Mumbai terror attack

Mumbai is hit again. For the nth time. The metropolis, and the rest of the country goes through the same rigmarole-  The panic, the shifting of the dead and injured to the hospitals; the headcount of the toll; the lame, practiced statements from the authorities and politicians; live footage by TV news channels showing gory pictures from all over; speculations about the explosives used and the terror groups involved; we sitting in our drawing rooms surfing through the news channels with a sense of gloom; people sending across text messages in mourning and anger, some updating on social networking sites; and some writers like me writing columns like this one. Sounds familiar? Yes, this scenario could have been the aftermath of any terror attack anywhere in the country, right from 1993 onwards. And I can tell you with utmost confidence the scenario of two days from now- people in Mumbai settling down, returning to their businesses- prompting groups to hail Mumbai as the most ‘resilient city’ (as if there’s a choice); there’s a final death and injured toll; the TV news channels are now interviewing the surviving victims and the families of the dead; the authorities groping in the dark about the people/group involved with random people being rounded up; and rest of us going back to our businesses, forgetting the episode till the next one happens. This sounds familiar too? It does, yes. Because it has repeated itself so many times over. We are a soft country with soft leaders. Everyone in the country knows the source of this mayhem. Such attacks are as much about the loss of lives and property as it is about the loss of self-esteem. Why must we die in installments like this? If we must, then why not die in a real battle? For me, in a situation like this, offense should be the best defense. Just like the US of A does- Hunt and Kill. And if in the process some of our brave men are martyred, so be it. But I think we must put an end to this repeated insults by going all the way with one final assault. We must wage a war against our enemies. No more showing resilience; no more being tolerant. We must take the offensive to the enemy shores. We must. It is time.   

Picture courtesy: PTI (aajtak.intoday.com) http://aajtak.intoday.in/photoplay.php/photo/view/1869/2#photo2

Monsoon ke Side Effects

When monsoon arrives in our part of India, it fills us with glee. The first down-pour brings immediate sense of relief from the prolonged, hot and humid summer conditions. The cool atmosphere is coupled with new, washed look of the surrounding buildings, appearing bright, as if freshly painted. The foliage, or whatever has remained of the urban foliage, appears bright-green and fresh. Overall, the world seems rinsed into a new being.

On the roads, pedestrians are seen caught unawares without umbrellas, scuttling for shelters; two-wheeler riders squinting in the downpour to find their way to the nearest covered parking; the four-wheelers carefully navigating the chaotic streets with wipers swishing furiously, and their wheels splashing off slush from potholes on the already harried pedestrians. People in offices latch on to the rain excuse and hurry homewards. Children make frolic in the rain, sometimes catching cold.

At home, we take time to soak in the smell of the wet earth, and if the surrounding is silent, one can almost immediately hear the frogs croak, as if they dropped down along with the rain. A leisurely household immediately puts on the kettle for some steaming hot cups of tea, along with spicy pakodas.

End of the honeymoon.

Starting from within ten minutes of the first downpour, we, in India, start experiencing a particular variety of misery that we experience every monsoon, since time immemorial- Power cuts. There have been technological advancements in all fields of life. Even the electricity board has had its own share of developments- New, air-conditioned offices for the officers; a fool-proof electronic meter- perfect enough to detect the slightest attempt at power theft; a new computerized system of billing; and even special task force to sever off your electricity connection if you fail to pay up your dues within the stipulated period of time. But the power supply situation has remained as it was, ever since electricity was first discovered. This year monsoon arrived a tad late in the first week of July in our part of the country but with every bout of rainfall, which lasts not more than half an hour, we have faced power failures for as long a four to five hours. The electricity department claims that the power cuts are exercised to prevent any mishap because of the rain falling over power lines. Excuse me? What age are we living in? Why can’t we have safe wiring systems that can stand in the face of a few drops of rain? The Indian public is so ‘used to’ this annual inconvenience that there is hardly any public furore against this lapse in service. If I call up my fiend and say, ‘We have had a four hour power cut,’ ‘Rains, right?’ he’d immediately reason it out. We have primed ourselves over the years to living with such poor infrastructure. Right now, as I write this, my home has been devoid of electricity for the last five hours. The sole telephone number of the complaint cell of the department returns an engaged tone- either because of calls from harried consumers, or they might have just set the hand piece off the cradle to ward off calls. We are being deprived of an essential commodity right now and no one is even telling us when it will be re-instated. The rain has long since stopped and the roads have begun to dry off. But still, the electricity department is sleeping, oblivious of the hardships of the common man.

Another of the civic nuisances caused by the monsoon is water logging and broken roads. By broken roads I mean roads destroyed beyond recognition at most expanses. My town has no drainage system worth its name. For eternity now, water has been collecting in insurmountable proportions every year at the same places, after every downpour, causing the same inconvenience to general public. And the administration has been doing the same thing about it each year- nothing. The stagnant water cracks up the tar roads at the same places each year, and these cracks burgeon into massive potholes, only to be repaired ‘after Diwali’. This vicious circle of water logging-broken roads-repairs after Diwali has become the eternal annual ritual. Is there no accountability?

I love the monsoon, but not its side-effects.

Google Dads

Quite frankly, I first read the term ‘Google Kaur’ in a joke on Facebook. So all credit goes to that person for this. ‘Google Kaur’ was the name given by Santa to his wife because she would give 100 answers to any question in 0.09 seconds flat! Google Kaur. Funny that.

However, this joke reminded me of having a Google dad all my student life, and I used to proudly say to my friends, ‘because my dad says so’, irrespective of whether he was right or wrong. I don’t remember, though, when was the last time my daughter asked me a question whose answer was also ‘Googleable’, if I may use such a term. She, though, keeps asking me English grammar, which I remain perennially confused about; and difficult math equations. But she never asks me general knowledge questions, like who was the first President of independent India. Instead of hearing me fumble and mumble between Dr. S. Radhakrishnan and Dr. Rajendra Prasad (I always confuse between the two. You?), she’d prefer to Google it and save her own and my blushes. So, is Google the new dad for children? Who invented the airplane? Google it. When did the French revolution begin? Google it. What is the meaning of dysdiadochokinesia? Google it. These days children don’t use reference books, and certainly not dictionaries and thesauruses. Hardcover encyclopaedias are being sold in vain by door-to-door salesmen at throwaway prices. Why? Because of Google. Google is the new Omnipotent. When my daughter sits down to study, especially when she’s doing a school project, she’s surrounded by gadgets, and more gadgets- A laptop (for the reasons mentioned above), A phone (to chat up with friends in between), A calculator (to know how much is 2+2), An android device (for any of the previous reasons), A printer (for print-outs for the project), and of course a spaghetti of tangled wires all around- from laptop adaptors to phone chargers to printer wires to God knows what. Within such a mess she looks like a harried first-tier techie in some MNC rather than a 9^th grade student. And her dad isn’t allowed anywhere near all this. So I just sit a little away and pretend to read the newspaper, hoping against hope that someday I’ll have an answer that Google doesn’t, so that I too could become the Google dad that all children used to be so proud of, prior to the internet era.     

Of Toothpastes and Toothbrushes

My last post was about some nonsensical ads on TV. This time I’m talking about some superfluously nonsensical products in the market. For the whole of my childhood, I used the one and only brand of toothpaste available- Binaca. It cleansed, whitened, and kept my teeth strong and germ-free (whatever that means because your oral cavity can never be germ-free, and if it were, you’d not digest your food). I used to love the cute, small plastic toy-animals that were tucked inside each pack of the toothpaste, and the fact that they themselves let off mint smell for many days. If a pack of Binaca was on the shopping list, I’d accompany my mother to the store, just to make sure I did not lose the toy to my brothers. I had a huge collection of such animal-toys, and it was fun to barter the ‘doubles’ with friends. Though this brand changed to Cibaca later on, I don’t really remember any other brand from that era. There was one ‘Forhans’ toothpaste but I used to hate it because it did not produce any foam. I don’t remember when MNC brands like Colgate entered the Indian market, forcing the indigenous but popular brands like Cibaca to merge with it to survive. Till date, you can find a pack of Colgate-Cibaca on the racks of super-stores. Times changed and so did the competition in the FMCG market and these days you can find at least 30 to 40 varieties/brands (there could be more, not less) of toothpastes on the racks of your store- White, red, blue, green; See-through; With glittering flakes; With red /green stripes; With clove, and with salt. Sorry, ‘active’ salt. Thanks for the seasoning, but what’s coming next? Toothpastes with garam-masala? And why must toothpastes have calcium in them? The tooth enamel is the strongest substance in the human body with lots of calcium. It does not need any more of it, least from its cleansing agent! Then there are toothpastes for the diabetics- sugar-free- as if we don’t brush with the pastes, we eat them for breakfast!

If there are so many varieties of toothpastes, toothbrushes can’t be far behind. Apart from the ‘normal’ ones (you know which ones I’m talking about), you can find the curved ones; Angled ones, conical ones; Flexible ones, flexible from in-between ones; Rotary ones; Ones with straight bristles, criss-cross bristles; Half straight and half criss-cross bristles; Half for the gums, half for the enamel bristles. The list is endless, and I’m sure some bristles are still on the drawing boards!

Do we really need all these pastes and brushes? Ha Ha to that!  

Before and After!

Ever surfed TV channels early in the morning? You’ll find that most channels that play the saas-bahu serials by the night have only three kinds of programs for the start of the day:

1. Discourses by various babas.

2. Astrological predictions, with the astrologers purposefully dressed garishly telling you what color not to wear for the day, and

3. Tele-marketing- my topic for this post.

The telemarketers promote all kinds of goods, most of them of questionable usefulness. From oils and balm claiming to ‘cure’ the worst kinds of arthritis (they show 80 years olds suddenly getting up and playing football), to tonics that help adults increase their height! (Now, that’s a height). Then there are various fitness equipments focusing more on the uselessness on other similar products by showing people injuring themselves on them rather than focusing on the goodness on their own products. They also show morbidly obese men and women morphing into shapely bodied individuals as if by magic, while the anchor blabbers on incessantly and dramatically. ‘Hair-raising’ ads featuring bald men re-growing their hair are preposterously replete with ‘before’ and ‘after’ photographs, when in fact they’re vice versa. Another of ‘magical’ products is a sort of compression inner-wear that allegedly turns funnily grotesque shaped women into sexy lasses only by pressing their cellulite-filled bulges at the right places. Considering that most women want to look sexy without actually being so, it is no wonder that such products cost a fortune. Other boring and mundane ads include those for kitchen appliances, but the most hilarious aspect of these ads is their dubbing in the local dialect. You might hear a Japanese speak flawless Telegu, of course with atrocious lip-sync.

But my prize for the most humbug ad goes to the one that sell products to save oneself from ‘buri nazar’ (I tried to find an English expression for this, but there is none, not surprisingly). They usually run a story of how a happy household lands into all sorts of trouble after a jealous colleague/neighbour casts his ‘buri nazar’ on their happiness. The ‘buri nazar’ is duly shown as a red line emanating from this person’s eyes and hitting the target object/person. Then they’ll show how things turn back to ‘normal’ once the victim purchases and starts using their ‘shield’ (Nazar suraksha kavach or something) against the ‘buri nazar’! This time the red line crashes against the shield and gets destroyed, leaving the buri nazarwala perplexed.

Such ads have only increased in number over the years. The anchors sometimes include out-of-work bollywood biggies (I saw Jackie Shroff in one ad this morning selling a magical balm, and Gracy Singh in another). All this goes on to show that such products do sell… and as to the people who buy all these things……no comments!

PS: This is not to say that all the products that are advertised are worth ridiculing. Many of them are genuinely useful. 

To Ivan Lendl, with love

I am not a big fan of lawn tennis and watch an occasional game on TV when there’s nothing better to do. I used to follow the game many years ago, but gave up ever since my personal favorites Ivan Lendl and Chris Evert-Lloyd retired and went into oblivion…I was briefly impressed by Pete Sampras but stopped following him too since he was winning all of them. I like to cheer a bit of an underdog so that my mood can swing from low when he’s losing to ecstasy when he wins. If there are no low points, the ecstasies tend to get blunted and this is what happed between me and Pete. I gave him up when his victories started to sound like statistics. But I still remember with fondness his extra-long short pants (not what figure of speech is this?). Having said this, I still make it a point to watch the Wimbledon ladies and gentlemen’s singles finals, whenever I can. I simply love the ambience at Wimbledon. The lush green surface, the traditional surroundings in dark green and mauve, the disciplined ball boys and girls (The BBGs), the players in compulsory all-white outfit and the way the players are addressed to on scoreboards. I love to see the BBGs scoot from one end to the other and across the court, swiftly and deftly, and the way they offer the towels and the balls to the players. I also like the very considerate audience and their measured applause; the umpire, and his clout. ‘Silence’ he’d say to the slightest murmur and you could hear a pin drop. The late June rain often disrupts the games but it only reminds you of where the games are being played, and the surety of the seasons there. The rain breaks are gleefully lapped up by the TV commentators, often former players themselves, to get nostalgic about their own times on the centre court. Finally, I like the way the Duke and the Duchess carry themselves during the ceremonies after the game. How they make it a point to chat with the BBGs lined up on either side of their walkway, and how they spend more time chatting up with the runner-up rather than with the champion himself.

But whenever I do watch a Wimbledon final, I’m remembered of the bitter fact that my favorite Ivan Lendl could never win a final here. Perhaps I come back each year only to mourn this fact. Ivan, I still love you…

Chaar Aana

The Chaar Aana is gone. Though the cute, round nickel had lost the meaning of its existence many years ago, it officially went out of use recently following an order from the RBI. There was some mourning on the social networking sites, but most of it was silly jest. Seriously, I don’t remember having seen a 25 p coin in a long time, let alone using one. Even the beggars accept no less than a one-rupee coin, that too with annoying nonchalance. All you can get in one rupee is a photocopy, a shampoo sachet, a pack of dhaana dal, or a cheap candy. Till a few years ago my wife used to usurp a handful of kothmeer and hari mirch (coriander and green chilly) from the vegetable vendor in exchange of one rupee, not any more. The truth is that along with the quarter, the fifty paise coin must go too, because it hardly buys us anything on its own, and unnecessarily increases the weight of the wallet (Imagine, ten 50 p coins make a princely sum of five rupees). And when it is needed to be paid as a fraction of the total amount, say, Rs. 12.50, one either pays Rs 12 or 13, without either party raising as much as an eyebrow. If not today, the 50 p coin will someday have its doom, as would the one-rupee coin. The only people who don’t really mind the existence of such coins are my doctor colleagues who attend to small children who have swallowed them, panicking their parents no end. These doctors sometimes duly return the retrieved coin and charge a bagful in return. At other times they charge the bagful and ask the parents to ‘keep an eye’ on their children’s potty every morning till they find it there. Surely, not an enviable chore.

Having said this, I’d emphasize here that people of my age would have at one time considered this now obsolete 25 p coin to be no less than a fortune. Everyone would have a list of things this chavanni could buy in that era. But let bygones be bygones. In fact, with the on-going rate of inflation, I think we now need Rs.100 and Rs.500 coins. What do you think? Let’s flip a coin to that.