Whatever Me

Lets Glorify Housewives!

2012-02-18T17:42:00.000+05:30

For a change, feminists and modernists need to realise that the role of housewife is bigger in a family, as compared to earning money.

In the same breath, let us understand that the money earner is not the provider of the family. The housewife provides for the family as well. She provides for the smooth running of the house. She provides time to the kids, teaching them values, mother tongue, familiarity to ethnic and cultural roots, festivals and many such soft education.

In the guise of independence and equal rights for the woman folk, there is an increasing propaganda against being a housewife, and instead in being financially independent. There are visible widespread efforts to demean the aspiration to become a good housewife.

Even a lot of mothers, under the influence of television serials, women magazines, that glorify & glamourise working women, indoctrinate their girlchild with ideas of becoming financially independent. The child is not given a choice by explaining both the sides. She grows up shying away from being a housewife.

I dare say that you guys are completely mis-directed, misled and therefore taking the wrong approach to the right objective. You will end up missing your objective by miles in the long run.

We need equal rights for women. Attrocities against women need to be abolished. Dowry should be insulting to the male ego. There are many other woman issues that need redressals.

All of the above can be fought without de-selling the concept of housewife. It cannot come at the cost of our families, which provide upbringing to the future generations.

Arguments like joint ownership of property, dividing the monthly net income on the salary date, education and awareness of the role of housewife among male kids as well as men should be taken forward.

In Assam, it is insulting to even think of dowry. The bride has to wear everything given by the Groom's family on the day of the marriage. Men only marry when they have the guts to take care of the housewife. Similarly, bloggers and media should stress on this fact, and make it shameful for men to demand dowry.

The moot point is that the glory of being a good housewife should not be sacrificed in the guise of women independence, safety and well-being.

Girls and boys, from an young age, should be taught about their roles as husband and wife. Boys need to appreciate the critical role that girls play and vice versa. At the same time, parents need to be told about their role of being a facilitator, giving the kids all options to choose from. They should glorify the role of housewife, husband and the institution of marriage.

Marriage is another system, which is in urgent need of councel, education and parental advice. Whatever I learnt about marriage was from peers, observation and my basic instinct. Quite obviously, I turned a rebel, not having any belief in the age-old institution, ultimately making a few grave life changing mistakes.

There are many educated women going through a chaotic phase, having not married beyond the age of 27/28 years, or divorced in their early years of marriages. The chaos is primarily due to the lack of clarity of purpose, focus and priority about their role after marriage. The chaos is also because of the dis-integration of joint families into nuclear feather-less, support-less families. Partly this is due to uneven economic development concentrated around the metros/cities, and partly because of the previously mentioned lack of clarity.

I am very clear that a good housewife makes a home out of a house, a family out of cousins, a community with a distinct socio-cultural-ethnic identity, with great civic values, with pride of their mother tongue, their state and their country.

Let us glorify the role of a housewife. She is the mother nature. She gives life and a meaning to it. Let men just earn some money and pay the electricity, gas and insurance bills.

Are we better Indian Citizens after Marriage?

2012-02-13T08:23:00.002+05:30

Its about two very young foreign tourists whom I saw cycling through the busy streets of Andheri, Mumbai; and one answer to a question that I had asked one of my married friends, who is also a father.

These two random incidences gave me a flash, explaining one of the factors why things happen the way they happen, in India. It gave me some answers to my curiosity about our over-arching corruption debate, the in-decisions in public life, the in-numerous pending court cases, the infinite delays in various infrastructure projects etc.

My married friend, who is a father of a very beautiful 4 years old daughter had said, "I want my daughter settled happily with a good husband" to my question, "what is your sole personal ambition?" My first reaction was, "That is really sweet, but what is your aim either for yourself or for the society at large?" That left him thinking... Then I realised that this is not a singular emotion.

This is the generic emotion of an Indian father (and mother). Indian parents feel responsible to provide for their children for their lifetime. Even though, the responsibility decreases after their children marry, yet it might be a tad too late in the day.

Lets compare this emotion to a father's agony and embarrassment in the United States of America, when his children are staying with him even after they have turned 18. Children are supposed to fend for themselves by the time they are 18. Parents don't feel the blame, if their children are taking loans or doing a menial job for their further studies. Parents don't feel the blame if they are not settled and married to a respectable family.

This is a paradigm difference in the way Americans (most of the west) therefore perceive responsibility after they marry and have children.

Those tourist kids cycling through Mumbai or that British girl (I once met in Diu) travelling India for the past 11 months are the bi-product of that culture. It breeds an independent attitude and an ability to take risk even among children, unlike India where both parents and children are dependent on each other.

Parents' life revolve around trying to provide the best education (donations and dowry included) and children's life revolve around seeking permission and grants from their parents. It is their birthright to be dependent on their parents in India.

If we juxtapose this argument to the fact that married men and women manage India, its infrastructure, its corruption, and all the related decisions, we would be able to visualize why we are so lenient in our public lives. All decisions that affect public life are politically sensitive, involve larger than life egos and have multiple and dangerous impacts. They require one to be brave and take risks. Our culture and family responsibilities restrict us to take these risks.

Adding to that is the scientific fact, as mentioned in one of the most intelligent book that I have come across - Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, that both risk detection and risk avoidance are not mediated in the thinking part of the brain, but largely in the emotional one. The consequences are therefore serious. It means that rational thinking has very little to do with risk avoidance.

Which doctor would setup his practice in a village when he knows that he may have to pay huge donations for his son's MBBS? Which bureaucrat would risk his responsibility towards his family by going against a corrupt politician? It may even be true vice versa. Who would act as a witness to a crime? How can one let go of huge sums of money when a higher price can fetch a better husband for his daughter?

Even the corporate world faces the symptoms of this lack of risk appetite. Who would want to lose a promotion by disclosing the truth, or by accepting one's mistake, or by taking responsibility.

We have anomalies to this fact such as Mr. Narendra Modi and Ms. Mayawati, that further proves my analysis right. They are individuals and therefore have greater appetite for risks in their own rights.

If we look at the effective and popular social activists, we would see the same argument taking shape. Medha Patkar is divorced. Anna Hazare never married. I don't think Vinoba Bhave was married.

Baba Amte was married, but his wife Sadhana Amte actively participated in her husband's social work with equal dedication. Importantly, he belonged to a very wealthy family with different and evolved values system as compared to that of the masses.

My POV is that the ability to take risks severely decreases with marriage and children. Marriage and children make us selfish to our family, thereby detaching us from the responsibilities as Indian citizens. It is ingrained in our culture in the way we perceive responsibilities, risks and therefore take decisions in life.

Government policies, judiciary and other administrative functions should take note of this understanding and accordingly write policies, make regulations and enact laws.

Large scale corruption, fear of tough decisions etc can only be managed with this POV in perspective.

We Parents!

2012-02-03T15:57:00.001+05:30

We are at a annual day function itching to take pictures of the beautiful performances. But quite a lot of parents are clicking pictures left, right, centre, top and bottom.

What would they say when their kids would find out that they took photographs?

Yesterday, Ruhi was very specific reading the circular given to her by her school. Dont click photographs, she said. She knows me to be the passionate photographer and her mom to be trigger happy on her iphone. So she was more particular with her instructions.

I am sure every kid knows that photography and videography are not allowed in this annual day function.

But we parents rarely are examples to our kids. Who cares?

Word of Mouth, then MMS and Now Word of the Mouse - Its all about ideas that went Viral !

2011-12-13T01:11:00.000+05:30

Viral marketing, viral advertising or more pertinently the surprise of a 'million hits on facebook/youtube' basically refers to a creative output that spreads like wild fire and reaches millions of us in a very short period of time.

A creative output that encourages a certain set of the society having high social networking potential to share it.

A creative output that convinces the other certain set of the society having the curiosity to view or experience it.

With Youtube, Facebook and Twitter, viral marketing has become more pronounced in our day to day lives. Recently we saw the Flash Mob video at the CST Railway station, Mumbai. Please click here to experience the video if you haven't already. It has clocked 1,745,676 views as I write this blog.

Then we have seen Sonu Nigam taking advantage of the viral "Why This Kolaveri Di" to promote his son with a very methodically edited video of his son singing Kolaveri Di. The original video has clocked 21,839,944 views, not considering the other youtube edits of the same video. Even the Sonu Nigam engineered video has garnered 2,877,936 views.

A few generations back, viral ideas travelled through word of mouth, then I remember them travelling through MMSes, now they travel by the WORD OF MOUSE !

Speaking of word of mouth, the best example of an idea going viral, outside of the virtual world, is of course 'Harry Potter'. This series of books written by Ms. J. K. Rowling has been translated into 65 languages and has sold more than 325 million copies in more than 200 territories around the world. The Harry Potter films produced by Warner Bros. Pictures have grossed $3.5 billion worldwide at the box office.

MMSes as a medium for spreading virals also attained huge eyeballs and gossip. As we know, stories of two bollywood movies - DevD and LSD were based on the phenomena.

Do you remember the Ashmit Patel - Ria Sen MMS clip? It has again re-surfaced on youtube and is gaining popularity. You guys have to hunt for the link yourself on this. You can click here to hear an interesting news on it though... Hai Rabba, Ashmit! kuch to sharam karo..!

MMS virals were more of pornographic content, probably because MMS travelled from peer to peer and the mobile device is extremely personal. It was like how many men read a classic novel before going to bed alone!

Whatever said and done, pornography has limited scope in the society. MMS was soon bowled over by the social networking websites. Today is the generation of Youtube and FaceBook. And here comes the word of Mouse!

Some of the interesting epidemic that the mouse had spread:

Charlie bit my finger - again ! (395,738,061 views)

David After Dentist (103,648,602 views)

Talented Fat kid Dancing to Dhinka Chika (1,541,922 views)

A blog that has received over 2700 comments and over 1 million page-views - An open letter to a Delhi boy written by an amateur cum 'celebrity-now' blogger Shahana Nair Joshi

Going by these phenomena, it is obvious that the dream of every brand manager is to have at least one viral campaign in their careers. The biggest question still remains, how to create a viral campaign?

There are quite a few brand campaigns that have gone viral on youtube. Click on this line to sample a few.

The new Nokia Lumia - The Amazing Everyday video is going viral as we speak. It has clocked over a million page views already. 1,034,928 views to be precise. It has surpassed Samsung's "The Next Big Thing" Galaxy S II Commercial. Going by this, can I pressume that Microsoft has finally arrived into the mobile OS market? Perhaps, yes. Perhaps, no.

There is also hope for the old popular commercials to go viral today. If the brand has the ethos intact, why not re-popularise the old commercials.. The 1984 Apple Macintosh commercial is a case in point. It has received many millions of views. One of the many youtube uploads of the video has garnered 8,797,112 page views.

This world of viral marketing is the new challenge for every creative mind in the advertising and marketing industry. There are no easy answers or theory, just like there is no theory behind why Lady Gaga has the maximum number of followers on Twitter, followed by Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian (can you believe this?) and Britney Spears.... I cant name the line-up. It is gross. But it is a fact. Is beauty really skin-deep?

Honestly, designing a viral campaign would mean the final stamp on knowing not only consumer behaviour well, but also a generation to its bone marrow.

Till the time I can't create, let me just spread.

What is my Nationality Proof !!

2011-12-02T11:33:00.001+05:30

One fine day I receive an email from the HR department saying,

"This is to bring to your urgent attention that your nationality details are not updated in our records. This is extremely important from a compliance perspective. Please provide one the following information urgently and not later than November 23, 2010."

!!! The keyword that struck me was 'one of the following information'. It then occurred to me that we don't have one document to validate our Indian nationality. Or the Government is unable to communicate one document as the only citizenship document.

I also realised that we commonly hear questions like 'which are the citizenship proof documents that are required to apply for a passport?' But there are hardly debates on a mandatory piece of document to prove citizenship.

The most accepted definition (Marshall - 1965) of citizenship is that it comprises three elements - civil, political and social element. The civil element refers to the right of the individual - the freedom of speech and faith, the right to own property and to justice. The political element is portrayed as the right to directly or indirectly participate in the exercise of political power. The implementation of this right pertains to political representation. The social element covers the whole range from the right to economic welfare & security, to the right to live the life of a civilized being to the standards prevailing in the society.

A unique nationality proof would go a long way in ensuring a just implementation of all the three elements for the authorised citizens of the country.

Germany has the German ID card as the primary proof, apart from the German passport that presumes German nationality for assistance from German consular officials abroad. Same is with Sweden where the tangible proof of Swedish citizenship is the national passport or the national identification card.

As for the United States of America, the certificate of US citizenship is the only document issued by the US Government as proof of US citizenship.

British citizenship may be proved by a British passport, a Certificate of Entitlement to Right of Abode, a British consular birth certificate, a nationality status letter or a Certificate of Registration issued by the Home Office. It may seem 4 documents, but actually there are all related to various types of citizenship.

In Singapore, prior to 1965, even aliens could work there as long as there was someone employing them. However, they too introduced work permits and travel restrictions. Non-citizens could no longer work and had to apply for work permits.

Likewise, most developed countries have a clear policy on citizenship proof, which India seems to lack.

The information that I had to provide to prove my nationality was 'one of the following':

Voters ID Number
Passport number, Date of issue of passport and Date of Expiry
Copy of Domicile certificate

Voters ID card or Electors Photo Identity Card(EPIC) is an identification card issued by the Election Commission to all eligible voters, to enable voter identification on election day. However, the irony is that the voters ID card is NOT essential for voting. The only requirement is the presence of your name in the list of registered voters i.e., electoral rolls or voter list of your polling booth and an identity proof.

Passport is perceived to be document required if there is a need or capability to travel out of India. Penetration of passport in the rural areas therefore, is almost negligible.

A Domicile/Residence Certificate is generally issued to get college admissions and jobs in the Government services. It is a proof that the person bearing the Certificate is a Domicile/Resident of the State/Union Territory.

To add to the fluidity of the whole process, it was perfectly okay if I didn't have any of the above three documents. I was given a form that I could fill in. I had to put it onto a stamp paper with a sign from the magistrate. Thats it and I am a citizen of India to enjoy all rights of a citizen!

With these accepted procedures, do we really know our citizens? For a better understanding of its citizen, and optimum utilization of tax income for the citizenry in terms of education, employment, medical facilities, social security etc, it is absolutely essential to have an unique identification document or number for each of the citizens. This document should also be mandatory to avail of any citizenship rights.

This document can not only be used for identification but also for tracking every public service that one uses. It can also be used to make family trees and progression of a culture/community. It can act as a deterrent for foreigners to settle in India.

Today, the cultural fabric of Assam, for instance is endangered because of the continuous immigration of the poor Bangladeshi population. It is very easy for a Bangladeshi family to claim Indian citizenship by being in Assam for a few months. One of the various ways is to get caught in a minor theft cause. Once there is police history, voters ID card comes next. Voter ID as we can guess, is a political instrument, which can bring in political corruption. It can one of the cheapest tactics of vote-bank politics.

Logo of Aadhaar Project

The Aadhaar project of the Government of India seems to be the saviour, but it has many weaknesses. The pros are:

It intends to deliver unique identification numbers (12 digits) to every resident including the homeless and transgender. It is been interestingly popularized as ‘Aam Aadmi Ka Adhikaar’.
Even if people do not have required documents, they can apply for Aadhaar card. Individuals who already have an Aadhaar card can introduce residents who do not have any documents to establish identity.
It aims to facilitate easy verification, availing of Government or Private services, help welfare programmes reach intended beneficiaries and for serving as basis for e-Governance.
There would be rare duplication, as it is linked to demographics and biometric information - photo, 10 fingerprints and iris.
It is free of cost and the Government of India is bearing the total cost.

However, the biggest loophole is that it is being promoted as a voluntary scheme. It is not mandatory to get yourself registered for the UID. Secondly, it is not a proof of citizenship but is meant for all residents of India. This brings our argument to square one.

It is high time that the Aadhar project is made mandatory so that India can plan for equitable distribution of wealth, education, employment, medical facilities and social security procedures.

I flew Indigo today. They are the best.

2011-11-27T11:18:00.001+05:30

Just boarded my flight back to Mumbai after a wonderful evening at MICA, Ahmedabad. In my mind, I am thanking the MICA team for booking the tickets with Indigo Airlines.

Indigo never fails to surprise me with their brilliance. The crew, the hostesses, their marketing ideas, the in-flight announcements, their time adherence, their customer service... the list is endless. They know their business well.

No surprises that they are the most profitable airlines in a time when kingfisher has become pawnfisher with no money to pay for fuel.

So how Indigo pleased me this time...

Quite obviously, the hostesses were looking better than ever. They were wearing a hat that we normally see on international flights. And very pleasantly, they had the same stylish haircuts!
Most interestingly, they were wearing a cute badge on their left sleeves saying 'I am going international'. What a great communication idea to talk to existing customers! It could have said 'We are going international'. Most marketeers would have written it that way. But there is a reason why Indigo is also the best employer in the transportation industry. The 'I' factor will make every hostess will feel proud of the message and own the message which will positively affect their service standards.
Have you ever seen Sandwiches photographed like this? A top cross-section view. The in-flight
mag is top class and no-nonsense. 1 page each for veg and non-veg food, two pages for snacks, two pages for munchies, one page for juices/drinks, two pages for full page ads clubbed together, 4/5 pages on Indigo merchandise, and 3 pages about Indigo. Interestingly they talk about various awards inside a simple trophy mnemonic in the merchandise pages in an unobtrusive way.
I was delighted to hear 'please do not forget to save your work that you might have done on your laptop before switching it off'. How do they arrive at such great ideas when every other airlines are simply being so usual and normal?

Thank you Indigo for a great flight. We have just landed in Mumbai. I will surely show my gratitude by traveling with Indigo every time.

All the best.

Organise an event to learn how to be patient !

2011-11-15T14:58:00.001+05:30

Dr. Mallika Kondoli
performing Sattriya Nritya

13th November 2011 has become a past tense. I feel awkward. My mind was too used to considering it in the future; a future that was approaching super fast to a no-station land.

Today, there is an emptiness due to its absence. Pre-13th November was a period of many emotions. There was optimism, pessimism, anxiety, camaraderie, loneliness, anger, frustration.The only thread of all the overflow was patience which helped me keep my sanity and self motivation intact.

Srimanta Sankaradeva
(1449-1568)

A few of my friends and I had organised 'Saaneki - Indelible Impressions of Assam' at the Experimental theatre, NCPA, Mumbai on the 13th of November 2011. It was a Assamese cultural event with 35 artists being invited from Assam for 4 nights, and 10 different song/dance items to be executed in 2 hours 30 minutes.

Our plan was grand. Grand beyond us. Our wish list was impractical given our nine-to-nine Mumbai jobs. Cost was much higher than what we could self fund. The agenda was too large in scope to clearly fathom its depth. We were few and inexperienced.

Entrace to Saaneki at NCPA
Mukha, Japi and Gamocha

What we had was our love for Assam and the Northeast, our grief that the rich Sattriya culture is unknown to the rest of India and our resolution to give back to our roots, our identity.
August is when Monali (my better half) and I, first thought of Saaneki. We wanted to create awareness about our great 15th century Saint and socio-cultural reformer Srimanta Sankaradeva.

We called ourselves
Kuhipaat Foundation

The initial plan was to put up the event on 16th October - His Janmotsav. Later we had to shift the date to 13th November and thankfully so because the venue that we got was the most prestigious NCPA, Nariman Point. The venue search undoubtedly was one of the most anxious times that we had spent. I was always hopeful, though.
We needed a venue, which would lend credibility to the program. Moreover, our target audience were people from outside the Northeast.

Simultaneously, we were deciding on the event name, and organiser team name. Designing of their logos. We were doing research on the program agenda. Sattriya culture developed and propagated by Srimanta Sankaradeva is too vast, classical and sacred. We needed to collect funds and sponsorships. We need to scout for talents in Assam who can perform in Mumbai and do justice to Sattriya culture. The list was endless.

Naam Prasang at Saaneki, NCPA

Every little thing that we had to accomplish gave us hopelessness in the beginning. We had to keep patience for things to fall in place. Be it the venue, artists, funds, event props, audience, media coverage and logistics. The only mantra was the thought that we have to keep working hard, be positive and think that we can make it happen.

Every night after office went till 2AM in the morning. Writing content for the leaflet, writing mails to probable sponsors and individual contributors, negotiations with performing artists.

Ram Katha by Mridusmita Das

As the event came closure, the tension was building up. Booking train tickets for the artists, hotel reservations, arranging transport etc were easier, we were actually tensed about the logistics inside the auditorium, once the program starts. How do we manage 12 different programs - the agenda had live programs, solo performance, group performance, songs, shraddhanjali to our dear Bhupen da, a prayer ceremony - Naam Prasanga.

Shraddhanjali to Dr. Bhupen Hazarika at Saaneki, NCPA

We kept working hard and we told ourselves to be patient. Today I firmly believe that if you have focus and keep working hard, the whole universe conspires to help you out of all your problems. We had three hands of God, helping us have a great professionally organised event.

First hand of God was our friend called Dezadd, who is one of the best floor managers of the country. We had casually told him to help us on the event day. There was no confirmation that he would actually come. But half an hour prior the event, he was with us. He reached and chaos went away. People today ask me, "Was it really your first event? It was so professionally done."

The second hand of God was the extremely intelligent Meiyang Chang. He cancelled his other appointments to be with us, half an hour before the event. In just 15 minutes, he adapted himself to all the Assamese words. He added grandeur to the event that we could never achieve in our very first event.

Meiyang Chang was felicitated with the
traditional Assamese Japi and Gamocha

The third hand of God was a friend of one of our team members - Mahan J. Dutta. He was George K. Antoney. He designed the lights. And I think it was just too fabulous. The photographs would tell you what I mean by writing 'just fabulous'.

So today, when I look back at Saaneki - the planning, the design, the logistics, the 'begging money' spree, the 13th of November, the accolades, the post event phone calls - I just take back one learning.

Have patience and keep working at it. Everything just happens. Sometimes it takes a bit more time, but it would happen nevertheless.

I take this opportunity to thank Meiyang Chang once again, Dr. Mallika Kondoli, Mridusmita Das, Rumi Talukdar, Mrigen Dutta, Gunindranath Ojah, Dezadd and George without whose participation, this event would have been a non-starter.
I thank Monali Bhardwaj, Mahan J. Dutta, Arindam Baruah, Dhruva Bordoloi, Sourik Datta, Leon Kaushik, Debashish Sarma and Sagar Saurav who worked tirelessly in various ways to organise this event.

I get surprised. Then I evolve..

2011-10-16T19:12:00.001+05:30

In 1997 when I dared coming to Delhi for a career, it was a super daring scene to see a woman driving a car. I missed a local bus once looking at an woman driving a foreign SUV.

It was a spinal chord turner. It was super sexy to see a woman in command. I used to wonder if they have two cars in the house, or if the husband is okay sitting in the passenger seat. I used to think, "Isn't that a paradigm shift of control"
By 2001, when I started my first job in Mumbai, it was still not too common to find women driving to offices. If a woman is driving to office, then she had that extra edge in the game of peer pressure and women liberation.

I was evolving. I have started accepting as normal, as a good sign of modernity. It was still a bit awkward for me to be in the passenger seat of a car driven by a female colleague.

Now, it is my 10th year in Mumbai and I have completely evolved.

Around the year 2001, I saw the first girl smoking and walking on the streets. Few of my friends used to smoke during my MBA days, but that was still mostly closed doors. Seeing a girl smoke in the street, in a chai ka galla was strangely mesmerising and disgusting at the same. Mesmerising because it was sexy. Disgusting because smoking is harmful and I knew that she would never be able to quit.

I once saw a mother telling her husband to keep the kids, then almost running to the side of the building to smoke. The husband busy on his phone could not stop the kids to run to their mother. You had to see the mother's face, being caught red-handed by her kids.

I used to practically ogle at women smoking, more so if she was pretty and looked innocent, trying to pretend the 'what's the big deal' attitude at the same time. It is pathetic to admit, but I felt kind of macho to be smoking with them. Whenever I would go for a chai, I would not be able to control my urge to smoke, if there was a girl smoking in public sipping tea all alone.

Soon, that too became a normal sight. It became just another man smoking beside me. However, I am still doubtful if I would be able to accept a smoker wife.

Back in 1997, it was a college secret for a couple to live-in. The girl would have a house on rent with her friends, but she would mostly sleep in her boyfriend's house. Or the vice versa. These relationships were the grapevine - discussed, abused, mocked in closed doors at every get-together in the absence of the co-sleeping friends.

I would have been very uncomfortable about living-in with my girlfriend. I would have to run away from my friends, become a loner with only my girlfriend beside me.

Today Supreme Court has recognised live-in relationships and with that we have evolved to accept it as something better than going for an arranged marriage with someone, one hardly knows.

I am in my second live-in relationship.

Then came the ubiquitous hot pants in around 2006. How could a girl wear such a short pant, was my first question. Today, it seems every 17 year old wear a hot pant when she is just meeting her friends, going to the shopping mall.

I swear that I can't be fantasizing about all these 17 year olds irrespective of the milky-ness of her thighs or the smoothness from the latest waxing session. It was mostly a sight of questioning the status quo. What's happening to the kids?

It's been a life of constant evolution. I have moved a thousand years ahead in just 10 years. I feel so far away from all my friends and cousins back in Assam. Whenever I visit my home town, I try to travel back in time to relate to every statement directed at me from my elders. I wonder how it will be for my parents if I get them to Mumbai to spend the rest of their lives.

Would they crib to despair and get restless due to the whole hopelessness of the situation?

I may be hopeful. They may be hopeless.

It was my day of Introspection

2011-09-20T23:40:00.002+05:30

Do you get this feeling of just running away into another world unknown? Today that was the mood of my day.

Naturally, it was my introspection day. A day that must save my days and my life.

As we grow being a toddler to a runner, we learn to ask questions, to absorb new sights, to ask for toffees by every minute, to play a new game and the list is endless. We go to school and collect new experiences. We go to college and learn to smoke, to drink, and of course, to woo girlfriends.

Then we start earning. We start hunting for the best job. We aspire to drive the best bike and then the best possible car.

This exponential series of adapting to and accepting new things, learning new tricks of the trade slowly but surely gets us all into the virtual realm of Maya. Maya that is addictive. Maya that is overwhelming.

One Sunday afternoon, I vividly remember my father saying, 'I want to stop having mutton'. Then I had asked, why on earth do you want to quit mutton. He said, I am completing a natural cycle of taking everything and then trying to leave everything. I thought, "whatever" and continued chewing the tasty liver.

Today I suddenly understand what he meant. I am starting on my next phase of life - the phase of giving up and giving back.

This is my 12th year of my professional life. 11th year of slogging in Mumbai.

I have already given up cold drinks, given up chocolates (almost), given up sweets (almost), trying to give up smoking (which perhaps would always be 'trying to'). Today, I feel like giving up Mumbai.

I don't mean the city. I mean the life. (unfortunately, the city and the life are conjoint twins)

We cant give up earning and the chaos that you have to go through to earn a decent life. But we sure can give up the crazy decibels, crazy traffic, crazy working hours, crazy cost of living, and the smoke filled, dust filled star-less sky.

It is also a time to give back. It is a time give back what I have learnt, what I have experience and what I have earned.

Its a time to give back the love that my parents showered. Would they ever come to Mumbai to stay with me. Never. So should I go back to Assam and be with them in their lonely times?

Its a time to give back to the society. To start counseling the youths to make a career. To help a bit to take Assam into an economic growth trajectory. To start contributing to culture, to preserve and promote it.

Did I get enough time to think clearly and to arrive at some resolutions. Of course, not. Mumbai hardly gives you that much personal space and time. I had another great busy day. Quite a lot of problem solving, delegation and management was done.

I perhaps need another day of Introspection !

We can be the Government !

2011-09-17T01:08:00.001+05:30

Everyone of us, who have migrated to metro cities from small towns and villages for work and prosperity, can probably relate to all the cribs that we often hear and make about our home states and state governments.

One of the Facebook comments read, 'Without a better Government, better policies, implementation and awareness, no one can develop the current condition of Assam till 2050... the Government is busy in making people fools...'

I also used to say that a few times till I could realize that Government is not essential to economic and social development.

Its definitely hard work and needs a lot of dedication, passion and sacrifice. However, we have to believe it strongly that economic and social development can happen without tax money and Government intervention.

We can be the Government ourselves!

The hypothesis is basic and straight-forward. An economy develops when there is growth potential for disposable income, which can circulate in the economy to provide for a cyclical growth. The more the disposable income, the faster the money circulates, the better is the economic potential towards growth. Secondly, with increased potential for disposable money in the economy, communities tend to spend more time for social, cultural and community development.

Any small idea that can contribute to disposable income in the short run or in the long run, is worth its effort towards development.

Well known economist Keynes had spoken about Govt. spending by paying the public to dig and fill up holes in the ground. When the public would get the money, they would buy and thus would increase money flow in the economy. That was his one of the solutions to get over the great depression of the thirties.

Mahatma Gandhi vision towards economic development was to help every village become a self-sufficient republic. Mr. Gandhi's economic policies were different from what Nehru instituted in the first five year plans. He spoke about self sufficient villages and not about big inefficient PSUs.

Each one of us working outside Assam or in Assam with knowledge, know-how and some money can fulfil Gandhi's philosophy by thinking about our villages and towns first to add economic value.

Adding economic value is not as difficult as it sounds. Let me illustrate few of the basic initiatives that each one of us can make an effort to take.

Whenever we visit our native place, we need to find out few hours to address school and college students about any topic that you think is of importance. It can be lecture on career counselling, self employment tips, dignity of labour, importance of time and the list can go on.
We can organise a get together in local clubs to increase awareness about mediclaim, life insurance, health insurance, mutual funds etc. This will not only improve lives of people who buys these instruments, but also help local youths who can become agents to sell them.
We can pay for college education in terms of the hostel fee and a monthly maintenance. If a student gets an admission into cotton college and we can contribute Rs. 2000 for the student, we are actually giving life to knowledge. We should simply focus on our home villages to find a worthy student.
Knowledge is the new currency of today. We can write blogs and also can contribute to the local newspapers and magazines to spread knowledge. We should write about agriculture, mid-size business ideas and models, increasing efficiency etc which can boost economic value addition.
We should create awareness about micro-finance possibilities. We have the initiative called 'Rickshaw Bank' that can be replicated for most of the low cost business ideas that small towns can easily execute. It is as simple as buying a rickshaw for a poor family and asking for Rs. 18 everyday for 18 months.
We can organise small events by calling artists and performers from Assamese villages and towns to cities like Mumbai. Even if we pay a nominal performance fee, the overall benefit is much higher to the society at large.
Open a question/answer page in Facebook where anyone can ask questions relating to the area of your expertise. If you are a CA, you can answer questions on tax, company accounting best practices etc.

There are numerous such ideas that each of us can initiate. The intention needs to be there to contribute in some way by spending few hours, one day a week. Once the intention is there, ideas are never-ending.

It is a humble request that everybody on the better side of life should think of contributing back to the society in the smallest way possible.

We can then be the Government. And we wont get the time to crib about the Government.

Are festivals festive for all?

2011-09-07T11:56:00.000+05:30

Last night, it was an elephant of crazy monotonous beating of drums that kept me awake till 2 AM in the morning.

It was worse when I woke up with an elephant headache from all the crazy monotonous beating of drums at 5 AM in the morning.

Effectively, devotion to Lord Ganesha made me sleep just 3 hours, and now I am in the office - angry and sleepy. I can assure that I wouldn't be less angry and less sleepy, if I was a devotee myself.

Everybody but the troupe of drum beaters and the group/family which is bringing the idol to their mandal, were clearly in deep agony. It was just too sensitive an emotion, to show it upfront on the face.

It is unfortunate that we lack civic sense, responsibility and sensibility towards our fellow citizens when we go about satisfying our personal urges to achieve happiness and contentment. From cutting a lane with a probable hope to reach the personal destination faster, to celebrating festivals without caring for the others in the society, we are just a selfish bunch of human beings.

Perhaps that is the reason why the Great Ganges is filled with filth, stink and germs. I have heard that the shops next to the ghats sell soaps and shampoos the most, and at a premium. All that matter to us is a dip in the Ganga for a few seconds to absolve ourselves from the sins. Then we spend hours in the bathrooms of our luxurious hotels with all the soaps and the shampoos to wash off all the filth, stink and germs.

Perhaps that is the reason why our public toilets are un-usable. Perhaps that is the reason why our asses may get a chewing gum attack in a public transport. And the list goes on...

Do we really know how to lead a community life? Do we know the meaning of a team player? Is that the reason why we are pathetic in all team games? (Cricket is not a team game!)

Phew!

Freedom from Fuel Hikes

2011-08-27T20:20:00.003+05:30

They say freedom is a state of mind, however fluid it may sound.

On second thoughts, it seems to me that it is intended to be fluid and philosophical. It is almost impossible to achieve, but everybody wants to achieve it nevertheless. It would only be a slight exaggeration if we say that we want freedom at almost every moment.

We need freedom from Fuel Hikes!

Last night when I asked "Kitna litre?" to the petrol station attendant after giving Rs. 200, he said "Do Aath". I said "wtf, only two litres of Petrol in 200 rupees". I was ignoring the .8 litre affected by the Bata price-tag mindset.

Freedom from fuel hikes cannot possibly mean expectation of the fuel price being the same. I cannot expect it to be the same till my next pay hike. Even if I work 24 hours to get the promotion this year.

Freedom from fuel hikes cannot possibly mean expectation of a vehicle that runs on water. If that becomes the case, we would need to have two monsoons. One monsoon in the winters for the BMC (municipality) to maintain the supply, even to drink! We can use paper for the other things.

Freedom from fuel hikes cannot possibly mean expectation of a day when we would have separate track for riding cycles. We cant expect to have a ban for single occupancy in personal 4-wheelers expecting reduced fuel demand, increased employment of drivers and increased pooling of cars complimenting public transport.

No, freedom from fuel hikes can definitely not mean public transport for me. I can not now get into local trains, buses, cars and auto-rickshaws.

Some of them says fuel price hike is positive for economic growth. It seems there are some broader benefits. I believe what they say in the absence of enough knowledge to validate. Now that's something, for sure wont let me expect freedom from fuel hikes.

It is good that I can manipulate the feeling of freedom to my benefit, neither with any expectation from someone to do something, nor with any guilt of hampering something good for the larger society.

It is good that freedom is a state of mind.

This blog post was written to participate in the Indiblogger contest sponsored by Fiat . The topic of the contest was 'Freedom from Fuel Hikes'

Lokpal Bill - An Allopathic Approach to Fighting Corruption

2011-08-22T01:48:00.002+05:30

Lokpal Bill is more of an allopathic treatment with known and unknown side-effects. It seems to be directed at treating the symptoms of corruption that is overtly visible.

It rests on the assumption that we can police corruption. It rests on the assumption that corruption would reduce on a sustainable basis, if we persecute the guilty. It rests on an assumption that the Lok Pal himself and the Lokpal committee would be super-humans and would not get lured into corruption.

In my opinion, all these assumptions are flawed. We have to get inventive to arrive at sustainable solutions to curb corruption and more specifically the need for corruption. There are no single solution and it wont happen in the short term. We have to arrive at a series of policies and strategies to be implemented in the next 50 years to curb the very idea of corruption.

This blog post is an effort to point at some of the steps that should be taken to curb corruption. There may be many others that I am unable to think, but the idea is to have solutions that are human independent, and process dependent. A process oriented solution would stand strong even if the main proponent or the main committee decides to quit the program.

Each of the solutions that I am suggesting can become a paper for discussion. So I intend to keep it short.

Who funds the political parties to fight elections? My first solution lies in this question. There should be a central pool of funds (tax money) that should fund the political parties and their election expenses. There should be a bill that defines the role of funding and restrictions put on political parties in using any kind of funds of their own. This solution will address the huge need for funds that political parties have to sustain their campaign and to sustain their dedicated party workers. I consider this need for funds as one of the primary reason for corruption.
How many political parties today pay their taxes? There was a news item recently that highlighted over 300 registered political parties, which have never paid their taxes. The Government should stress on reforming the control and accounting standards over political spending and donations. This would put restrain among the funding lobby in the political parties. The need for funds would also be lessened and additionally a proper accounting policy would put restraints on the collection of funds.
Do we have a strong moral science subject in our primary and secondary syllabus? Primary education and then secondary education form our attitude and impressions about life. Not many schools, except for the few convent schools have any subject that teaches the kids about being a good citizen and a good human being. The Government should empanel acknowledged academicians to prepare a subject that is compulsory till the 10th standard. The subject would impart education about becoming a good human-being and a good citizen. It should also rationalize the need for it and why it is beneficial for everyone, the society and the country. This subject should cover the negative effects of corruption in personal and public life, and to the community in general.
Do we know how many house holds were raided for income tax irregularities in your city? It is important to have a deterrent strategy in place. We live in a society and have certain inherent fears that guide us. As part of the RTI strategy, we may have a system to present information in public forum about people who are investigated for corruption, or are convicted of corruption. Being present in such a list may become a big deterrent to being involved in corrupt practices.
Are all the Government services including the police force adequately paid? It is very critical and essential that Government should periodically review remuneration structures of all Government officials including sensitive departments like the police force. For instance, I have been given to understand that there are no adequate mediclaim policies that cover the police personnel and their families. In my experience, I think that our police forces including traffic police force have a very tough working life and they deserve to be paid well.
Do we have enough reward and recognition programs in the Government offices? Do we have a recognition program if a particular flyover project is completed on time? Do we have a recognition program if a police officer does the maximum number of over-time shifts? I would not know how many such opportunities are there to reward and recognise people, but I do know that it works in terms of enhancing motivation and to continue to do good work.

The moot point is that there are multiple ways to attack the root causes that create the need for corruption, and those that negates the conscious mind working against being corrupt. We can bring about 100 more such solutions if we organise a workshop of thinking minds.

But a Lokpal Bill is not the solution. The bill is intended to provide the Lokpal with supreme powers over the elected democracy. This can be detrimental to Indian parliamentary democracy. Secondly, the lokpal would primarily be dealing with incidences of corruption, when there is no process to define or understand the difference between a corruption free deal and a corruption induced deal.

What stops the Lokpal to have a biased judgement? What stops the Lokpal to give undue preference to his son or his immediate family members? The bottom line therefore is that the Lokpal Bill is an allopathic approach to fighting corruption. It is addressing the root causes that define the mentality to get corrupt.

Why do we have Anna Hazare?

2011-08-18T08:48:00.001+05:30

Many argue that Anna Hazare is a danger to parliamentary democratic institution. But the question we need to ask ourselves is whether do we have a democratic institution representing the masses?

If we really had such an institution, wouldn't Anna Hazare's of India have better things to fight for.. like primary education, for instance.

If we really had such a revered institution, wouldn't we have better electoral participation? Currently our electoral participation is hardly noteworthy, hovering around 50%.

Many also argue that Anna Hazare and his team should stand up in the elections, get elected and then correct corruption. But thats an argument in utopia. That is an option only if we have a fair election process.

We have to acknowledge the bottom line truth of Indian Parliamentary democracy today. The truth is that elections are being played and participated by the 'Kings'. These are modern-day Kings ruling their fief-doms (constituency). They are Kings with loads of cash, or a good source-of-cash support. They are Kings with an army of muscle power to vandalise any opposition or danger to the supposedly democratic parliamentary seat.

Corruption is the outcome of such an status quo. Today's Indian parliamentary democracy necessitates the role of money to become part of it. The party worker, an MLA or an MP having a better source of funds available to him influences the decisions of the party.

We need a revolution to overthrow the current democratic status quo of the Kings. The status quo that breeds corruption and kills accountability.

It is rare that we have an opportunity like the one we have today with Anna Hazare being the leader and the protagonist.Lets catch on to this opportunity and bring in whole-some reforms into our political system and parliamentary democracy.

We need a jolt to wake us up.

Assam - Rule of the Shorter Term

2011-08-07T17:22:00.017+05:30

This blog post is a result of the thought process that I assimilated by reading 'Northeast: threat to nation building and sovereignity' The blog post had an interesting perspective on how a kingdom can rule longer by giving autonomy to its smaller princely states, and by protecting them from larger enemies. We have seen that style of governance being beautifully exemplified by the Mughal rulers, the British administration, the Ahom Kingdom ruling Assam for over 600 years.

This style of administration is still relevant to today's political problems. However, it is hard to be seen. Telangana, Uttaranchal and the most burning of them is the issue that we are facing in the NorthEast, stems from the lack of such a style of administration. An administration style that recognises and appreciates the aspirations, culture, language, history of every smallest unit of the polity.

The most potent nationalistic emotion in Assam today is the feeling of 'not being part of the mainstream politics and economic development'. The reason for this emotion is the lack of autonomy and national protection of their local identity, that the citizens in the North Eastern states feel. We need to understand the foundation for such an emotion among the masses in the North East and Assam.

Formation of the Indian union and the emotion of being an 'Indian' had slowly started building with the spread of the Mughal kingdom. Fortunately or unfortunately, the Mughal kingdom couldn't seize power from the Ahom rulers in Assam. By the start of 1800, when the Burmese army started expanding towards Assam and had defeated and plundered the Ahom Kingdom, Manipur, Cachar Kingdoms, that the British army started focussing on Assam and the NorthEast. The British Army fought one of the most expensive battles to defeat the Burmese army and hence Assam became part of the British Empire and the Indian Union.

They bought educated and English knowing Bengalis to assist them in its administration. This had an alienating effect, which was to last another hundred years. Even I could sense the over-bearing presence of Bengalis in Assam in all administrative offices of the Government.

After the first partition of Bengal in 1905, Assam witnessed another phenomenon to shatter its identity related confidence. Muslim peasants from the over populated East Bengal started to migrate to the sparsely populated fertile fields of Brahmaputra and Surma Valleys. The formation of All India Muslim League in 1906 further hatched a political conspiracy to expand its numerical strength in Assam. The league initiated organised migration of Muslims from East Bengal. Nawab Salim Ullah Khan, a prominent Muslim leader and one of the founder members of AIML exhorted the Muslims to migrate to Assam and settle there in his public meetings.

The situation worsened during the period between 1939-1941 when the alternative coalition Govt of Sir Saadullah allotted one Lakh bighas (a bigha is little less than an acre) of land in Assam valley for the settlement of East Bengal immigrants. He ignored the protest of Assam Congress leaders like Bishnuram Medhi on the plea that the Muslim exodus from Bengal to Assam was necessary for the success of 'Grow more food' scheme in the state. In reality, Sir Saadullah was 'growing more Muslims'.

After Independence, Assam remained a part of the Indian Union inspite of all effort by the Muslim League, thankfully for the many hill and plain tribes. Non-Muslims outnumbered the Muslims. I would assume it was a sign of relief.

However, that sign of relief didnt last long. The feeling of alienation was to be ascerbated once again. During the Indo-China war of 1962, when the Chinese army had reached till the beautiful city of Tezpur, Jawaharlal Nehru made the tragic immature remark saying, 'my heart goes with the people of Assam'. It is important to note that Tezpur is one of the cultural centres of Assam, which produced many freedom fighters who laid down their lives in the Quit India movement and other such Independence movements. Assamese people didnt take this comment very lightly. It strengthened the foundation of anti-India sentiments. For instance, I heard about this comment in hear-say, floating across every household in Assam.

There were other smaller yet supposedly step-motherly initiatives by the Central Government that kept this perception of mis-rule intact. One such example was the Barauni Refinery in Bihar which was set up to process the low sulphur crude oil (sweet crude) from Assam. The other example was the lack of a tea auction centre in Assam. The tea auction centre in Calcutta was established in 1861, however, it was only in 1970 that the Guwahati Tea Auction centre was established.

Democracy of today and the constitution of India gives us two rulers with varying rights. One is the State Government and the other is the Central Government. With Lok Sabha being the power centre, the lobby for any developmental initiatives is counted by the electronic votes and therefore by the number of Loksabha MPs. Assam has 14 Lok Sabha seats among a possible total of 552 seats. The upper house - Rajya Sabha has 7 seats reserved for Assam. One of them is interestingly occupied by Manmohan Singh. It sounds quite fortunate for Assam. However, if I search in Google about any development or social work initiated by Manmohan Singh, there is nothing worthwhile to mention. I would take the liberty to say that Rajya Sabha is just a theoritical concept, inadequate in execution to keep the federal spirits of the country alive.

With such a low representation in both the houses, the emphasis on Assam, its culture, its economy is always a doubt. Mathematically, it may be an accurate representation but emotions and perceptions cannot be measured or controlled with mathematical logic. Its all about Action that defines a polity. I personally rule out all expectations that the Central Government would be patriotic of the sensitivities of the North East. So in all practicality, issues in Assam and the North East cannot outnumber NewDelhi’s other priorities.

The second option eligible to have become a good ruler for Assam was the ruling State Government. Going by the last few state governments, I would like to highlight the difference between the Moghul/Ahom kingdoms and Mahmud of Ghazni / Myanmar generals. The difference is that the former had a vision and an urge to rule longer either by design or by lack of choice, and the latter had the simple objective to loot and run. So the former did everything right to rule for hundreds of years and the latter looted, and vanished without much mention.

It is completely the prerogative of the ruling Government to either have a vision to rule longer and be a leader for centuries to come, or have just some short term objectives (which appear long term from one human adult life perspective) and rule for 5 to 10 years at a stretch. The current breed of rulers in Assam unfortunately doesn't seem to have a vision irrespective of whether it is AGP, BJP OR CONGRESS.

The burning issues are always at the back-burner. The Bangladeshi infiltration is eating up the socio-economic fabric in Assam. It already has 18 constituencies with a Muslim majority, up from 10 in the last election. Still the Government is not serious about curbing the menace. There is no concrete action to seal borders like we have in the west with Pakistan. There is no concrete plan to prepare for a common identity document to identify citizens. We Indians do not have a unique identity document as a proof of citizenship unlike the US and the UK. Lack of Government spending, stagnant private sector growth, and the resulting negative pressures of Un-employment is currently gripping its tight noose around Assam.

Rulers cant afford to behave like capitalists gunning and calculating for immediate profits. That's feasible only for commerce and businesses. There lies the tragedy gripping the land of red river and blue hills.

It is time to reflect and act for everyone Assamese all over the globe, to add economic value in Assam, to protect its rich Arts and Culture and to take Assam into a higher growth trajectory.

SlutWalk - the feminine herd being hopelessly misled

2011-06-19T16:42:00.014+05:30

Are they really protesting? Or are they enjoying the attention?

Why does a wife buy lingerie for the husband to be worn at bed-time? Why does a husband gifts lingerie to his wife?

To put it very crudely, a man gets a hard-on by seeing a skimpily dressed, sexy looking woman. And a woman loves to attract a man's attention.

To put it mildly, a husband loves his lovely wife to dress sexily on bed. And a wife loves to dress sexily for the man she loves.

If we relate this psychology, sexual behaviour, and biology into the mad rush of 'slut walk', you can understand how the feminine herd is being completely misled.

I am in no way supporting rape (I support public execution for convicted rapist). I am in no way supporting eve-teasing, sexual harassment at work. I am completely for a gender indifferent society.

The concept of SlutWalk was born in January after a member of the Toronto Police force, Const. Michael Sanguinetti, suggested to students at York University that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized”.

Would it be a sin for the by-standers to feel naughty?

It is a glory to democracy that these kinds of statements can cause such a stir. This particular statement has two inherent connotations that the feminists have taken offence. Firstly, the use of the word 'slut' and secondly the slight implication that women are inviting rape, molestation and other kinds of sexual harrassments.

There is surely some sense in re-defining the meaning and connotation of the word 'Slut'. One statement on the SlutWalk website reads. "'Slut' is being re-appropriated."

Many women argue that the very word slut is an embodiment of the double standards employed when discussing the sexual appetites of women and men. Women are described as sluts, while men are often referred in a less derogatory light as "studs" or a "ladies man".

It is a noble cause, but the method to go about doing it is definitely not 'SlutWalk'. You cannot re-define Slut by being conventionally slutty in public. In fact, all the girls with their semi exposed boobs and bums are re-emphasizing the definition more strongly.

The second cause is also mention worthy. Nobody should imply that women are inviting rape, molestation and other kinds of sexual harrassments by dressing in a certain way. It is a good news that SlutWalks have become a global phenomenon to protest against sexual violence, and to challenge the mindset that victims of sexual assault should be blamed for the crime against them.

In either of the causes, there is no sense in being semi-nude to protest. It looks more like a parade in colourful frivolous dresses.

In a civil society, there can never be a concept like 'Its my hot body. I do what I want.' In fact, there can be a protest against such a callous & irresponsible statement in public.

Isn't it common sense that exposure of the sensual parts lead to sexual or sensual attraction? Isn't it natural and more importantly involuntary? One can't get horny if he or she wants to get horny, whereas a sneak preview of a good round pair of boob-cleavage, even for a second, can get one horny on a bad day.

In that context, SlukWalks in revealing 'do I care' clothes is impractical, immature and is not well thought through, to achieve the desired objectives. Or perhaps, there is a subliminal sexual sensitivity in women which is making SlutWalk so popular. There is perhaps an inherent desire to expose and garner male attention in women which is indirectly getting fulfilled by these protests.

There is a need that feminists understand the real consequences of these semi-nude walks and direct their energies into a better methodology to address the rightful concerns.

Freedom Of Expression - Quite Difficult to Practice

2011-06-10T17:22:00.001+05:30

With the great painter Mr. M.F Hussain's death, there are lot of statements, articles and tweets saying/meaning, "I respect freedom of expression for everyone. Everybody should have the freedom to express oneself". My question is simply, "Is that so simple?"

I always thought that Freedom of Expression is an extremely difficult mindset to have for anybody.
Everyone of us has sensitivities that one cant get over. Some might have it against smoking, Some might have it against Non-veg food, Some might have it against a religion, some might have it against a career choice etc etc and etc.

To practice 'Freedom of Expression' in its true spirit, one has to get over his or her own sensitivities to various billions of expressions.

Also, the definition of expression itself is not too narrow to write a guidelines book. So if we combine the examples of exploitation of freedom for each of us living, it would be more than the number of your blogs and comments combined. It can range from the trivial such as 'putting your feet up on the table while watching TV (which many men do and wives don't like)' to a 'semi-nude Saraswati with her beautiful red bindi'.

I loved the painting. My sentiments were not hurt. But does that mean I respect freedom of expression. I am not too sure. Although my intent is to try to respect as much as I can.

IITians in Canada & Corruption !!

2011-04-14T18:09:00.001+05:30

It was quite a glorifying tweet from the_hindu that praised IITians. It read, "IITians in Canada observe day-long fast for Anna Hazare http://bit.ly/dY3XZ0 #Lokpal".

My first reaction was 'What are they doing in Canada after India sponsored their education."

Isn't that corruption? Isn't a collective and selfish action towards siphoning off of taxpayers' money? The politicians use tax payer's money to build swiss bank accounts. These IITians settled abroad use tax payers' money to build bank balances in US, Canada and other developed countries. They are worse than the politicians, as they even pay taxes to those developed Governments, and help in building education infrastructure there. What a sorry irony!

Since 1953, nearly twenty-five thousand IITians have settled in the USA alone. Although the trend has been on the down-slide, the reason is neither a healthy conscience nor patroitism. The reason is lower earning prospect in the US and higher earning potential in India.

Dreaming of higher income and success is neither criminal nor immoral, however we should pay for the opportunity cost. We should pay for the higher income potential made possible by the IITs. The Govt should enable a process for the IITians to repay the Government subsidies that they enjoyed while studying in IITs.

The last word is that corruption can range from IITians going abroad to 2G scam involving crores. It would be foolish to rally against corruption by politicians alone. The need is to create a better conscience right through primary education.

Additionally, we have to put processes for better accountability, making it difficult for the opportunists to siphon off tax payers' money. We should also create an environment of predictable punitive punishment to discourage misuse of tax payers money.

The Lokpal Bill should aim to do the same. More than vigilance, the Lokpal Bill has to be futuristic and pragmatic to create an environment of a healthy conscience against corruption, an environment of accountability and predictable penalty.

Ending Corruption - the Corporate way!

2011-04-13T11:30:00.005+05:30

Corruption is quite a funny phenomenon. We all know it is evil, yet we all do it knowingly or un-knowingly. With Anna Hazare and the Lokpal bill, it was quite a week of discussing corruption and civil activism.

For me, it was a week of intense reading of opinions in every newspaper and on twitter. One of the tweet said, "rallying against corruption is actually rallying against the symptom & not the cause"

So what is the cause of corruption?

Is it in our culture to think of our own selves? In Hinduism, the ultimate aim is to achieve personal Nirvana/Moksh. We dont speak about the community achieving Nirvana. Does that make us think about ourselves, rather than the civil society? Krishna in Mahabharata corrupted Arjun to think that the end is important than the means. Does that have any implication?We dont think before honking. We dont think before throwing a chips packet out of the car window. We cut lanes without thinking about the other cars. We dont think twice before dirtying the Holy Ganga. We dont think before dishing out a 100 rupees note to the traffic policeman for jumping the red light.

We evade taxes. I have seen individuals preferring to donate lakhs of rupees to a temple, rather than pay taxes. The thought perhaps is that donation may help achieve moksh, but taxes would not benefit directly.

All these human behaviours lead me to think that corruption kind of runs in our blood. And there are only two ways that I can think of curbing corruption.

The first is to put emphasis on primary education to develop a conscience against corruption and easy money (short cuts). Young minds develop as per what they are taught. Moral science as a subject should be made compulsory till class X. The syllabus should be developed by experienced behavioural scientists with an intention to develop a positive conscience against corruption.

The second is to learn from corporate management policies. Corruption is minimal in the corporate world among employees. The reason is perhaps the accounting procedures followed in every department and the deterrant that 'careers would get over if caught doing corruption'.

So both accountable processes and a genuine predictability of punitive action prevents corruption in the corporate world. We need to work towards achieving accountability at every Govt. offices. We need to strengthen the police and judicial processes for better predictability of punitive action.

A watchdog like the Lokpal bill can only do the bare minimum.

Gender Equality needs no definition. It needs practice.

2011-03-13T04:04:00.001+05:30

In the many discussions on gender diversity, women liberation, changing family system and the likes... we get to read a lot of effort on defining gender equality. In my last post that got published in Headlinesindia, I received similar comments and questions. Here is the list of a few comments and my answers against them.

"Just one question - what according to you is Gender Equality?"; "another point to ponder is - who defines gender equality for women...unfortunately it gets defined by men. this should change and probably is changing."

My answer to such arguments is "don't we understand equality? Is there really a need to define equality?" I would think that there is no need for us to define equality. Equality needs to be acknowledged and practiced. Gender Equality is simply "Equal respect & recognition in whatever one does irrespective of gender." There shouldn't be any aggression of any nature - physical or emotional between genders, taking advantage of the fact of being a male or a female, to win an argument or to make a decision.

Unfortunately men have played a dominant role for whatever reasons in forming certain social systems. It appears therefore to us that if women do what men have been doing, it would mean gender equality. That is not correct.

So you see double standards as harmful and wrong? Are u fine with women dreaming of careers just like everybody else? So when, under what circumstances are dreams of career not feasible , and for whom? For women? For anybody else also?

Of course, I am fine with women dreaming of careers. We've seen so many great career women and women freedom fighters. However, one should be very clear about two aspects of a dream: 'Why this dream?' & 'What will it take to achieve this dream?'

We want many different things in life. The need is to understand what is feasible and what would make one MOST happy. I am afraid that today, dream of a career for many women is enforced irrespective of whether they instinctively like it or not, overwhelming the homemaker instinct. It may be the omnipresent media thats making it easier for a small set of career women to influence the majority.

It is similar to feeling like making a movie or acting in one when you see a good movie or when you are among a bunch of filmmaker friends. In reality it is neither easy to make a movie nor easy to act in one. Even if it is not difficult, one may not enjoy the process of making a movie, which would be fraught with its own problems like poor work-life balance.

It is similar to parents forcing sons to be doctors and engineers because of social status conscience and peer pressure. After my 12th, the society had made me feel that if I don't get into an engineering college or a medical college, I am a failure. In hindsight, I am really happy for not becoming a doctor or an engineer.

So who decides all this? Who decides what their natural instinct is & what they want isn't natural? Just curious.

That is our conscience, which we need to make aware by keeping our eyes & ears open. Spending time to know oneself is the key. Perhaps the first rule of equality would be to have an atmosphere to decide for ourselves. We should never decide for others. But as elders, our effort should be to teach them and appraise them about the psychological decision engine that we possess in as much clarity as possible. We should teach our kids to spend time understanding themselves. We should make them understand that lot of times our decisions get influenced inadvertently by external forces and circumstances.

I understand that it is quite difficult because ultimately we are a human herd driven by our present culture, societal norms etc. It is very easy for us to get confused between instincts and imposed behavior.

My intrinsic belief is that the nature has made man and woman to complement each other. Conjugation of a man and a woman completes the cycle of life in terms of living and procreation. We have to understand that and respect each other for all the things that each of us are better at.

Happy Womens' Day to our Better Halfs

2011-03-08T16:33:00.002+05:30

Being a woman perhaps is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men. On this womens' day, let me appreciate all the women who have opted for being our better halfs.

'Better Half' as a term has always made me curious as a child. It was a beautiful word which meant self-less support, love and a well orchestrated team spirit to lead life. It was about taking the role of doing what one is good at.

My mother was a good cook and had a good sense of embroidery. So she took up kitchen management out of my father's life. With the kitchen, she took up the responsibility of the cleanliness of the house. As for her interests, my father had bought her a knitting machine and an embroidery machine. She is today known for her great embroidery and knitting skills.

My father, apart from being the provider and the primary earner, was a good teacher. He took the role of being the teacher of the house teaching us everything from school book education to good habits and civic sense.

It was a perfect balance of responsibility and authority over the family. There was a balance of the do's and dont's for each role in the family.

They were perfect Better Halfs, as they were performing the roles which they were better at.

Today, I see a dilution of this concept of 'Better-Half'. We are no longer as good as in the past, in dividing our responsibilities and authority in the family. We are confused about the roles that we are better at. Is the man better than the woman in providing for the house? Is the woman better in being a home-maker to instil values into the children? We are unsure of the do's and dont's in the family structure.

Modern thinking, education and consumerism is affecting our mindsets. For instance, we are unsure of the utility of education in being a home maker.

Gender equality is being confused with Role equality. Gender equality is not about the women getting to work and earn as the men do. Gender equality is not about women doing what the men traditionally used to do. Gender equality is not about women getting the acceptance to smoke and drink like the men.

Sometimes I get a feeling that women liberation is all about conforming to standards set by men for themselves. It is about women doing and excelling in what the men traditionally used to do.

Gender equality is not about conversions of role. Gender equality is about respecting gender equally without bias.

It is unfortunate that our society is going through this confused phase in the name of coping western lifestyles and attaining freedom of thought and action. It is slowly changing the meaning of the word 'Better Half' to simply mean 'Other Half'.

'Other Half' surely doesnt have the same charm to hold a family together. I want a Better Half in my life to help me lead a happy fulfilled life.

I want to sincerely show my respect and love to all the women who believes in being the better half and accept the role that they are better at.

A Happy Womens' Day to all of you!

Full of contorversial FAF - Arundhati Roy

2010-10-27T13:41:00.001+05:30

It was simply disgusting knowing what India’s noted writer, Booker Prize winner and human rights activist Arundhati Roy spoke and wrote on Kashmir. Sadly, it was inconclusive, unproductive, negative faf-speak meant to be controversial (only) without mettle.

Quoting one of the newspapers, she said, “Kashmir has never been an integral part of India. It is a historical fact”. She lashed out against India’s policy of oppressing “the people of diverse culture” and praised the Kashmiri struggle for increasing “consciousness in India about the oppression you face”.

And later she justified saying, “…what I say comes from love and pride... they (whatever she said) were a call for justice. I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world; for Kashmiri Pandits who live out the tragedy of having been driven out of their homeland; for Dalit soldiers killed in Kashmir… for the Indian poor who pay the price of this occupation in material ways…”.

The worst part in this whole media hype is that the solution to the Kashmir problem is not even being discussed. Everything that happened was emotion without action veering towards negativity.

Arundhati, being a respected personality could have instead pull the strings towards a solution, could have lobbied for a particular set of action points, could have tried to bring the central government, state government, opposition political parties, and other representatives of public opinion to one table.

How it is (whatever she said) was a ‘call for justice’? How would that bring justice? How would secession bring justice to the common public of Kashmir? I have spoken to localites in Kashmiri quite extensively and I can vouch for the fact that they don’t want ‘secession’. They realize that the lack is of an effective, efficient leadership which can steer Kashmir to development and progress.

If the local leaders couldn’t run the state with abundant central Govt. funds, how would they run a separate country with no external fund?

How is Kashmir ‘one of the most brutal military occupations in the world’? You can’t call the military ‘brutal’ by the count of military personnel alone. Once I had stopped my bike at Lal Chowk to speak to one of the Jawans, when the first thing he said, “Do not stand too close to us, we are the soft targets of grenades thrown from those wooden windows”. That is the actual plight and fear of the Jawans posted in Srinagar that the media completely ignores. Even if I agree with Arundhati for a moment, then she should have instead delved into the reasons of ‘Kashmir’ becoming a military occupation. Just saying that it is ‘one of the most brutal military occupations’ is very ordinary and controversial. It is just plain copying what many others have said in the past and is a waste of effort, time and energy.

How it is (whatever she said) providing justice to the Kashmiri Pandits that were thrown out of Kashmir by the Islamist fundamental groups? Is she even bothered about the Kashmiri Pandits? How is the Indian Govt. responsible for the plight of the Kashmiri Pandits? Why is Arundhati, being the Booker Prize winner blabbering?

One of her other points was about ‘justice for Dalit Soldiers killed in Kashmir’. Who killed those Dalit Soldiers? Why she is only concerned about ‘Dalit Soldiers’? What about the other regiments? Why is she casteist? Who have killed these soldiers? It is clearly either Pakistan, or ISI or Islamist fundamentalism. So how is her statement even relevant to ‘justice for dalit soldiers’?

Dear Arundhati, the need of the hour in Kashmir is an effective political leadership that can steer Kashmir towards quick economic progress. It is also the easiest strategy to implement given the political and cross border scenario. Issues with Pakistan, communal tension would always remain, or would need a longer term solution, but time cannot wait and standard of living cannot be compromised.

We should take Mr. Modi as an example for developmental politics reducing the gap between Hindu and Muslim mindsets. Today Mr. Modi gets a sizeable chunk of votes even from the Muslim community.

With economic progress and effective local leadership, Kashmir can march ahead as a progressive state. With progress, employment and rising income, communal hatred, Pakistani interference and orthodox fundamentalism will ultimately get marginalised.

Power of Development Politics. Mr. Modi shows us the way...

2010-10-22T22:24:00.006+05:30

In October 7, 2001, when the Indian economy was going through turmoil, Mr. Narendra Modi took charge of Gujarat as the Chief Minister. In February-March 2002, Gujarat faced the worst communal riots, where Mr. Modi was labelled as the primary anti-Muslim responsible for the killing of over 1200 lives by the media.

Turn to October 12, 2010 BJP and Mr. Narendra Modi in Gujarat is stronger than ever. BJP has swept the polls to six municipal corporations in Gujarat retaining power with two-thirds majority in all but one of them. In this age of fragmented polity where getting a majority seems unreal, BJP bagged 80 percent of the votes (30% Muslim votes) in almost all the places. Interesting to note is that these poll victories came just a few weeks after the BJP won Kathlal constituency in Anand district in a bye-election. This assembly constituency was a strong Congress bastion from the time it came into being.

How did Mr. Modi and the people of Gujarat make all this possible?

One particular remark of Mr. Modi caught my pride and attention. He claimed that only politics of development can do something good, not the politics of vote bank. He said, "I have succeeded to deliver my message that politics of vote bank or politics of appeasement would not do any good, but the politics of development would do"

The truth in this statement is the future of India. The truth in this statement will bring in faith of the Indian population into the political democracy. Development, prosperity and improvement of the standards of living will and can bring in a permanent political stability. And will tag along prosperity with stability.

Today we are being short-sighted. The political attitude is of vote bank politics, 'blanket' politics, immediate selfish goals and corruption ridden personal growth. It is vicious cycle that takes us away from socio-economic development.

Mr. Modi also could have been short-sighted after Godhra. He could have assumed his imminent fall in the next elections and could have concentrated his energies in making as much wealth as possible for a lifetime. Instead he chose the difficult path of development.

He once said, "An opportunity to work is good luck for me. I put my soul into it. Each such opportunity opens the gates for the next one."

Faced with massive economic losses brought in by 2001, he concentrated on reorganizing the government's administrative structure and embarked upon a massive cost-cutting exercise. As a result of Gujarat government efforts under the guidance of Modi, Gujarat registered a GDP growth rate of over 10% during his first tenure. This was the highest growth rate among all the Indian states.

Gujarat is probably the only state witnessing a double-digit growth for a long time and also the only state growing higher than the country's 8-9 per cent growth. Gujarat is growing faster than some of the Asian economies.

It's all about labour harmony, infrastructure development, transparent policies and prudent State fiscal management, which have contributed to Gujarat's growth. For instance, the man-days lost due to labour unrest in Gujarat is only 0.65 percent as against 5 percent in Maharashtra.

During my stay in Ahmedabad, I remember Sabarmati River as a dry riverbed for years, now it is flowing bank to bank. If the Sabarmati has begun to meander once again, that's because the water is coming from the Narmada canal, courtesy the ambitious river-linking project of Mr. Modi.

Sabarmati in full flow is an apt metaphor for the miracle that Modi has pulled off in making Ahmedabad a model for urban development. Today it boasts of wide roads, minimum traffic congestion, BRTS and ample green spaces along with malls, multiplexes and coffee shops. It is a delight to hear Mr. Modi speak about development. He once said, "Our roads will be as good as the Autobahns of Germany".

This is at a time when most Indian metros are creaking under their own weight. Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi - speak of any metro and you would see chaos.

It would be worthwhile to dig a bit deeper on the unique Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) with a high-speed dedicated corridor for AC CNG buses that will ply a 55-km stretch. The concept of BRTS was first proposed by the Gujarat Govt to the centre, which was later copied by a few other states. Today, Ahmedabad is the first city to have successfully launched the first phase by the intended deadline. It won the prestigious 2010 Sustainable Transport Award this year from the Transportation Research Board in Washington. Ahmedabad BRTS has caught the fancy of several countries including Malaysia, Indonesia and Tanzania.

There are many such success stories. You can read about quite a few them in wikipedia.

It's a proud moment for India that a political leader is showing us the path of long term development to win a democratic election, to be a popular leader. This is learning and teaching to all the national and regional political parties including the BJP, who have not been far-sighted like Mr. Modi in Delhi and the other states.

Lets salute to the power of development.

Twitter - Truely a phenomenon.

2010-10-01T15:02:00.012+05:30

“What’s twitter?” I used to ask. They use to say, “It’s a new micro-blogging site”. Honestly I didn’t understand the sentence in context, content and attitude. It had made me feel outdated. More irritating was the un-easiness because nobody had a clear answer for me. That was 2008.
I had talked to myself, “You have to jump into the water in order to learn swimming.” I opened my twitter account and named the account @lifeisbetter.
Almost immediately, I was clueless on twitter. I found twitter to have no head or tail, no start or end. How do I search for my friends, how do I create a network, how do I meet new people, how do I upload more photographs, who will read my tweets that takes a long time to compose in 140 characters, and so many such questions were left un-answered.
I didn’t return to twitter for a few months. It had left a bad taste because I couldn’t relate to the seemingly in-thing. Now that I look back, I realise that my mistake was in my pre-conceived notions. I was looking for social networking site in twitter, which it clearly is not. It is much to the power infinity more than that.
This post is about my discovery about this amazing phenomenon called Twitter. It is simply incredible.

Twitter takes you closer to your favourite (or hated) celebrities.
It was the celebrity quotient of Twitter that got me back to it. I could follow @gulpanag and read up on her opinions. She even responded to some of my tweets. I was elated and so would so many of us when we get to interact with our demi-idols, know their lifestyle, next movies, where-abouts and personal candid photographs.

Twitter is an excellent news channel
Thanks to one of @gulpanag’s tweets that I got introduced to @outlookindia, which opened a whole new world of relevant news being available to me to devour. I am currently following @outlookindia, @thehindu , @ietweet , @DNA , @BBCIndia among a few others who actively tweet about news and opinions from respected writers and journalists. Then there are individuals like @sonaliranade, who untiringly tweets about financial and political news from all around the world. It is such a pleasure to read up on varied topics on a single platform.

Twitter is the easiest to access
Twitter is an example of growth via sharing. Twitter is perhaps the only platform where over 50% access happens through third party applications. Twitter made it very easy to allow other websites and mobiles to access twitter. The result was that we have got better third party applications
with better navigation and UI to access twitter than the twitter app itself. Today I access twitter mostly through my mobile phone. I have downloaded a mobile application called ‘Pocketwit’ from Google labs for my windows phone. It is convenient, easy and multi-faceted. It has all the twitter features for reading / posting tweets and much more. In fact, as per latest data, 20% of new twitter users join via mobile device, as opposed to signing up on the web.

Twitter has led to many innovations and business models
Two years back, I had read an interesting one-liner for twitter. It said, “Twitter is the SMS of the Internet”. I found it to be an intelligent line, but not anymore. Today the line seems very shallow and narrow in its scope to define the juggernaut – twitter.
The twitter revolution came with a lot of associated products and services. Thanks to the total API support of Twitter programmers. Software developers easily came up with amazing products that compliment and supplement the twitter experience. The three most significant among them are: tiny URL sites like bit.ly, photoblogging sites like twitpic, text-shortenning sites like Twitxr and 140it. The restriction of 140 characters has led to all these inventions.

One can shorten a long URL and post it directly to twitter along with a message by logging on to bit.ly. Bit.ly also let us know about how many people have clicked on the URL.
One can upload a photograph on Twitpic, which gets converted into a tiny URL and then one can write a message along with the tiny URL to post it directly to Twitter.
If the tweet is longer than 140 characters, sites like twitxr and 140it helps in shortening it using shorter words like r for ‘are’ etc. If the tweet is still longer after than 140 characters, then it stores the tweet in a tiny URL and lets the user post it directly to twitter.

It is amazing that how much we can now do with 140 characters. Imagine a news item tweet with a tiny URL, which you can click for details. You can choose to read more, or decide to let go. Even amazing are the mobile applications to access twitter. For instance, Pocketwit gives me all these features in one platform. You just need to put the long URL and it becomes a tiny URL. It connects to is.gd for the same without the mobile user knowing the complexities. Pocketwit allows me to shoot, convert that image into a tiny URL and post it to twitter. It also allows me to browse and post an existing image in the mobile. It is integrated to Twitpic in the back-end and photos are actually getting uploaded to twitpic and can be also viewed by logging onto Twitpic !
Twitter has led to so many innovations and applications that we have websites like http://101besttwitterapps.com/ whose complete focus is on the third party twitter applications.

Twitter is second only to Google !!
Twitter is doing over five times the search queries that Bing handles at 19 billion per month, and about 20% of those that mega search star Google processes. In a tweet, one can prefix # in front of an important word and these words help in searching the tweet easily. Twitter co-founder Mr. Williams said that Twitter does about 600 million queries per day and added to say that “the figures aren’t all apple to apples”. The search queries from third party applications and mobile application are not fully accounted for. How’s that compare against the major search engines? Working from ComScore figures from December 2009, we have the following data set:

Google: 88 billion per month
Twitter: 19 billion per month
Yahoo: 9.4 billion per month
Bing: 4.1 billion per month

To conclude, Twitter has been a true phenomenon not only for networking and publicity needs but also for socio-economic-political discussions, viewpoints and news. It has given a new meaning to sharing and collaboration. It is still nascent in terms of its use for advertising and promotion. I believe there is a huge scope for monetizing twitter to benefit human kind.
Great Job Twitter. Thank you Jack Dorsey.

This blog is an entry to the "My Favorite PC App" contest. Check out numerous apps for PC/Netbooks available at the Intel AppUp Center. If you are looking for an opportunity to build and monetize your applications, check out the Intel® Atom™ Developer Program.

Taking a pause.. in the journey of life.

2010-09-30T17:09:00.017+05:30

I am becoming 35 next year..and really dont know if I would live till 70 with all the voluntary and involuntary pollution that I subject my body to. Half my life is almost about to be over.

Isnt it quite a milestone? Time has come in life when time is suddenly appearing to be short in supply. Every day that I would wake up, live through and sleep off, would become that much costlier. And the cost of every passing day would only grow exponentially.

Does it mean that I need to do everything faster and accomplish more things within a day? No, of course not. Thats would be crazy. But it surely means that I cant afford to let go of days frivolously as I have been living till date. It simply means that I need to pause and rethink about living the remaining half of my life.

I may either decide to live the same way, or decide to change it. The most important thing I felt that I should definitely take a pause. Time is now to really dig deep and do things that will make me smile, proud and happy... and unrepentent."

I am smiling, proud, happy and unrepentent about the 34 years that I have lived, but at 34 years, I dont have the same plans and ambitions that I have had when I was 17/18 years old? The variables of life have changed. My interests, passion, aptitude, strengths and weaknesses are more clear to me. I have a larger arsenal of knowledge and experience.

The decision or direction that I decide to take is not important in this public forum. Its more about the means and the significance of a pause in living life. Its difficult especially in a fast paced fuzzy life of Mumbai, but if you want the most out of your life, you have to take a pause, rethink, and re-prioritise.

Clearly and expectedly perhaps for me, time is to change how I live my time.

Dabangg - Highest first friday collection at 14.5 crores

2010-09-12T11:35:00.002+05:30

This is one case study that I would like to request the authors of Superfreakonomics - Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner to research. It would also perhaps interest the 'Tipping Point' maverick Malcolm Gladwell.

It was July 23rd when the promos of Dabangg got released and like the wind Dabangg just got into everybody's nose. I felt it was a viral campaign of the physical world. I didnt meet a single sole who was not waiting (or desperate) for the movie to release. Desperate, I say, because all of us wanted to catch it on the first show or on the first weekend. Nobody was waiting for others to give review.

I was not wrong. Dabangg released to a biggest response in 2010. Taran Adarsh tweets, "As per initial trends, 'Dabangg' will be competing with just one film – '3 Idiots'. It is expected to cross 13 crores that '3 Idiots' did on a opening friday. 'Raajneeti' - the biggest opener of 2010 did Rs. 10 crores.

Dabangg is about crazy bollywood masala and wholesome entertainment. It has comedy, action, typical hero-villain antagonism and item numbers. To dig a bit deeper, the movie has the hero having an idealist mother, a father-son relationship which is sour at best, police that are funny, pot-bellied and corrupt and a villain who has an akhara (village gym) and men with guns.

What clicked for me was the consistent characters, the dance moves and partly the dialogues. Salman Khan was the angry young man in every scene of the movie. Sonakshi Sinha (acted really well) was the shy but mature village girl, who dotes on her father and would not marry till he is alive. Even after her marriage and during the songs, she is shown to be shy. Arbaaz Khan played the idiot brother who is not serious about anything in life, but his girlfriend. Throughout the film, he takes wrong immature decisions.

Yes, the film is a must watch, but how did we know about it so much in advance? How can we explain the hysteria before the release of the film. All the multiplexes enjoyed 'never before' advance bookings for Dabangg. Even the share price of Shree Ashtavinayak Cine Vision, co-producers of Dabangg, have jumped 40 per cent in the last one month before the movie was even released.

What was the tipping point for the movie? Was it the promo? Was it Salman Khan? Was it the dialogues on the promo? Was it the dance moves on the promo? Was it Anurag Kashyap (brother of the first time Director - Abhinav Kashyap)? Was it the Zandu song (or the balm!)?

I dont have the answer but it was indeed a great sociological phenomenon nevertheless. It seems to me that the 'connectors', 'mavens' and 'Salesmen' (of Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point) came together to like the movie and promote the movie to make it an instant opening hit.

About dirty Ganges and rampant corruption...

2010-08-20T22:12:00.002+05:30

Recently I read a very enlightening book by Mr. Pavan K. Varma. It is called 'Being Indian'. It is a brilliant book of insights from an extremely observant intellectual, who tries to demolish myths and generalizations about Indians.

He gives a great epic on his views on Indian psyche, on what makes Indians tick and what they have to offer to the world in the 21st century.

I was stuck by two obvious traits that we experience everyday but don't normally think too much about the root cause. It is about why our holy Ganga is dirty and why do we have such rampant corruption in the smallest things we do in our day to day life.

He says, Indians don't care about the community as much as they care about themselves. The whole world revolves around himself and his family, community coming among his least priorities. Then he adds, Indians don't care about the means as long as the end is clear, positive and good by conventional standards.

Most of the phenomena that we observe around us can be explained by these two traits.

Whether it is the noise pollution / water pollution during Ganapati celebrations in Mumbai, or the garbage disposal behaviour of Indians, we see that Indians do not care about the community as a whole. They do not care how dirty the Ganga is, as long as the belief is to become sin-free by immersing in it. All common sense would imply that any holy place would be most cared for, clean, organised and looked after. In India, we hardly see any clean, organised temples across the country. There are efforts by the temple committee but those efforts end in their personal benefits and their personal beliefs about their part of the duty towards God. Its ultimately all about the end.

The author has given innumerable instances to prove this trait including those that we all know in Mahabharata involving Lord Krishna and Arthashashtra written by Kautilya.

In the same breath, Hindus, contrary to popular belief, have no inclination to understand the six schools of Hindu thought. Their pre-occupation is with the ritual of religion and the rewards that it can offer. The pursuit for the fruits of religion and not the religion per se. The end is important, not the means.

The author gives an interesting example of the Gora Baba in a village near Lucknow. The Gora Baba - an English man who died during the 1857 revolt, is known to fulfil every wish of his followers. Since he was an Englishman, he is offered liquor, cigarettes and meat. A prayer is incomplete without the lighting of a cigarette, which is then offered along with the agarbatti.

It is this trait that make us tolerate and encourage the smallest and silliest of bribes that we pay in our everyday life. The job should be done and ultimate profits should be made, and in the process if we have to organise for chai paani, its alright till the job is getting done quickly and to desired results.

I am sure we have enough examples of such instances, stories and anecdotes.

The book is a well illustrated and substantiated personal opinions of Mr. Pawan K Varma. Any Indian with interest to discover Indians should definitely read the book.

You may decide to disagree with his views, but his views would definitely widen your horizon of thinking about Indian and Indians.

For me, it worked. I loved it.

What's the time?

2010-08-16T16:04:00.004+05:30

Yesterday, I bought the first watch of my life.

It was closing time at Croma in Malad, Mumbai. Three of their staffs were waiting for my transaction to get over, and to call it a night. I paid, got my warrantee card stamp and wore the bright black-dial, chrono-fitted, multi-function watch. From the World of Titan.

It was independence day discounts all over the place, and I bagged a cool 50% discount.

While the sales lady was closing and packing my empty watch box into a plastic bag, I started chatting with the other two staffs on the various mobiles on offer in the next table. I was basically interested to find out if the mobile that I had bought last month is now available in half the price. Luckily it was not and to better that, there was only a scratch and win offer on mobiles.

Feeling good, I was about to leave when I saw the watch on the sales lady's wrist and asked for the time. Everybody was hurrying to close all the counters and so, it must be really late.

She immediately dug her hand onto her pants' pocket to fish out her mobile and obliged me by telling me the time. It was 10 minutes to 11 PM. One of her colleagues was also about to take out his mobile.

I wondered if I had just bought a watch which is on my wrist. I wondered if both the sales persons were actually wearing watches on their hands. I had. They were. Then why the mobile?

I wondered how human behaviour has changed in a span of 5 years from swinging and rotating one's arm to find out the time to fishing out the mobile.

Amazing!! When everybody had stopped looking at a wrist-watch to look at the time, I bought one. :)

A Disappearing Number - An experience

2010-08-11T08:46:00.028+05:30

It was an experience that I didn't think existed.

I have been kind of a regular at going for 'Plays' at Prithivi and NCPA, and have always liked the intensity and passion of performance in them. I thought of it as an art done by artists seriously interested in that art, unlike Bollywood that seems to be more about capturing mass appeal, lesser risks and making profits.

But yesterday was different. It was surreal. I had gone to watch 'A Disappearing Number' at NCPA and it managed to break all my pre-conceived notions about a play, its beauty, its art and its limitations. The only thing expected was great acting, everything else was un-expectedly awe inspiring and beautifully creative.

The play, conceived and directed by Simon McBarney of Complicite Company tells the story of the intense relationship between the mathematicians G. H. Hardy and Srinivasan Ramanujan, a 23-year-old Indian genius with no university education. The play also had a parallel love story of a lecturer at a British university, Ruth, with an American hedge fund manager from Los Angeles, Al Cooper. Ruth is shown to be an ardent fan of Ramanujan and Al becomes enchanted by one of her lectures that he randomly attends about the notion of 'an infinity of infinities'.

While the story of Ramanujan is performed in linear time, the story of Ruth and Al travels back and forth in time bringing in relevance and context to the presentation. While the story was good and touched me for it being about an amazing Indian, what caught my admiration was the production values and on-stage ideas that were executed to communicate with the viewers about intricate mathematical concepts.

The play seemed like a jadoo (magic) because of the extremely creative and coordinated use of video footage, recorded audio, and an exceptionally designed stage setting, which could become a Cambridge classroom and a Caurvery riverside within seconds. To me, it has re-defined the creative possibilities in a stage by the use of great acting, backstage coordination, use of props and the use of new media technology.

The play effectively manages to convey the unity and infinity of the universe with continuous and congruous use of actors, shadows of actors, audio/visual aids, props like the over-head projectors and the ever transforming stage.

Let me try to bring into life one of the scenes that tries to represent the concept of continuity, infinity and that there is no gap between two whole numbers, say 1 and 2, because we have the infinite series of 1.1, 1.11, 1.111 etc between 1 and 2. Essentially the scene was representing that the whole world is continuous.

{I decided to delete this paragraph, as my explanation may not do justice to the spectacle that the team at Complicite Company produced on stage. Instead thought of inserting an image.}

Amazing Creativity. Amazing Teamwork. Amazing Screenplay. A must watch for anybody especially if you get emotional about art and creativity. I almost cried with happiness, exhilaration and sadness.

---------------------------------

Read more about the 'A Disappearing Number'

Read more about Simon McBurney - my idol now. I have to know and see more of him.

Surprised in Jammu City about Srinagar

2010-07-26T20:54:00.006+05:30

Today, I got pleasantly surprised as I was entering Jammu city for the first time in my life. Ending my Ladakh biking trip, I am to take a train back to Mumbai tomorrow.

I had an impression of a city comparable to Srinagar. While Srinagar is the summer Capital, Jammu is the winter Capital of Jammu and Kashmir. So common logic implied that both the cities would be similar in development and progress.

I was by far under-estimating Jammu.

Jammu city is a clean, modern well planned city that has wider roads with quite a few fly-overs. It has a six lane bridge, the likes of which is even unseen in Delhi and Mumbai. Interestingly, the bridge is so wide that one lane is used for casually parking vehicles for a lazy evening chat.

I wonder what is to blame for this stark difference between Jammu and Srinagar. Is it the local governance? Is it terrorism? Is it something else?

While in Sonamarg yesterday, I was having an interesting discussion with two local shop-keepers. They were openly antagonising the local governance. They were strongly opposing the dictat of Omar, Farookh, Mufti and the whole gang.

Ironically Omar thinks otherwise. Please read this article that was published in the Hindu.

Frustrated, the shop-keepers were saying, "They should go and stay in their villas in London and America...Kashmir does not need them... India is giving enough money to the state but everything is being used for personal benefits and to buy properties abroad. They added that Manmohan Singh is a good person but if our own people are corrupt, then what is our future..."

Then they said something quite remarkable. They said, ".. there is one person who is a good politician. Karan Singh from Jammu side is a good man and thinks about the state and our people..."

Frankly, I dont know if Dr. Karan Singh is from Jammu but now that I am in Jammu, it surely looks like he is from Jammu...

Srinagar is one of my favourite cities. I wish for as much development to happen over there as I have seen in the Jammu city. I pray that Srinagar also gets a Karan Singh as a leader working for the development of the region.

Omar perhaps need to get out of his ivory tower.

Political thought: Changing the way politics is done and perceived.

2010-07-05T17:11:00.007+05:30

Politics today suffers from chronic In-breeding. The cause of all the political myopia, the lack of depth in political innovation and the deepening of the structural flaws in the system.

While China is winning diplomatic battles across South Asia in Sri Lanka, Australia, Burma etc, we are still struggling with an in-efficient, toothless, direction-less democracy.

Today, we are facing a dire need for a paradigm shift in political thinking and in the perceptions of politics in the minds of the common electing population. We need to think of ways to facilitate better implementation of developmental politics.

In my previous blog on 'Political In-breeding', I had mentioned about a model to reform political thinking to create developmental strategies rather than strategies just to win elections. This blog post is an effort in that direction.

Like any school or any education institute, which is known by the quality of its students, a country is also known by the quality of the people governing it. The education institutes get the quality by the strict entrance examinations or merit requirements.

For a country, it is not as simple.

For a second, even if we assume to having the best brains to run the country, would they be able to run the country to development? I wont think so.

How would they know how to run a country? How would they know the theories of management, the theories of International Relations, the theories of Financial Prudence, the theories of Industrial and Manufacturing economy and similar millions of other theories essential to govern a country to development?

Today, we neither have a proven model to filter-in quality talent to run the country, nor do we have a model to educate the filtered talent to run the country well. Some may argue that we have the Indian Administrative Services. My response is that I am clearly focusing on democracy and on the elected members of the society, who gets the power from the support of the masses to run India.

So this narrows down to two points of inflexions which can change the way politicians do politics to run the country:

Making of a new Politician
Educating the new Politician

Both these point require out of the box analysis with details to arrive at a model that can be implemented. I would write on each of these points in detail in two separate blog posts (just to keep each post easy and short to read)

Amazing Americas at FIFA 2010 Creating History

2010-06-20T18:26:00.004+05:30

Another 10 minutes to go for Paraguay to make history of sorts. It is 18:40 IST, 20th of June 2010, the 27th match of this world cup edition is being played. Paraguay is leading Slovakia by a solitary goal.

Its nothing surprising. It is not an upset result. But do you realise that this result with all the other results by the South American, North American and Central American teams in this world cup create a hostory of sorts.

None of the American teams have lost a match till now. If we take the carribeans into account, Honduras has lost one game, that too, to a South American team - Chile. No European team has beaten an American team in this world cup 2010....

As we speak, Paraguay is 2 goals up in the match against Slovakia.

The European powerhouses except for Netherlands are displaying a rather lacklustre play of the ball given the stars that they have, and given the popularity of club football in Europe. Spain losing to Switzerland, Germany losing to Serbia, France losing to Mexico, England drawing with Algeria, Portugal drawing with Ivory Coast leaves the ground completely to the American teams.
So that brings the Americans into the top two slots of every group that they are in:
Group A: Uruguay, Mexico (France is third)
Group B: Argentina, South Korea
Group C: Slovenia, USA, (England is third)
Group D: Ghana, Germany (No American team)
Group E: Netherlands, Japan (No American team)
Group F: Paraguay, Italy
Group G: Brazil, Ivory Coast (Portugal is third)
Group H: Chile, Switzerland (Spain is last)

Is this a beginning of a paradigm shift in the game of football, in the marketing of football, in the merchandising of football, in the hooliganism of football?

We will have to wait and watch. Things have changed for sure.

Women are not in the receiving end, our culture is!

2010-06-10T21:30:00.004+05:30

I am having a bad time with some of my female bloggers. If I show up to them, they will probably kill me. Anyways let me shoo my embarassment aside and let you know the interesting discussion.

I found this interesting and very well written blog by someone who calls herself 'Desi Girl'. You should definitely read the comments... berrate me or support me.

Attaching my last comment, which kind of defined my objective in all this mess.

OK peace! Throwing my white sqeaky clean towel into the ring! I washed it myself.

You know, the day I returned from my engagement, what was the first comment I got after a few formal congratulations. “Dude, thats not a engagement ring, that suffer-ing” With that statement and by being engaged, I entered into this cycle of wife bashing. I was completely taken aback and in a few days began seriously wondering, why these people have got married in the first place?

The reason I quoted this experience was to just prove that there are enough guys (looks almost like a majority) who think things are bad for a man in a marriage as well. This is sort of an answer to Malabika’s statement about “why are things bad for women at all?”

Life is unfair and things are bad for everyone, if you look at it that way.

Today if I start a blog dealing with ‘Man’s suffering because of his marriage’, and provided I am writer of IHM or Desi Girl’s callibre, believe me, I can have a good follower base… with all kinds of jingoist comments against wives, ..

We all know that relationships are difficult. Why do we say, “Shaadi ka laddoo jo khaye… “, “Shaadi Barbadi” etc etc along with the hazaar jokes about marriage? Similarly we have thousands of jokes around Saas, Bahu? Also, I had this “one room philosophy” which basically meant that the best of friends will also fight the moment they stay under one roof, irrespective of gender.

The point what I feel very strongly is that we should not fan this fire by giving one sided point of views. We are educated resourceful guys having a balanced view on life. Can we survive by rebelling against the other gender or our mothers (own or in-law) from a norm point of view?
These kinds of propagation is delaying marriagable age, breaking families, increasing divorces, confusing kids, and leaving our parents support-less. Today relationships are becoming more & more difficult… Our patience and perseverance are at an all time low. I feel, we are not propagating the right attitude and spirit by such venom-filled posts against a custom without giving an alternative worth the salt.

And nuclear individualistic lifestyle is definitely not the alternative. Even economically, nuclear family is disastrous. It eats away national savings without the motivation to save for the family.

Do we want to have homes for elders like we have in US, or like we have creche today in Mumbai? I do not want to leave my kid in a creche even it means reducing my income to half. Do you want the abortion rates that we have in US? Do you want ‘Juno’s’ to be omni-present in our society?

Have you read ‘its not about the bike’ by Armstrong? He didnt know his father and his mother was 18 years old when he was born.. Imagine why he cycled everyday for hours… Impressively, he used his frustrations in a productive way.

We may not. Our sons may not.

Have you guys read, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray and Love and then Commitment? She is the apostle of individualism and nuclear family. Just read how confused she was from the age of 17. How she was handling relationships? How she had to resort to medications? Luckily, she is a gifted writer and had the intelligence and the money to live through her crisis (and earn from it also).

We may not. Our daughters may not.

We have to devise a way to live with our families in a constructive way. We have to be team players, family men and women.

Cheers everyone. Peace.
We are in the same boat, brothers and sisters.
May God bless.

Are we in the right frame of mind to deny ourselves a joint family?

2010-06-07T23:25:00.013+05:30

I was completely against joint family but today i cant figure why? I professed 'girls be careful marrying a boy living with his parents'.. now I cant fathom why I thought like that.

To each, its own! Now I would say!

During one of those days feeling the blues of being out of home (away from parents) from class VI till today, when I should be taking care of my parents, something someone said startled me.

One of my friends (much younger to me) made a hardcore comment that "I want to get married to a joint family."

WHAT? I thought. She continued, "We need someone to guide us on how to run a home and how to become a successful home-maker. I just hope I get a good mother-in-law"

Till then, I was so surrounded by thoughts of today's modern women being independent, knowing how to balance personal & professional life (in Mumbai you would hardly find a husband who wont want his wife to contribute to the kitty), that I never thought this aspect of a woman's perspective to a joint family.

It was a time when I always felt guilty about seriously wanting to give the comforts of a young intelligent bahu to my aging parents. In my heart I was convinced that they deserved to relax now. My mom and dad worked, borrowed and foregone every luxury to make their 3 sons have the best of education. Today we are all migrant labourers earning very well and they are alone.

I felt that I should be with them but how do I say that to my wife who is not going through these dilemna and who cant understand my need for a joint family with her supporting me. So I felt guilt both ways...

Now armed with what my friend said, I started questionning my guilt, my guilt for thinking about a bahu for my parents... It is ultimately a mutually beneficial relationship corrupted by hyped up saas-bahu serials. Its not that bad when I see my life and my growing up years.

I started talking to many of my other friends about their concept of joint family. I clearly see a particular pschylogical profile opting for joint family. Its primarily the perceived (or real) lack of independent will in a joint family that a girl is scared of. Almost all wives of love marriages opted clearly for nuclear families.

I understand that with a culture of individual choices engulfing India, everyone wants to lead an independent life without interference. We seek independence in terms of our actions - what we wear, what time we sleep, what do we eat, drink etc. That is understandably not possible in a joint family. A tinge of conventionalism do creep in a joint family, the degree of which, again depends on the education and awareness levels of the family. Independence of thought is however possible. I have led a very independent life from class X and today I discover that independence of thought rather than independence of action is what I should crave for.

So I started observing joint families closely.

I found that joint family has critical economic significance too. As an effective support system, joint families can resolve the problems of modern-day housing, domestic labor (how many murders in Mumbai !!), baby-sitters (I remember seeing one video where the baby sitter was slapping the baby because she was crying) and destitute homes for women and children. China, for instance, encourages joint famies to solve the problem of housing.

Quite interestingly, one of the reason why our Indian economy could survive the economic crisis was ample domestic savings. Domestic savings is led by the concept of joint family. In the west, there is no motivation to save and individualistic consumerism has lead to national debt like that of what the US is facing today.

On a personal level, my quest took me to my childhood. I used to love going to my mama's house. A joint family with 3 mamas, mamis, kids and koka-aita (grandfather-mother). It was so much fun with the VCD player, story sessions, games, food, hide & seek and so much more... Kids surely love joint families and learn so much.

I remembered my grandfather and grandmother getting sicker by the day and the way the joint family tackled those times. My grand father and mother were a lucky couple. I miss them a lot.

What a support system! It supports everyone. No one's lonely and no one's overworked. I have heard of wives being loaded with work (unfairly) but I have not seen unreasonable expectations. Saas is older and so may get to relax a bit more. I have seen my grandmother going hand-in-hand with my mamis, and my mami used to tell her to take some rest.

When a couple can fight, how do you expect a saas & bahu not to... But i realised that all the fights stay in check in a joint family. First of all there is an authority, secondly there are enough distractions for a fighting pair - be it a couple or saas-bahu. And there are kids that bring the best out of everyone.

There was privacy too. I remember having this unsaid rule (don't remember who gave it to my head) that we were not supposed to get into any of the bedrooms (Ya, we had the luxury of quite a few bedrooms) while playing hide & seek.

Joint family is also a very potent bed of learning your roots. You get to know the relations and culturally you are given a good foundation. I would have hated to have a situation to learn only from my parents. Perspectives are many and strengths are multiple. You just absorb all. I am sure, weaknesses will also be many. Luckily I was, and am always a positive child, boy and man. It is anyway not a good thing to think bad about elders - again a learning from being with all of us.

Joint family as a concept has been our tradition and is the reason of our Indian-ness. It is the symbol of 'unity in diversity' and acts as a classroom for team spirit.

Today as I understand more about life, I am getting converted. Although I won't impose my thoughts, yet I wanted to lay down my thoughts for everyone to read, introspect and decide for themselves.

CD/DVDs - Half baked inventions !!

2010-06-06T00:49:00.005+05:30

Always had a grudge against CDs & DVDs.

Initially because I had a cool stereo tape recorder bought with my own money... and then because those damn saucer like discs were painstakenly costly.

Now I hate them because of their lack of immunity to dust (India is perennialy under construction) and rough weather. You cant expect me to always hold them by the edge and treat them with a 'handle with care' sign all the time. Once you keep it in the open, it will sneeze the next time when you play it. It beats (skips) the shit out of the music. And to top it, its not curable.
Once it sneezes, its cremation time, dude.

I always wonder why the intelligent morons who invented them didn't think of giving it a shelter from scratches, dust and other electro-magnetic fields.

It definitely has its pluses. Has a great apetite for storage, that too, good quality storage. Looks sleek, modern and high-end. Output is of hi-fi quality. But it has to be all that and more, when the aim was to make the good'ol tapes extinct.

However, the morons were so engrossed on the look and the shine of it that they forgot to cover it (give it a shelter). It is worse because the predecessors had a shelter to make it work for years. Its even (more) worse because the head that reads the CD/DVD is much smaller than the head of the tape recorder that used to read magnetic tapes. It was an easy kill. Morons.

They could have thought of lasers to read the disc (Isnt that an idea?). You dont even need a peep-hole to read the disc with laser. Laser as a technology surely existed then.

By the way, this blog is a patented thought. You jerks, dont even think.

You guys must now realise how pissed I am, with one of my favourite CDs refusing to play without sneazing. You know what, it is in my trash bin now.

GOOD BYE !!

Career Councelling - Let them choose. We would facilitate.

2010-05-29T19:41:00.009+05:30

Today I bumped into an over-joyed emotion on FaceBook from a very sweet cousin of mine, saying 'my results are out'. The immediate question to my mind was, "how do I diplomatically get out the examination that he is referring to?" He sure is a sweet cousin of mine, but I had no clue of his exact age and the class he is in. The reason is my 10 years stay in Mumbai chasing big dreams, chasing whatever looks interesting and whatever promises to pay-off.

The next instant, he perhaps understood my dilemna thousands of kilometres away in Duliajan, Assam, the message pops in saying, 'Class X - 90%'. I quickly replied "Congratulations". I was overjoyed. At the same time, I felt a little stuck thinking, "he must be now burdened with expectations to choose science and become a doctor or an engineer."

This brought me back to my thoughts to one of my earlier blogs about where I want to be vs where I am. It brought me to thinking about career councelling, or for a better word, the importance of career assessment.

I often lament saying, "We need to better career councelling in India". But today I am quite stuck thinking, how do you give career advice? What is career councelling when it comes to the elders of a family guiding the young ones in the family?

This blog is an effort to understand our responsibilities as parents, elders, seniors, to guide our sweet young energetic ones towards cultivating dreams for themselves and towards achieving them.

Career councelling is mostly a self discovery process. So the first rule of thumb is that we can not impose our thoughts of a good career to our sweet young ones. (I am quite liking this term - SYO). We have to help them discover themselves, their interest and their passion. No career or means of livelihood is a bad career. It can only be a bad choice.

That makes it clear that as elders, we need to facilitate choice and the act of choosing, and not choose for our SYOs.

The act of choosing is a serious business. It needs a clear responsible mind, hardwork, discipline, honesty, introspection and respect and all other such human virtues. This is where we elders should come in, in whatever capacity possible.

We can instill good values in our SYOs and make them responsible citizens.

Standing up for one's own mistakes, understanding the value for each penny earned, knowing to do his/her own homework, binding his/her own books with the brown cover and labelling each book, washing the tiffin box himself, making his own school bag with the books that is required by the class routine for the next day, keeping a diary, and many other such seemingly mundane routines actually make a SYO feel responsible or makes him responsible.

He needs to get a clear sense of his responsibilities vs his elders' (mostly parents) responsibilities. He should be clear that he is not going to get imposed with a career choice. That is his responsibility to choose.

As I said, the act of choosing is lot of hardwork and discipline. One has to be aware of the options to choose from. Here, we elders have a big role to play. We have to give an unbiased view of all the possible career options that our SYO has.

The keyword here is 'unbiased'. For instance, farming is not a bad career option as compared to being a doctor. Singer Lucky Ali is a passionate farmer. However, it is our duty that we provide a summary for each of the career options to the best of our abilities without being judgemental. For an emerging economy such as India, a necessary element of the summary should be about possible family life in a particular career chosen. In our ambition to be a high flying MNC executive, we forget that we might have to become migrant labourers staying away from our extended families, which many may not want to in the long run.

To my mind, one of the biggest task that we have today is to demystify medicine and engineering as career options. It feels so regressive to me to predict that when you are little older than a toddler, you want to become a pilot and when you are giving your board exams, you want to be an engineer or a doctor. It is saddening to see all the IITians going for IIMs, which clearly shows a lack of focus in terms of career planning. Moreover, it is Government spending (subsidies) going waste.

Secondly, to choose well, our SYO has to be aware of his own self, interests and aptitude. There are a number of online assessment test to get to know one's own interests and aptitude. Let me share an interesting link which I found while researching on online assessment tools. Although these can help in knowing oneself, but it has to be complimented with self introspection, observing elders'/others' career and lifestyle, lots of reading and exposure to all possible media, especially the Internet.

I remember my days when I passed my class XII. I rebelled not to study medicine or engineering just because everyone wants me to be doing one of the two. That probably was a childish emotion but I know the reason now. Thank God that my parents always supported me in whatever I wanted to do. Otherwise, it could have been worse.

This blog is just a summary of my opinion of the responsibilities that we elders have towards our SYOs. There is lots to read on the Internet. It is the everyday parenting that counts in giving the wings to our SYOs to fly towards their dreams.

Conflict of Individualism with Collective Knowledge

2010-04-30T22:57:00.015+05:30

Elizabeth Gilbert - the famous author of 'Eat Pray Love' and 'Committed' sums up her western upbringing as: "You matter". She talks about personal happiness through a very personal, individualistic search for contentment.

Today one can read umpteen similar viewpoints supporting happiness via individualism, freedom to choose one's own destiny towards happiness, opportunity to shape one's own life's ambition and dreams, independence to choose one's own love (life partner), liberation from conservative tradition and promotion of the self.

Elizabeth Gilbert describes this phenomenon beautifully when she writes, "I was raised to believe that I was special. My 'me-ness' was always prized, and was recognised as being different from my sister's 'her-ness', my friends' 'them-ness' and everyone else's 'everyone-else-ness'."

I see nothing wrong with this attitude but fear that it may instigate rebellous-ness. Rebellion in itself too may not be bad but when laced with ignorance can create chaos.

Elizabeth Gilbert had to travel the world at the age of 37 to research and discover 'Marriage' - the stubbornly enduring old institution. That too, after being married earlier for 6 years. Fortunately, she had the money, motivation, intelligence and resources to take the effort. But was it worth it? It is interesting to note that she hardly mentions the role of her family, her upbringing in teaching her notions about marriage.

My contention is that decisions and directions in life is best taken with maximum possible understanding about life. It is the relative wisdom that would ensure relative contentment. My belief is that individual wisdom can never be richer than collective wisdom. My belief is that the family support system is the most self-less of all source of collective wisdom.

The culture of individualism conflicts with this benefit of collective wisdom because an individual has to suspend logic and obvious reasoning to take advantage of collective aged wisdom. There are many aspects of life's wisdom that cannot be understood at a particular point in time. Individual wisdom comes with age, experience, education, circumstances. So it may be prudent to believe in collective wisdom without really understanding the same.

If we take wisdom in terms of the understanding the institution of marriage and the effect of individualism in America, it was as early as 1800s when social conservatives suggested that 'this trend toward expressive individualism in marriage would spell out the very breakdown of society'. What they specifically predicted was that 'allowing couples to make life matches based purely on love and individual whims would promptly lead to astronomical divorce rates and a host of bitterly broken homes'. Dont you think they were kind of correct?

To reiterate, it may not be always possible to understand 'why is it what it is' for whatever our elders advise us, society administers, neighbours gossip etc. We need to open our intuition and instincts to accept views and opinions irrespective of whatever it is termed - 'traditions', 'superstitions', 'customs', 'gossip', jokes etc.

We should not let the collective wisdom of our extended family support system get diluted with fervent individualism. We cannot afford to re-invent our worldly understanding every lifetime. Of course, we can choose to disagree, but with extreme caution.

The western concept of individual choice may sound cool. But beware, its lonely and devoid of worldly time-tested logic. We have to let collective wisdom survive the onslaught of western individualistic culture.

Everyone of us cant be Elizabeth Gilbert.

We ignore dental hygiene.

2010-04-16T12:46:00.002+05:30

Last week one of my friends had to extract six of his teeth due to decay. It was alarming and a shock for me.

Dental hygiene becomes a thought and a concern when we find difficulty chewing with one of our teeth. Unfortunate but true that we visit our dentist when a tooth pains. Even in Metros, where dental knowledge and expense are relatively higher, dental hygiene is most neglected.

It’s when we are returning from the dentist with our first root canal done then we are thinking of taking care of the remaining teeth. Even then, how many of us know how to take care of our remaining teeth?

For many, the obvious may be to start brushing after dinner before going to bed. For some, surprising it may sound, it is brushing regularly from now. It is worse if it is a promise to brush properly from now.

Dental hygiene is a serious concern that we are seriously not concerned today. We have to understand that tooth decay is irreversible and realise that the sorrow of not having a critical tooth like a molar or a canine is lifelong. Tooth decay not only spreads to other teeth, but also produces a foul smell.

Did you know that a root canal is actually a process to cut off the supply of nutrients and blood to the tooth, making it a dead brittle tooth, which can chip off any time? Scary, isn’t it?

Dental hygiene is easy, cheap and has long term benefits. It comprises brushing, flossing, cleansing and a six monthly visit to your dentist.

Our daily dental hygiene plan should involve brushing our teeth twice in a day - morning and before going to bed, flossing our teeth and rinsing our mouth with a mouthwash once in a day. Brushing is for overall cleaning, flossing is to remove deeply lodged food particles and cleansing is to reduce the bacterial count and activity.

If we double this daily regime with a six monthly visit to the dentist for specialised tooth cleaning and check up, we are surely assured of a healthy pair of teeth for a lifetime.

It is always re-assuring to have one familiar dentist, as he would know your teeth structure, history and your lifestyle better. So go and make friends with a dentist today. I have made mine.

Wish I had the good sense to follow these instructions when I was a kid. It is important that we teach and enforce dental hygiene to our kids. The best way to enforce is to do it ourselves. Kids learn from their parents, as they take them as examples. If the parents brushes twice daily and enforces the kids to do the same, it is very likely that the kids will pick up the habit too.

I am going to meet my friend tomorrow to look at him and silently resolve to start a more stricter dental hygiene regime. I dont want to extract any of my tooth till I am fifty. Period.

Reservations against Medical Seats is a Criminal Offense

2010-04-12T19:55:00.006+05:30

Reservation like License Raj is a bane for any modern democratic society. It leads to discrimination and misuse by the mighty. More than discrimination, I worry about its ability to foster inefficiency.

We may decide as a strategy to tolerate inefficiency in politics, inefficiency in civil services et al, but we can't tolerate inefficiency in the medical practice.

Reservation for medical seats towards scheduled tribes, scheduled castes and other backward classes is tantamount to assisting murders and death due to negligence. In this case, this 'negligence' is actually 'disguised' ignorance.

Medical science is a quest to understand the human body, which is so vast that it has the potential of giving a nobel prize every year for another zillions of years. I believe through many discussions with doctors that we perhaps know only 20% percent of the human body and its myriad behaviour.

So, medical science needs students with sharp intelligence, memory, insightful analysis and an aptitude to grasp complex scientific logic. Additionally, it needs life-long curiosity to crave to learn more every passing day with newer discoveries and theories.

In contrast, reservation is bringing in students with lower intelligence, lower aptitude and lower analytical ability into the medical fraternity.

This has obvious dire consequences and more so because of the following two reasons:

The non-medico society knows very less about medical science. This leaves very little argument against a wrong prognosis. I remember one of our neighbours not allowing his child to drink water, as he was having loose motion thinking that water will only make it worse.
The doctors are kept in God-like social standing. They are the opinion makers. So, naturally doctors are not questioned and are followed with blind faith. That is the reason perhaps, of the existence of Hippocratic Oath.

I have had so many instances of stupid mis-diagnoses that it pains my heart.

In spite of the fact that Parkinson's Disease is one of the heavily studied disease, my father was mis-diagnosed twice by doctors who had Masters in medical sciences. A year later, a 4th year student told us about my father by just looking at him for a few minutes during my marriage function. I have to mention that she was the topper in her batch.

I have heard of so many gastro-intestinal complications due to mis-prescription of antibiotics without proper guidance about the side-effects of antibiotics. My uncle expired due to heavy intestinal bleeding due to wounds in the intestines caused by excessive antibiotic doses.

One doctor could not recognise peripheral vascular disease which is ultra-common in heavy diabetic patients. It is unbelievable but it was me who had to pin-point that this is PVD, but it was a bit late.

A good doctor is one who can think out of the box assisted by his clear understanding of the various facets of medical science. A book worm (one who believes in mugging) who passes his medical exams can never understand medical sciences too well.

We have to seriously understand and give a thought to abolish reservation for medical seats in all Government colleges. And very quickly at that.

Another disease affecting the medical fraternity, I thought I should mention, is the prevalence of admission through donations. Donations seats are as harmful as reservation seats to the common man.

Beware Indians.

Introspection: We chase security till death!

2010-04-07T22:13:00.002+05:30

Today I am about to be 34 in about a few days. I think I have had a successful stint at leading life to a respectable position. I have grown from earning 1500 a month to earning in lakhs. I have learnt to keep myself productively busy. Very busy.

But a strange thought is currently depriving me of all my pride and contentment.

We are only taught and doctrinated to chase security. We are not taught to chase our dreams.

Security, I feel is a transient term, a state of mind that changes with context, time and money.

I have been chasing security. I have been chasing money. I have been chasing the easiest and the most secure way to make money. Not knowing how much is enough money. Not knowing how much money will give you enough security.

I surely had a passion and an inkling of my interests. I am happy that I didnt go completely haywire. I studied advertising at MICA. Designed communication for McDonald's

Then I think the inevitable had to happen. I aimed for convenience, comfort, stability and security. I jumped jobs and skills that were of interest and convenience to me and that which could fetch me more money. Soon, I had EMIs to pay, a house to run, a car to drive, a bike to ride. I had a lifestyle to maintain. Pubs to go and luxuries to experience.

Maya-Nagari Mumbai, all the while assisted me in my quest for security. I didnt realise and understand the maya.

I took the stand still-traffic to be a necessary evil to be waded through. I took to working 10-12 hours as if I had no option. I considered the brown sky without any stars to be the natural sky. I took the honks, construction sounds, and all the artificial sounds to be natural. Sometimes I think I will become deaf. I took to staying away from my parents as something that everyone in a metro does. It seemed normal.

Thinking of what's next become a priority. Ambition, Performance, Ego, More Money, peer pressure became a way of life... Anxiety is accepted. They say there are pills that are abused to control anxiety. So much for security.

I forgot to look back, to introspect. Today, I feel a bit shaky. Security still alludes me. Security has become a never ending chase.

Time to think. Time to realise my dreams. Its never too late.

Memento Memories - We too keep notes!

2010-03-30T22:14:00.015+05:30

OK. So what am I doing?
Oh, I'm chasing this guy.
No. He's chasing me.
Ah! Fuck!

------

I have this condition.
A condition?!
It's my memory.
Amnesia?
No, no, it's different from that. I have no short-term memory.

I know all about myself, I just...
Since my injury I can't make new memories. Everything fades.

If we talk for too long I'll forget how we started...

For any movie maniac, this would ring a bell. Memento for many, Ghajini for few.

Just for the un-initiated, Memento is a 'must watch' psychological thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, adapted from his younger brother Jonathan Nolan's short story "Memento Mori". The movie later inspired one of the greatest bollywood blockbuster - Ghajini (the Ghajini hair cut, though was original bollywood creation).

This is not a movie review, but a reflection of the movie that fell on me.

The movie is about Leonard Shelby who believes in his life through notes, Polaroid photographs with caption and permanent tattoos on his body. Since he has short term memory or practically doesn't remember anything and anybody, he trusts his instincts, handwriting and tattoos.

'You really need a system if you're gonna make it work. You kinda learn to trust your handwriting... ...where you put them is really important. You need a jacket that's got, like, six pockets... You just kinda learn to know where things go and how the system works...'

Don't we all write notes? In the corollary, don't we find people who doesn't write notes inefficient and often forgetful workers. Don't we consider 'Post-it Notes' as one of the world's most innovative products? Don't we find ourselves a bit lost if the minutes of the meeting are not circulated or noted?

The only difference being that Leonard Shelby had too short a memory. We all have short memories and some reference memories.

The movie makes a great statement on belief systems, instincts and intuition. Its all about self belief about what you perceive in life.

...I have to believe in a world outside my own mind.
I have to believe that my actions still have meaning.
Even if I can't remember them...
I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world's still here...

We too know so little about the world in spite of being scientifically so advanced to send men to space. The only option is to have faith and belief.

Its believed that medical science only knows only 20% about the human body. There are innumerable diseases that the medical fraternity calls 'Auto-immune Diseases', which in simple words imply that we don't know the cause and cure. We know so little about what's going to happen in the next instant.

We have created technology to fill ourselves with documented knowledge - wikipedia, google, blogs, libraries et al. But can we read, understand and assimilate all of that in one life-time to understand life,... to understand ourselves.

Am I really sure that the laptop with its lithium battery wont burst on my lap while I write this blog? Its all about my belief that's making me continue to keep the laptop on my lap

So what we do is we believe in our instincts and strengthen them through daily conditioning. Its about habits that we pick up from our childhood and the culture that we come from. We have to accept them and be happy with ourselves. One life time is too short to keep thinking of changing for the better, especially when it is difficult to understand 'what is better'

Conditioning didn't work for Sammy, so he became helpless.
But it works for me.
I live the way Sammy couldn't.
Habit and routine make my life possible.
Conditioning. Acting on instinct.

The movie beautifully portrays that this system of belief, instinct and intuition can be strengthened by conditioning and has to be complimented by past memories (references). Otherwise the system will shake and dis-integrate. We have to remind ourselves about who we are.

Today, in our busy lives, we tend to forget who we are, where did we come from and why we are wherever we are. Its about an un-ending desire for progress and material success accumulating stress, anxiety and confusion in the process. We forget our objectives, about why we started the journey and instead create newer objectives.

We all need memories to remind ourselves who we are.
I'm no different.

Leonard Shelby could keep his single mindedness because of his systemic notes that he either tattooed or written on Polaroid photographs. Everyday the first thing that he reads is 'Remember Sammy Jenkins' which is tattooed to his left upper arm just by the side of his thumb. That statement starts his process of understanding his life, his condition, his purpose and therefore deciding on his next move.

We are not so fortunate. We don't have a trigger to start the process of understanding life everyday. And we end up our days scampering like rats.

The best part of Memento is that Leonard Shelby can choose to not remember a few details in his life. He starts every day with a clean slate with no hatred, biases and pre-conditions. Morever, he can choose to not write notes about something that he may repent in the future. He can choose to forget. Today, most of our sadness and depression is about the memories of our past.

We may not remember the minutes of an important meeting, but we would surely remember our sad moments, failures, humiliations and bad relationships. Some memories are best forgotten but we cant help it.

We have to let go of some of our past. Even if it means 'no learning from that past', it's worth it.

To cut long story short, Memento is an amazing insight and perspective on memory, instincts and conditioning behaviour. A must watch for an healthier outlook towards life.

This time it is Muslim Reservation.. Frowning!!

2010-03-25T21:17:00.004+05:30

Just had a frown reading a news item on twitter that the Andhra Pradesh government has received a major boost with the Supreme Court upholding the validity of four percent reservation provided to backward members of Muslim community in the state.

Still frowning but just a bit relaxed that it is just an interim order. Thank you Allah!

Earlier last month the Andhra Pradesh High Court had termed a separate quota for Muslims as 'unsustainable and unconstitutional' and ruled against a Congress Government act - Reservation in favour of Socially and Educational Backward Classes of Muslims, which was passed on 23 July 2007. According to the act, 15 socially and educationally backward Muslim classes (students and employees) were to get 4% reservation.

It seems to be the season of ripe reservation. MIM (Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen)- one of the political parties opposing the women reservation is campaigning for this reservation. Cool! (More frown)

One of the points pro this act says that reservation actually began on the basis of religion. It says, an individual enjoys schedule caste (SC) status if he is a Hindu or Buddhist making his religion the deciding factor. Muslims and Christians SC people do not fall under SC reservation. (smiling & frowning)

Although plausible in the present day context, just imagine the blunder we have made in the name of SC reservation. How ridiculous it seems today that someone thought an SC cannot be a Muslim. Likewise, this Muslim reservation will also be ridiculed in the future for some silly mis-assumptions and mis-conceptions of the present.

It is interesting to look at why the High Court had opined that the Act is unsustainable and unconstitutional.

Unconstitutional simply because it is violative of Article 14 (equality before law) and other provisions pertaining to prohibition of discrimination by State on grounds of religion, race, caste, SEX or place of birth. Wonder how the Rajya Sabha approved the Women's Reservation Bill!!

Unsustainable because it failed to evolve and spell out proper and relevant criteria for identification of social and educational backwardness and inadequate representation in public employment among classes or persons belonging to Muslim community. The data which was relied on was actually collected and observed made by Anthropological Survey of India to make an anthropological profile of Indian population.

Cant fathom why the Supreme Court ignored these bases... Sometimes I think that I am just increasing my chances of static wrinkles on my forehead by frowning and getting angry on these news items. Who cares about me and my wrinkles?

What's wrong with live-in relationships, asks Supreme Court

2010-03-24T14:56:00.006+05:30

Marriage as a forceful essential convention has got a kick in the butt.

The Supreme Court yesterday opined that a man and woman living together without marriage cannot be construed as an offence. This, along with the January 2008 Supreme Court ruling stating that 'if a man and woman are involved in a live-in relationship for a long period, they will be treated as a married couple and their child would be called legitimate', makes for a great change in the Indian social fabric.

With respect to physical security, the female of live in relationship is already given protection under the Domestic Violence Act 2005. In terms of the fear that the male partner may leave the girl with kids is also no longer true. In the court of law, it will be very easy for her to prove legitimacy.

With respect to children, the SC judgement has dispelled all doubts and apprehensions crucial for the children’s future, their prestige and treatment among the society. They will be treated at equal footing in the court of law.

I have always questioned marriage as being the ultimate weapon for eternal togetherness. You may want to read this. These changing societal landscape only proves that nature ultimately will raise its head out of human-created shackles like marriage. Although it may not reduce the significance of marriage as a safe institution, but it will surely encourage and support the rebels to follow their instincts and conscience.

Like the Indian economy grew after the 1991 liberalisation, the social economy will also get enhanced by this liberty given to choose the way we want to spend our life with our partners.

This will also bring women into equal economic footing, as they don't have to face the pressures of convention inside a marriage.

Divorce and break-ups will be a lesser taboo and emotionally less draining. It will ultimately be considered natural.

Relationships will be stronger, as the likelihood of each partner taking the other for granted will be lesser. We all know that marriage as a social bind changes the dynamics of a relationship. 'Shaadi ke baad change ho gaya hain' will be a lesser heard phrase.

This judgements and developments may finally make 'marriage' a lesser inspiration for jokes. It may lead to lessening of the significance of one of the oldest proverb - 'Shaadi ke laddoo jo khaye woh pashtaye, Jo nehi khaye woh bhi (nehi) pashtaye!'

Jay Ho!

Husband, Wife, Marriage, In-laws.. an unending discussion!

2010-03-20T14:48:00.007+05:30

Bringing you a very interesting dialogue that IHM and I are having. This is in continuation to my previous post - What I understand about 'Paraya Dhan' - A response to one of IHM's blog. I am putting her responses and my replies.

You may read her blog - Paraya Dhan and her limited rights - first to get the discussion entirely.

My 1st response: By the end, I stay confused. Somehow I cant relate to so much brouhaha about so many things. I feel there is too much superficiality, complications and double standards in your writing and in the messages. I think the perspectives are too narrow and urban-ish.

IHM: Urbanish perspective? Not entirely.I think basic problems women face are the same all over India. Divorce is still a dirty word – we force girls to ‘adjust’ and live with their in laws even if they don’t want to; a large number of widows still stay unmarried; girl- children are still unwelcome, getting married and staying married (and staying a suhagan ) is still very important for a girl…

My 2nd response: Marriage as an institution is man-made and is a fault-ridden convention. The other name of marriage is adjustment, compromise and adapting to a new family. Both the boy and the girl goes through new requirements in life. If you want to be in the convention, you better be conventional. Divorce will ALWAYS be a dirty word, adjustments will ALWAYS be required, staying married will always be important for both THE MAN and the woman. Widow re-marriage is surely an issue that my dad once fought for. I didn't understand why he was not letting my masi stay close to us. I was a kid. I wondered why he got her married to someone so far away. Now I understand and I respect my ‘Deuta’.}

My 1st response: Or perhaps my perspective is narrow and Assamese.
I am born and brought up in Assam, where there is no caste system, no class consciousness, no religious sentiments (changing drastically with ISI being active and Bangladeshi immigrants). I have not seen domestic violence, dowry and dowry death, divorces and ‘nuclear families’ (the few ones I saw were unhappy). I loved my joint family upbringing. I was fed (with hands) by the aunts more than my mom ever got a chance. Games like hide & seek, community swimming in the pond, getting honey from beehives wouldn't have been possible without a joint family.

IHM: A fun filled childhood no doubt. I know male children are preferred there too. Shouldn’t all children be loved equally? Let me ask you this – why do parents all over India prefer male children?

My 2nd response: I agree with you here but I have always seen parents being happy with a boy and a girl. A pair is considered a blessing. So, I have seen parents wanting a child depending on the first child. Yes they may be a bit skewed towards a boy for their first child. But this is going to change. This thought and preference had a genesis / reason which is past due date and the fundamentals have changed now. I understand you being pissed with this status-quo, being a woman, but at the same time please agree that things are changing. No point stressing or rebelling too much about it. Its like the Indian motorist honking the daylights out of the sound ecology, even when he knows that traffic can only move that fast, or worse when he knows that the red light has just turned green. So although it is a valid point you are making, you cannot get too prejudiced and jingoist about it. And talk only of girl issues in marriage. Our (educated bloggers) discussions should be gender-neutral or gender balanced. You know we Indians are actually much better off. Have you seen movies like ‘North Country’ and ‘Mississippi Burning’? You will realise the rural US of A. We have had woman presidents and prime-ministers. How many countries can boast of that?

My 1st response: I really don't understand so much fuss. I would just want to say, why cant we just let nature take its turn.

IHM: Is it unnatural for adults to marry the ones they love and to make a house of their own?

My 2nd response: Of course it is natural. It is also natural that her elders would want her to convince them of his worthiness. They can get difficult at times, but they are your elders, your family and I am sure they will understand. However, ‘making a house of their own’ is a bit dicey and implication laden proposition, because the corollary implies that they are BREAKING AN EXISTING HOUSE of their own. It is natural that they will face a harder test from the elders. Why is this bothering you? Isn't the fallout of their want for a house of their own, natural too?

IHM: Is it unnatural for a girl to want to be wanted and loved by her biological parents as much as any other child? Or is it unnatural for a society to let all children love their parents, not just the male children or just female children?

My 2nd response: Of course it is natural for a girl to feel wanted by her biological parents. Its a crime not to let the female child not love their own parents? But the duty of the girl is also to give love and get love from her new parents. It may sound harsh but she has herself got into an existing convention called marriage. The boy is also in the same boat. He is the son to her parents. Ya it is worse for the woman because she has to stay with the husband’s parents. But that's a patrilineal tradition. And has not happened by fluke. You should understand that it is worse for the khashi and Garo MEN to stay with the girls’ parents; theirs is a matrilineal tradition. On a lighter note, the son also has a lot to go through in a joint family. Just imagine how difficult it gets to the man to have two women in his life – Mom and wife? Ha! If you are interested, let me tell you about an interesting Assamese custom. The mother of the groom does not attend the actual marriage puja. She cries and bid farewell to her son till the front door of her house. You may be thinking, what crap!!? But its true. She acknowledges and willfully bids farewell to her son to another woman – his wife. From the day of the marriage, her son is the responsibility and property of his wife. So woman favouring tradition does exist and society has acknowledged the position of the wife.

IHM: And is it unnatural that all women want to be valued even if they only have daughters/ or no children/ or no husband or no brothers? Do think about it.

My 2nd response: I thought. Like all woman want to be valued irrespective of her marital / reproductive status, all man also wants to be valued the same way. Have you noticed the way society looks at a divorced man, child-less man or an unmarried man. I know you may have noticed that about a woman. Men are also in the same boat. Society is crazy and helpful at the same time. It will eat you up if you are not among one of them. Importantly (and relevant to this discussion), there is no gender bias.

My 1st response: There are woman who do not think that household work is mundane. They love to be nurturers. They love to be provided for, to be submissive and feel sexy. And there are women who would always crib about a supposedly generated status-quo of women’s deplorable plight & jump up and down for women’s independence in terms of financial security.

IHM: There are also women who want a little more than household work. Won’t it be better if each did what they are inclined towards?

My 2nd response: I am a big support of free will. Women should be allowed to whatever they are inclined. And I don't believe that they are not allowed. There is resistance but things are changing. But the point I am repeating is that marriage requires certain adjustments from both the boy and the girl. And convention says that the girl is the nurturer. But woman do have a choice. In my hometown Duliajan, 99.9% woman are, as you call them, ‘Provided for’. But
interestingly the only MLA winning 3 consecutive assembly elections in my home constituency was a woman. See, there are choices to be made everywhere. But every choice has resistance applying both to THE MAN and the woman.

IHM: Do you really believe that the problems that are discussed on this blog are not genuine? I understand that it may not directly concern you, maybe it has never touched your life directly, but does that mean the problems do not exist?

My 2nd response: The problems that are discussed are not representative and are skewed towards woman. Problems may actually exist, that's not the point. My point is that I always rebel against skewed discussions, scenarios and logic. Skewed discussions never veer towards root causes of a problem phenomenon. Skewed discussions are more of crib sessions and finger pointing sessions. Of course culture plays an important role for a skewed scenario. For instance, a girl slapping a man on the streets would everyone have assuming that the man must have done something wrong. Similarly when I am in your blog and your forum, I feel I am in a skewed scenario with remarks and cribs without any clear analysis. I don't want to escape, and instead want to provide my two bits. So I am responding even after losing 2000 words to smoke. (My first try at this response got deleted). Consider another imaginary analogy of a 'man-blog' saying “Monogamy sucks, Polygamy is the way”. Going by my opinion that Men are intrinsically seeders (do you agree?) and there is a good chance of a rush of man-supporters to that blog. But that blog or the discussion that will ensue may not keep the general female population in mind. It would be definitely man-skewed. That's not productive for the overall society. Remember blog (pen) is mightier than the sword!

My 1st response: Today in Mumbai with increasing number of blogs (aka awareness) about women independence, I see more confused woman, more confused about their role in the society. More divorces. More under-eye circles.

IHM: The dark circles were always there, and the confusions were NOT permitted to women, so our folk lore and folk songs are full of women ( and their parents) fearing or complaining about a girl’s in laws.

My 2nd response: Folklore are also filled with remarks ridiculing marriage, ridiculing a wife’s tantrums, cracking jokes on Joru Ka Gulam etc etc. Also don't forget jokes. When I was engaged and was wearing my engagement ring, one of my seniors told me “that's not a wedding ring, that's suffe-ring. Ha! Again repeating, boys are in the same boat, IHM.

IHM: Today women are in a position to be able to do something about the confusions. And I agree it may disturb those who were comfortable with the old system, but should that mean we do not look for alternatives?

My 2nd response: I don't believe that anybody stopped women from getting confused. Marriage is also about giving shoulders to each other to get confused (and cry!). And we are successfully getting confused all the time. Why do you say, confusions were not permitted to women? Also I don't know if your blog or the comments are doing anything about solving the confusions. Its not analysing the issue keeping the husband in the picture. If you read one of the comments in my blog when I published my 1st response in my blog, shubhra says very aptly “Confusion arises when people/women confuse traditional views for being 'sexist'. Women being the nurturers of the family should not be considered/termed as 'Dependants'. No one would like to be associated with this word. Traditionally women have been perceived as biological production plants in certain societies and have been inhumanly treated..Probably that is the reason for such angst in the modern woman... They have been taught how their breed has been tortured for years and the only way to change this is to become financially dependant. I would plead all the women to treat this as a phenomenon practiced in few societies and not generalise this as a traditional norm. Domestic violence should not be acceptable to anyone, including women..But at the same time every woman should have an insight into who she is and what she wants from the society and from herself..Only then will she realise whether she wants to be a nurturer or a provider...or both(if she can balance the act) Once she accepts who she is, she will not feel the need to prove herself by going out of the way to fit into the modern society." Very well said, Shubhra. Thanks.

IHM: No divorces may or may not mean happy marriages. A lot of couples stay together even when they are unhappy – and that does not mean the marriage is successful, it simply means they are afraid of society’s reaction to a separation. Living together only because they have no choice is always a good idea?

My 2nd response: You are absolutely right. ‘No divorce’ is a farce. However, I again repeat, the man is also afraid of society’s reaction. Why do you forget that? Marriage is difficult and people do stay married for fear, for kids etc. It is a gender neutral phenomenon.

My 1st response: The reason is we are not letting each one be. Our support systems are breaking. We don't know our neighbours. We don't play hide and seek anymore!!

IHM: About Support Systems. Widows were often returned to their parents’ home and their children were discriminated against by whoever supported them – brothers or in laws. Today we realise that even if one needs support, one need not be dependent – today a widow can earn and ensure that her children and she, both have respect. Isn’t this a better system? Here I feel even the brothers can’t really be blamed – it was a forced responsibility. I feel a society where all adults can take basic care of themselves is a healthier society.

My 2nd response: I believe in re-marrying the widow and supporting her from all sides. But ya there are cases of her being sent away and blamed for the husband's death. I have not seen it myself though. With education, woman will start getting independent financially and you are right all adults taking care of themselves is a healthier society. Sau taka! But again, its more like social in-consistencies created by the strong and mighty. The similar analogy is the Brahmin-Non Brahmin issue. For centuries, Brahmins never allowed the non-brahmins to go to pathsaala. They always wanted the non-brahmins to be illiterate so that they don't understand their mantras that they recite (one of the reasons). Let me tell another interesting thing about ‘Brahmin mantra’. Did you know that on the marriage fire (don't know what it is called) the pandit actually marries the girl to himself and then hands her over to the husband. If you
decipher the sanskrit mantra you would see that he is the one who is marrying the girl first. He is a Brahmin and has a first right (of refusal!) over all of us. Another thing about Mantra that I read was, when one gives pind by the funeral pyre to his parents, the panditji through mantra says that the son actually is the cause of his father’s death and he has to wash his sins by giving dakshinas – a cow, a goat etc etc… Today things have changed and will continue changing.

My 1st response: I have seen both worlds. I have seen my joint family. And I have seen khashi and Garo families where the youngest daughter gets the property of the mother and the boys go to the girls’ house. I see how they beautifully manage.

IHM: They should be treated like all other adult family members- like equal members, taking part in all decision making, and their opinion should have the same value as other members.

My 2nd response: I completely agree. It will change with education and awareness. It will also change the way a mother in law (also a woman!) is overpowering and has an uneven say.

My 1st response: In Mumbai (perhaps in all metros), I have seen woman going to their parent’s home when she is about 6-7 months pregnant. That completely leaves me NUMB. My parents and the parents that I have grown up with would have taken that to insult. If the daughter in law feels more comfortable in her parent’s house after marriage, and not in the husband’s house, it is a curse for the in-laws. Believe you me, I have always met wives who are happier delivering in their husband’s home, therefore.

IHM: I think a woman should be able to choose who she feels more comfortable with – a girl who can go to her parents house whenever she likes is definitely happier than a girl who will fear that her show of love or trust for her parents might be taken as an insult by her in laws. Such things should not become a matter of honor or insult, this is the reason why women feel oppressed in Joint families.

My 2nd response: I agree. I don't debate free will. But I have observed that in-laws do take extra care so that she actually feel comfortable, esp. when there is a social obligation. See in the cases that I have seen, both the son’s mom and the daughter’s parents have given farewell to them and they have themselves for everything and the boy’s parents in most case. So the girl never thinks that she has the option that she can go to her parents. so she does not feel oppressed at all. A person in the desert may not feel the need for an AC, when he does not know about the existence of AC. Its like only when we buy an AC, that we cant sleep without an AC. See I am not referring to giving support back to parents, financial or otherwise. Both parents should be taken care of. They are our elders. Period.

My 1st response: Last week, one incident shook me up. One of my team members came to me and requested me for a leave of 1/2 days. She said her sister has got chicken pox and so her mother has to go and take care of her. And obviously since she had a baby, she cant come to office. Now the question that puzzled me was ‘where is her sister’s husband, parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts…’
I (we) take ‘paraya dhan’ very seriously. If somebody can trust their dhan to us and call their own blood as our dhan, we will better take care of her and make her the cynosure of our eyes.

IHM: An adult citizen’s welfare cannot be left to her family’s good intentions. When adults live together, there can be disagreements and there can be ego clashes, an adult should be able – if she so chooses, to live in her own house with her spouse, without being made to feel guilty.

My 2nd response: Good intentions are all that we have to trust and make our future. If we cant leave anything to good intentions, then most of the concepts in this world will collapse. As I said, living in her own house implies NOT LIVING in her husband's house. So it is natural to face resistence. Please note that her husband's house is her house now. She may not feel it in the first few years of her marriage, but she will be the overpowering SasuMa one day thumping her rights in every little detail. So its perhaps a bit of a trade off for the woman in the first few years. On a lighter note, I hate wearing ties but who is forcing me to work in a bank. Me myself. Fact is I forced myself hard to get into a bank because it pays. I never dreamt of the salary that I get in reality today. But the fallout is that in a bank, you have to be in a bloody formal dress. So I believe that for any problem or discomfort, we should first think why we got into the problem situation. Are we making a trade off? Then suddenly you may find relief.

IHM: The biggest problem with ‘paraya dhan’ is the girl belongs nowhere, the parents raise her to fit into another family, and the other family makes her their honor, pride and responsibility. Take a look at what girls all over India go through as kids because they are ‘paraya dhan’. What about their childhood?

My 2nd response: I dont agree that the girl belongs nowhere. In fact it is the dream & destiny of girls to marry INTO a good, wealthy, generous, loving family all over India. Also, today’s bahu is the SasuMa tomorrow. She is the bloody owner of the house and has all the keys for a good 20 years of her mature life. A man can never become as powerful as the SasuMa. Even otherwise, as a wife, you tell me who decides the colour of the house, the sofa set, the window curtains, the drawing room, the drawing room table where the husband cant put his leg, the colour of the shirts that the husband wears, the ganjees and underwears of the husband, … today, tell me who decides the nursery school, who decides the auto rickshaw taking the kids to school…and so much more that the wife does.

What I understand about 'Paraya Dhan' - A response

2010-03-18T00:15:00.004+05:30

This is a response to a blog - 'Paraya Dhan and her limited rights'

Did you read the blog? You may read it first. I read it along with the comments. All of it. But by the end, I become confused. Messed up in the head.

I cant relate to so much brouhaha about so many things relating to Paraya Dhan. I feel that there lies underneath - superficiality, immaturity, complicated thinking, hidden sour feelings, modern life confusion and a zingoist attitude. Its about questioning culture for narrow ends and means. I even didnt like the comments. I think the perspectives are too narrow and urban-ish.

Or perhaps my perspective is utterly narrow and Assamese.

I am born and brought up in a neighbourhood in Assam, where there was no caste system, no class consciousness, no religious sentiments (changing drastically with ISI being active and Bangladeshi immigrants). I had not seen domestic violence, dowry and dowry death, divorces and ‘nuclear families’ (the few ones I saw were unhappy).

I loved my joint family upbringing. I was fed (with hands) by the aunts more than my mom ever got a chance. Games like hide & seek, family swimming in the pond, getting honey from beehives, sitting and chatting in the winter sun and all the fun wouldnt have been possible without a joint family.

So, I really dont want to understand so much fuss.

There are woman who do not think that household work is mundane. They love to be nurturers. They love to be provided for, to be submissive and feel sexy. And there are women who would always crib about a supposedly generated status quo of women’s deplorable plight & jump up and down for women’s independence in terms of financial security.

I have seen both worlds when it comes to Paraya Dhan. I have seen paraya male and paraya female. I have seen my joint family. And I have seen khashi and Garo families where the youngest daughter gets the property of the mother and the boys go to the girls’ house. I see how they beautifully manage.

I have seen how daughter in laws are treated with pride and responsibility. I agree things are a bit funny this side of the country. In Mumbai (perhaps in all metros) - my city for the last 10 years, I have seen woman going to their parent’s home when she is about 6-7 months pregnant. Now that completely leaves me NUMB.

Last week, another such incident left me with utter remorse. One of my team members came to me and requested me for a leave of 1/2 days. She said her sister has got chicken pox and so her mother has to go and take care of her. And since she had a baby, obviously she has to take care of the baby. Now the question that puzzled the hell out of me was ‘where is her sister’s husband, parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts…’

My parents and the parents that I have grown up with would have taken that to insult. If the daughter in law feels more comfortable in her parent’s house after marriage, and not in the husband’s house, it is a curse for the in-laws. Believe you me, I have always met wives who are happier delivering in their husband’s home.

Today in Mumbai with increasing number of blogs (aka awareness) about women independence, I see more confused woman, more confused about their role in the society. More divorces. More under-eye circles.

The reason is we are not letting each one be. Our aspirations are crazy. Our expectations are many directional. We are influenced by the frenzy of multi-media. On top of that, our support systems are breaking. We dont know our uncles, aunts and first cousins. We dont know our neighbours. We dont play hide and seek anymore!!

I (we) used to take ‘paraya dhan’ very seriously. If somebody can trust their dhan to us and call their own blood as our dhan, we better take care of her and make her the cynosure of our eyes.

So I find these discussion so muddled with post modern thoughts that solution and clarity is long far invisible. Wish I could time travel to my past and bring that past to all of you...

However the fact is that today 'I am in the same boat, brother' (sisters and friends).

Response to Random Thoughts: About Parmanent Commission for Women...

2010-03-17T10:06:00.002+05:30

Thought of copying my response to a blog - "Delhi HC Orders Permanent Commission For Women In the Armed Forces".

I wanted to emphasize that 'opening up of career options and avenues towards financial independence for women is not regressive but reservation for women on the pretext of development is myopic, stupidity and pure politics (in its negative connotation)

My comment: ... "Sorry, I have been out of the web world for some days now… could not respond to you earlier. I understand where you are coming from. However this is unlike reservation where there is an unfair discern in selection and nomination.

If what you say about women from the biological and cultural perspective is true, then natural selection will take place and only the women who are fit and dedicated enough will rise to the top. We have to understand that there are women who do not fall into the stereotype that we know and they can very well serve the nation and the armed forces like any men would.

On a lighter note, like there are men (B. Darling and the likes) who are definitely unfit for any permanent commission...

Recently I had the chance to meet Krishna Patil who is the youngest Indian to climb Mount Everest and she is summit ting 7 mountains in 7 continents which will be a world record. When I interacted with her, it was evident that she was positively different from the stereotypical women. She for instance can surely deserve a permanent commission in the Army, if she wishes to opt for it.

Also, the HC order says that “women can certainly be considered for PC in wings like engineering, ordnance, intelligence, signals, logistics, air traffic control and the like, which will not take them directly to the battlefront…”

Also, we have to understand that it’s tough to get a second career at 35-40 years…

Many countries have already instituted this practice. Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh deploy women on sea-faring warships. The US has even allowed them on submarines. Even Pakistan has seven women fighter pilots.

So let natural selection take over. I personally am fine till there is no reservation and unfair politics handing the natural selection process to the powerful and mighty.

Another Reservation Politics Stinks !!

2010-03-09T00:00:00.005+05:30

So many posts on women reservation on 8th of March that I feel a bit pukish and dizzy. Another reservation. Another license raj. Another era of political discrimination by gender after caste, creed, religion and whatever else.
As usual I read IHM too. She questions in the context of women reservation bill, "Do we need to create an environment where equal opportunities are made available?" And she answers, 'I think we do."

I am completely for Women Independence. But with this bill, we are taking it too far.

Quoting another fellow blogger, Ipsita Shome, "....next we will see cat-fights of the merit-less fairer sex." L.F.A.O. Mindblasting, I say.

Add the dogs to the cats and see the fun! In fact, I heard cat fights are worse if one listens to the stories about the ladies' coaches in our revered Mumbai local trains.

People, the requirement is to create a system to bring in intelligent, efficient people to govern the country. There is no time to play on another political factor. We need governments to take India into becoming a developed nation.

Today we have much bigger concerns. The biggest concern is 'Inbreeding in Politics' leading to stagnation of political ideas. You may like to read how inbreeding is killing politics and political thought. Another big concern is our feverish voter turn-out. Mumbai had a voter turn-out of 44.21 percent. Yes, 44.21.

We have no time for another reservation and any senseless thing like that. Let good sense prevail. Let the satan of reservation die in the Mithi river stink. Ha!

For God's sake, we dont need another term to the likes of Nepotism - sounding a slightly different - femotism or some crap-tism like that.

Pritish Nandy had something very interesting and 'sweet' to say in his twitter account today -

@PritishNandy Now that Women's Day is almost over, let's cut the hype & get back to the simple task of loving them for what they are.

Let nature prevail.

Political Inbreeding - Genetic Disorder in Political Thinking

2010-03-06T16:38:00.011+05:30

I was reading one blog by Niharika Mishra questioning the role of education and its inefficiency to create well-rounded conscience. I found the thought quite interesting. It made me think about the role of education in something else that's been acting crazy on my mind lately - Indian Politics.

What is the role of education in creating able politicians to run our country towards growth? Or quite simply put, how do we create politicians today?

This takes me back to my college days where we used to join the political campaigning for college elections to get a entry to the girls' hostel ! We had our ideologies and all but we had our educational ambitions of getting good marks as well. So serious participation in the college elections were not in the agenda for me. Having said that, there were a few friends who were actively into college politics. Surely college, especially graduation/master degree is one of the breeding ground of future politicians.

The concern is how they breed? The concern is what do they learn & assimilate when they are becoming future politicians. I have observed that independent candidates hardly won elections. If they are too popular, they are beaten to withdraw their nomination. Effectively, if you have political ambition, first you have to adapt to sycophancy and become part of a close group.

You need to build a rapport with the existing political pillars. There is nothing wrong in becoming part of a team but the problem in this particular context is that the formative years of becoming a politician is guided by senior politicians. So you tend to think how your seniors thought, you tend to behave how your seniors behaved. So vote bank politics is imbibed into the young politicians.

The strategies to garner votes therefore get no paradigm shift in thinking and orientation. And naturally you are taught to think petty, straight-jacketed and obvious.

Second most potent ground breeding politicians are the existing political families. Sons, daughters, cousins of existing political bigwig becomes the next generation of the political class. Like Rahul Gandhi once said, "I am example of Rishtedari Politics". Interestingly, I see a similarity between a political family and a business family. Like the TATAs, the Gandhis try their best to continue their family legacy. It is serious business of intense thinking for the whole party to ensure a successful Gandhi heir. It re-affirms that politics is a business that needs heirs to continue family income, fame, power and privilege.
There is nothing too bad about a potent political family of politicians like we have families of doctors. But again the question comes to education and formation of a political mind and a strategist. The question comes to the development of the mind that will become the future leaders of political parties following the footsteps of their fathers and uncles.

The leadership therefore is handicapped to think differently in terms of the future strategy of a political party. Its always the same means and same ways to achieve the same goals.

I consider this as a critical problem that a political class or a party faces. Analogy can be drawn to concepts of genetic diversity and problems of inbreeding. A varied gene pool indicates extensive genetic diversity associated with robust populations that can survive bouts of intense selection. Meanwhile, low genetic diversity or inbreeding can cause reduced biological fitness and an increased chance of myopia and therefore possible extinction.

The political class needs to stop inbreeding of thought processes for their survival.

India today needs development and better standard of living. In developmental politics, garnering votes is a means to an end. Not the END. Religious sentiments to gather votes does not fall under the objective of developmental thinking. It only figures when the objective is to gather votes.

When the end becomes the passion to improve standard of living. Votes will flow on its own.

Developmental strategies to improve standard of living is not as easy as raising religious sentiments. It needs a lot of sharp acumen, economic understanding and social consciousness.

Just being a good orator, or a goon, or a heir wont do.

There is a need for a paradigm shift where:

educated, experienced manpower willingly joins the political class leaving a well-paid corporate job or any stable life to run political strategies.
students with political ambition gets proper training and skills to practice positive developmental politics.
heirs of political families would go against the tide of conventional political thinking of their fathers and uncles

Currently I am forming my thoughts on how to bring this paradigm shift. Surely I shall write a model to reform political thinking and to create developmental strategies to win elections.

Cats - cute, clever and chatur...

2010-02-28T17:06:00.003+05:30

This was a comment (I've modified a bit) that I wrote in one of my dear blogs by IHM. Though I quite dislike the acronym but she is a good writer who writes sensibly on sensible topics. I like her passion for the topics she writes.

This blog of hers, however came to my notice not for the topic, but for this photograph that I have presented in my blog, stolen from her blog. (Thanks IHM).
I just loved the way the cat is looking out for someone. Most likely, that someone is a something. It may be a lizard on the other side of the wall. Never can guess a cat !!

I have grown up with a dozen of cats and dogs in Assam. They were so much a part of our lives that I used to find supposedly
popular snaps in urban India like that of 'a cat sleeping on a dog', quite a cliche'.

Cat is honestly great fun. They are the hunters. Quite, fast, clever lovable bastards, they are. Also they are the cleanest animal I have even seen. You would never see her poop, they will cover it with sand. You would never see mud, dust and other dirt in their body. This is interesting because cats hate water and stays as far away as possible. Sure they must be always thinking if they could quench their thirst with something else !

I have had great moments with our cats. Let me tell you a few interesting ones that may sound funny, surprising and cute. Surprising, because we, living in the metros, simply cant get to know the real cat. For instance, we don't have ceilings here where the cat can climb... !!

She playing with a ball of wool. Only trick is that you have to keep it dancing by pulling one end of the thread. Today's urban generation wont believe if we tell them that one of the favourite time-pass activity for the girls was to buy different colours of (balls of) wool to hand knit sweaters, scarfs for their dolls and future husbands. Cat used to love that. She will watch from a distance with full hunting posture at the ball of wool which is on the ground moving, as its being pulled while knitting. With one clean swoop, she will attack the ball of wool and take it a few yards kicking with its front limbs and biting the wool ball dead! My mom used to get irritated but I used to have too much fun.
A similar but of course better scene was to watch the cat catching a rat and playing with it till it dies. It will let the wounded rat to run and then he will run fast and catch it again - the same way she plays with the ball of wool. Sometimes, the rat actually manages to run away. That's the worst, because it would die somewhere and the whole house will be smelling.
Watching her protecting the plate of fish and rice. One of our dogs, a greedy bugger used to finish his share of food like in a second and would slowly come for the cat's share. Slap! Cats are so quick that the dog is left with no clue, when the paw came, hit and went. How many slaps my dog must have got for trying to sneak like that. It was just too much fun. The poor dog barks after getting the hit, then gets scolded by my dad to shut up. Dogs normally do not go near cats. Generations after generations, dogs have got slaps from Cats. Cats do come near dogs, though. Its on her whim! She would slowly come and climb onto the sleeping dog and sleep on top of him. The dog poor fellow forgets that he had got a slap a while back. Stupid dog!
Apart from getting to wear cool jackets, this was the second reason why I used to love winter so much. Once I am 10 minutes on to the bed, she would pull out the mosquito net and get into the bed to sleep next to me. She will purr the hell out of me. But slowly I had got used to it, loving it every passing day. She would mostly sleep to your back. For some time, I wondered and later discovered that they don't want to be in a position where I can hug him or put my heavy hand (sleeping me) on top of him. They consider it binding and cant accept that.
Have you ever seen a cat jumping from a height? what a sight and a miracle. They make absolutely no sound. This used to be my best time pass activity whenever I used to be bored dead. I loved looking at the cats doing their rounds all over the place (roof, windows, ceiling etc) for hunting, perhaps copulating, or just loitering around like kings. In Assam, we have tin houses with ceilings. There is about 2 feet space between the tin roof and the ceiling. They would love to climb to the ceilings looking for mice. They have their usual routes. The tool, dressing table, the window, the cupboard and the ceiling in 2 seconds flat. And no sound. You remove the tool, they will meow you to death. They will hardly come and go through the doors. They know the ventilation that is always open. They basically know all the crevices in the house. It always fascinated me to see them jumping from so high and to such height without making any noice. Whenever they come to sleep with me, I keep touching their paws and wonder how can they be so silent.

There are so many childhood memories with our cats and dogs that I tend to think that keeping a pet in Mumbai is so much of a farce. Dogs are still okay. I have a golden retriever and it is almost the same level of fun. But Cats are wild and their true nature can only be seen in the wild. Come to Assam someday if you like cats.

BTW, I hope you guys know that cat is not a domestic animal by strict definition of domestication. One wild feature of cat is that they wont copulate in the near vicinity of humans. Secondly, it will attack you if you approach him in a closed room from all sides and he/she feels cornered. If it's a he, then better not go near him. They will jump to your trachea, much like other cats. Beware!!

The smart alternative to Shallow Political Activism

2010-02-10T22:34:00.003+05:30

This is in continuation of Shallow Political Activism - Part I.. an effort to highlight the myopic political activism of the MNS and the Sena in Mumbai.

Instead I always believed that the smallest of developmental initiatives goes a long way towards building public faith.

Lets take the Maharashtra cabinet's decision to give new taxi permits to only those persons who are well versed in Marathi and have resided in the state for at least 15 years. Would it really help the Marathi Manoos? If it does, at what cost?

My proposition is that there are easier ways to get Marathi Manoos engaged in the taxi driving business. MNS or SENA just needs to gives this responsibility to a shrewd Marathi businessman to start a taxi business only for Marathi youths. The money has to be organised by the MNS and Sena, which is no big deal looking at all their foreign SUVs.

This will even do wonders for the Party because word will spread about the positive initiative to engage youths. And the youths will actually earn money for real and get busy from being idle.

This brings me to this idea of political parties having a defined cell for development initiatives. The guys (leaders) who are good for speeches and politics should concentrate on speeches and politics. The guys in the development cell should work at the grass root level in various possible initiatives to uplift the common man.

Businesses can be started. Schools/colleges can be opened. NGOs can be formed.

Ironically, MNS was distributing 50000 Marathi alphabet books to all the North Indian Taxi drivers.

Why cant we think positive?

Shallow Political Activism - Part I

2010-02-06T02:22:00.007+05:30

It defies wisdom. It defies all that we speak as educated office-goers. It defies all that productive development is. Its mere politics. I am referring to what the top regional parties in my city - Mumbai are vociferously noising the populace.

Mumbai belongs to the Marathi Manoos.

Although that's a debatable fact (read Who’s Not A Mumbaikar?), yet I understand that this statement is a sensitive emotion for majority of the Marathi population living in Mumbai and Maharashtra. Any population whose mother tongue is the local language would feel strongly about outsider population coming in hordes and occupying a sizeable proportion of the good jobs available.

So it becomes an easy & obvious strategy to take advantage of this strong emotion for any political party. An obvious decision is likely to be myopic and short term. In this case, the decision to hang on to this emotion by SS and MNS is clearly regressive, myopic and short term.

This kind of obvious political activism has a strategic drawback. It needs active mobilisation of the youth. We have to understand that youth is a transient term. Today's youth is tomorrow's married responsible man.

So, if a political party mobilizes today's youth to support this emotion, effectively their focus on career, education and focus on a bright future will suffer, which in effect will make them unsuccessful married men and fathers.

Secondly, the point to note is that the political party suffers too when a generation ages. Once a youth, now a husband cannot support the party as well. The party suffers. They have to get the support of the next generation as well. We have seen it happening to Shiv Sena when their first generation supporters had grown old. My analysis is that this phenomenon of eroding support base of Shiv Sena gave an aperture to Raj Thakeray to form MNS with a new generation of youth with the same principles.

Tomorrow, I see MNS losing grip, and Shiv Sena or a new regional party harping on the same emotion becoming stronger.

MNS and SS should understand this point of view and engage in developmental politics, rather than divisive politics. Being a political party of the local people, they have an upper hand in executing developmental plans which help the "aam marathi manoos." They should work with in conjunction with the non-local successful population for the development and overall well-being of the city and the state.

Joru Ka Gulam - A mind numbing phenomenon

2010-02-04T16:47:00.012+05:30

Thankfully I bumped into IndianHomeMaker in this closely knit web world and I got to read her blog inviting definition for Joru Ka Gulam. I was one of the last to read and by then there were quite a few definitions that have come to define JKG. I read almost all of them.

It was quite an expected set of responses. The synopsis of all the comments was a t-shirt design by a fellow writer Tara Bhatt that said, "I love my wife". So if you love your wife, think that wife is equal to the husband (one comment said, "if the husband touches the wife's feet to reciprocate..."), fight injustice meted out to women, teach the women to be on her own (one comment said, "instead of driving her around, teaches her how to drive), you are a JKG. Ironically, with all these definitions, I wonder if JKG is almost about to be extinct.

I have to say that I disagree with most of these comments. I find a herd mentality trend in all the answers. A good-at-heart, rationale man who loves his wife, who believes in gender equality, who is socially secure and blah blah blah (meaning the ideal-est man for a woman) is NOT a JORU KA GULAM. I get a feeling that most of these are written by women with high high hopes from men and that they love to call their ideal man - JKG.

Joru Ka Gulam as a concept, is much more complicated. To me, JKG is

is a termination of an extremely complicated and strict social fabric where we have a male and a female staying under one roof for life with a conscience that this is it. In fact, it is not about a man-woman relationship. I had this one room theory when I was in college which said, No two boys, two girls & a boy and girl can stay together as best of friends, company, partners for more than 6 months under one roof. That aside, men intrinsically do not prefer monogamy and their wandering ways (followed by guilt & conscience) take some of the men towards being a JKG.
is a fall out of the inability of most of the men to fight the tears and jigsaw emotions of the women. Men always tend to please their women with short term 'to be broken' promises and lies just to keep the woman happy for the moment and in effect goes towards being a JKG
is a result of male dependencies on the female's expertise & core competency in handling the house-hold intricacies such as managing the vegetables, maintaining cleanliness, managing the kids to a simple task like making a cup of tea. Even when there is a girl friend who is not living in, the house gets a cleaner, fresher and organised look. Men love it and some men become JKG to it.
is a result of the society of JKGs where we have had our upbringing. We are taught to be JKGs for a happy marriage. In Assam, the mother of the groom doesn't attend the marriage because she has to accustom herself to believe that her son is no longer hers now and he has gone onto another woman. Another woman owns him now. One of the first lesson told to me jokingly was, "whatever she says from now is your word of destiny"

For me, JKG is the man who has lost his sense of being, independence to his wife. The man who listens to his wife blindly in front of the wife. Outside of marriage, he may be a different man (though he cant do late nights as 'on the mobile' is almost like 'in front of' in today's day and age). He more often than not, bitches about marriage and wives in general and may also get into extra-marital or into prostitutes. Since he cant feel his authority in the marriage, he wields his authority outside of it.

There are degrees to being a JKG. Some men go to lowest degree of JKG. He actually lose authority in general and become calm, quieter in general, more so in front of his wife. I wonder if women like such men, for us men, he becomes a changed man - a JacK ass(Gaand).

We all know 'gulam' is derogatory, and for a meaning so negative, to get associated to marriage and then to become a household term requires a hell lot of reasons, circumstances, inequillibrium and chaos. Interestingly, this negative term today has lost its negative-ness to quite an extent. Without a qualm, superstar SharRukh Khan proclaims on TV that he is a Joru Ka Gulam. That whole program was about promoting the concept of JKG.

However easy the term JKG might have become, I see a sense of helplessness especially in India. Once I was sitting with my uncle (a doctor) and an Italian doctor, who was talking about his late night research work and that he does not get time otherwise. My uncle joked, “Doesn't your wife say anything?” He point blankly non-chalantly said, “No, but if she does, you make her understand. If she doesn't understand, you divorce her for incompatibility and professional reasons”. My uncle was stunned. In India, marriage is largely a one-way ticket convention.

So JKG is not the person who is the ideal husband who loves his wife. JKG is the man who feigns it. One interesting comment that I read on the t-shirt design was "my hubby loved the design but he will wear it as a night suit."

Point that I would make is that we cannot make this term so easy and omni-present. A good husband cannot be termed JKG. We are effectively discouraging good husband-ism. JKG to me is a spineless man who feigns to listen to his wife or is afraid to not listen. A man with self respect and confidence to give his wife the same pedestal is the real man.

So we should stop sarcasm equating good husbands to JKG. Lets not allow these sarcasms create social norms or support social norms already so deeply entrenched.

Ishqiya - Vidya Balan's blouse et al

2010-02-03T23:04:00.004+05:30

Finally bunked the office early at 7:30PM to come for Ishqiya, to devour Naseeruddin Shah with an open mouth, to laugh with 'Circuit'... sorry Arshad Warsi and to just understand why is this movie seemed different.

Surely it was different. The storyline was kick-ass. More specifically the set in which the movie is shot is very realistic. The house of the widow, furniture, the village, the cars and everything that was selected to be part of set design is simply superb. Production design credits go to Nitin Chandrakant Desai. I wonder how much research must have gone into it. And it was surely entertaining. Recommended for sure.

Naseeruddin Shah is simply great and funny. Story (Vishal Bhardwaj, Sabrina Dhawan and Abhishek Chaubey) is intelligent. Cinematography (Mohana Krishna) is beautiful with some awesome editing. The dialogues are written well & quite funny. The characters are well sketched.. ya the movie has many good points.

But I expect a lot from a movie.

The dialogue delivery was not consistent in the native dialect, pronunciation and way of speaking. Only Naseeruddin Shah could carry it through the movie. Our Vidyadhar Verma - the Sena leader and village leader was ironically the worst. It seemed he is from the Tollywood taking Hindi lessons to enter Bollywood.

The screenplay had some flaws. People peeping through windows with half their heads visible from inside, and the guys romping inside the room don't get to know the intrusion, was a bit too much to digest. I can expect that from a comedy but not from Ishqiya. The police people disappearing suddenly in the last scene was also very glaring.

Vidya Balan was a cute disappointment. She is beautiful, feminine and all but her acting is a fight. She sings a slow number with her Veena. If I had my way, I would have made her dance in that scene. Then it would not have been so clear that she is actually not singing. That she is only lip-syncing. She gave it away big time on that scene. I could only think that Nandita Das would have been a great choice. In fact, that actress from Haazaron Khuwaishein Aisi - Chitrangada Singh comes to my mind too, and would have done a better job, to my opinion.

One point ironically stuck me was Vidya Balan's blouses. In an effort to get into the seductive zone, they have become very city-ish. The cut & the stitching of the blouses were very un-villagelike.

I wonder why that stuck to me as the sore point !! Go and watch.

Rann - bad camera work

2010-02-01T00:42:00.014+05:30

Just back from a bad experience with Rann. Actually I had gone to see Gul - you know who. My Favourite actress ;) So I was only expecting Gul Panag. I was into a mindset that nothing can put me down as I was anyway going to watch Gul. And she is beautiful and a good actress. Morever, there was Amitabh Bachchan sir who does not know how to act BADLY. There was Riteish who is quite good, improving each day. On the whole, there was this consolation that how bad can RGV go. It had to be a watchable movie.

But the camera work, I tell completely tested my patience. I was hissing pissed by the time the movie ended. The DOP/cinematographer was so bad that I wanted to kill him. Its a rare emotion to get about killing people. Believe me, its not everyday that I get such strong emoions. Okay let me cool down. Let me be a bit polite. He was so bad I wanted to slap him.

To start with, I couldn't even read the DOP's (Director of Photography) name. The movie started with a play of zillions of remotes going blur and clear, blur and clear. Such a give-away to start a movie with 'remotes' and 'people switching on news channels', for a movie which is about news and the news channels. Having said that, its a director's prerogative to start the movie in whatever ways he want to.

The point is that the start coincided or collided with the titles. The titles and the zillions of remotes were shot and edited in such a distracting way that reading the titles was simply impossible. I missed all the names. I actually missed the titles completely. And now, as I write this blog I am trying to google the name of the DOP, but can you believe it that I cant find it. O ya, I need to look up IMDB.COM.

So I finally get the name of the DOP / Cinematographer and I am really surprised. It is Amit Roy whose work, I genuinely loved in Sarkar. Unbelievable. Perhaps his assistants did this movie and he was doping.

The whole 15 minutes of final dialogue delivery of Mr. Amitabh Bachchan was eaten away by the awfully creative camera work of Mr. Roy. I mean, "how can you create so much of distraction during a serious dialogue delivery, which is the main climax of the movie". The shot has a laptop and some other furniture in between Mr. Bachchan and the camera in various avatars. And the camera man is continuously playing with Mr. Bachchan, the laptop, the furniture, the India 24x7 logo etc etc.

In another scene, it seemed that the camera was right in the nose of Riteish. I could see that it was very difficult for him to even act. He was looking for something in 'khanna's house'. Riteish, if you are reading this blog, you need to tell me @lifeisbetter, if I was right in my assumptions.

I wouldn't be able to write about all the bad scenes, as most of the scenes were poorly shot. The one that comes to my mind is a shot of Mr. Paresh Rawal putting his foot to the lens of the camera, effectively to audience. Some people may seriously consider it rude to point legs to the audience. Ya there may be some who would consider it creative. But I think the latter will be fewer. Secondly, it seems to me that the idea was to symbolically depict that Mr. Paresh is the villain and he is kicking the media. Was it required, really? Till this point it is fine but I sincerely feel that you cant change the setting to suit your camera's focal length. In the same dialogue, in the close up of the foot, Mr. Rajat kapoor was sitting straighter than in the long shot !!

I know that normally the DOP does not care if the dialogue delivery is getting communicated properly to the audience. He only cares if the shot is looking good and creative. But that cannot be the case when DOP is mature. Only if the DOP immature, childish and amateurish, I may understand.

Overall, the lighting was not good. Brightness and contrast was poor. The shadow affects were not crisp and clear. The framing was very shaky. There were too many change in the lens work for a scene. On the overall it was an unnecessary attempt to go over-creative.

The cinematographer was clearly abusing creativity and making it irrelevant to the context of the movie. You cannot let your creative emotion become over-confident and take over your rational thought processes.

For instance, we understand that shaky camera work is one of the theories of photography. Handheld camera work is taken on a high note and is considered very creative in the industry circles. But one needs to know where to use it. It was relevant for movies like 'Blair Witch Project' and 'Paranormal Activity' and so was beautiful and satisfying to watch. In Rann, it was a flop show.

Very disappointed. The only saving grace was Gul's face. :) On a serious note, the story was good. Acting was very good and as usual Amitabh Bachchan sir is God. If only the camera work was downplayed...

Intuition & Instinct - Questioning the obvious !!

2010-01-16T20:11:00.003+05:30

One common trait that is across human civilization is the herd mentality.

Earlier it was the barrage of cold calls selling un-secured loans, now its the donation related tele-calling. Yesterday I received 3 of them, and I feel it would increase in the coming days. Just wait it will come to you too.

Somebody has to start and the whole industry tows the line.

ICICI Bank started giving free credit cards, the whole industry followed blindly fearing losing of market share. We know for ourselves where the credit card industry is today - on the brink of closure. If you were wondering why suddenly you have stopped getting calls selling credit card, now you know. Today you cant get a credit card even if you call and request them. Such a great product satisfying such a basic human need. But....

I remember my first day at MICA when we were asked to introduce ourselves. The first person started with name, hometown and education, the next 10 guys did the same till our professor stopped us to give our first lesson - don't be 'another brick in the wall'.

Yes it is risky, time consuming and difficult to think differently. Its even more difficult to substantiate something which is out of the ordinary. How can you substantiate gut feel, intuition and instinct?

The point is even if we take one intuitive, instinctive decision every month, it would make a huge difference. It would either towards a new initiative or towards negating some obvious decisions that we end up taking to be safe.

Guys lets be compulsive rebel. Lets be creative. Lets add value.

Lets think instinct, not too much.

Condolences to 2009 !!

2010-01-01T04:01:00.006+05:30

Condolences for passing of the 2009. Today is 1st January 2010. It is the addition of a number in the 10th place, not just in the unit's place.

The whole year has passed away.

Today I am drinking to remember 2009, to remember all the fun things that happened... and those that didn't happen.

Who knows and who cares of what 2010 would bring.. fact is that past is dead. That's the melancholy. That's the celebration to bring back the dead.

For a second chance.

So many resolutions gone to dust faster than the bones of the next door skeleton in the grave.

So many promises unfulfilled haunting me like the scary ghosts of the stories when we were kids.

So many job lists and plans gone awry for the lack of sincere follow up and action... I must have made more job lists than the jobs in those lists in various formats stored in various places like the mobiles and laptops that I have used in the span of the year 2009.

May be its alcohol induced but I feel like crooning...Why did you go away leaving me in such a dilemma with no strength to deal in the future? Why did you leave me with so many plans unfinished? Why did you leave me with so many plans yet to be executed?

Happy New Year is such a premonition! It will put Bejan Daruwala to shame!

Its just the beginning, the first day.

Though I wish you all a very happy new year being a nice man that I am, yet its ultimately that what you make of it.

I wont let it go away like I did let go of 2009.

And I feel happy.

We live by Instinct & Intuition - 2

2009-12-17T21:36:00.004+05:30

I see so many of my occupation-ally successful girl friends unmarried by the conventional age. Please don't ask me the conventional age but I guess you know what I mean.

I can also see that its a lonely life given our culture of 'no mingling' with strangers, even if strangers are us. We simply don't talk to each other even if we are in an exclusive pub, where singles seek out.

Earlier I had written one small piece on that frustration, today I am thinking of instinct and intuition, if and when she actually meet up good looking strangers.

With age beyond her conventional age of marriage, she become a cynic, mature, logical and risk averse. She questions everything; taking the best decision becomes a necessity for her.

Now that she is stable with her job. Now that she is a bit lonely with only independence by her side (she may refuse to admit this though). She knows that marriage now has to be the option.

But the issue is that all the good men are married.

Her married friends hell-bent in finding her hooked up, will occasionally come up with potential partners. She would meet them but her mature brain will act up from the time she set sight on her prospective boyfriend. She will dissect that somebody until she finds a thousand reasons of no-compatibility. Even his pronunciation or lack of knowledge about a rock band may become a sore point. Also, guys that she meets would be most likely older than her. So they will, very likely, have their own age-related idiosyncrasies, which would not be acceptable.

I may be over-reacting and getting theatrical but the mature brain does get a little mopped up with baggages of logic, rigidity and rationality. She fails to hear her instinct and intuition. She is a bit too far gone from the spiritual world of inner voice.

This is when we need to introspect and drive away logic and listen to inner voice. Any relationship is full of compromises and so we cannot afford to think of the compromises to be made before what instinct is actually saying. It is the true voice. It would never leave you or mis-guide you.

You may not get your instinct kicking-in right in the first meeting. Of course, first meeting cant be called dating. Thats for frustrated people. So the idea is to meet second time and many more times after that. Work hard to get your instinct kicking in. Any logical conclusions should be snuffed out at this moment - in the beginning.

Finally you will get to listen to your instinct and intuition. If instinct says yes, you may think of applying some logic.

It is not true that all the good men are married. It is not true that all the married men are good. In fact, the truth is that there is nobody who is good from every aspect of human behaviour.

Point is 'you have to think instinct, not too much'.

We live by Instinct & Intuition - 1

2009-12-13T12:23:00.006+05:30

One of my friends Facebook post said, 'Be with those who help your being'. One immediate repartee is '...that would have been a easier statement if we could read minds, understand telepathy or be God'.

I asked her, 'do you think I do, as in help your being? I think I do. But she may think otherwise. The corollary may be even torturous. She thinks I do but actually I don't. So how do we reconcile. The question comes to whom do we trust to be with them. Confusing right?

It is actually very simple. I follow my instinct, my intuition and leave the rest to the universe, to chance. There is no end to logical analysis in an effort to find out the truth. It can only lead to paralysis, even worse schizophrenia. I may be hyper-acting but I am trying to prove a point here :)

Following your instincts and intuition is a beautiful experience. Its lovely, easy and relieving. They are always right, strong and by your side.

Another complicated Facebook post reads 'The hardest thing about growing up is that you have to do what is right for you even if it means breaking someone's heart. Including your own'. Its amazing that we can think and become so complicated & mind-fucked.

Life is not so complicated as we make of it. In the corollary, it is as complicated as we make it.

Whether you are a kid or on your death bed, you always do what you think is right for you. We are all inherently selfish. Thats the order of the world. Even in flights, you are requested to get the oxygen mask for yourself before helping kids & elders. This is nothing to do with growing up. You always do what feels right for you, what your instinct and intuition tells you.

You think instinct, not too much!!

PAA - More Mature than Progeria !!

2009-12-08T12:08:00.006+05:30

PAA is a good film. It is much more than Progeria - the disease.

The film takes a very positive stand on youth and politics. It is just too emotional that Balki has decided to take this stand on politics - the heart of a country. You feel proud to watch the film. It clearly conveys that

Politics is not a bad profession by itself. It is the people in politics that make it dirty.
Young politicians can make a difference if they are willing and passionate enough. The mass may be indifferent to politics but they are not blind or stupid. They know how to appreciate truth, genuine-ness and good work.
Bad politics or rumours need not be tackled negatively. The society understands life and that politicians are also human. So coming out with truth and sincerity is better appreciated

It also turns a very relevant chapter on family support and about today's independent women. It showcases a modern Indian woman, a doctor who takes on life and pregnancy with strength, guts and self belief. It beautifully conveys the importance of the mother whose support was very critical to the daughter's decision.

Apart from the message, one of the first things that excited me is the overall creativity in the film. The witty dialogues, the shots, the use of shadows, placement of lights while shooting and the color & tone of the film. It was a beautiful play of light and darkness.

I specially liked the scene where Abhisekh's MP office, which is well lit, is shot from outside the office cabin through the door. So in the big wide screen you have this door where the light is there. Rest of the screen is dark. It is beautiful.

The second shot that comes to my mind is the scene when Paresh Rawal comes to the hospital and have an argument with Abhisekh. In this scene, Abhisekh is hidden by a pillar and only Paresh Rawal is visible while shouting at Abhisekh. I dont remember any other film using this technique to shoot an active argument between two individuals. Very creative, I would say.

To give credits, I couldnt find the DOP - Director of photography of the film but the cinematographer is PC Sreeram, who also crafted the look of Cheeni Kum. Guys, you have done a great job.

Kurbaan - excellently packaged action thriller... Not a love story

2009-11-21T14:57:00.010+05:30

Had a lovely breakfast with Kurbaan. Rs. 90/- for a wholesome salad of Kareena, Saiffu (as she funnily calls him), Vivek Oberoi, Om Puri and Kirron Kher. It was a good breakfast.

Actually I am still cogitating and yet to fully recover from the after-effects. For the quick busy reader, let me give a quick verdict. It is surely a must watch film. Incisive direction by Rensil D Silva, great looks and tone by the cinematographer - Hemant Chaturvedi and the editor - Asif Ali Shaikh, excellent screenplay by Rensil again and effective acting by the whole cast. Dont delay, Just watch. Its worth it. Only suggestion is that catch the morning show for its sub 100 price point.

Now let me give words to my after-thoughts about Kurbaan. When I saw the promotion, I was dissappointed with the extremely dull & thoughtless idea behind the promotions. Thrillers are not supposed to be promoted this way. You may want to read this. I had a bet with Karan Johar (@kjohar25) that if Saif does not die in the end of the movie, then I will delete my blog. So, of course my guess was correct and my blog stays... How can a movie be a thriller if I can predict the outcome just by seeing the promotion.

Anyways I always wanted to watch the movie. I was sure that it would be a good movie. I was correct. Not only it is fantastically designed (can be compared to any Hollywood movie), but also it gives out a dashboard about the hegemony of the whites and Islamic fundamentalism in an effective way. The vicious cycle thats shown is a reality and so, Rensil, "very well told". Proud of you.

But as the perfectionist that I am, I can't keep wondering a few things. Firstly why is the movie named as 'KURBAAN'. Who gave the Kurbaani? The Om Puri family - no they were taking revenge, Saif - revenge again, Kareena - Of course not, she is the hapless victim. So why is it called 'KURBAAN'. Being a biased person that I am, I dont think Rensil has thought about this name. It has to be the work of a team who cant say no to the leader of the team.

Then, is Kurbaan a love story? It is not. Its an action thriller. Perhaps when project Kurbaan had started, the script was a love story. When it was rendered, love story has become an action thriller. It happens, and nothing wrong about it. But the promotion therefore should be that of an action thriller. "Some love stories have blood on them" is therefore completely irrelevant to the story. In fact, the love quotient was zillion times stronger in NewYork.

Again, why is it shot in the NewYork. Probably its a decision taken with the support of loads of money or the belief that America, London, Swiss Alps (any location outside India) brings in the junta. And presumably, Karan Johar couldnot have known that "NewYork" was being made by Kabir Khan on a similar plot, IN NewYork ABOUT Muslim fundamentalism...

Even though I am writing a blog on the movie, I could not be one with the movie. I didnt feel for anyone in the movie. Even a frequent 'cryer' wouldnt have shed a tear. In fact, I didnt feel at all for the movie. It didnt have any clear message of what it supports or propagates. It was talking both 'for' and 'against' Muslim fundamentalism, American hegemony, terror etc. It is a 'no stand' movie, so you dont feel for the movie and its story.

Actually, action thrillers are supposed to be like that. You see the movie for the action and for the thrill. You would never cry in a Van Damme movie. Kurbaan is just that. An amazingly well made action thriller. It is stylish and has this grey tone to it. The action scenes are well directed and real. The plot surely could have been unpredictable but action thrillers, most often than not, have a predictable end.

Overall, a good movie. Although I enjoyed it, yet it was not complete.

Kurbaan - Promoting a thriller

2009-11-16T10:54:00.010+05:30

Shouting that Kurbaan is a thriller will only put the movie in that genre. Thats it. It wont promote the movie as a thriller subliminally, emotionally and in that perspective....

Thrill is something that you have to experience... The promotion of Kurbaan is gravely lacking in that respect.

Quite surprised reading Karan Johar (@kjohar25) saying that they have purposefully kept Vivek Oberoi away from the promotion to make it clear that Kurbaan is not a love triangle. I say, how foolish, from my heart. We cannot make a thriller clear of any perception. Let the mass have all kinds of perceptions and then let the thriller shatter them all in the movie hall... It would be interesting to know, hear and read people guessing all kinds of formula...

Oh! what a line! "Some love stories have blood on them". I say, its so cliche, bollywoodish and theatrical. Got a bit upset when I got to know that it has come from KJohar25. I have higher regards for him. But I am happy that @RensilDSilva didnt think of it. Thrill meter would have hit all time low in such a case. At least now, there is still some suspense about how rensil thinks. If at all blood is so important an obsession, then a much better line could have been "Some love stories are written in blood" - courtesy my friend Akanksha. Even thats taking away from the thrill quotient. We could have discovered all that while watching the film. This line had the potential to add thrill quotient but the team (kjohar25) failed here.

I wonder why Rensil DSilva (@rensildsilva) is a bit less visible in the media. Why Kareena Kapoor in her umpteen interviews mentioning KJohar as the director. Come on, he has done Aks, won an award for Rang De Basanti and he was the star copy writer of Mudra Communications belting out hugely popular McDonalds commercials. Enough can be said about him but the point is that a new director can very well add to the thriller quotient, if we design communication accordingly. As Kareena in one of her interviews mentions that Rensil is edgy... so just taking off on that thought brings up great ideas about using Rensil to create a thriller quotient around Kurbaan.

The first poster released also lacked serious 'Art Director' instincts and intuition. Refer the poster in the beginning of my blog. Now see this one. Doesn't it give you a better thrill? Visual communication can speak louder than words. I wonder where this poster is hiding when it comes to huge hoardings... Wonder who designed this. Get a feeling that it is not the same person.

Given that Kurbaan is releasing on the shadows of a successful film - NewYork and conventional logic suggests that they are kind of similar, promotion had a huge role to play to break conventional logic.

I am sure the movie would be a great movie. I have great faith in Rensil and I am sure (I hope) he has been given a free hand in making the movie. I just feel that it would have been better if the promotions were handled better, more strategically. It would have been fun for communication enthusiast like me to experience the media and mass reaction.

I had asked a friend yesterday, would Saif die in the film? She said, "Of Course" If he doesnt, I delete this blog or I have made my point.

Osho on FUCK

2009-11-11T15:18:00.005+05:30

Some rubbish that I just read. Read if for yourself how you feel. This is Osho's rantings on FUCK. I believe there is also a video or an audio track on this.

It is actually so much more than that. I find Osho's description extremely lacking in scope, scale and beauty. Fuck is a much greater experience, a phenomenon and an instinct.

Osho says, "It is one of the most beautiful words. The English Language should be proud of it. It is one of the most interesting words. It is a magical word. Just by its sound, it can describe pain, pleasure, hate and love.

It falls into many grammatical categories. It can be used as a verb. Both transitive, 'John fucked Mary' and Intransitive, 'Mary was fucked by John'. And as a noun, 'Mary is a fine fuck.' It can be used as an adjective, 'Mary is fucking beautiful.'

There are not many words with the versatility of Fuck. Besides the sexual meaning, there are also the following uses:

Fraud: 'I got fucked at the used car lot.'
Ignorance: 'Fuck, if I know.'
Trouble: 'I guess I'm fucked now.'
Aggression: 'Fuck You.'
Displeasure: 'What the fuck is going on here?'
Difficulty: 'I can't understand this fucking job!'
Suspicion: 'What the fuck are you doing?'
Pleasure: 'I had a fucking good time!'
Request: 'Get the fuck out of here.'
Hostility: 'I'm going to knock your fucking head off.'
Greeting: 'How the fuck are you?'
Apathy: 'Who gives a fuck?!'
Surprise: 'Fuck! You scared the shit out of me.'
Anxiety: 'Today is really fucked.'

Every morning if you repeat the mantra 'Fuck You' five times. It clears the throat."

-Osho

You may also like the read this article titled - Why I slept with 1300 women? http://bit.ly/21rRvv Quite an interesting take of fuck. Somehow more meaningful than what Osho ranted.

Creativity comes to the deserved!

2009-11-09T22:37:00.004+05:30

Creativity often can be seen in the most unexpected places. Thats the beauty of it. Creativity is omnipresent. Not locked in the so called ivory towers of advertising agencies, production houses et al.

Some years back, I had written this little piece when I saw this amazing salesman on the streets of Lower Parel. I was coming out of office for lunch and this branding spectacle I saw just floored me.. and I wasnt blogging then.

Read this.

I see this street boy (un-derogatorily) wearing an umbrella hat - a hat that is a perfect replica of the umbrellas that he is selling on the streets.

He is wearing an innovative manually designed belt which can hold a dozen umbrella hats. The umbrellas on his belt are organised in a way that all the different colours of the hat umbrellas are visible to the onlookers. Incidently, it is holding his trousers too.(what a show-window!!!).

The left hand carrying an umbrella for consumers to touch and feel before buying What merchandising!!!).

The right hand is carrying an open umbrella. He has this amazing talent of rotating the umbrella in great speed (What a clutter breaking event!!!)... Who wont get attracted when a multicoloured thingie is in rotation in your area of vision...

Dont know what prompted him to think so creatively. I doubt that it is his intelligence. I think it is his hunger to earn money for his next meal !!

Transparency & Trust are mutually exclusive

2009-11-02T14:19:00.008+05:30

Yesterday, we were having this debate about how important is to talk with accountability. That we should not say everything that you feel like saying...

My brother, who was primarily working on his laptop, suddenly gets up & shoots his salvo. You guys are talking nonsense!! Everyone should be transparent and that he is transparent and that he cares a hoot about what others feel as long as he is transparent. Then he went on to say why Govt should be transparent, politics should be transparent etc etc...

It was good that he went on his speech for some time. It made my Dad - mostly a silent self after Parkinson's got him, utter a sentence that really pushed me to the wall & made me think... and now I am blogging.

He said that "if everyone becomes transparent, it will be difficult to trust people. Our society runs on trust"

My instant reaction was that "wow, this is serious stuff!" But I didnt understand the implications fully. I wondered about how is trust related to transparency. Both trust and transparency should co-exist, as both are virtues that generations have been preaching.

Slowly it dawned on me how correct is my Dad. It became quite clear in my head that you cannot afford to be transparent if you are in a social fabric of friends, family and colleagues. As long as this world and our lives are based on trust, friendships and gossip, we cannot be transparent. If you are transparent, nobody will share their selves, as you would not keep it to yourself; and you wont have a social circuit.

It is actually a big deal to be discreet, secretive, trust-worthy and therefor non-transparent, diplomatic and political.

So you cant be transparent when it comes to the society, your family, your friends and colleagues. Sad.

Thinking deeper, actually you can never be transparent about yourself too, leave the society. Thats depression.

Let me not write further. Its better to live life like it comes to you. I wont say f the ideals, but they should be cursory in the periphery guiding you from going insane to the society at large.

Loving Mumbai - its spirit, its people, its conscience

2009-11-01T12:38:00.012+05:30

Mumbai is my home. And I'm lovin it.

On the 3rd of January 2002 with my RX 100 on a train from Ahmedabad, I arrived in Borivali, Mumbai. From then, it has been such a positive ride.

Sure, I had my share of frustrations in the initial initiation to the big bad Mumbai. From getting the bike out of the Borivali train station to traveling in the local train to reach lower parel, the next 15 days were a nightmare. I was not used to such a fast life in Ahmedabad.

With optimism for life and no such great ambition, I started my journey to settle down in Mumbai, to get my rythm back and start my life.

In these 8 years, I moved from Borivali to Sewri (what a relocation; with of all that I had in my Yamaha to a place which is the other end of Mumbai), from Sewri to Shivaji Park, from Shivaji Park to Mahim, from Mahim to Sion and then to my own home in Tilak Nagar, Chembur.

Occupationally, I moved from advertising & media to making ad films, from marketing to online marketing to my current position of Head - Internet Banking, Deutsche Bank. Yes, I work in a bank handling technology after starting my career with an agency handling advertising.

Here, as surprised you might be as a reader, I am also surprised at the opportunities that Mumbai has given to me to discover myself, my talent and my latent interests. I followed my dreams and dreams became reality. With time, money ceased to be an issue for most of my waking hours. I do get greedy at times.

Now thats too materialistic a reason to love Mumbai. Thats not what I wanted to write today. I wanted to write about my experiences, my feelings with Mumbai in these 8 years of living here, of making such tectonic shifts in my life.

The essense is that I have never felt alone in Mumbai. I never felt insecure in Mumbai. It has given life to my will to hardwork, be good, have patience, have faith and keep going.

From that day in 2002, when I found a helping leg to push my empty tanked bike to the nearest petrol station to yesterday when I found a stranger helping my dad (a parkinson's patient) to walk in the dark theatre towards his seat (we were there to watch Aladin & I went ahead to find the row), I have so many good memories of Mumbai and its beautiful people that it fills my heart to become a better person myself. I wish thats an epidemic and everybody is therefore becoming a better person themselves.

Let me jot down a few of my everlasting memories of Mumbai:

# Borivali to Sewri for a 10 days old on a bike in Mumbai was tough. I didnt take a single wrong turn and I found my destination in around an hour and half. In Mumbai it seems nobody has time for anybody but I found time from everyone. Everytime I asked for directions from an autorickshaw driver to an office goer, I got clear directions. From dharavi, I actually found someone who told me to follow him till my destiny. He actually took an extra turn for me. It was such a great satisfying journey, which could have been the worst in my life with 3 bags in a RX 100 with no clue about road directions.

# I am a bit of a crazy bike fanatic. Once I stubborned my way to take my father to the hospital for his acupressure session. While returning, he was having problem in getting onto the bike. Two gentlemen came and help him get on the bike. It was good till then. On the way, he got uncomfortable and was not keeping his balance on the bike. I had to stop somewhere near Goregaon in the WE highway. The magic started then. In a matter of minutes, my dad was brought down from my bike, given water, a stool to sit and relax. After a good 15 minutes when my Dad was comfortable, they again helped him onto the bike and we reached home. I was overwhelmed beyond words. I decided to become a better man myself.

# The fact that I dont have to bargain when I get into an Auto / Taxi is such a relief that we can only realise when we go to Delhi/Bangalore/Chennai. There is of course a slight problem that I ocassionally face. The taxis standing close to office premises wont budge for shorter distances. Once it happened that two girls (quite good looking and so I was observing or you may say leering at them) were trying to hire a taxi. They tried the standing taxis. They didnt budge, so they started waving for the passing taxis. Suddenly I see these two traffic policemen riding a bike passing by the waving girls... What shock me is that they stopped after a few metres to instruct the closest taxi driver to take these girls wherever they wants to go. Now that changed my view about traffic police completely. It is actually such a good life sala.

# I am quite a party animal. And shoulder to shoulder brushes are quite common in any pub in Mumbai. So a few bad looks here and there is accepted to be quite common. For the past 8 years, I have only heard of a few pub skirmishes. I havenot seen them. In Delhi, every pub/party has one fight every night. I may be exaggerating a bit but fights, abuses and quarrels are so much lesser in Mumbai pubs. It is actually fun.

# Last night, in a fit of excitement I left my purse in a paan shop in Bandra. Can you believe that? Yes I managed to do that and fortunately remembered after about travelling 5 kms towards my home. Luckily I have the habit of checking for my purse and mobile every 10-15 minutes. I could only say "WTF, I am screwed." I reviewed my memory and the best chance was the paan shop we stopped. I am still under dis-belief that I have actually got back my purse. God bless the paan walla and I wish he open a paan shop chain and become a paan magnet. Really, that's how magnanimous my wishes are for him.

Let me not drag it now. Just one last line. Mumbai - its people, its spirit and its conscience is really something to be proud of and to be inculcated within.

Dont understand why we say BIG BAD MUMBAI sometimes.

Blogging a Forward

2009-10-22T10:14:00.003+05:30

I have grown up playing, peeing and dragging my body when I couldnt walk in a Bengali family among litters of 'sandesh (callaghan)', a puja room with zillions of idol photos, and experiencing many of their typicalities. Today when I was reading this forwarded mail.. it brought back my baby memories... read it and enjoy.

A is for Awpheesh (as in Office). This is where the average Kolkakattan goes and spends a day hard(ly) at work. And if he works for the "West Bengal Gawrment" he will arrive at 10, wipe his forehead till 11, have a tea break at 12, throw around a few files at 12.30, break for lunch at 1, smoke an unfiltered cigarette at 2, break for tea at 3, sleep sitting down at 4 and go home at 4:30. It's a hard life!

B is for Bhision. For some reason many Bengalis don't have good bhision.In fact in Kolkata most people are wearing spectacles all the time.

C is for Chappell. Currently, this is the Bengali word for the Devil, forthe worst form of evil. In the night mothers put their kids to sleep saying, æNa ghumaley Chappell eshey dhorey niye jabeö

D is for Debashish or any other name starting with Deb-. By an ancient law every fourth Bengali Child has to be named Debashish. So you have a Debashish everywhere and trying to get creative they are also called Deb, Debu, Deba with variations like Debanik, Deboprotim, Debojyoti, etc. thrown in at times.

E is for Eeesh. This is a very common Bengali exclamation made famous by Aishwarya Rai in the movie Devdas. It is estimated that on an average a Bengali, especially Bengali women, use eeesh 10,089 times every year. "EiMorechhey" is a close second to Eeesh.

F is for Feeesh. These are creatures that swim in rivers and seas and are a favourite food of the Bengalis. Despite the fact that a fish market has such strong smells, with one sniff a Bengali knows if a fish is all right. If not he will say 'eeesh what feeesh is theesh!'

G is for Good name. Every Bengali boy will have a good name like Debashish or Deboprotim and a pet name like Montu, Bablu, etc. While every Bengali girls will have pet names like Tia, Tuktuki, Mishti, Khuku, etc.

H is for Harmonium. This the Bengali equivalent of a rock guitar. Take four Bengalis and a Harmonium and you have the successors to The Bheatles!

I is for lleesh. This is a feeesh with 10,000 bones which would kill any ordinary person, but which the Bengalis eat with releeesh!

J is for Jhola. No self respecting Bengali is complete without his Jhola. It is a shapeless cloth bag where he keeps all his belongings and he fits an amazing number of things in. Even as you read this there are 2 million jholas bobbling around Kolkata- and they all look exactly the same! Note that 'Jhol' as in Maachher Jhol is a close second.

K is for 'Kee Kaando'!. It used to be the favourite Bengali exclamation till eeesh took over because of Aishwarya Rai (now Kee Kando's agent is trying to hire Bipasha Basu).

L is for Lungi - the dress for all occasions. People in Kolkata manage to play football and cricket wearing it not to mention the daily trip in the morning to the local bajaar. Now there is talk of a lungi expedition to Mt. Everest.

M is for Minibus. These are dangerous half buses whose antics would effortlessly frighten the living day lights out of all James Bond stuntmenas well as Formula 1 race car drivers.

N is for Nangtoe. This is the Bengali word for Naked. It is the most interesting naked word in any language!

O is for Oil. The Bengalis believe that a touch of mustard oil will cure anything from cold (oil in the nose), to ear-ache (oil in the ear), to cough(oil on the throat) to piles (oil you know where!)

P is for Phootball. This is always a phavourite phassion of the Kolkattan. Every Bengali is born an expert in this game. The two biggest clubs there are Mohunbagan and East Bengal and when they play the city comes to a stop.

Q is for Queen. This really has nothing to do with the Bengalis or Kolkata,but it's the only Q word I could think of at this moment. There's also Quilt but they never use them in Kolkata.

R is for Robi Thakur. Many nany years ago Rabindranath got the NobelPrize. This has given the right to all Bengalis no matter where they are to frame their acceptance speeches as if they were directly related to the great poet and walk with their head held high. This also gives Bengalis the birth right to look down at Delhi and Mumbai and of course 'all non-Bengawlees'! Note that 'Rawshogolla' comes a close second!

S is for Shourav. Now that they finally produced a genuine cricketer and a captain, Bengalis think that he should be allowed to play until he is 70 years old. Of course they will see to it that he stays in good form by doing a little bit of "joggo" and "maanot".

T is for Trams. Hundred years later there are still trams in Kolkata. Ofcourse if you are in a hurry it's faster to walk.

U is for Aambrela. When a Bengali baby is born they are handed one.

V is for Bhaayolence. Bengalis are the most non-violent violent peoplearound. When an accident happens they will fold up their sleeves, shout and scream and curse and abuse, ôChherey De Bolchhiö but the last time someone actually hit someone was in 1979.

W is for Water. For three months of the year the city is underwater and every year for the last 200 years the authorities are taken by surprise by this!

X is for XÆmas. It's very big in Kolkata, with Park Street fully lit up and all Bengalis agreeing that they must eat cake that day.

Y is for Yesshtaarday. Which is always better than today for a Bengali (see R for Robi Thakur).

Z is for Jebra, Joo, Jipper and Jylophone.

Is Marriage the only ultimate weapon to kill loneliness?

2009-09-09T10:24:00.007+05:30

Its my never ending quest on questioning the convention of marriage. I have questioned it from so many points of view during discussions, during my dreamy moments. Finally it would be best to put pen to blogging for documentation sake.

One such question is: Is marriage the only weapon to kill loneliness? Or rather why is marriage the only weapon to kill loneliness?

I know so many boys and girls doing well in life but lonely. My brother, My friends who are yet to get married, My colleagues. They are so frustrated and incapacitated by loneliness that I see them changing their stance on marriage. I see them considering marriage as the only saviour to their lonely dinner time, lonely weekends, lonely life.

Ultimately everyone of us wants to marry... in hopelessness of loneliness knowing well that marriage may not be the ideal solution.

So, how does a working woman and a man find a partner for companionship?

Mumbai is the most glamourous, free, liberated city in the country. It is the city of dreams, city that is thought to be a haven of casual frivolity, of casual companionship, of casual sex. However I see hopelessness of loneliness more pronounced in Mumbai. Are we liberated enough to seek partners?

Mumbai is known to be one of the safest city with girls having no fear to travel and be outside of home at night. Yet we dont speak to strangers. we dont smile at strangers. How does a girl go about talking to a stranger boy in an upmarket pub without being considered cheap, or worse slutty. A up market pub has a homogeneous set of people and is a opportune place to meet likely minded people. But how?

Most of the couples meet each other through common friends. I am talking of working men and women. College days are a bit out of scope for this blog. So if common friends cant help..

We spent most of our waking hours in office and hence the only place to meet people. But we are all very professional to understand that office and personal life is best kept separately.

So when loneliness strikes, the only option becomes marriage. We start looking towards shaadi.com, towards parents et al for the next available opportunity to get married.

If only I could make Mumbai more natural, liberated, social and approachable? And thus marriage wont have to become the only weapon to kill loneliness.

'Just do it' - One Random Thought !

2009-08-29T13:12:00.006+05:30

The famous Nike campaign was really a good consumer insight that pulled in brain wave towards the brand. Among its many manifestation, I see two meanings thats prevalent - carving out of two consumer behaviour types: 'thinkers' and 'doers'

As we know, these are two sets of broad behaviour patterns that we see among us. One, who is a quality stickler and hence takes time thinking to execute any particular activity. He misses timelines but (tries to) delivers quality by putting attention to detail... The other who likes executing activities faster without much pendulum. There is always a second chance to improve, is perhaps the thought. Finishing is the priority for them.

'Just Do It' in my mind manifests into different meanings for these two kinds of people. The quality stickler says 'Just Do It... enough of masterbation'. Deadline is well past, shit. The finisher says 'Just Do It... get over it and start the next in line tomorrow. I am done for the day. Beer.. yeah!!'

Creativity as a profession, I feel, should fall into the laps of the former kinds. However, as it is with the world, everthing is in a equillibrium.

So creativity is also practiced by the second variety. They are good at it. Prolific. Fast. Money spinners. Quality.... never mind. There is a second chance!! With 'Son of the soil Vs Son of a gun' hoardings all over Mumbai city and '100% de dhana dhan' full page spread in DNA, it gets really depressing. And funny.

Creativity is in the wrong hands. Money is also in those wrong hands. People without any creative aptitude but with the right 'just do it' attitude is clearly polluting out-of-the-box lateral thinking. I want to curse them saying, "May they go to hell called empty houses...

But life is about variety. Accepting and ignoring variety is the rule. Evolve and lead your own life and just do your own thing. Be happy.

Homo-sexuality - isnt it like insanity?

2009-07-04T19:30:00.007+05:30

I have no strong negative emotion against homo-sexuality. In fact I have been very close to such behaviour, as I have studied in an all boys school from pre-puberty to adulthood. And we hear of so many rumours.. et al
However, I certainly think that it is an anomaly.

If the celina jaetlys of the world professes that homo-sexuality is natural, it simply means to me that like insanity, homo-sexuality is also natural. So do we allow insanes to roam around freely on our roads performing insanity.

As for freedom of expression goes, yes everyone should have the freedom of expressing oneself. It is not a crime like insanity is not.

Having said that, we should not encourage homo-sexuality and more so encourage breeding of homosexual behaviour. It is not natural...it is not according to the fundamentals of human civilization.

Just to take an analogy, yesterday I saw an unfortunate gentleman nude below his torso. He seems well behaved and normal otherwise. Perhaps he is a peace loving, not harmful to society and a normal person who has just lost his sense of shame to hide his genitals.

So if we imagine that this kind of insanity spreads wide into our lives and becomes prevalent, would we allow activism to start to allow them to roam around freely on our roads? Would you encourage them to show their genitals in public?

We need to councel them, take care of them and bring them to the normal decency of life. Same goes for homo-sexuality.