It Hurts to be Right

I am used to it now, what I have decided to call The Curve of Belief. It starts with me proposing something, usually an idea that feels brilliant in my head on day 0, then enthusiastic the first time I narrate it to my immediate family. The idea sounds defensive when their eyes glaze over and they zone out while I am speaking. It becomes whiny and plaintive when I am encountered with what I consider to be irrelevant / stupid questions or even more idiotic suggestions that i should be working, getting a job, doing something useful, you know, rather than ... this. 

Time passes, months, sometimes even years. Then what I prophesied happens to pass, and said infidels tell me, "So, you were right." I smile. Because I would have moved on to the next Curve by that time. 

We are in one right now, don't you think? I don't believe that we need any more graphs than those that are already going around, or more reporting on the numbers of people infected with the covid-19 virus. Last Friday I declined to attend office and consequently skipped an important client meeting. This was my first project after a year of near-drought work (and money) wise, but when I called my employer that morning I was convinced about the severity of the outbreak, even though in India the infected numbers were in the low double digits. He was kind enough to agree to my wish, although he ended the call with an embarrassed laugh on how "people have pressed the panic button, yeah". 

Yeah. 

Five days later, here's what things look like in India: 

Source: India Today and covidout

As of writing this blogpost, the total number of covid-19 positive cases is reported as varying from 148 to 151 in India on 18 March.

Well, not bad, of course. More people are dying of it in Italy everyday than the total number of positive cases in India. Hurrah! Indian immune system ki jai! Go mutra zindabad! Filth and pollution, thank you! 

Except when you put it in a graph. 

And then you compare the shape of our graph to that of other countries.

Source: Worldometers.info

Most of them are ahead of us on this deadly bridge. A bridge would be an apt metaphor, because our line graph, which is right now as steep as a dreaded mountain face, should flatten out before it starts reducing (refer China and South Korea above). We are still climbing (like Italy and the US above). Which means: there's lots more to come, folks. 

Sure, these numbers cannot be compared, apples-to-apples. India's numbers may also not be indicative of reality, since we have opted to quarantine people at home and only test them if they show symptoms. We have ramped up our testing capability only recently, and the so-called Stage III of the spread, which is when it moves from people with a travel history to affected countries, out into the local community, to people who don't have a travel history or anything to do with the people found to be infected initially. But all this only underscores my earlier point that, in this case, there is a lot more we don't know - about the virus, about the extent of its spread, and its effects - than what we know. 

I probably sound ridiculous, with my over-righteous lectures and forwards about "social distancing", mostly over WhatsApp. Heck, I have even started practising social and emotional distancing at home; that's how ingrained this behaviour has become for me. 

I also know that I, and my immediate family (which is a rainbow of ages, from a toddler, to adults, to 80+ years old senior citizens and others with pre-existing health conditions) will also get infected. It's only a matter of time. All I want is to get there at the point when the curve has moved downwards, so that they can get admitted to hospital and therefore get the critical care they would most definitely need. Hopefully by then the number of recoveries would also be robust, giving all of us, along with all those who might have contracted it from us, some hope. There is no bigger regret than a tragedy that could have been avoided, but was not because we believed in our genetic immunity, the unhygienic conditions our bodies have adjusted to and the legendary powers of cow pee. I am no analyst, biologist, doctor or an expert on anything. I like to read, to think about what I read, and to understand how it may / can / would apply to me and my life. 

This is my take. 

Note1: The extensive Medium article that convinced to work from home last week.

For of a Truth ..

For of a truth, in these days of independence, of pushing and striving among all ranks and sexes, the gracious old-world flower of gentleness runs risk of being trampled out of feminine character: the more so, because it is a common fallacy to confound gentleness with weakness; whereas true gentleness is the handmaid of strength though not of self-assertion. For strength has any forms of manifestation, and the ideal woman of the East is strong in self-repression, in cheerful subordination of the individual to the community: since an Indian household is still a community on the old patriarchial lines. She is the outcome of an ethical, if not a material civilization. Analysis of the seemingly arbitrary conventions that dominate her life reveals an underlying canon of stern self-control; just as analysis of her rigid religious observances reveals a faith permeated with the poetry of symbolism. 

Maud Diver, The Englishwoman in India, 1909

The more things change, the more they remain the same. 

Honour

I heard this word being bandied about at a wedding last week. Sure, I had heard of it before, although recently it had been famously paired with another by now familiar word, “killing”, in articles splashed in newspapers, starring enraged parents and indignant community leaders. 

As personal experience amply demonstrated, reading something in the newspaper and having it do the rounds at a wedding I was attending, are two very different things. One always tends to read unfortunate news with an admirable sense of detachment. Simply because “it will not happen to me.” If we were to employ this studied detachment in our daily lives they would be a lot more peaceful. 

The wedding itself went off smoothly, but the venue rumbled that the bride’s younger brother was ‘opposed’ to her marriage to one outside her community. He famously walked around with a sword in his hand in the days leading to the happy event. I had only to surmise that he was waiting for the right time to kill himself. Here’s why: Imagine that I were to meet this visibly angry person, furrowed browed and thin lipped, a sword dangling at his waist, a possible escapee from the set of Bajirao Mastani. 

Me: Hey, what’s up? 

Angry Brother (AB): Nothing much, just took a selfie with my sword. Uploaded it on FB and got 110 likes already, see? 

Me: Oh. That’s a cool sword. What are you doing with it? 

AB: Apart from the selfie? Waiting to kill my sister, and the traitors who support her unclean marriage to an outsider. She has destroyed my honour and that of the family!

Me: I see. 

AB: No, you don’t see. You don’t know the meaning of honour and how important it is to us, men. Women are supposed to protect it by behaving with discretion and respect. When they commit such sacrilegious acts they bring shame upon us! They don’t deserve to live and neither do the other traitors!

Me: Yes, you have mentioned that already. Um, can I ask you a question?

AB: Sure, sister. Anything. 

Me: So you say that your sister has destroyed your honour?

AB: Yes.

Me: And honour is undoubtedly the most important thing to you? Because you are ready to kill for it? 

AB: That is correct. 

Me: Would it be fair to say, brother (it seemed fair to return the favour bestowed to me), that a life without honour is not really worth living? 

AB (removes his sword from his waist and holds it towards the sky with a fierce cry): Haan ji, haan! 

Me: Great. So then shouldn’t it be you who should be killed? 

AB: What? Kya bakwaas hai yeh? 

Me: Yes, see it’s perfectly logical. (I count the points on my fingers under his glowering eye.)

One, honour is the most important thing to you.

Two, honour is irreversible. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Three, a life without honour is not worth living. You said so yourself. 

Hence therefore, you should be killing yourself. Your honour has been irrevocably removed and cannot be gotten back now that the dirty deed is done. And let’s face it, it’s easier to kill yourself than so many people, right? I hear that the groom’s father has five siblings. So that’s five into two plus two children each on an average, twenty plus the groom and his parents twenty three. 

(I eye his slim sword skeptically.) Did this come with a warranty? 

Why Bangalore needs buses

I must confess. As one of the car driving horde on Bangalore's narrow and overflowing roads, I detested all BMTC buses, red, green, orange.. colour no bar. One of these giants was enough to block the entire road it went on. Each bus on an average took 10 seconds to move after a signal turned green (if it was going straight) and atleast 15 seconds if it was taking a turn. This turn would also mean that the bus would have to go to the extreme left of the road in order to turn right and vice versa, thus ensuring that no vehicle (except maybe Quixotic motorists and the occasional gravity defying auto rickshaw) could move till this manouvre was completed. By which time the signal would be red again. Sigh.

It's been two days since all drivers, conductors and mechanics of BMTC called a strike on, interestingly, demand for differential pay. When I first read the news of the strike yesterday I was actually thrilled. I imagined empty roads and myself on them, zooming away in my little black Reva. Bah! Foolish me. What actually happened was exactly the opposite - with thousands of people not having public transport, taxis and autos were much in demand. Let's do a simple calcualtion. If 50 people travel in a bus on an average, and these same 50 people were to use private means of transport because of the strike, the ensuing *extra* space that these vehicles would occupy on the road would be almost double that of a BMTC bus. Multiply the number of people in a bus by atleast 2000 (the paper today states that BMTC operates almost 7000 buses daily) and you have a mind boggling increase in the number of smaller, but cumulatively larger space occupying vehicles on the road.

Sure, Bangalore has pathetic public transport on the road. The buses do not ply on all routes, so connectivity to all parts of the city do not exist. Most of the time the buses are not regular or on time, which makes it difficult to depend on for getting anywhere in time. The price is the only saving grace, because the comparable amount that one has to shell out for an auto or a taxi is atleast 2 times more than the bus fare for the same distance. But BMTC is a supposed star among all state owned bus transport companies. They are supposed to be making profits (anyone see their balance sheet?) and they have won many awards for innovative introductions and solutions for improving public transport, Volvo A/C buses on IT routes and denoting one day in the first week of the month as "BUS DAY", being examples. BMTC has also been increasing the number of buses on the road, claiming that by encouraging more people to use public transport they are reducing congestion on the roads. I was a non believer. Until now.

Bangalore needs it buses back.

Handed to us on a platter

You would never guess this one: Apart from architectural marvels, Persian influences, language, culture and religion, what is the all-pervading thing that we Indians have inherited from the Mughals?

Quoted from "The Crimson Throne" by Sudhir Kakar. A work of historical-fiction, the book has some interesting revelations about the Mughal period, most famously the transition of reign following Shah Jahan's rule, and Shah Jahan's sexual exploits.
Indians may be polite and friendly and possess other admirable personal qualities, but their public life is marred by sycophancy and corruption.. The rot starts, as it always does, at the top: as they say in France, 'A fish always starts smelling from the head.'
.. The voice of flattery pervades all ranks of society.

So that's what we have got in a platter from our ancestors of 5000 years - a tradition of sycophancy and corruption. While in the Mughal era words were the flowers people used to adorn their leaders, in today's world it is posters, rallies, plots of land, statues. We get full points for Innovation on the 'S' front.

If flattery is the coin of social discourse, then corruption is the currency of all transactions in the regime. This is easily evident in the number of words they have for a bribe in their language - dastoor, nazrana, baksheesh and so on. It is an established custom throughout the country that without the intercession of influential friends or the payment of bribes nothing gets done; even princes of royal blood cannot get their work done without some kind of payment.

So no one was above the Law of Corruption, it seemed. Very apt, even today. It is a well known fact that a common man looking to register a house, get a ration card, a driving license, a passport, a voter's id or even admission in school for his child, is required to grease all palms along the way. The rot is so deeply entrenched in the system that there is only one way to survive: by becoming a part of it.

Surprisingly, it is not the lack of good laws that is responsible for the state of affairs. If properly administered, the existing laws would render the Indies as eligible a residence as any nation in Europe. But of what use are good laws if they are not observed and when there is no possibility of observing them? The sole aim of governers of provinces appointed by the king is to amass as much wealth as they can in the time they have left in their appointments before they are removed by the whim of the monarch or the machinations of enemies at the court.

Nothing more needs to be said. If there was an award for "Best set of Laws ever written for a country" India would win it hands down. For a poverty stricken country torn by strife and turmoil in 1947, we had a clear set of heads at the cusp of independence and with them dreams of a better, better world. That we are far from being true to their letter is glaringly obvious.
But what can we do if it's in our genes, right? We can't just throw the errant chromosomes out of our system. Or can we?



Stare into space, chew over it. Or chew through the next person who dares to extend their hand out for unwarranted cash.

Margazhi

Margazhi is the Tamil month that begins in the middle of December. The beginning of the Madras Music Season, when even the otherwise difficult weather co-operates, with cool breeze and just-warm-enough sunshine. I was fortunate to be a part of it for 2 days, and those 2 days were one of the best I've had in a long, long time. Great weather, an air of festivity and above all, fantastic music. An out of the world experience.

Although Bangalore is where home (and therefore the heart) is, Chennai as a city has a unique energy to it. You can see it in the wide pothole-free roads, tasteful buildings and umpteen saree and jewelry shops, and you can feel it in the cultural events and happenings. It is elegance and beauty, borne out of years of perfection and adaption to changing times but without losing touch with history and tradition. Chennai is the uncrowned cultural capital of South India, and is at its most beautiful in December.

As quoted by S Ramadorai, Vice Chairman, TCS, 10 things to do in Chennai during the music festival season:

1. Visit Sampradaya music library which has 7,000 hours of music from the great masters, old and rare books, photographs and gramophone records.
2. Go to Ayodhya Mandapam in Mambalam, sit on the floor and listen to religious discourse which blends humorous storytelling of the epics with songs.
3. Get up early and join the bhajan groups marching to the temple; make sure to sing a song at the temple; get pongal as reward.
4. Go to the house of your favourite film star and have a photo taken of you with him or her; all stars employ photographers for the purpose.
5. Don’t fret if your favourite star is out for a shooting. Go to Marina Beach and take a photo with the star’s life-size cutout.
6. Eat chilli bajji at Santhome; drink filter coffee anywhere.
7. Eat “full meals” on a plantain leaf.
8. Spend Christmas at the church on St. Thomas Mount, where the Apostle Thomas was killed in the First Century; also, visit Santhome Church where his body was buried for some time.
9. Shop at Ranganathan Street for trinkets; Nalli Silks for Kanjivarams; Usman Road for jewellery.
10. Have your fortune told by a hawker’s parakeet.

So I have my task cut out for my next visit :)

States

Sometimes I can't help feeling that Life is like a badly constructed Indian road. Potholes all over the place, steep bends and humps at the wrong places, mad and noisy traffic.

Unlike for the Indian road, I know there would be no fun if we were warned of happiness or calamity before it hits. Though it would definitely help to be prepared. It's ironic, all these phases. You don't enjoy them - the periods of anticipation, confusion, lack of clarity. But it gives your mind something to chew on, and to create infinite possibilities. When you reach the end of the road and the fog clears, you actually miss the excitement! It's a roller coaster ride, this one.

I guess the thing to remember is not what happens, but what you make out of what happens.

Is it true?

Last Sunday (5 July 2009) the Times of India supplement Times Life! (can be accessed through: http://epaper.timesofindia.com) carried an article that in a sense answered the questions I raised in one of previous posts Being Indian to the Rest of the World. This article is titled “Why are Indians targeted?” and using the recent attacks on Indian students in Australia as a backdrop, it tries to answer why Indians living abroad seem to be targets for hate/racial crimes than other immigrant minorities.

From a personal viewpoint, being an Indian in a foreign country has its advantages and drawbacks. The advantage is the familiarity that locals and others in the country have with ours thanks to the predecessors. It makes it easier to mix and get along, for us and for the locals. The drawback is that the Indian visitors before us have left some impression on them, and in most cases we have no idea what it is. We are simply the recipient of their behaviour that has resulted from this impression. Sometimes, this impression is not a good one.

The article mentions that although Indians are admired for their brains, looks and in some cases money, we are despised for showing off shiny gadgets, playing loud music and talking in our native tongue in public. In short, we Indians wear our culture on our sleeve. Indians do not make any effort to assimilate into their culture, preferring to “herd” with other Indians.

Of course, there is nothing wrong in being connected to our culture. In fact, there is every reason to be proud that young Indians despite being exposed to the various other cultures and globalization are balancing their culture with living in the modern world admirably. I would say that our mature sensibilities and conflict management skills are a natural result of growing up in the mela that is India :-) So the thought here is, maybe we are just being too loud about it.

Being Indian to the Rest of the World

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post are from personal experience and may sound myopic, insecure and downright wrong. Still, they are based on experiences and I am writing about it, hoping that it will ease the discontent that has been nagging me for quite some time now.

I recently returned from a family holiday to the African sub-continent (name of country withheld for personal security reasons :P). I had a great time and unforgettable memories were created. Nevertheless, certain behaviour that I observed from tourists and locals alike along with past experiences in other countries (in other continents) have prompted me to write this post. 

What does being Indian mean to the global tourism industry? Do hotel staff and tourist guides enjoy extending their hospitality to Indians? Do people like Indian tourists??

My experience says: not really.

For the record, all those stories about being as squeaky clean when abroad as aloof and dirty when home are definitely true. But we are also thrifty to the point of being miserly – we tip grudgingly and never make impulsive purchases. And of course, we bargain to the last bone if price negotiation is even remotely prompted.

Now the logical question is: is tourism only about money? Isn’t it also about appreciating the local culture and respecting the country’s rules?

The answer: Of course money isn’t everything. But which other tourist doesn’t appreciate the local culture and the country’s rules? Money is the bottomline, at the end of the day.

Self-bashing aside, I don’t think any of what has been mentioned above is worth being shameful about. We are all the product of our respective environments, and there is no contesting that the environment in which we Indians grow up is one of the most complex in the world. That makes us natural adapters to change (as our large expatriate population justifies) and excellent at conflict resolution. But I digress.

The result of this Indian tourist stereotype is the step-motherly treatment that we are privy to. Watch for it: the airhostess in the international flight is all smiles for the Westerner sitting beside you but barely spares you a glance. (Note: Western tourists also travel in Economy class!) The shop owner in the souvenir shop trails behind the American couple but ignores you completely.

It rankles, obviously. But it's not going to stop us from travelling the world, of course :)

Who am I?

An article I read in mint prompted me to write this post.

The author expresses an inability to defend why the notions of "Indian Culture" as espoused by Sri Ram Sene and Shiv Sena are wrong or misguided. She feels that if we, the common (wo)man, as a polity define Indian culture through a set of qualities or adjectives then that will make us more equipped to deal with such "fundamentalist" behaviour. Predictably enough, "Indian culture" does not have a universal definition, and any attempt to create one will stymie its natural evolutionary process and in a perverse way, serve the fundamentalists' cause.

I must confess that the article prompted me to ask myself how connected I felt I was to Indian culture. My immediate reaction was that a person whose upbringing and background were more traditional than mine has more authority on the topic. But then, I am not any lesser an Indian than the next person. I might think in English and have my "roots" in a city that no longer knows what it stands for but what the heck, I wouldn't feel so at home anywhere else. 

We are the moderate majority, but we are also the fringe elements. Educated and qualified, we would rather spend our lives earning money and moving up on the income strata than making the country a better place to live in. As champions of the private enterprise, we consider the public sector and the government as a necessary evil. It's been this way for generations now. We are very happy in the cocoons of our lives, going to work, coming back to family, planning for the next big holiday or the next house or car. Who wants to tell a bunch of hooligans what Indian culture means to us? We have better things to do. 

A good home or a good road?

At first glance, the answer to the question seems obvious: Would you rather have a nice big house or a smooth pothole-free road? The house, of course!

What with the economic downturn, private sector jobs are drying up. The Indian Governemnt, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be in the least bothered about this development, atleast as far as recruitment is concerned. 

As part of a generation that looked down upon PSU jobs as stodgy file-pushing and intellectually insulting (as compared to the better-paying and challenging private sector jobs), this development raises uncomfortable questions. With campus placements round the corner, three magic words are being bandied around - Sixth Pay Commission: the manna from heaven, the bright spot that makes it look less of a compromise than it actually is, and the plaintive reason for accepting a job in a PSU. (The real reason is: there isn't any other, baby!)

Now, all that money for the hike has to come from somewhere, right? And it doesn't require a genius to see that the governement is not richer this year than last year. Neither will it dare to touch the "Social Sector" budget - yup, the same one for which the CAG has mentioned that the governement has not used upto Rs.33000 crore of funds from international agencies for social development. So that leaves us with the next biggest: the Infrastructure Fund. 

Stop constructing that flyover and let's re-lay this road next year instead of this year. We are the Government. We care for you, the aam aadmi. See how we are paying you more?

I strongly feel that the Pay Commission revision should be made performance-based. The PSU can be measured on a number of parameters: increase in revenue, customer/client feedback, employee satisfaction etc. The appraisal process can be conducted by an independent party and the pay hike will depend on the individual performance. I'm sure my solution is far from paractical and is riddled with problems, but what with the brightest minds joining PSUs today, some might actually end up staying and becoming much-needed change agents.

Hail PSUs! 

Slumdog Millionaire

My first reaction on hearing that this movie has been nominated for 9? 10? Oscars was: "Oh."
Something like what you would say when you looked at the clear sky in the morning but heard the steady drizzle grow into a thundering downpour by 4 in the afternoon. In this case a typical reaction would be to stare out the window at the rain for around 5 minutes and then get back to
whatever it is you were doing. That is precisely what I did.

I don't think it shows India in a bad light or glamourizes poverty. In fact it is a very realistic potrayal of a set of people who have to constantly watch their backs and for whom surviving each day is the biggest challenge.

I also don't think an Indian director could have done justice to this story. Not because Indian directors are not good enough (as is mostly assumed) but because as an Indian, having grown up seeing luxury and poverty across the road from each other, his view would be biased. The view portrayed in the movie looked real because it was objective. It is the view you get when you see it for what it is, without any "baggage". If an Indian was to make a movie on the American life/way of living I'm sure he would do a great job.

I also didn't see what was there for it to merit all those Oscar nominations. I guess that is because we are used to watching Indian movies that are high on drama and emotion. It is well-made, no doubt, but not too different from the mainstream movies in terms of masala.

Sometimes I am tempted to spout a theory about a conspiracy to get the world to talk about India. First Arvind Adiga's "White Tiger" and then this. Remember the theory of how countries which the cosmetics giants view as potential markets win the beauty pageants? I can imagine a similar exercise being conducted to identify how India is different from the rest of the world: so you list all the "Points of Differentiation" and then you see which one can give us competitive advantage. No prizes for guessing what topped this list: poverty and the grit of the people condemned to live with it.

But then this would be a self-destructing hypothesis right? More attention => more business => more development => get richer => eliminate poverty => left with no point of differentiation
As a last word, so long as we are benefiting from it (economically) as a country, I have no objections at all.

Laughing stock

The best example for a foot-in-the-mouth syndrome is the Indian politician.

• When a journalist is shot while travelling in her car at 2am in Delhi, Chief Minister Shiela Dixit says that she should have been more careful and not been out alone at such an ungodly hour.
  
• When incidents of women call centre employees being abducted and raped when being picked up by "their company taxis" late in the night surface, the Karnataka government banned women from working in establishments after 8pm, a rule which was thankfully revoked later.
• Maharashtra Home Minister R R Patil calls the latest terror attacks in Mumbai, which are by far the most lethal, a "small incident which is bound to happen in big cities like Mumbai"

While these misplaced comments might be amusing, they also throw up some disturbing indications about our political leadership (or the lack of it). Sychophancy and bureaucratic procedures are the rule of the day. Indeed, when keeping your post depends on which politician's leg you massage rather than actual "work", no politician expects to be voted back in office for doing his duty with sincerity and conviction for the welfare of the citizens when the real path to power lies in the hands of his superior.
We in India are tuned to apathy when there is anything to do with politics. Who wants to get into that muck? is the common question. There is so much filth in the government system that even 100 years of cleaning will not rid it of its filth. Might as well drop that and go clean the Ganges instead.

Just desserts

Jug Suraiya's article in the TOI today resonated with my views and prompted this post.
He writes about two politicians who couldn't be more different from each other: Barack Obama and Raj Thakeray. While the former, he says, stands for "togetherness", the latter stands for "otherness" or alienation. As he says, people get the politicians they deserve. We as a people have shown apathy and cynicism in ample measure:

Who cares whether I vote or not, these elections are always rigged anyway!
Why should I bother not to litter/jump signals/bribe officials when everyone else does it?

The day we become responsible citizens, we will elect a true leader to govern us.

The White Tiger

My curiousity about this book was first aroused, predictably enough, when it won the Man Booker Prize. I have read both positive and negative comments on the book, the most striking of them being "How can a page turner like this win a Booker?"
Sad, but true. Page turners sell the most but are the bottom of the heap, relegated to airport terminals and the occasional reader who picks up a book when all other timepass options have been exhausted. Which brings me to: What does winning a Booker tell you about the book, anyway? As the saying goes, one man's nectar is another's poison.
But I digress. This post is about the book, not what it won.

For a non-Indian, the book may be a revelation: Yes, there is an India beyond the traffic clogged roads, the spanking new and tall buildings coming up at an amazing pace (Wish I could say the same for the flyovers and the Bangalore metro!) and the 9% GDP growth. And yes, it's not pretty at all.

For an Indian, it puts to words all the emotions of this other India, the majority India. Mass migration, urbanization, poverty.. the list goes on and on. There are people who accept their fate and spend their lives pulling rickshaws or selling vegetables, and there are people who will not.

To make a point effectively, we have to provide a stark example. Hence the book takes us to one of the places in India where this poor man-rich man difference is as stark as black and white: Rajasthan. Replace the 'Laxmangarh' with a 'Lakhansipur' in UP or a 'Daulatpur' in Bihar and the story could be the same. The poor man is the good guy-turned bad, and the rich guy, when not being cruel or downright arrogant, is confused and utterly lost.
I bet we can write an equally good book on exactly the opposite happening in India: How a good rich man becomes poor and becomes bad, or how a bad poor man becomes good and therefore becomes rich.
One swallow does not a spring make.
Also, I don't think the book speaks of anything that we should be ashamed of as Indians. Indeed, there is an abundance of literature on this topic, but not all of it has won the Man Booker of course, for various reasons. TOI's India Poised campaign was based on it. Shashi Tharoor has talked about it in India: From Midnight to the Millennium. So do, I suspect, Gurcharan Das in India Unbound and Ramachandra Guha in India After Gandhi.
Read it, it'll help you pass a boring weekend afternoon.

India: From Midnight to the Millennium

In his portrait of one of the world's most important and interesting countries "India: From Midnight to the Millennium", Shashi Tharoor speaks about "a kind of Indian almost unrepresented in Indian politics."

My kind of Indian.

"There are many of us, but, among India's multitudes, we are few. We have grown up in the cities of India, secure in a national identity than a local one, which we express in English rather than any Indian language. We rejoice in the complexity and diversity of our India, of which we feel a conscious part, we have friends of every caste and religious community, and we marry across such sectarian lines. ... We are secular, not in the sense that we are irreligious or unaware of the forces of religion, but in that we believe religion should not determine public policy or individual opportunity.

And, in Indian politics, we are pretty much irrelevant.

We don't get a look in. We don't enter the fray because we can't win. We tell ourselves ruefully that we are able, but not electable. We don't have the votes, there are too few of us, and we don't speak the idiom of the masses. Instead we have learnt to talk about political issues without the expectation that we will be able to do anything about them."

My feelings exactly. A number of incidents led to this conclusion on my part:

1. When I voted for the first time this May I couldn't help wondering how my kind of vote plays any role. No candidate came to my apartments to campaign, although I did see them "waving the wave" in an adjacent lower income locality. The candidates' promises hardly make any difference to me. I would treat them with a kind of indifference bordering on hostility should they approach me at all. Why am I voting? What difference does it make whether I vote or not??

2. As of Q1 2008, the following two movies were declared box-office hits: Jodhaa Akbar and Race. I had only seen the first and did not think it deserved to be a hit. All my friends who saw Race told me that it takes infidelity to dizzying heights and can easily rank amongst the worst movies ever made. I saw Race later, and although I have seen worse movies, if this is a hit, then God save the world. (Race was obviously not made for someone like me. Come to think of it, which movies in the past were made for someone like me and were box office hits?)

Sometimes I am consumed by a feeling of helplessness, followed by guilt for not having the guts to enter the fray and give back to my country by using my education to provide efficient solutions to lingering problems.

Does writing about it help, I wonder.

Just Like That

The "April Showers" are called so not only because of their timeliness but also because of the short (but intense) rain. At home, I always smell the rain before I hear it. Sitting on a ledge in the balcony, a tree stump in the adjacent plot of land caught my eye. Such a sight has become increasingly common in Bangalore nowadays. This particular stump was a tall and imposing coconut tree, that dared to spread its branches into the neighbour's territory and drop a coconut or two there when time was ripe. It paid for its natural insolence. I will always remember the day it was cut. It put up a good fight. It took upto 6 strong men morning to night to reduce it to the stump it is today. Is it easier to remove a problem rather than solve it? Just like that?

The binding force

Was flipping through India Today's special edition on 60 Greatest people in India. Most of our freedom fighters top the list (Bhagat Singh, Subash Chandra Bose, Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Vallabhai Patel..). Bhagat Singh topped the poll, and the editor intepreted the choice to be that of a Young India, who was more daring today and rooting for nationalism more openly than before. I say: Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe Mahatma Gandhi's actions/sayings/principles have been used/misused/abused to such an extent till today that no one is really sure about what he actually said/did. On the other hand, Bhagat Singh's actions have been clearly chronicled, both in literature and on screen (the script writer of the movie The Legend of Bhagat Singh wrote the article on him).

Another striking point I noticed was the politicans of various hues who all came under the umbrella of the Indian National Congress during Colonial Rule. Though they had differing view points on many issues their goal was the same (a Free and Prosperous India) and so this difference in opinion turned out to be a boon rather than a bane. All these freedom fighters were very accomplished and educated. They chose to give up a cushioned and comfortable life for a greater cause. Sadly, this is not the state of politics in India today. The best minds work for private institutions or go abroad. We have become more and more risk-averse. But what is the solution? Maybe the party the IITians have formed is a start. Maybe banning people with criminal records from standing for elections is another start. I am not as brave as those IITians, but I will try to give back in my own way. Being a responsible citizen is definitely a start.

Son of the soil

I chose to name the post with the cliched phrase purely to highlight how it has been misused today. Sometimes I cannot help wondering if I am incredibly intelligent or if our political representatives are incredibly obtuse.

• Education is in need of some serious reforms: accepted
• Quality of education, especially in government institutions needs to be improved: accepted
• So the logical thing to do is to fix what is not going well, right? But, no! I will go and meddle in the one thing in this entire blessed country that is running as smoothly as a well-oiled clock - the IIMs. To hell with primary education! To hell with producing employable graduates instead of those who have a namesake degree and are unemployable! Son of the soil indeed!!
• It also seems stupidly simple to me that apart from caste, economic status must also be considered before reserved seats are allotted, so that the truly needy benefit. But considering that the previous point has been completely missed, I should not be surprised that this point has been missed as well.
• I wonder about the long term repercussions of such reservations on the younger generation of OBCs. An OBC candidate gets an IIM seat because of his/her caste even though his/her CAT percentile was much lower than those of the GM category. And here I am talking about a student who is economically well-enough to be supported through private education in one of the premier engineering colleges in Karnataka. This has generated resentment amongst his classmates, who also worked just as hard (an in fact did better than him). In the long run, this can result in further ostracizing of OBCs from mainstream society.

I suppose that my views on politics may seem naive to some. After all, elections and votes are the ultimate leveller and if there is one thing that our politicians do not lack it is focus on this leveller. But I have never understood the reason for this complete apathy towards public interest just to get votes. Do you guys have a conscience or not??

Take me instead!

This was my instant reaction on hearing reports of Rahul Gandhi becoming PM incumbent. Not only does it show the utter disregard for the existing PM, even comparing a greenhorn like Rahul Gandhi with Dr. Manmohan Singh is blasphemy. I mean, come on guys! Our current PM is one of the most highly educated people we will ever find, and the fact that he has chosen to give back to the country by entering politics speaks a lot for his character. But since Politics is so simply because it doesn't make any sense, I say that if you think Rahul Gandhi will make a suitable PM, let me tell you, "Take me instead!"
Let me see why:
1. I am an ordinary Indian citizen who has seen the situation in India for what it is, without the comfort of a famous surname as well as fashionably breaking security cordons to "meet the people"
2. I have no political affiliations (I think this is more of a positive than a negative)
3. I will take my role more seriously because it was not handed over to me in a silver spoon
4. I would take up the post because I want to use the power to make a difference to the million of lives in India, and not to make money/garner mind share/win elections
I think there are atleast a million people in this country who will fit this bill along with me. So Mr. Rahul Gandhi, you have competition, and how!