo! Enough with the Rajathan jokes!)
( ) danced in the rain (Er… no. Yeah yeah… I know it’s weird. You don’t need to tell me that over and over again!)
(X) a letter to Santa Claus (nailed to the wall in a white, sparkling stocking!)
( ) been kissed under the mistletoe (No misteltoes :x)
( ) watched the sun rise with someone you care about (Are some people ACTUALLY that fortunate?? Im green with envy!)
(X) blown bubbles (Responsible for half the bubbles blown in this planet.)
( ) made a bonfire on the beach (Hmmm… maybe on our planned trip to Goa this year.)
( ) crashed a party (Nay.)
(X) gone roller skating (Tried, fell… bloop!)
(X) had a wish come true (More often than not! Touch wood.)
( ) jumped off a bridge (Do I look crazy? Or suicidal?)
( ) ate dog/cat food (Again, do I look crazy?? Or suicidal? LOLZ!)
( ) told a complete stranger you loved them (Why would I do that?)
(X) kissed a mirror (Ok now forget I just said that!)
(X) sang in the shower (Hardly ever, but yes. Wont even qualify as a bathroom-singer!)
( ) had a dream that you married someone (Never.)
( ) glued your hand to something (You think we cant just yank it off? Or to glues come with "You cant get rid of me" warnings these days? Lol! I crack myself up!)
( ) kissed a fish (Er… just eating would suffice for now.)
( ) climbed a water tower (Im no tarzan… incarnated or otherwise.)
(X) screamed at the top of your lungs (But only when fighting with dad… to drive my point home, obviously!)
( ) done a one-handed cartwheel (Nah.)
( ) talked on the phone for more than 5 hours (Nonstop? What do you talk about for so long???)
(X) stayed up all night (Insomniac by profession. It IS night right now!)
( ) picked and ate an apple right off the tree (No apple trees here. Pooh!)
( ) climbed a tree (Tried… fell hard on my arse.)
( ) had a tree house (What is this?? The US of A??)
( ) been too scared to watch a scary movie alone (Braveheart!)
(X) believe in ghosts (As a kid, ofcourse.)
( ) have more than 30 pairs of shoes (But close estimate nevertheless!)
( ) worn a really ugly outfit to school (Why would I do that?)
( ) gone streaking (Na.)
(X) gone doorbell ditching (If it means what I think it does, then yeah!)
( ) been pushed into a pool/hot tub with all your clothes on (People who know me wont dare!)
(X) told you're hot by a complete stranger (But in less express terms ofcourse.)
( ) broken a bone (Nah. Im no case of fragile bones.)
(X) been easily amused (The habit persists!)
( ) caught a fish then ate it (Never even gone ‘phishing’!)
( ) caught a butterfly (Tried though!)
(X) laughed so hard you cried (Yeah! Actually... I usually laugh that hard!)
( ) cried so hard you laughed (So that’s not just confined to maniacal soap stars?? Revelation!)
(X) cheated on a test (Sorry teachers!)
(X) forgotten someone's name (And found yourself feeling awkward and embarassed! Hey, cant blame me! I know a lotta people! You don’t expect me to remember EVERYONES name!)
( ) French braided someone's hair (Nay. People don’t trust me with their hair!)( ) gone skinny dipping in a pool/hot tub/river (And where would I do that? In my ‘indoor heated pool’? Bah! Bill Gates daddy, I want a new pool.)
( ) been threatened to be kicked out of your house or been kicked out of your house (Never once!)
(X) loved someone so much you would gladly die for THEM (But see… that’s a thing of the past! Next!)
( ) cheated on someone (Even loathe the idea.)
(X) talk to yourself when no-ones around (Brief self-rationalizing talks and all. Nothing major!)
(X) hate someone you once loved (A fairy-tale gone sour.)
(X) love someone you once hated (Yeah, that has also happened.)

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Priyanka, that was a long long tag (fun, nonetheless)! Hope the ‘thirst’ is adequately quenched ;)

P.S. Thanks all for bearing with my smart-ass jokes and comments.

Fabulous Ads- Part 1

2006-09-13T11:51:00.000+05:30

Every now and then, while flipping through channels on that idiot box, we stumble upon ads that simply stand out of the bunch. They incarcerate all our attention, hands down. So this is a tribute to some recent ads that have successfully managed to etch themselves onto our memories for the years to come…

Coca Cola: Thande ka tadka!

Brand: Coca Cola
Agency: McCann Erickson
Tag Line: Thande ka tadka
Description: Aamir Khan enters a restaurant with a red and swollen face, eyes hardly open, donning ‘touristish’ apparels, with a camera around his neck. The owner thinks he’s a foreigner and decided to fleece him. He adds two extra ‘0’s beside the price of everything on the menu. Aamir writes his order on a paper and is forced to get it himself after nobody understands him. As he begins gorging on his ‘thanda samosa’ and ‘thanda pakora’, i.e. coke with samosa and pakora, he starts talking in hindi, much to the surprise and disappointment of the waiters and the opportunistic restaurant owner (who are now surrounding and gawking at him like fools). He leaves them zapped by telling them that he is not a foreigner, but a photographer mauled by honeybees while shooting.

My Take: The humour quotient was high and the power idea gave the brand a new positioning. It definitely struck a chord with the masses and had me rolling with laughter for a considerable amount of time… I almost missed the pepsi commercial, courtesy: the tears of laughter that blurred my vision, which aired a few minutes after I saw this ad for the very first time. Aamir reinforced his prowess at dexterity yet again, assuming the garb of a supposed-Japanese tourist. The average viewer would never have discerned the twist in the yarn unless told! Coca Cola, as always, showcased great marketing wizardry so far as winning the ‘localization’ war is concerned. The bond between Coca Cola and its ubiquitous trump card ‘Thanda’ remains intact. Cola’s trademark: maintaining flavor with élan.

Surf Excel: Daag achche hain!

Brand: Surf Excel
Agency: Lowe
Tag Line: Daag achche hain!
Description: Brother and sister are returning home from school. Backdrop: rain-soaked grounds with a cloudy ambience. Sister accidentally steps into water puddle and soils herself. The adorable face cringes with disgust and we see her at the verge of tears. Protective/loving brother throws bag aside and starts ‘punching’ water puddle (semi-consciously splashing more dirt on his sister’s uniform and soiling his own clothes in the process!), repeatedly asking ‘it’ to apologize to his sister for the ‘misconduct’… All this, while the sister chants “Aur maro, aur maro…” from his side. Both of them finally convinced that the puddle has been trashed enough and had apologized, go home happily The million dollar smile is back on the sister’s face. The screen is filled with colorful splashes, and a ‘daag achche hain’ slogan playing in the backdrop.

My Take: Surf Excel had done something unthinkable again. While all other detergent powders were basking in the glory of how good their product was at removing stains…Surf hit dirt with the glorification of dirt! Haven’t we heard of out-of-the-box thinking and other such jargons at B-schools? Well, this was just an instance where it was put into use! The ad took my breath away and I was mesmerized by the innocence that those two kids afforded the ad! It was clutter-free unlike other detergent powder ads, which kept comparing the superiority of their product by their less-effective (???) counterparts. A thematic ad that successfully launched the brand philosophy, surf excel had proved to be the last word in detergent advertisement again: both in terms of product offering and communiqué. The ad commands a high recall value with consummate ease. The responses speak volumes… the commercial took the product image to greater heights. Sheer tenacity. One word sum-up: Innovative.

Ford Fusion: The no-nonsense car!

Brand: Ford Fusion
Agency: JWT
Tag line: The No Nonsense Car
Description: Version 1: Two marketing dudes are trying hard to impress their boss by suggesting to shoot the new Ford Fusion ad in Australia. Unimpressed, the haughty boss explains to them that the customers would buy the car not because of the location but for its features and goes on to talk about the car’s attributes and concludes by giving them a stern order “Give me an ad without any nonsense”. The ad ends with: “The no-nonsense car” tagline, as the crestfallen duo cancels their trip.
Description: Version 2: The same two dudes have another brilliant idea: A long rough road, a chopper, Fusion, a pretty girl criss-crossing her way through the traffic… Stop! The boss is unimpressed again. He halts them mid-way and goes on to tell them about the Fusion’s unmatched features. He again concludes by an arrogant statement: “Drop the girl and the chopper. Keep the car… ummm (thinks) and the road.” The screen is again filled with the Fusion, the tagline scribbled alongside it on the screen. The duo crest-fallen yet again!

My Take: Seems the creative guys couldn’t actually come up with a no-nonsense idea for the commercial and were forced into making an ad out of reality! Jokes apart, the first sentence I blurted out after seeing both these ads was: “Wow! Some ideas!” No brand-ambassadors to inflate the market price, no false claims, no un-necessary jazz and no desperation involved! JWT churned out a clear-cut, blunt commercial. The message in the bottle is clear: the car will get the cash registers ringing with only its distinguished features, barring all other nonsense (a rude reminder for other complacent car makers who, till now, swore by enviable locales!). The beginning of a new era in modern-age car ads? Time will tell all…

I guess that is all I have time for now… Hope you have a wonderful week.

Dedicated to mom and dad… blood is surely thicker than water.

2006-08-14T17:28:00.000+05:30

“God couldn’t be there with every child, so he created parents…”

Sitting alone in my room this late into the night leaves in reminiscing about the days gone by. Ma and dad, I can’t even begin to describe how much you mean to me.

My dad lost his mom, my grandma, when he was just 2 years old. So a childhood without a mom’s protective cocoon taught him what takes others no less than an entire lifetime to learn. Though his dad, grandpa, loved him more than any father could ever love his son… the lack of motherly affection (that only and only a mom can afford to give) left a never satiable longing for ‘mother’s love’. To worsen things, we lived in a joint family and dad spent his early days looking onto mothers who woke up their kids from slumber only to make them drink yet another glass of milk, while dad spent days without even tasting a single drop of the white liquid (grandpa was too busy with business… was the sole caretaker.). Now, an obvious aftermath of a tough childhood was that pa vowed to make the life of his children ultra-comfortable and full of love. Now as his offspring, I can proudly confer the title of the ‘World’s Best Dad’ on him (yeah, yeah. you must be thinking that every kid says that and it’s a quotidian notion, but really, my paterfamilias is different.). A few things that I miss about him after having shifted to Delhi are-

Driving me all the way to the school before an exam, while I tried mugging a few more facts on the seat alongside his in the car.
Comforting me after each of our quarrels, even when I was usually the one at fault.
Our post-midnight discussions on anything ranging from my school problems, to debating, to business issues, to politics, to tuitions, to family, to friends… he was my best pal!
His high b.p. when I used to drive his car while he sat nervously on the passenger seat, tightly clutching the dashboard with white knuckles!
Our importunate phone-addiction… calling him at work for trifle matters. It might have irked it at times, but he never showed.
His short-temper! Thanks to that, the world seems like a calm place, and people easy to handle! Cause handling him was the toughest! Also, he has unmistakably passed on his short fuse to me, in my genes ;)
The sudden softening of his expressions during an argument when he saw the slightest hint of hurt in my eyes.
His foregoing personal comforts to make sure we siblings had a comfortable childhood.
His priceless advice on anything under the sun!
His wisdom and grace and eloquence and erudition… do more men like him exist???
The glint of tears in his eyes when I was leaving for the US of A / packing for my 3 year stay in Delhi.
The pride in his eyes when I used to tell in that I topped in so and so subject / class.
His constant encouragement and those pep talks…
His fair and unbiased ways.
Our lovely Sunday family evenings.
His pats on my back.
His half-hour long prayers at amer-fort, while I just stood there waiting for him to get over.
His political acumen! From questions like ‘Dad, what’s the whole deal with Narendra Modi and the Gujarat riots?’ at lunch to ‘Which party do you think is better for India and why: BJP or Congress?’ over dinner… I miss those times!
Our shared laughs over ‘The great Indian laughter challenge’!
And most of all, I miss how ‘I’ felt around him… protected and special…

Truly a man blessed with a heart of gold. And interestingly, I’ve learnt one more fact about him in the past one year that I spent away from him- He can give VERY explicit instructions! Sample this-

Dad: Bitiya, independence day is inching closer. You try and stay indoors as much as possible.
Me: I know dad, I know. I’m not a small baby you see, I’m 19 now.
Dad: Beta no matter how old you get, you’ll always be my small daughter to me and I’ll keep guiding you, whether you like it or not.
Me: I know dad. But I can take care of myself now.
Dad: Listen, and this is an order, I want you to stay indoors till the 15th. No outings, no movies, no friends. If the need be, at the most you can go to your college. And then later straight back home. Avoid all public places like theatres, multiplexes, the metro station, etc……...yadda yadda yadda…

…………… you get the idea!
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So this is my dad… Now a little something about mom.

As a child I always thought that my mom was the prettiest lady on the face of this planet! With her white (nearly!) skin, perfectly arched eyebrows, hourglass figure, long lustrous hair and all. But soon I realized that she was much much much more than just being pulchritudinous (did I add sufficient number of ‘much’s??). The early memories of my life are sprinkled memories of her nursing me, cooking all sorts of cuisines for us so we never had to eat out, smiling warmly at my achievements, scolding me for my misdeeds (at times! not that I gave her much reason to complain!), waking me up in the morning for school (everyday for 12 long years!), teaching me social science and the dreaded math, etc etc etc.

Now a few things I miss about her:

Her waking me up in the morning! No matter how hard the alarms try, they never manage to wake me up! (courtesy: the snooze button! I keep pressing it without even realizing!)
Her delicious food! All other food in this world sucks! Well, not all… but a great part of it!
Her soothing words which never failed to ease my frayed nerves.
Her calls for truces while dad and I fought away in the living room, screaming at the top of our lungs!
Her constant efforts to make room for my umpteen books… space always fell short! Now my books are all piled up in a mould in my room here in Delhi!
Our fun ‘Miss Universe / World Contest on t.v.’ evenings!
Our melodramatic fights (if any! we rarely fought.).
Her insights into anything and everything!
Her incessant insistence that I consumed all 3 meals in a day, and that too with atleast two glasses of milk! Gluttony!
Her hot coffee on exam days to keep me awake through the night.
Her famous dal makhani, rajma and pasta! (I know I have talked about food earlier, but it’s just that these three items deserved a special mention!).
Her helping me with my packing (and the unpacking bit too!)! Now a task that took me 15 minutes earlier, with her around, eats up 2 whole hours!
Her advice on what would look good on me while buying clothes.
Our girlie talks and the saloon trips!
‘Bad-people’ bashing! (confused? i intended so!)
Her tantrums on seeing me on the phone for too long! (but now I see it was for my own good!)
How she made sure that my brothers didn’t pester me with the loud idiot-box noises during my exams! (Bhais’! Nothing against you! I was childish and immature! Infact another post in the pipeline especially dedicated to you two!)
Our twaddles in the kitchen, while she cooked & I sat and talked.
Her supportive attitude.
Her optimism!
Her smiley demeanor and light moods.
Her reassuring smile.
Our evening walks to loose weight! (mom, please don’t kill me for putting this up here!)
Her habit of spending all the money at hand buying things for us three, while she came home without even a single addition to her wardrobe or assets. Selflessness at its primary best!
Her check-ins into my room on seeing my lights on late at night, to take the book from my hand and put it on the side table and cover me with a blanket.
Her persistent ‘learn to cook!’ nagging.
Her unconditional love.
Her oiling my mane and braiding my pigtail till until a few years back.
Our chole-dal-poori breakfasts.
Her occasional fits of anger that instantly drove her point home.
Dressing ‘up’ for family occasions.
Her de-motivation tactics to keep me away from junk food, and then later showing up with two large take-away bags of McDonalds that exude delectable aromas!

And many other things that are implied for any mom! Just wanna say… mom you are special and beyond compare!

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Ahh…folks, I miss our times together! But hey, as always there is a brighter side to things, my missing you two made me write this post! Would have never said these things on your face! Also, I’m finally getting to face the world on my own… which makes me appreciate the fact even more that you guys have actually done A LOT for me. Now folks, sit back, relax and let your penumbra (read: daughter) prove herself to you!

P.S. My adorable brothers, I reiterate the fact that you two will also see a post dedicated to you soon.

Solitude vs Loneliness

2006-08-12T18:28:00.000+05:30

Solitude, by far, is a more ‘positive’ term than loneliness. Having gone through both these spells, I think I can do a pretty accurate analysis of the expressions for the good of others.A sententious overview:

‘Solitude’ refers to the state of being alone and the capacity to still enjoy the (intentional) lack of company.

‘Loneliness’ refers to a sad state which is a byproduct of dearth of friends or company.

Solitude is locking yourself in your room just to get away from the world and spend some quality time with yourself; to contemplate; to think; to realize what needs to be realized; to reconsider; to rejuvenate; to heal oneself. It’s almost always a result of personal whims. When does one feel the need for some solitude? After a break-up; a failure; before making an important decision; after a traumatic experience; a loners world… the reasons are umpteen and the list is endless.

Loneliness, on the contrary, is something that’s forced down our throats. An importunate condition, a gall issue. We never decide to be lonely ourselves… circumstances make that decision for us. Loneliness, in its worst form, leads to drastic changes in a person’s life, attitude and outlook. But in milder forms, it can have temporary repercussions that are usually forgotten overtime. What leads to loneliness? A bad temperament, failure, bile, a calamity, or basically any other thing that repels people away from us. Temporary repercussions? Lower levels of self worth and self-esteem, excessive drinking and smoking. Simple remedies: A good jog, a new hobby, blind idiot box worship, shopping spree, internet surfing, sex, binge eating and a positive attitude. All this and presto! We’re back to normalcy in no time!

P.S. Smell fresh wounds? Dont get any ideas... this is just another addition in my already long list of spontaneous posts!

Creativity marred!

2006-08-02T10:18:00.000+05:30

Hi all! Now this post comes almost a month after my previous post… so I presume you all must be wondering where I have been. So this ‘comeback’ post should be an answer to all your queries…

The past month was hectic… actually on second thoughts, ‘hectic’ would be an understatement (and I read somewhere that second thoughts usually make more sense than the first breeze of thoughts that cross our minds. But that’s a different story altogether and I’ll elaborate on that in my forthcoming posts!). Let me give you a sneak-peak into what I have been up to this past month: a rude reminder that holiday season is not eternal (sigh!), frantic packing, addition of crazy nomadic overtones to my persona, loads of traveling, I-miss-my-folks blues, crazy timings, sudden lifestyle changes, the inclusion of a morning walk into this lazy bum’s schedule and BAM, I open my eyes to a different life. How I miss those lazy mornings and worthless days (read: holidays)!

Now for the title of my post: creativity marred. This is a strange phenomena and I’m going to explain it with a series of questions (that would later suffice as the answer): Has a task ever intrigued you so immensely that you find yourself thinking about it quite often, infact so often that it would successfully give your lover a complex?!!? Have you ever experienced the sheer joy that’s derived every time you do this task? Have you ever felt that you’ve finally found something you love to do and would continue doing in the near future? And then have you are being suddenly pulled out of your normal course of life and forced to attune yourself to the changing times? And lastly, have you ever found yourself feeling like an amateur again when you finally sit down to do the task you were so proficient at doing earlier?

This is precisely what happened with me. I had fallen in love with blogging and was always brimming with ideas that would go on to make my next post… was always raring to pen down my views about everything under the sun and post it for the world to see. Then suddenly holiday season came to a halt and I had to take a detour to my crazy life. The metamorphosis took its toll on my zeal to write and I lost all interest in blogging. So yesterday when I sat down to write, my mind went blank and the incessant tick-tick-tick of my clock was the sole thought that clouded my brain. Kept mulling over what to write and finally after an hour, gave up on the idea. Then today I decided to give it another shot but again couldn’t think of anything concrete, so just decided to share what I have been going through. Now as I write this, I realize that I’ve finally managed to incorporate the changes well (that a life in the fast lane forces down your throat!) and am once again my organized self (an excellent time-manager FYI! Sorry if the immodesty irks!). Normalcy seems to be the perfect antidote to the damage done to my creativity! New ideas are already pouring into my mind, like a gush of water from a broken dam.

Take 1:
It’s a beautiful day,
The sun is on its way,
I feel the wind in my hair!
“Oh what a brilliant time to live life!”

Take 2:
It’s a beautiful day to soak up the sun!
Let’s get out there and have some fun!

These lines were inspired by t.v. commercials (let’s see if you can guess which ones!) and yeah, I know they doesn’t make much poetic sense, but I love them! So the dam is down, which means plenty of posts coming your way people… hold thy breath!

The most unusual award recipient DU has ever seen... ME! Nostalgia!

2006-07-03T02:14:00.000+05:30

So this is another brief flash of motivation that has got me writing (despite my incessant instructions to myself to complete the more important jobs at hand…like finishing up the book that I’m currently reading!). Another habit that seems to have set in is that now I usually write when the world is sweetly tugged away in their blankets…deep in slumber…i.e. at night…usually after midnight. Night offers what I crave for the most…solitude! Stillness instills peace.

Anyway, coming back to what I’ve thought of writing about today… Allow me to take you back in time (actually a trip down memory lane for me!)… the day is the 1st of March 2006, 9:30 in the morning. Delhi was regaining normalcy after an unusually long cold-spell…and people were once again out on the streets (not that they had ever mastered the art of staying indoors or anything!), enjoying the bright sun that now finally allowed them the luxury of shedding off their woolens! I was comfortably tugged in my sheets… sitting in front of the T.V…. with a cup of coffee and the morning’s newspaper… in my most casual attire… assuming that college was off today on account of some valedictory function… waiting patiently for the Finance Minister P. Chidambaram to come and announce the annual budget for FY2006. Now the newspaper told me that the ‘Government Of India’ had released the ‘Economic Survey Report 2005-2006’ and impatient as I can be, I got up to go to my colony’s ‘paperwallah’ to get myself a copy of the same. Now it just so happened that as I was getting up, my phone buzzed (only to startle me out of my wits!). It was a class-mate of mine informing me that today was the ‘NSS Valedictory Function’ and I was receiving a certificate for my services to the ‘National Service Scheme’… and also that I was already very late! Whoa… my dreams of a quite, peaceful morning came crashing down (much to my dismay) as I jumped out of bed, picked up my cell-phone + wallet and rushed to the college (without giving much thought to what I was wearing or how I looked… alas!). I also made it a point to stop by the ‘paperwallah’ to buy the copy of the survey. On my entire way to the college, I kept fretting about whether I’ll make it on time or not, but thankfully I stay only about 15 minutes away from the university…and did manage to reach there by 10 a.m.

I quietly entered the seminar hall and silently took a seat by my class-mate who had called earlier. Now it was only after she pointed out that I noticed how I looked…. I was wearing a scruffy black T-shirt (that didn’t really scream out ‘elegant get-up’) teemed up with my oh-so-casual grey pajamas… a copy of ‘The Economic Survey’ in my hand… with nothing but bathroom-slippers to cover my feet… and to make matters worse, I donned a shiny, oiled mane (don’t blame me… I’d intended washing my hair after the budget speech by the FM… which I anyway missed later!). My class-mate was a little taken aback on seeing me dressed so inappropriately for an award function and was about to ask me the reason for the same (cause it isn’t commonplace to find the sophisticated me in such a horrendous get-up, and that too on such an occasion!) but bit her tongue when I told her I wasn’t quite aware of this ‘suddenly-popped-out-of-nowhere’ function. Now they started announcing the names of the recipients of the certificates… Rohini Mittal… Akanksha Bannerjee… blah blah blah… and then finally the dreaded YASHIKA TOTLANI. Now I stood up, vowed not to make a fool of myself on stage, and confidently walked down the aisle with my head 60 degrees from the ground (till date I wonder how I managed to do that!). Our vice-principal Dr. Indu was handing out the awards and after a head-to-toe analysis of me, she finally managed to force a smile on her face (for the photograph ofcourse!) and handed me the certificate…CLICK… a click by the photographer… a ‘very’ bright flash, while I shamelessly flaunted my teeth… followed by a round of applause… and I’m off the stage! When I finally reached my seat… I looked up only to see our NSS convener Ms. Usha Singh (a lovely lady, by the way) staring at me in disbelief with her mouth slightly open and a quizzical ‘what-were-you-thinking?’ look in her eyes. I avoided her gaze and was one of the first ones to leave the seminar hall after the function got over (a run-away success, if you must know!).

Now this weird sequence of events didn’t stop me from enjoying a round of tea and samosas that followed the function (with the economic survey still tugged tightly under my arm) and I left the college with a smile on my face and a glint of naughtiness in my eyes! I’d actually pulled this off! A feat that about an hour ago seemed almost impossible to achieve! So to cut a long story short, I would conclude by pointing out that today I would surely qualify to be called ‘The most unusual award recipient DU has ever seen’ in it’s over a century long history!

Moral of the story: The student fraternity at DU can pull off almost anything coupled with a little self-confidence and grace. To substantiate my point… I would like to bring your to your attention the fact that not even a single student bothered raising an eyebrow on seeing my casual attire… Maybe they simple dismissed me as another case of a student not trying to disguise her true self under pretentious garments. Kudos to you guys… you rock!

Epilogue: Today I hold that historic photograph in my hand (my hair shine even brighter here… damn that bright flash! And the look on my face is worth a million bucks… futile attempt to suppress that naughty grin!) and feel my eyes moisten up with the memories of this and many other such incidents that, I believe, make one’s college experience all the more enriching and fulfilling. Masti ki paathshala…

Note to self: I notice my posts are getting longer with each passing day… have to be careful about not going ‘over-board’.

The Beautiful Game... An overdose of excitement!

2006-07-01T02:09:00.001+05:30

I just witnessed (on T.V. ofcourse!) the match that can safely be called ‘the king of all clashes’: Germany vs Argentina, battling it out to make it to the semi-finals of The FIFA World Cup 2006 currently unfolding in Germany. Now honestly I’m not a football-buff and ‘m not too familiar with the ‘terminology’ used there. But I still understand the game to the extent that I can thoroughly enjoy a match when I sit down to see one (courtesy: dad and bro)… And as I have just seen one such electrifying match, I have decided to pen down the excitement in the air while I’m still in the moment and can easily articulate my thoughts…

Note of caution: If you aren’t interested in football matches, this post might not interest you.

Now I knew that people (read:CNN) were calling this match ‘the final before the finals’ and also knew that this match would surely compel the most ardent of fans to leave aside even the most important of works and glue themselves to their televisions. And what a match it was…did live up to everyone’s expectations and proved to be a great watch!

The match started at 8:30pm IST and I couldn’t catch the first one hour (yeah, I know I missed quite a lot) cause I was busy ‘orkutting’ on the internet and had lost track of time (but considering that it went on for almost 3 hours…I can say I didn’t miss too much!). When I heard my brothers suddenly applauding in the adjoining room…I figured that someone had scored. Now this was before my youngest brother came running into my room to tell me that Argentina had scored (he was cheering for that team!) and pulled me to watch the game with him. Reluctantly, I closed down my computer and obliged. And what followed was pure, unadulterated fun………

As I was supporting Germany (merely because they were the hosts and three time world champs), I wasn’t too happy about the fact that the opponents had scored. Soon thereafter, Klose(11) scored for Germany in what could be called his best goal yet in the world cup…something that bought the teams on level playing ground once again. A lot of close calls and good football later (‘energetic football’ maybe…but on second thoughts…nah…football has become synonymous with ‘energetic’) … the grueling, excruciating, agonizing 90 minutes came to an end (add 4 minutes of extra time to that), much to the relief of the players who were now sweating as if they’d just paid a visit to a furnace! That had brought the match to a draw 1-1 and what followed was another 30 minutes of great football (tie-breaker) where both the teams didn’t allow each other to score yet again (talk about good teams playing out as even better opponents!).

Now came the penalty shoot-out and the tension in the air was nearly tangible… This would decide which team would proceed on to the semi-finals and which one would have to see days of hard-work go down the drain… The free-kicking started and, slowly but surely, the tension overshadowed the faces of the players… Now I wont test your patience by furnishing more finer details and simply tell you who won: The Mighty Germany won ‘the battle of all battles’ with a splendid score of 4-2 in the shoot-out (they have a great goal-keeper and I found myself gaping in amazement at his brilliance!) (much to the dismay of my brother!) while the German fans went ecstatic! Argentina’s players, now in the ‘denial-mode’, slowly recovered and reluctantly accepted defeat.

Now this didn’t come as a big surprise to me (the match was exciting though!) cause I’d already predicted sometime back the names of the two teams that would qualify for the mega-finals: Brazil and Germany. Till date, it seems like my prediction is gonna come true in the near future… But all the guessing and analysis apart, for now, I just wanna sit back, relax and devour ‘the beautiful game’ in full swing…

So this was it: three time world cup champions Germany had beat two times world cup champions Argentina in the penalty shoot-out round. One more glance at the idiot-box and I see the faces of some Argentinean players drenched in tears as reality slowly dawns down on them… german fans proudly waving their flags in the crowds… shouting slogans that I couldn’t comprehend… agony and ecstasy at the same time… a dramatic end to this season’s most anticipated match (well…next only to the grand finale)………………………………….…………………………………………….…... all followed by a furor of celebration in my living room ……………..(with the exception of my youngest brother who’s still sitting with a swollen, disappointed face!) !!!

P.S. If you don’t enjoy football, but still decided to read the story and got bugged reading this, don’t worry, I don’t think I’ll be writing about football matches again. It’s just this one time that I truly felt like replicating the magic!

A Figment Of My Imagination...

2006-06-29T00:17:00.001+05:30

BLOGMANIA GRIPS NORTH INDIA
Phenomenal increase in the number of bloggers

28th June 2006: The past one-week witnessed a phenomenal increase in the number of bloggers in north India. While Delhi recorded a figure of 3 million new bloggers in the past 7 days, the other states weren’t far behind with approximately 2.5 million new bloggers respectively in their kitty. This growing trend has all the hallmarks of a revolution and cyber-experts and analysts believe that this might prove to be very profitable for website owners and cyber-entities.

A considerable portion of the blogger’s pie comprises of the student community, who seem to be the most actively involved in this pursuit. Sites that offer free blogging services, like blogspot.com and myblog.com, are on a roll with students hogging these sites in their quest for ‘free islands’ on ‘cyberland’. Yashika, a student at Delhi University, says “I’m glad to have finally found a platform to put forth my views about anything ranging from personal experiences to global issues. And the fact that whatever I post will be eternally preserved in the ‘reservoir of blogs’ gives me a sense of contentment and a feel of the 21st century! In addition, this is like an impetus that fuels my creative side and results in a wide-spectrum of blogs.” She seems to be voicing the opinions of millions of bloggers out there who now have a new object of affection.

Now the flip side to the issue is the growing number of addicts who try to lose themselves in the maze of the confusing corridors of blogs and seclude themselves from the rest of the world. Psychoanalysts believe that such steps are prompted by feelings of insecurity and poor self-esteem. But apart from that, there are no apparent disadvantages of this creative activity.

So keeping in mind the skyrocketing figures, it can safely be concluded that blogging is here to stay!

Disclaimer: The above article is just a figment of my imagination and is not aimed at anyone in particular whatsoever. The facts and figures are all fictitious and nowhere related to the ground realities.

(And a warm welcome to Priyanka and Neha on the blogging bandwagon! I dedicate this article to you guys!)

The Day of Umpteen Reflections

2006-06-27T03:48:00.001+05:30

It’s 3:30 at night and I cannot put myself to sleep. Insomniac you will say? Not quite. This seems like an obvious after-effect of a very eventful day. Eventful? Yeah. Let me elaborate…

The day started with a phone call to a very dear friend who had been out of touch for quite a while now (yeah Neha, I’m talking about you hon!). And soon after I hung up, I found myself reflecting over an often-ignored (deliberately?) fact of life: in this fast paced life of ours, we often overlook the unmatched pleasures that the small joys of life can afford us. This seemed like one such joy! A hearty conversation with an old friend the first thing in the morning…..heaven! Better than starting your day with a cup of hot, steaming coffee and a newspaper in your hand (and headlines that read as: “Indian companies dominate the Forbes 500!” Hahaha…gotta get a grip on this wild imagination of mine…no holds barred…hahaha! My fascination with the corporate sector manages to creep into my text as well these days!)

The day proceeded in it’s normal fashion…giving no clues of what lay ahead of me. The lull before a storm? Surely! (Wait…‘storm’…an overstatement maybe!) Now the news that made this day stand out of the bunch came in the evening. I got to know that I’d made it to the admission list of the exam I’d appeared for about a week back, en route my quest for admission to a premier institute. Now this made my day because I’d assumed the odds to be against me…it was a classic case of 913 candidates fighting it out for just 17 seats. And the fact that I’d made the cut gave me a sense of elation!

Now what followed was a series of phone-calls to my near and dear ones. Under normal circumstances you’d assume this was a measure to spread the joy. But my case was different. I was calling them up to seek advice…. advice regarding whether to join the course or not! Crazy you’d say…but whoever said I was predictable and sane 24x7???

Now this exercise of seeking advice threw new light on the character traits of these beloved people, precisely the reason that etched this day onto my memory. Some came out as surprisingly brilliant career councellors, while others as pyramids of laughing goo! Some proved their worth as a confidant, and others shared their inside views with commendable frankness. (The people referred to here are very much aware of whom I’m talking about! So no more explanation on this front!) Now after hours of catching up on the phone, I hung up with a grin on my face. At around half past midnight, I found myself in a very reflective mood again, amidst the solitude of my room. I was reflecting about the days gone by, the days that can now safely be called the foundations of these strong bonds I cherish so fondly today. I was reflecting about the times spent with these precious individuals, each of whom is special in their very own way. From the days of carefree ignorance…to the days where I felt a need for some serious self-actualization; these people have stuck by me through thick and thin. Today I express my gratitude towards all of them for standing by my side when I most needed them! I wanna thank them for their unrivalled contributions towards making me what I am today.

Wow…this has been more random than I thought it would be! Gotta wind up now cause if I don’t sleep right away, I’ll shortly witness the first rays of the sun filtering through my window coupled with the chirping of birds! If you’ve read this far, I assume you don’t possess the attention span of a three year old and are willing to read what I have to say! Read on and who knows, you might just end up learning a thing or two from my blogs!

Well this seems like fun...

2006-06-23T00:36:00.000+05:30

A big hey to you all! This is my first stint at blogging and I'm pretty unsure about the degree to which I wanna allow this wide world to get a glimpse of the life of this 18 year old! A dear friend of mine knocked this idea into my head and I must admit that the prospect of an uninterrupted flow of thought on cyber-space for all to view did sound interesting. So here I am, typing away spontaneously without giving much thought to where this is going! Now without further ado, I'll set the ball rolling by starting with a brief intro about myself (an endlessly alluring task): A commerce student at Delhi University whose eyes shine bright with the dreams of a glorious future...a person who was born into a conservative family, something that didnt stop me from breaking the glass-ceiling and venturing into previously untouched territory...a rebel by nature with an inexplicable fascination with defying the conventional and with an insatiable hunger to redefine the way things work. That's just a brief overview to the kind of person I am...completely unpredictable and just when you think you've got me figured, the season is already changing! Go figure! Well...seems like I'm off to a good start. The rest will follow soon. Till then, adieu!