THE MUSIC "SEASON "

November and December months in Chennai are somewhat optimistically known among the native music lovers as "The Season", reminiscent of the summer "seasons" in Hill Stations of the colonial era. Like the those events, the Chennai season is also based on exclusion and exclusivity. The defining requirement is a fair knowledge of Carnatic music or at least a credible pretence of it.

Like the hill stations, the music season too does not take well to democratisation. The influx of hoi polloi and lumpen proletariat have rendered  the queens of the hills overcrowded, dirty, deforested and generally denuded of their original charm. The Chennai season attempts to avoid such democratic disaster by requiring a basic minimum knowledge of Carnatic musical idiom or, as I said earlier, at least a good pretence of it. This arrangement works well.

Those without even a passing familiarity with this form of music prefer decadent film music with its borrowed themes, prettified voices, electronic gimmickry and crude double entendres. They stage their own musical festival, also around the same time. Suffice it to say serious musicians do not perform at those and the audience tend to be of a certain jingoistic socio-political persuasion. These events are known as Tamizh Isai Vizha (Tamil Music Festival) which for the cognoscenti is an oxymoron.

Given that November and December in the South Indian calendar are inauspicious for weddings, many halls are available to host musical concerts.The evenings are pleasant and conducive to dressing up in heavy silk saris. This conjunction of possibilities is the origin of the Madras Music Season. Then Madras became Chennai and I.T. became all the rage making Chennai more prosperous. Suddenly everyone wanted to be part of the cultural scene and rediscover their cultural heritage. The Chennai Music Season was born.

Concerts are sponsored by "sabhas" which literally are gathering of people. There is a clear pecking order amongst the sabhas with the higher echelons patronised, sponsored and bank-rolled by old money. Sabhas run on subscriptions (mostly from pensioners) are "virtual", to use a modern phrase,  hire venues for their concerts and do not give away free passes. They generally claim to be more serious about the music. At the bottom of the musical pyramid, Builders and Developers sponsor many concerts and distribute free VIP Passes to their prospective customers. Much to their chagrin, the recipients discover that every one is a VIP. Such concerts are more about marketing new homes than about music. Still people come attracted by an evening out and snacks and coffee.

Comments like  "nalla irundhadhu" (it was good) are as much about  the music as about the quality of snacks served. The crowd numbers must not be confused with those who actually  listen to the music - many turn up for the food. It is possible to have all three main meals of the day at the sabhas and at a reasonable price too. It is therefore not surprising that Sabhas are also ranked by the quality of food they serve. Caterers use the music season to hone their skills in preparation for the imminent wedding season. For many music lovers the quality of catering is an important determinant in choosing a concert to attend.  Chennai's army of music lovers marches on its palate.

The City sees much influx of people from afar during this season:  people avoiding the northern winter, NRIs making the obligatory visit "back home", Mumbai residents who cant decide between Chennai and Mumbai and Bangaloreans who have no culture to speak of. A recent phenomenon is NRI kids, mostly from America, coming to perform at the Chennai festival. Participation allegedly enhances their chances of an Ivy League admission. A host of Serviced Apartments have sprung up to cater to this trend. Sabah-crawling is known and people are known to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at different sabahs, and teatime snacks at yet another one.

In Madras of yore, the artistes were mostly indigent and the audience were economically better off and it showed in the way they dressed. Today the artistes are much better off and dress accordingly, whereas the audience looks like it has just rolled off  a bed. Most female artists coordinate their outfits with those of their accompanists. Lots of gold ornaments and flowers -also colour coordinated- are in evidence. The dancers, though, for the most part look as if someone painted them instead of the picket fence.

Some of the Madras audience was musically knowledgeable  and the rest polite. Chennai audience comes prepared; seriously prepared. They come armed with little booklets of lyrics and raaga notes. No sooner a new piece is begun, they all assiduously search their little books and lean back with satisfaction when they have identified the song and its technical details. The aficionados hum along at the beginning of each piece and then proceed to shake their heads vigorously in appreciation. Audience appreciation is expressed whenever it is deemed due, even in the middle of a piece; but the artistes do not seem to mind.  The techies and NRIs in the audience can be spotted videographing the concert, despite its express prohibition,  for the benefit of a wider audience on YouTube.

In Madras the concerts served a useful purpose as a marital clearing house where information about "suitable" young men and women was exchanged with a view to striking an "alliance". The parents of the boy and girl were introduced to each other by well-meaning friends or relatives and if they hit it off, the boy got to meet the girl around the sacred fire on the wedding day. In Chennai I have not personally encountered a single such instance despite being the parent of a "most eligible" young man.

People, I guess, are too busy checking out the food to check out boys or girls.

LIVING IN THE PAST

Many years ago Chennai was still Madras and Perambur used to reverberate to the music of Cliff  Richard and the Beatles.  As yet unknown in Madras save for a few die-hard aficionados,   Jethro Tull sang of England

Happy and I'm smiling,

Walk a mile to drink your water.

Walk a mile to drink its water? That is decidedly inadvisable in Chennai, walk or no walk. Some smart people have founded lucrative businesses providing allegedly "clean and safe" water. There is much that can be said against alcohol but it must be admitted that it is a very good disinfectant. It is not surprising that half of Chennai is pickled in the stuff most of the time. For the convenience of commuters making their weary way back home from work, alcohol is even dispensed in 100 ml sachets. No wonder that Water and Alcohol constitute the two most lucrative businesses in Chennai. Chennai also does roaring business in gold but one can not eat or drink it. The yellow metal also appears to be more abundant that aqua in this city.

In Madras we drew water for our daily needs from wells which every house had, or collected it from our taps which not all houses had. We did not pass it through fancy filters, ultraviolet devices or reverse osmosis plants but drank it straight up - I would have said "on the rocks" but for the fact that cooling water with ice was thought to cause cold, sore-throat, fever, and everything this side of AIDS. Nor did we need to disinfect it with  liberal quantities of alcohol. Today we are sold water allegedly sourced from lofty mountains and holy rivers  and reportedly passed through magical machines and purifying processes. None have been near either source except perhaps inside a plastic bottle. Alternatively, they will sell you purifying equipment so fetchingly promoted by yesteryears Bollywood leading ladies and their daughters.

When I was a student in Madras we used to protest against many things, but water was not one of them. Later, when water scarcity became acute, it was even jokingly said that Madras did not have  a water problem for there was no water; there was just The Problem. There was a war in Viet Nam, which was a very popular subject for protests. It was easier to get young people to rally around this issue than even  increases in college fees. Anything and everything was a just cause for a walk down the streets of Madras raising good natured slogans with a lot of gusto, little conviction and  absolutely no rancour at all. They were all jolly picnics albeit a bit hot and sweaty. They provided the much-needed opportunity to spend time in close proximity to girls without the parents suspecting monkey business. An occasional bus or two was burnt, when stones for pelting were hard to come by. The Madras girls did not burn their bras though. 

Once I used to join in 

every boy and girl was my friend. 

Then an ageing actor with a bad lisp who called himself the "Revolutionary Actor"  took an interest in politics. He had neither  revolutionary nor acting credentials, but somehow had a huge fan following, much like a latter-day super-star whose entire stardom was based on an ability to flip a cigarette from its pack with one hand and catch it with his teeth. His on-screen acts consisted mainly of cavorting with young lasses half his age, singing songs with social messages, lisping his way through unmemorable lines and some linguistic jingoism, not to mention beating up forty baddies in one go without breaking into a sweat. His revolution was to stand the then political wisdom on its head and establish movies as the gateway to political power - a case of Life imitating Art. Now we have sixty revolutions per minute, and in the words of Mr. Anderson of the Tull, 

Now there's revolution, but they don't know 

what they're fighting

Despite all of this, I catch myself wanting to sing

You know I'd love to love you,

And above you there's no other.

But with each passing day it gets that much harder. The Tull, however, provide a way out:

Oh no, we won't give in,

Let's go living in the past.

It seems to me to be the only sensible way to live in Chennai.

STREETS OF CHENNAI

In Madras the streets were named after their designated uses, as in Godown Street which was full of "godowns" or warehouses.  Its proximity to the Madras port encourages the conjecture that the cargoes unloaded  from merchant ships were stored in these godowns before being "shipped" off to "mofussil" towns. There was an entire street named for Coral Merchants and another was simply known as flower bazaar.

Some were named for the communities which populated them, as in Armenian street or Beri Chetty street which were homes to merchants hailing from Armenia or the Beri Chetty community. And then there was the time honoured tradition of naming streets after prominent citizens. Theagaraya and Nair roads were named after two stalwarts of the Justice Party (a pro-colonial and anti-Brahmin movement) which went on to morph into the Dravidian social movement  and thence into Dravidian political parties.

Pantheon of Hindu or Christian deities and saints also lent their names to streets, avenues and boulevards. They even named a street after the first person to build a house on it (Chinnaiah street). Then there are the mandatory "mada" streets which are streets forming  rectangles around  temples and /or the temple tanks. I would be remiss if I omitted to mention that streets were also named for popular celluloid heroes of questionable looks and even less talent, names resplendent with the obligatory honorary doctorate and French honours which no one seems to think much of.

Certain Telugu-speaking community of traders was very prominent in the 19th and early 20th century Madras society. They were also very public-spirited and shared their good fortune with the less fortunate of the city. They established and supported charitable hospitals, schools, colleges, and soup kitchens, not to mention temples. Some of their descendants, whose own contributions to the city or its citizenry could be counted on the fingers of a limbless person, claimed the city - unsuccessfully, I might add -  for their fledgling state on the basis of this munificence of their forefathers.

These gentlemen - the temple-builders and soup kitchen supporters,  not their descendants - also gave their names to the city streets. Their names were sometimes used with  the honorific suffix "lu" (pronounced "loo") appended to them; like Govinda Rajulu, Sri Ramulu, and so on. Why some one would  think it an honour to attach a "loo" to their name beats me, but vanity has that effect on people.

Some went so far as to prefix their names with a title suggesting great wealth. For example, one street name read Gopathy Narayanaswamy Chetty Road which was quite a mouthful even for us, who are used to bombast and to long names. By the time a person from the North could finish saying the name we could traverse its entire length by foot. The name signifies that the said gentleman was the owner of many cows which in 19th and early 20th century India counted for much. Some mischievously suggest that the prefix portrayed his wife as a cow (go = cow; pathy = husband), but there is no firm basis to this bovine theory which is asinine at best.

Then Madras became Chennai in an act of political hoodwinking  - the fact that Chennai is an abbreviation for "Chenna Pattanam" meaning "the good city" and is of Telugu origin, is lost on the great unwashed who constitute the principal vote bank of the Tamil chauvinists. The government also abolished castes. The abolishment consisted of  banning the use of prefixes, suffixes and honorifics that hinted at caste affiliations. Chettys were dropped from names as were Reddys, Ayyars and Ayyengars. Rangachary Road is now emasculated to Ranga Road as is Pulla Reddy Avenue to Pulla Avenue. But erstwhile Nair Road remained Nair Road presumably as a homage to the origins of the Dravidian movement.

The self-proclaimed atheist government went so far as as to remove the "swamy" from the aforementioned Gopathy Narayanaswamy Chetty Road which now simply reads Gopathy Narayana Road. It is further shortened to GNC Road by the technology-obsessed younger lot. It does not have the same ring to it any more. Roads with female names remain unmolested (something I cannot say for the city's females, though). However there were not many to begin with: in time honoured Tamil tradition, men are deemed more worthy of honour than women.

In an act of political correctness the suffixed "loo" was also dropped from street names. But loos live on in the streets of Chennai.

In fact the streets are the loos.

BEAR WITH ME

India is set to host International Bear Conference.

This piece of news brought a smile to my face. You've got to smile at this. Else you are not human. A Bear Conference? Yes a Bear Conference. Not a conference of bears mind you, but a Bear Conference. To my mind the difference is quite huge and significant too. It is not where bears get together to discuss how to survive the Humans or the Bulls. It is a conference where humans bullish on bears get together to discuss the latter's future. At least that's what it means to me.

A conference of bears would not surprise me though. They are said to be quite intelligent notwithstanding a proclivity to sleep most of the year off.  I used to know quite a few characters like that at the venerable IIT, Bombay. They all managed to ace their classes despite a pronounced tendency to sleep off most of the days in their dorms, just managing sufficient class attendance to avoid being struck off the rolls. They were very intelligent. It is a moot point if they were intelligent because they managed to get a lot of sleep or if they could afford to sleep a lot because they were intelligent. I thought at that time that their absence from classes significantly contributed to their developing into highly intelligent young people. I tried it (sleeping a lot) and it didn't work for me. In addition to sleeping a lot, they must have been drinking water from a source different  to the one I used.

News media also report that India is to set up a Bear Commission. Presumably the bears involved will be the four legged variety and not the two-legged ones, although a Commission for the two legged bears would not surprise me. In addition to being very smart this lot is also known to be quite influential in the financial circles. While the bulls grab all the limelight, it is the bears that make most money (think John Paulson during the latest financial crisis). I also understand that being a bear requires lot more intelligence, not to mention cojones,  whereas being a bull just requires is a lot of money. This exemplifies a fundamental human truth: it is easier to get people to believe so called good news than bad ones. The Bear Commission will hopefully not be a commission of bears (what would you call an omission of bears - Bare?) nor commission bears into doing bicycle-riding tricks. Given that it will be a Quango (quasi non-government organization), much "commission" is likely to be made in the name of bears.

Bear with me while I try to trace the future of bears, bear commissions and conferences. Bear experts will meet at a nice resort hotel in a very agreeable location at least a thousand miles from the nearest bear, talk about bears over a lot of rich food and lovely cocktails and then set a date and venue for the next International Bear Conference. In between, unattended by most delegates (who will mostly be flitting in and out of the conference hall to attend to cell phone calls), some die-hard bear aficionados will deliver lectures like "Bear and Development", "Dialectics of Bear development",  "Bear and Technology", " Socio-bio-economics of man-bear symbiotic coexistence" and stuff like that. In the concluding session the conference will dole out mementos like a wooden bear carving and a denim backpack with a pink Paddington Bear embroidered on it.

The Bear Commission will be headed by a retired IAS officer. In recognition of the gravity of the Bear Issues, he will carry the rank of Principal Secretary and draw concomitant pay and perks.  He will also undertake study tours to New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Shanghai, Seoul, Paris, London, Sydney and Kruger National Park to meet, study, and understand Bear issues first hand. A Parliamentary Committee consisting of MPs from across the political spectrum will visit Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Berlin, and Paris to assess the impact of sex-trade on bears. MPs will get a special allowance of Rs.10 crores annually for bear necessities. Sonia Gandhi will announce a subsidy of  Rs100,000/- per bear per annum for 500 million bears resident in India. A special drive will be launched to identify the other 500 million bears which have so far eluded the bear census. Her son in law will become the honorary Chairman of International Polar Bear Standing Commission and in that capacity will be allotted 1000 acres in the centre of Delhi to set up a Polar Bear Permanent Exhibition. The allotment will carry the right to use the land for building  7-star Polar Bear Hotels. The Bear allowances, Bear subsidies and Bear Land will all be exempt from the prying eyes of the CAG - the constitution will be suitably amended.

Bear development takes time. Tigers were not saved in a day or, as they say, Ranthambore was not built in a day.
Until then we will continue to set fire to bears that stray into our living spaces.

KASAB'S HEAVENLY REWARDS

I am afraid a grave injustice is  about to be perpetrated; a contract declared void and a promise broken.

I refer to the hanging yesterday of the sole surviving Mumbai Terrorist. The facts are simple enough. Kasab was part of a Pakistani team sent to Mumbai to kill and maim as many as possible and create general mayhem and murder. They came, they saw, they killed and all but one got killed. Kasab survived, unfortunately for him and fortunately for the Human Rights Industry, left leaning loonies, bleeding heart liberals (among whom I count myself), Arundhati Roy (who is a whole category by herself) and Suhel Seth (who defies categorization). The now late Kasab will keep them in business for the next whole year. By then something will happen somewhere in India to provide more grist to their Human Rights mill. The Human Rights show must go on.

Back to the aforementioned Kasab. By not dying in action has he un-earned the promised rewards which include numerous virgins which were his for the taking ? Questions: is it necessary to die in action to merit the promised rewards? Is deferred death also acceptable?. Did he not fail in his quest for martyrdom by not dying in action? In this context I vividly recall a scene from the movie Patton, on the wartime exploits of the prickly American general George S. Patton. Apparently a brash and no-nonsense soldier, he averred that "no bastard ever won a war for his country by dying". Jihadists beg to differ with Patton in this respect and their philosophy makes  rewards in the next world conditional upon martyrdom in this. I am sure dying in action is an integral part of that offer, which Kasab failed to do - until yesterday, that is. If there is an appeals process in the Martyrs' Heaven, I would advise Kasab to argue that his death due to hanging was directly connected with and as a result of his jihadi action and thus he is entitled to the rewards as advertised. I might even agree to appear on his behalf provided I am assured of a ride back.

Kasab's death has been different things to different people, depending upon whether you were a direct / indirect victim, Human Rights Activist,  Loony Leftist, Bleeding Heart Liberal, Arundhati Roy, right thinking member of society or Suhel Seth. I have read articles questioning the constitutional propriety of hanging him. There was even one questioning the legality of turning down his appeal. Another one suggested that he was not made aware of his rights for further appeal and therefore the hanging was unlawful. I am sure that most of those raising these questions were cowering in front of their TVs with their doors triple locked  and window blinds down as the events of 26/11 were being aired live.

Perhaps for them facts like the photographic evidence of Kasab strutting in VT station with his submachine gun, tens of dead bodies and the manner of his own capture in a shoot out are mere details and somewhat irrelevant; perhaps they also think that by sending the victims to heaven (or in some cases hell, but Kasab didn't know who deserved which) Kasab was giving them a shot at heavenly goodies. These Constitutional Proprietists and armchair legal eagles think that trials and appeals over four years and 60 crores of protective custody aren't sufficient. May be they would have preferred a live demo by Kasab with live victims with running commentary by ISI Chief and a written confession endorsed by the Taliban supremo.

I am not overly concerned by the consequences of the hanging, notwithstanding Taliban threats, clamour for hanging Sarabjit or that Imran Khan would lead an invasion of India.

I would of course be very disappointed if  Kasab is denied, on technical grounds, his promised rewards in the next world, especially the virgins.

MANGOES AND BANANAS

I do NOT mean Man goes Bananas, although that would be an apt description of  the recent exhortations of Indian Finance Minister Mr. Chidambaram that inspired this post. I shall not get into the merits of Mr. Chidambaram's economic wisdom here. This is just about mangoes and bananas as fruits, of which the First Son-in-Law seems to display a considerable knowledge, not to mention much astuteness about  what it all means.

There are many fruity comparisons and analogies in the English language of which Oranges and Apples is a favourite amongst Management Gurus and practitioners. The fashion page writers prefer Peaches and Cream to describe the complexion of their favourite page 3 set. Wodehouse preferred a "Fruit cake" to describe many of his creations. Our own Man in Black, politico-business guru, all-round business maestro and First Son-in-Law (outlaw is more like it) prefers Mangoes and Bananas. What is good for the first family is good enough for me - I know which side of my bread is orange marmaladed / mixed fruit jammed / fruit-preserved / jellied.

Mango is the common Indian fruit much beloved of all Indians from the steamy South to the Himalayan North and from the jungles of the East to the deserts of the West. Each region has its own unique and preferred variety, be it the exalted Alphonso (where did that come from? The name is not Indian), the humble Langda (what sort of name is "lame" for a fruit? There is no accounting for these northerners' tastes. We in the South call our mango "blue" because it has bluish-green tinge before it ripens) or the whole lot in between. More than even languages which tell one Indian region from another, I dare say it is the mango variety that signifies the uniqueness of each region; its soil, climate, people,  monsoon patterns and seasons. So much so it is used to designate the Ordinary folk in Hindi : Aam Aadmi. I apologise for the sexist usage of the male gender by the Northerners despite not being a Northerner and not sharing the sexist ways of those people. In Tamil Nadu we have our own brand of sexism but we do not insult our much-loved Neelam Mango variety by naming it after our men.

The First Son-in-Law's reference to "Mango People" is spot on: the mango is a lowly fruit, vulgar in the sense of being too common, notwithstanding the hideously expensive Alphonso variety. The latter phenomenon I rather suspect is due to the rich and the famous wanting to set themselves apart by buying something so common at a price so few could afford. The mango tree is also not treated with a lot of respect. We decorate our front doors with a garland of mango leaves on auspicious or festive occasions. Otherwise the plant gets a rough treatment.

Really rough. Years ago when our much-pampered mango tree failed to yield any fruits we were advised to give it a sound thrashing with an old footwear and crucify it, Christ-like, with nails. I was happy to oblige and drive a few rusty nails into its trunk in with an old shoe. Believe it or not, next spring it burst forth into a profusion of  white blooms and early summer we had a plentiful crop of fruits. It wasn't exactly Alphonso to taste, but it wasn't too far behind. The following season the fruits were fewer and then the next summer there were even fewer until there were none at all by the fourth summer. Back to square one. We had stopped beating it after that first time - we thought it deserved better and did not need any further "shaming". How wrong we were.

The trick  to keep mangoes coming is to constantly shame them, beat them up with chappals, drive nails into them, and generally treat them like something you wouldn't step on. First son-in-law understands this which is probably why he refers to ordinary Indians as "mango people". Which is also probably why his in-laws have been running this country for over six decades.

Bananas, which come in various shapes colours and sizes, are never beaten. We respect them enough to eat off their leaves on festive occasions, their dried outer skins can be fashioned into wrapper for food and even disposable receptacles. Fully-grown banana plants are a symbol of welcome at venues celebrating important occasions. Their flowers are a special delicacy and their stems are credited with special cleansing powers. A Tamil adage has it that the humble banana stems are eaten by a dieting elephants. This last piece of wisdom is highly questionable (do elephants have self-awareness? do they know when they are overweight? do they even care if they did? do they want to do something about it? etc etc)  although elephants are known to ravage banana plantations for their succulent stems.

Leaving the botanical aspects of mangoes and bananas aside, what exactly did the First Son-in-Law mean when he referred to mango people and a banana republic? I believe he was drawing upon his deep knowledge of plants and fruits to tell us something really valuable. Mangoes give pleasure to humans and animals and in return the latter  disperse their seeds. Mango trees also cry out to be beaten and shamed now and then. A banana plant on the other hand needs gentle treatment and requires just the right conditions to grow and flourish. A banana plant doesn't depend on being useful to others in order to spread. A baby banana plant grows from its mother's roots, right under the protective umbrella provided by its parent; it matters not if its fruits are edible.

A banana plant is like a ruling  dynasty, you might say.

PUPPET ON A STRING

"A Puppet's Life Ends" screamed the Times of India headlines this morning.
I was too bleary eyed and sleep deprived from watching a late-night movie (or two) on the telly to grasp the import of this headline. It took a while for the headline to register as I prepared myself to face the new day.

Upon reflection I must shamefully admit having felt somewhat elated by this news. At the time I wasn't sure if I was still dreaming. You know how it goes - you are living the wonderful life and suddenly wake up to find it was only a dream.  That happens to me quite a lot. Here I am dreaming of the good life and suddenly the music of the neighbour's car being reversed out of their gate rudely brings me to reality. On the subject of reversing alarms, who indeed thought up those hideous pieces of noise?

We in Chennai are especially addicted to loud and hideous noises - dual-tone car horns, the sound of the political bigwigs making a speech in Tamil which no one is meant to understand and no one indeed does; movie heroes romancing their heroines (who all uniformly sound like pre-pubescent girls - is there a story in there somewhere?); radio adverts which sound vaguely like a pitch and more like an admonishment of some sort; street vendors selling weird and wonderful goods and long-forgotten services (think re-fluffing your flattened pillows and mattresses); drunk husbands (in Chennai it is the sacred  husbandly duty to be perpetually drunk) threatening their wives;  their wives, usually domestics, fighting with one another and so on. Now all of this communication is carried out at the highest possible decibel level and in a gruff voice which the locals seem to find very authoritative, romantic, persuasive, seductive, powerful and leader-like, all at the same time. There is nothing we would do quietly if we could do it loudly.

Cars being started up and revved, cars reversing out of their gated nigh-time security out into the narrow street for the morning, the stiff bristles of the street sweeper ladies scraping whatever is left of the asphalt on the street, the vegetable vendors announcing their wares in a sing-song fashion, and the cuckoo that is forever looking for a mate - so far unsuccessfully, I might add - are the sounds that rudely jolt me out of my pleasant reveries and let the harsh reality impose itself upon my consciousness most mornings. With the month of "margazhi" nearing it will only get worse for that month requires hordes of devotees to take out  processions singing certain vaishnavite devotional poetry long  before sunrise (and all too soon after I retire for the night). Admittedly religious fervour, especially the vaishnavite variety, is somewhat lacking in my neighbourhood but even the one that is manifest  is too loud and too early to facilitate a good night's rest for yours truly.

You can now understand why I am a poor starter in the mornings and why the newspaper headline failed to make an impression on me this morning.
When it did, I was wide awake. There was a feeling of (almost) elation. What could be better than learning that finally The Puppet is dead? I suspect we all resent being puppets in one way or another. Equally sure that we hate being manipulated by parents, bosses, friends, rivals, marketers, political leaders and our governments. A puppet symbolises the ultimate powerlessness: in and of itself it is inert but in expert hands and pulled by the right strings, it jumps to life and can be as good as real life itself. It is the ultimate action by proxy. Not surprisingly, puppet shows are very popular the world over. The English have their Punch and Judy shows, the Balinese have their Ramayana shadow puppet shows, and we have a show called the UPA.

A Puppet's Life Ends, screamed the headline.
When I started reading the story, my elation was short lived.

It was Kasab who was dead.

WE ARE (EN)TITLED

In a previous post I had touched upon the current Chennai fad and the general Tamilian predilection for grandiose titles. The titles range from the gentle "Artist" ( conferred on a far from gentle man) to a warrior-like "Commander in Chief"  (couldn't be more inappropriate for he has trouble marshalling his own troops) and include "green gold" (duh!!), "Mother", "Golden star", "Maiden" (this for a woman over sixty who is widely believed to have lost that status decades ago on a casting couch; on current form she is very likely to remain one), and "Revolutionary Leader". The list is only indicative of this titled madness and not exhaustive. Titles have been getting ever more wild, grandiose, most of the time thoroughly  undeserved and all the time totally unfounded. The basic premise underlying this trend is the (Goebbels-like) belief that Truth is in the repetition of claims. Popular acceptance,adulation, adoption and even imitation more than validates this premise.

Are we then just a bunch of people with fancy titles (albeit self-assumed)?  Far from it. We are entitled, not just titled, people. May not be empowered people, but we certainly are entitled.

Mr.Kamaraj (who was bested and consigned to political oblivion by a woman he reportedly dismissed as a "chit of a girl"), the grand old man of Congress Party, conferred entitlement to a college degree on every child born in the state of Madras. They say it had everything to do with his own lack of a higher education and with winning elections. He is widely held to be the father of entitlement, at least in this state. The grandfather of entitlements was a grandee of the Dravidian movement who, when asked if sacrificing "efficiency" at the altar of "entitlement" will not be bad for governance, reportedly said that a government was like a bus: while it helped to have all four wheels of the same size, wheels of differing sizes would not stop it altogether. Thus entitlements have a long and distinguished history in this state.

There are various types of entitlements:

1. We are entitled to titles.
Weird and wonderful ones. Sonorous ones. Fancy ones. Wild ones even. Most of these titles are the result of abject sycophancy and an overdose of  hallucinogens. Not to forget a total absence of factual basis. We can and do assume titles implying valour, high academic achievements, cultural sensitivity and achievements, artistry, personal traits like generosity, and social position and status. So much so we were the first to bring back the titles that were abolished by Indira Gandhi in the 1960's when we restored a title to a family which had lost control of its fiefdom over 300 years ago. Thereafter the rest of the country lost no time in dusting off their own Maharajas,  Maharanas,  Maharaos and Maha-what-have-you, not to mention Nawabs and Zamindars. Bengalis had long ago cleverly incorporated titles signifying territory ownership into their last names (as in Talukdar, for example) and thus did not have to resort to such repossession.

2. We are entitled to free Utilities.
We are entitled to free water and electricity. Never mind that the supply thereof  is of very poor quality. Never mind that we then divert the supply - illegally, I may add - to business establishments which are unable to establish their entitlement to obtain these. We watch TVs, which we are entitled to for free, plugged into free power connections we are entitled to while frying fish (alas, not free so far) on the free gas stove (which we are entitled to) running on LPG gas (entitlement). The government has commenced its own TV channel which in course of time will surely be made free of subscription fee.

3. We are entitled to college places and college degrees.
Never mind our academic bent or the lack thereof, we are entitled to a place in a college; as also a college degree. Talk of academic accomplishments is simply upper class mischief.

4. We are entitled to flout the law.
Laws, rules and regulations are just a lot of baloney. They are meant for the fearful who run scared of their own shadows. Laws are meant to oil the wheels of the society and make social living easier. We do that our way - so long as you live by our rules, everything is hunky-dory and there will be no social friction. This applies to traffic rules, land titles, just about anything you can think of. If you are Salman Khan you are entitled to run over mango people living on half a banana a day;  if you are a poor NRI  hairdresser you will do jail time; a RI (Resident Indian) is only entitled to RI (rigorous imprisonment). Notable non-mango people are entitled to inherit this great but troubled land in addition to being exempt from security checks at airports.

5.We are entitled not to observe social niceties.
So we belch loudly and as often as possible at restaurants and public places. We jostle, we jump queues, we rub up against others in public places, and we are entitled to share our thoughts as loudly as our vocal chords would permit.

6. We are entitled to re-invent history as often and as fancifully as we wish and generally we do. Even if we don't invent anything (except History which we invent all the time) it does not matter - we are entitled to them anyway.

7. We are entitled to take 30 days a year off from work in addition to 52 Sundays and half of each Saturday. This is on top of 20 or so "festivals" and one day a month for no reason at all. In addition, on the days we "work", we are entitled to arrive late, leave early and take long lunch and shopping breaks. We are also entitled to take time off to take children to school, parents to hospital, obtain a new gas connection or terminate an old phone connection. In Chennai we have the unique entitlement to take an hour off on Amavasya days to pay perform poojas for our dear departed. Media intellectuals crib about this enormous waste of working hours but the smart ones know that the economy only grows when we are busy goofing off.

Above all we are entitled to think life is good.

THE VISA TEST

The Chinese built the Great Wall to keep the marauding Mongols out. The West invented the Visa, for the same purpose. The latter has taken some weird forms over the years.

Times were when you could jump on to a ship - or stowaway, depending on your spirit of adventure and financial condition - and got off the ship at some port with nary a glance thrown in your direction. You were just another coolie come to serve the great empire, and good luck to you. Given the class divide in the UK, it was a assumed that you couldnt compete with those that really mattered, and you looked different anyway and spoke funny like Peter Sellers on heroin. America needed vast numbers of immigrants and one more meant a further pair of hands to build dams, railroads and NY skyscrapers; the language skills didn't matter for the Americans spoke funny in any case.

Then the West went and invented the visa system. To keep "the other" out. They realized that vast hordes were willing - itching, actually - to come over; to escape poor governance, lack of basic daily necessities, plain and simple tyranny and sometimes even persecution; above all, in order to realize one's dreams which suddenly did not seem so distant any more given the West's economic expansion mode. Indian cotton crops and vast throngs of the great unwashed and unclothed kept the mills of Manchester humming overtime. The Americans were feeding and clothing themselves and the masses newly arrived from an unfriendly Europe.

Then wars happened, communism was on the march, America and Japan looked outwards, British empire was imploding, Germans wanted to wipe out everyone except themselves, and in the middle of all this someone went and crashed economies everywhere. A flu' pandemic also killed millions across the globe. When the shooting match ended America was victorious, Russia was bloodied but victorious, Europe was rubble, Japan was glowing with radiation, and British empire had lost its appetite for an empire. Suddenly there were bad guys and needy ones everywhere who needed keeping out. One could no longer jump into a ship,or a plane for that matter, land somewhere and start living there. Us Vs Them lines were drawn all over the place: East Vs the West, North Vs the South and Russians Vs all the rest. Russians built walls to keep their people in while the West was building invisible ones to keep others out.

The queues outside the American consulates in India were long and started forming in the wee hours of the morning. They sought your financial details, tax returns and details of property ownership. Now they ask for your views on the Drone strikes. They used to ask you to prove that you were not trying to emigrate; now they ask you to prove that you support regime changes and the war on terror. The British examine  you ability to finance the trip and intent to leave Britain  on expiry of the visa. If you want to migrate though, it gets a lot harder: it will require deep knowledge of British history and FA cup results not to mention what Magna Carta means in English. Not expressing liberal  views in your social network pages  and wholehearted support for regime changes and war on terror help.

Then someone went and crashed the world economy all over again (you'd think that the smart people of the West would learn from the past), leaving the West struggling, China powering forward, and India muddling along. Suddenly India became an attractive destination for Ambitious Americans, hapless Brits and clueless French, all looking to make a quick billion or two. Germans, like their wines, do not travel well and send their Mercedes Audis and Porsches instead. The Chinese detest the "unclean" Indians and don't trust the tricky gwailos. So they don't come to India nor let the gwailos come in. The Chinese women continue to prefer aged and much married gwailos, especially the French.

Now it's time for India to erect barriers to this influx of fortune hunters.We failed to do that when Robert Clive arrived with his burning ambition and flashing sword and look what happened for the next 300 years! We need to be subtle, like the Brits, and ask questions about history and culture before granting visas. We should ask about the distinction between the pulao and the Biryani,  and between a sambhar and a kulambu.  We must question them on the poetry and political philosophies of Baharathiyar and Bharathidasan and as a trick, include Sunil Baharti (Mittal) in the equation (answer: the last one only believes in money). The fact that most Indians would fail this test does not matter - we are all already in. That Sonia Gandhi might fail also does not matter, for David Cameron doesn't know what Magna Carta means in English. She might hardly fare better with Dante and Machiavelli, for I am not sure if Italian waitresses were required to read them.

Those seeking long-stay visas could be tested on the life and achievements of Sachin Tendulkar.

TAXING TIMES IN CHENNAI

I was in need of something to achieve this morning.

I managed to run my car a full month on a single tank of petrol (still the actual fuel economy is well below Toyota's claims - what do those guys smoke?), assisted someone with his Harvard Business School application (some might wonder why I would want to inflict yet another HBS graduate on the world, but that is a matter for another day) and generally managed to stay within my budget for the month.. I started to manage the finances of our fractious and fractured housing Condo. All these still left me in need of a sense of (greater) achievement. Ah, yes, I even managed not to have fresh scars on my car which if you know Chennai is a considerable achievement. Chennai has this interesting relationship with wealth and symbols of wealth, such as a car - we absolutely despise the ones without it and envy the ones with it. We display this through a fierce protection of our own assets from vandalism and by vandalising others'. But I digress.

I felt I needed to achieve something bigger this morning. What could be more challenging than trying to pay one's taxes? Challenging from many different perspectives: firstly, bringing oneself to pay something to an entity that in one's opinion does not deserve it; secondly the act of finding the money  is a challenge; and thirdly the act of payment is made as near a physical impossibility as any group of humans can manage it. When I sat at my computer to make the payments the local government was upto the challenge and made it impossible to do this on line.Suddenly I belonged to the wrong "area", "ward" and "Sub" (whatever that one is) compared to six months ago. Then I decided to beard the lion in his den. I decided to visit the office that supposedly collects property taxes.

This is a very brave act and not to be undertaken lightly.The government was upto the challenge and defeated my ill-considered essay by not being where it was supposed to be. Anywhere else this might be inconceivable. Not in Chennai, India. Noticing that my continued cruising around was drawing unwelcome attention, I beat a hasty retreat and looked for something else to achieve, one still involving the government.

I discovered that my "water taxes" were due. The phrase "water tax" is a misnomer - there is a component of the payment that is classified a "Tax" and another which is a "charge". The Tax is a percentage of the annual rental value which, according to the government, is less than 50% of what similar residences in my Condo fetch every month. In short, it is a figment of the government's imagination although imagination is not a word one associates with governments. The other component, the "charge", is not related to anything, particularly the actual consumption of water.

The decision not to pay the water tax/charge online was for a simple reason: their servers do not work before or after hours and generally not at all the rest of the time. I was possessed of a steely determination to make the payment by appearing at their office in person. Excited as I was, I was also filled with apprehension about the absence of key officials, the fact of having paid these taxes on line for the last two years (such payments are generally held to be "untraceable") and about the approach of lunch time when all activity ceases; any of the above could have rendered my attempt null and void. I joined the queue, considered taking a short-cut available for "senior citizens", dropped that idea - if you want to be considered a Senior in Chennai, you must look old, feel old, be bald or at least fully grey and dress old - and queued up. When my turn came up, which wasn't long, it was all over in a moment with a zap of a handheld laser barcode reader. All my payments records were on screen, including my online payments. Money changed hands, got classified into "Tax" and "Charge"  and a receipt was duly issued. I was so pleasantly taken aback that I want to go back again. The problem is, they only bill me once every six months.

I am seriously thinking of petitioning the Government to accept my payments every month.

What's the World Coming to?

I am depressed
Again.

This time the condition has not been brought on by the texting generation's favourite phrase. Nor due to the intimation of my God's infirmities and inabilities.

The last one is not true; not exactly anyway. I have been informed that my God is an elaborate hoax and not by a school drop-out domestic help.

Let me begin at the beginning, although considerable uncertainty surrounds what exactly was the beginning  and what existed before the beginning. It is what Physicists call a "singularity" which is a code word for "I don't know and would prefer that you don't ask". Physicist-parents refer to their extremely wayward offspring as "singularities". Ordinary parents do not so refer to their children because they - the parents -  are unaware of  what singularity means and think it is the state of being single. Isn't that the purpose of all technical jargon: to confuse the uninitiated and confound the unfamiliar? Anyway, getting back to the very "beginning", I have just been informed that there was no beginning to begin with.

You see the idea of "beginning" mattered to the creationists or the  "bubble theorists" who thought that the universe started like a bubble and kept expanding like one, darkly implying that like a bubble it would one day burst too. They preferred to remain silent about the drop of soapy water which became the bubble. The Steady-Statists  preferred to think of a universe without a Beginning or End which is fine so long as you are dealing with the middle, but can get to be embarrassing when near the extremities. This view vibed well with  some Hindu traditions that posited gods with neither beginning nor end; Such views conveniently closed their eyes to the myths about gazillion gods who were born, grew up and died just like any human. Now I am told that a beginning or an end exists only in our minds and are not "real" or "absolute".

I preferred a world where starting somewhere if I went in some direction long enough I  would reach the End with no further progress possible. A world that had length, width, depth and, thanks to Einstein, Time. I am now informed that Time and Space do not exist but are just my mental constructs, a result of my "consciousness". This last-named is a concept much beloved of men like Deepak Chopra and J.Krishnamurthy. It is particularly upsetting to have one's orderly world of mathematical certainties  turned upside down by the wishy-washy stuff of Krishnamurthy, Chopra et al.

Mine was a world in which given the  "Initial Conditions", I could compute my state any time. With a fair amount of precision. Mine was a world where Radios, Lasers, LCD TVs, MRIs and PET Scans, all worked and entertained, diagnosed and even cured. I thought I understood how these worked - well, not quite, but I knew vaguely the principles on which they were based and could comprehend, if someone explained them minus the maths. It was a world in which if I learnt the right maths, and tried hard enough I could explain the Universe - well, not all of it, but all except before the Beginning and  after the End. So long as you didnt want to know where everything was and what they were doing at the same time, I could explain everything, give or take a few "anomalies".

Now along comes someone who is not even a Physicist ( a medical doctor, for pete's sake) and says the whole thing is a trick of our minds.

Enough to depress anyone I would imagine.

O M G

I am depressed this morning.

There are a number of reasons for this state, starting with having to use the  texting-generation's most favourite exclamation for the title of this post. I have nothing against that generation beyond noting that they are selfish, spoilt, looks-obsessed, ill-educated, badly brought up and financed instead of being raised by their parents.

The other main reason I am depressed this morning is that I have just been informed that my God is not good enough, doesn't cut it, doesn't pass muster, etc etc: In general he/she is a wimp not deserving of my - or for that matter anyone else's - devotion and respect. This despite my god being a vast multitude of  multi-limbed, multifaceted, characters capable of taking many forms and (usually) possessed of multiple consorts. I have much respect for anyone who can manage one spouse / companion / consort and I go into a state of abject surrender in front of anyone with two of these, not to speak of a multitude. Despite being possessed of this enviable ability, I have been left depressed by the intimation that my gods don't cut it.

I am reminded immediately of a book that my father handed me long ago while I was still in school. It was summer holiday and I had nothing much to do, having dismantled every electrically-driven object - no electronics those days, mind you - I was allowed to lay my hands on; these included battery operated train sets, cars, Mechano sets and generally anything with an electrical motor and /or battery in it. Needless to say I had less success putting them back together again and, when I did succeed, I was usually left with a few parts more than I started with. But such is the locus of developing genius. I had a feeling that I was going to be another Feynman although I hadn't yet heard of that gentleman which happened only much later, in college. Concerned by my boredom and by the mounting cost of things that needed immediate replacement - such as torches, bicycle dynamos etc - my father thought up this idea of getting me to read. Read with a capital R. Quite unlike today's parents giving their kids Harry Potter videos to watch.

The book was titled The God That Failed. It was subtitled "A Confession". The book featured essays by exotic sounding names like Louis Fischer, Arthur Koestler, Andre Gide (which I duly pronounced as "Guide", not knowing any French), et al. It was soon after the Russians had stolen a march over the West with the launch of  the Sputnik, the space-dog Laika and were threatening to obliterate the West with their ICBMs. I believe Krushchev used to call Nehru "Tavarisch" and give him a bear hug which somehow filled me with excitement. Much, much later when I saw Bob Hoskins play Krushchev in "Eenemy at the Gates" the excitement returned. Not only had they pulverized the Nazis, they also had managed  to get rid of  Stalin, and their rockets and missiles looked more menacing than the Western equivalents. Their Marshals (Zhukov et al) looked much much more resplendent in their uniforms festooned with medals and campaign ribbons, much more so so than the American Generals LeMay or Taylor or Admirals Zumwalt or Rickover. In short I was in thrall of the Soviets as any boy who liked things that went "boom" could possibly be.

Then Koestler, Gide, Fischer et al said that the Soviets God had failed. Actually I am deliberately getting the dates a little mixed up here - they said it a little before I was born, but I became aware of their saying it only 15 years later. After all I had to learn to read and learn to read English which, despite what my facility with the language might lead you to believe, I wasn't born with. A bit like quantum mechanical view of the world, a thing exists only when you observe it. So, to me, the Soviet God had failed only when I heard about it from these fine gentlemen, although their rockets were still doing well in the 'sixties. They too would fail, later, and I am unsure of the role of God in that. Or that of Ronnie Reagan despite his claims.

Not only did I have to read such books and newspapers and magazines handed to me by my father, but I also had to write precis of what those books said or essays on the headline news, like the "State of Congo" which my father would then get typed and critically read. So learning the names of the capitals of the world, the colonial powers and their colonies as well as the names of their liberators (who later turned their tormentors-in-chief) was de rigueur. Not surprisingly I used to hate summer holidays while in school. The upside was that I could show off amongst boys of my age, reeling off names of countries on every continent, their capital cities and their current leaders. The last named was a bit tricky especially when it concerned South American and South East Asian countries for by the time I learnt the names of one set of leaders they would have been overthrown in a "coup de etat". That was my first French word (apart from the name of Mr.Gide whom I called Guide) and sounded very sophisticated. I would say coup with a silent P unlike my peers who did not and somehow felt that that was a special skill.

The aforementioned venerable gentlemen had all embraced Communist ideals and Soviet Russia heartily in the early days of the latter and, after the Nazis were overthrown, had a change of heart. Not least because the Nazis had been eliminated - you see, Stalin's unspeakable cruelties on his own people, carefully concealed from everyone, was slowly beginning to leak to the wider world. To them, the Soviet Gods had failed notwithstanding their chest full of brass-ware.

Which brings us to brass ware in general and Hindu idols in particular.

We are on the lookout for a domestic help now and someone referred a woman who had time to spare and needed to earn some money. In the course of the chat - during which she interviewed my wife more than the other way round - we were informed that having converted to Christianity (to marry the object of her affections), she will not come to work on Sundays which the good Christian Lord had decreed to be the day of rest (the Hindu Lords, the whole host of them, have made no such stipulations perhaps knowing full well that for Indians every day is a day of rest, if they can get away with it). She appears to have embraced the Christian faith with a fervour only to be found among the neophytes and apostates.

Despite having grown up as a Hindu having only recently embraced Christianity, she also unequivocally confirmed that she is not much impressed by brass-ware especially when the latter purport to be idols of Hindu Gods and therefore will not look at them let alone touch, clean or polish them.

It seems my Gods have failed to impress which leaves me depressed.

ACHIEVEMENT ORIENTATION II

I wrote in an earlier post about how anti-achievement oriented we Indians are as a society and how we maligned an achiever by stripping him of his present position on the day after his greatest achievement. While the conventional political and social wisdom would attribute this to his being a Dalit or a Maharashtrian or both, my inquiry suggests otherwise: that it was entirely due to his world-record beating achievement. In other words, his achievement cost him dear.

We are an anti-achievement society. We prefer to inherit than to achieve. You can guess where this is going.

Whatever the field of endeavour, the inheritor is more respected than the achiever. We prefer Dalit-hood to be inherited than achieved. As for Brahminhood, it is a debased currency that no one wants to possess either way. Prime ministerial position is conferred or inherited rather than achieved through ability, track record and merit. So also other positions of  prominence in politics or government. Ditto for places in the so-called "professional courses", especially in Engineering and Medicine. Jobs are sought to be inherited through a process of ever microscopic segmentation of the society (in order to justify inheriting the privilege). History is twisted and wrung until rights and wrongs can be extracted  which are then used to justify some sort of entitlement programme in education and jobs.

Where does all this come from?

The Great Indian Movie which is a bellwether of Indian social norms, desires and aspirations and is a true mirror of the Indian society, reflects this accurately. The "hero" or the protagonist is invariably the scion of a titled moneyed and landed family of consequence. When in the beginning he appears to be otherwise, in the end he is discovered to be the long-lost scion of a titled, moneyed and landed family. His ability to single handedly take on a few dozen baddies and drop-kick and karate-chop his way into the heart of the girl and the audience is attributed not so much to his skills in martial arts as to the natural inheritance of a young man of noble birth. The "villain" or the baddie, on the other hand is invariably born on the wrong side of the bed or railway track, whichever analogy tickles your fancy, and is thus not a true inheritor of the riches or great facility with his legs or hands. He is invariably shown to be a thrusting upstart who was not born to greatness (but one who merely aspires to it) and therefore does not deserve it.

Even the Hindu mythology is full of this  line of thought. Some characters obtain great powers from Gods through diligent worship and through severe penance. In the end all their boons and powers are to no avail when confronting the ones who inherited their great powers. Just recall any story from the myths...

In modern times, Nehru was preferred to  Patel,  Indira to to a legion of politicians derogatorily referred to as the "syndicate", Rajiv to Pranab, and now Yuvraj Rahul to anyone of the  other aspirants.

The effect of this is nothing short of disastrous.  Instead of striving to achieve excellence or greatness, the race is on to achieve and accumulate great power and wealth so that the next generation can inherit them, thus gaining a leg up on their competitors. So we amass political power, land, money, gold and anything whatsoever which can be passed on to the next generation. That this act of amassing power and wealth requires one to break various laws and moral injunctions is the real issue. We have thus created a political criminal / amoral class who are all set to pass on their advantages to the next generation. The real damage is done to the psyche of the public: all that matters is acquiring power, whatever the means. Therefore the scant respect for the rule of law.

Achievements are democratic - anyone can aspire for them. Inheritance is reserved for the privileged few.

We are on the side of inheritance.

ACHIEVEMENT ORIENTATION

We in India do not respect achievements. Which is why a former star weightlifter is reduced to working in a brick factory, carrying loads of bricks instead of being feted as an achiever and / or coaching the new crop of weightlifters. Which is why former gold medal winners (in hockey, not in individual events) have to hock their medals to support themselves even as sports officials are doing flourishing with nothing to show by way of achievements to deserve the life of luxury and wealth.

The most recent example of this is the shameful way in which the venerable Mr. Shinde, former Power minister and present Home minister has been treated. He has many stellar qualifications not the least of which is his being a Dalit from Maharashtra state. Sometimes these are separate qualifications but the modest man that he is, Mr Shinde just claims them as one single honour. Each of these is in itself a formidable qualifications for high honour and higher office. But in combination they trump everything else. It is the Indian political equivalent of a straight flush in poker - there is none higher.

I do not mean to denigrate being a Dalit or a Maratha, but there is another, even higher, qualification  he possesses: his unquestioned (and unquestioning) loyalty to the First Family. While the first two come with birth, the last named has to be earned like a Bournville chocolate. The process isnt easy and involves years  of cringing before and paying obeisance to the First Family members regardless of age, ability etc. Total lack of individuality and achievements in various spheres not only helps, but are a pre-requisite. That a Dalit from Maharashtra has managed to achieve these is no mean achievement.

On a week when various countries are counting their Olympic gold medal tally - in which endeavour India is doing quite badly despite the pre-Olympic hype - this man puts India on the global map with a world record breaking power shut-down and promptly gets punished with a change in responsibilities. Keeping a few millions in the dark comes naturally to all politicians. That's their stock in trade one might say. Keeping 600 millions in the dark is an unsurpassed and unsurpassable record by even Indian standards. To put it in perspective, the number is bigger than the entire population of North and South American continents. It is bigger than all of Europe. It is even bigger than the population of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia combined or that of South east Asia plus Japan. It is only smaller than China and India. It is a record even the USA with its abject dependence on power grids and technology has failed to achieve, even during the worst of the solar storms which generally tend to fry power systems on earth.

Every newspaper of any worth in the world - traditional as well as online - was talking about this fantastic achievement. For a day or two even the goings on in Syria were off the front page! That is no mean achievement.

And how do we reward this man?  By promptly removing him from his responsibility for the power sector and taking him with the responsibility for "Home". Or internal affairs. Affairs, like all politicians, he can handle. With aplomb. With sang froid.  Home, on the other hand, is not as exalted as "power" although while holding the "Home" portfolio, he will wield substantial power. But this kind of power can  not light up homes; it can only extinguish  lights and it usually operates in the dark.

We are a nation of anti-achievers.

MUCH LATHER ABOUT A SHOWER

"Capture life perfectly....a perfect addition to your home luxury and sure to get plenty of fine moments for the years to come. The whole new look and aesthetic design crafted with precious metals with a finesse of craftsmanship ensures  the proud feeling of an envious possession."

Sounds Greek or Latin to you? Try Mandarin. I am  a proud owner of much pointless Chinese gadgetry  whose operating instructions sound similar. They all promise to enhance my life one way or another. What is this particular frothy exuberance all about? 


The phrases "precious metals" and "fine craftsmanship" might lead you to conclude that some sort of jewellery is being hawked. But " addition to home luxury"? How does one square that with jewellery? Perhaps a new type of sofa made of gold and inlaid with precious stones? Even the bling-happy Russian oligarchs, not to mention the redoubtable Mr Ambani of the two billion dollar monstrosity for a home, would baulk at the prospect of owning one. Besides, such blingy stuff in one's living room is a likely turn off, turning a possible "whisky and sofa" into a certain "gin and platonic".


The clue, perhaps, is in the next line: "Our professional expertise in this field will give you an enhanced bathing experience with the least operating cost".
A diamond-encrusted shower head perhaps? Enhanced bathing experience with the least operating cost? That is clearly MBA-speak improbably combining Finance and Marketing in the same sentence; but what is it promoting? Could it possibly mean a cheap shower? Could it? If it is, could a cheap shower enhance one's bathing experience? Or could it be one of those new-fangled "bathing devices" (I am getting into the spirit of the advert here) whose jets assault you from various quarters leaving you more tired after the shower than when you went in? 


The promise is of "least operating cost". In all these years of showering and cleaning myself I never thought of  the expenditure on soaps as "operating cost". What an insight!  From now on when I spend less on soap I shall feel better knowing that I actually am lowering my "operating cost". Hereafter I shall also exhort the rest of the family to keep a tab on operating costs while having enhanced bathing experiences. Operating costs, indeed. Why didn't I think of that earlier - I could have saved millions?

The advert goes on with its purple prose: "It gives you total peace of mind and a sustainable lifestyle for you and your family". It is all about being green - even while having an enhanced bathing experience at least operating cost. Especially while having an enhanced bathing experience at least operating cost.

It is "powered by the sun" and  "backed by electricity" so that the glorious uncertainties of life cannot deny you an enhanced bathing experience at least operating cost.

Now that I have got you all excited, go get that solar water heater installed.

TRANSPARENTLY LAWLESS IN CHENNAI

A curious thing happened the other day when I was driving. I took a left near the IIT campus and was immediately flagged down by a pair of policemen. I normally do not react well to being stopped by police because of my belief that I  never ever violate any law. Well, may be not never ever, but never. May be not even never, but hardly ever violate any major law. A nice copper informed me that my windows were less transparent then rules permitted and the sun-control film would have to come off. My protests that my windows complied with the rules for transparency were to no avail. I was told that the Supreme Court had mandated that there should be no films at all on vehicle windows. With that advice I was let off.  A quick check later on the net proved him right. The Court had indeed said that.

The Court had observed that any film, irrespective of how transparent, has to come off, even if it complied with the transparency norms! However, if the manufacturer-supplied windows were tinted that was acceptable. I find this decision very illogical coming as it does from the highest court and arguably the wisest one.  My first problem was with the Court ignoring the rules framed under the relevant laws: if the stipulated transparency norms were complied with why is that not acceptable? The court was also taking on an executive role. Admittedly the Government of the day is feckless, and does not govern. Is it therefore acceptable for the Court to take on the job of the government? I think not. If this continues, the courts will soon be telling us what to wear, eat , whom to socialise with etc etc.

There's another angle to it, which I found very strange indeed. The court, it seems to me, was not concerned with  the substance, but only with the form. Compliance seems not to be the issue, but whether the windows were supplied by the manufacturer or  were modified in the after-market with films. I expected greater wisdom from the highest court.

Then there is the matter of implementing the Court's orders. I promptly had the films removed from my car windows at some cost, only to find that every other car is Chennai still sports pitch black window film. Highly reflective ones too. Displaying a party flag on the bonnet helps evade the attentions of the police. Clearly the police and the government do not intend to implement the Court's orders. Perhaps it is their way of telling the judiciary where to get off.

I have a problem with governments not-enforcing of laws, rules, and regulations.  It breeds a healthy disrespect for the laws in the minds of the general public and encourages the belief that laws are meant to be broken, even ignored. That, as you know, can have serious consequences for the future of this country. There is also a progression at work here: people get used to breaking and ignoring simple laws at first, slowly progressing towards more important ones. One can already see this in action all over this city.

I have always maintained that one shouldn't raise one's voice in a dispute unless he is prepared to lift his hands; and one shouldn't lift one's hands unless he prepared to strike with that hand. If you don't want to strike someone, then don't get into a dispute.  A government must not make laws and regulations it is not prepared to  enforce, for unenforced laws only result in general disrespect for laws and encourage violating progressively more important laws. Libertarians may have political justifications for less government and less regulations, but my stand is for reasons of practicality.

In Chennai you have people habitually driving up the wrong side of the road, driving without lights at night, overtaking from the (dangerous) left side, jumping red lights, not sticking to a lane, weaving through the traffic, and commit at least one infraction every 100 yards. But all of it goes unpunished encouraging the belief that the government is not serious about its own laws. So people build extensions without permits, build without prior planning approvals, grab land belonging to someone else, travel hanging from  the outsides of buses and trains instead of inside them, and so on and so forth. The list is endless. This, amongst people who have been known to be sticklers for rules and regulations.

The belief is rife that  laws are meant to be broken - which ones depends upon what you can get away with. At this rate, Chennai will soon be returned to the jungle whence it sprang. 

THE RAJA OF RETRO

We all love retro stuff. Old movies, old songs, classic and vintage cars, clumsy but beautifully made old cameras ( I personally love those Voigtlanders with their numerous levers and dials) etc. It is as if distance in time blurs the image and softens it sufficiently to take away the rough edges and induce  warm and fuzzy feelings for those objects and times. Thus our colleges were fun places even though we hated them in real time; Chennai was a better place to live in despite water logging when it rained and water shortages when it didn't; girls were prettier then (debatable?), and women more virtuous (lack of opportunities?).

The old Ambassadors, Fiats and Standards had more character - code word for difficult to start in the mornings, apt to stop while running, would overheat, wipers and brakes would fail without notice, etc etc - than today's econoboxes whose only redeeming feature appears to be ever increasing fuel efficiency. This last is a matter of concern to me personally and has reached the realm of incredulity - a recent launch claimed 31.2 KMs per Litre. Thats the figure they quote for very efficient small cars in the USA with the exception that the figures are for Miles per GALLON. The enormity of the claim dawns on us when we consider that 1Gallon is 4.54 Litres. Despite the fact that today's econoboxes all look the same, they are infinitely more reliable: start when you want to, stop when they have to, turn where they have to and generally behave as they are expected to. But are we happy with them, after complaining for years about the older models which did not share these characteristics? No. We want retro and are willing to pay insane amounts for that outdated look.

Take the new trend in digital cameras: a slew of retro-looking ones have been launched with modern innards but resembling the range-finder cameras of the 60s. When we had those ones we desperately thought them uncool and wished for the SLRs. When Olympus came up with their sleek and small OM  range we wanted them rather than the bulky Nikons. When Contax teamed up with Porsche and Yashica to revive their brand through the RTS range with revolutionary features and superb looks, we wanted that. But fifty years on, the 60s cameras are all the rage. It seems that we prefer the modern to the products and designs of the  immediately past, but given 40 to 50 years distance in time, we seem to covet the old in preference to the newest.

The general rule of retro seems to be: a) 40 to 50 years old; b) form in preference to functional efficiency  and c) insane cost for given feature-set and functionality.

As in many other things we in India also love the retro. We love KL Saigal's raw singing, Talat Mehmood's silken ghazals, black and white movies of Guru Dutt, and the remembered virtues of our living spaces. We waste no opportunity to say "old is gold". Our politicians and babus also like the retro Ambassador cars (not so much out of a love of the retro as for the illusion of simplicity they appear to confer on their owners and users, I suspect). The simplicity of our political and ruling elite is very complex. Their fondness for the retro may have something to do with their hankering for the times when the rulers were all-powerful and could pretty much do what they pleased and as they pleased without all the need to consult and confabulate with the ruled class.  No one embodies this more than the Raja of Retro, Mr.Pranab Mukherjee.

We have just elected ourselves a President in Pranab, who is retro personified.  He resembles a 19th century Bengali Bhadralok, straight out  Bankim Chandra's novels. In his beliefs he is an unreconstructed Socialist of the 60s and 70s. Some might say that that is a risk that comes with being a Bengali. His political persuasion is that a Gandhi (not the Mahatma and his descendants, but the Nehrus-turned Gandhis)  knows best. His principle of governance is that a few politicians complimented by many babus know what is good for you and me and generally the less we know, the better for us. He is fond of demonstrating his retro credentials, even going so far as  to amend the Tax laws recently with effect from 1962. Nineteen freaking sixty two!


His next retro act will perhaps be to retroactively right a wrong that happened in 1984. When Indira Gandhi was assasinated in '84, our retro man staked his claim to be the next numero uno. Little did he realise that in the Indian political calculus numero deux  comes after numero uno and that's about as close it can get to the latter. Numero unos come from a family destined to be numero unos for ever and ever. The contest is always to become numero deux, as is now playing out with that ever green political protagonist, our esteemed minister for Agriculture with a penchant for digits in pies of various shapes and sizes. Our retro man would love to be able to go back and undo the great injustice of 1984. And then again he may yet face the mortification of having to anoint the scion of the numero uno family as the new numero uno. He may yet pull off a rabbit from a retro hat and become President with effect from 1984 which would let him retroactively decline to let an unelected ex-pilot to head the government. 


He might even retroactively resign his Presidentship in order to become the new Prime Minister, his life-long dream and live that dream in the Red Fort - retroactively converted to Prime Ministerial residence of course. Truly a Retro Raja.

COUGARS IN CHENNAI

We have all sorts of canines in Chennai. Great Danes, Labs, Dalmatians, Pekinese, Chihuahuas, Rajapalayams, Combais,  etc etc. Pedigreed ones, and mongrels too. Indigenous as well as imported breeds. And some in between.We a have fair variety of felines too. Cool cats and Pussycats, kittens in Kollywood or Mollywood or whatever wood it is called, Lions, Tigers and all sorts of indigenous and non-native felines at the zoo. We also used to have Liberation Tigers who mostly liberated hapless women of their gold ornaments and homes of whatever objects of value including in some instances, in a well known West Madras area, water pumps - water pumps! Water pumps? When your cause is noble nothing is too cheap if acquired in furtherance of that cause. Then we have Tigers of all sorts of description belonging to political movements with membership ranging from just one to a few millions and of questionable relevance. These are usually headed by people with military titles like Captain, Havaldar, Corporal etc. Those with titles involving higher ranks are not directly involved in feline causes but are known to conveniently support some. 


However Chennai is Cougar-unfriendly country. 


Many Chennai men have leonine names: Balasingham (young lion), Sundarsingh (handsome lion), Narasimhan (man-lion), Duraisingham (lion lord), or Rajasingh (lion king). Some of these gentlemen are wealthy and live the life of a male lion: life of leisure where all the hard work is done by the females, with the males doing what they do best. Like male lions they have a pride of loins (not a typo). Sugar daddies, you might call them. To paraphrase Jane Austen, a man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a mistress. The younger they are the more they are preferred. The concept of "chinna Veedu" (literally the small home or, the other woman's home) is a well established and accepted one in this society. Having almost disappeared in the 60's and 70's, it has made a surprising come back  amongst the newly and insanely rich, like the political and business classes.


The idea of a wealthy old man taking on a young mistress is quite well accepted. The lucky ones even got to be wives. Traditionally, unfortunate young women with poor or no marital prospects were offered to much older widowers in marriage. In this culture there is no situation more dire for a young woman than remaining unmarried, nothing is a greater  burden for parents than their daughter being a spinster. A girl is like a hot coal in the hands of the parents - to be gotten rid of as quickly as possible. Anyhow. 


Things are not symmetrical, though - the scales are not equally tilted in favour of the women. While sugar daddy-ism is accepted Cougar Women are not accepted. The idea of a Chennai Cougar is inconceivable -even the zoos don't keep any. 


I have to illustrate this a recent incident: my wife, my father and I were out visiting one day. My father is nearing 90 and is beginning to look it although he had been blessed for long with the handsome looks of a much younger man. Alas, the ravages of time, in abeyance till now, are upon him with a vengeance now. To cut a long story short, he looks his age now. I seem to be destined to be like him. My wife is prematurely grey after a battle with a life threatening illness and the side effects of the so-called cures for it. She met a lady in the course of our visiting and introduced herself and also me and my father, pointing in our general direction (we were seated next to each other). The lady repeatedly - and I mean repeatedly - suggested to my wife that surely she meant that the "older" man was her husband. Even after being assured that it was the younger-looking man who was the husband, and that the older man was the father-in-law,  she looked as if she found the whole thing fishy and drifted off to catch up with someone else.The funny thing was the woman was willing to accept that a man in his nineties could have a much younger woman for a wife but  a woman cannot have a younger (looking) husband. She wasn't a woman steeped in tradition: she travels alone, stays alone in hotels during her travels and so on.


The tradition of sugar-daddyism is alive and well in Chennai. My wife's own grandfather married - the second time - a young woman who was just as old as his eldest son. Each family has some such  stories. Politicos feel the need to maintain liaisons with much younger starlets as do male stars themselves. A celebrated male star has a history of  moving in with ever younger women. A certain late sugar daddy bequeathed a future political leader on this state. 


Amrita Singh is non-existent in Tamil Nadu; Candy (of V.C.Shukhla fame) is not.

THE BEE AND THE IDOL

The Bee is the epitome of hard working scrabbling lifestyle, struggling against odds. Buzzing around looking for food, coming back to share the info with the rest of the community, then fetching it one bee-sip at a time, protecting the queen, protecting the next generation, building elaborate hives of mathematical precision and high structural integrity, and doing all this while fitting in with the bee society and its rules. Clearly this is beyond humans on a sustained basis.

There is a considerable body of research on how the bees do what they do. How they find the flowers which hold their food, how they communicate the flying directions to that spot through a complex and ritual dance setting out the flying directions and distance, how they defend their hives housing their queen and the future generations.  All these are amazing feats. They way they deal with invaders is no less amazing and is based on selfless team work - they do this by literally baking the invader with the heat generated by vigorous wiggling of their bodies. While humans are known to do this in some sports like rugby (the piling atop the invader), or at night clubs (the vigorous wiggling to generate heat in the other), doing both simultaneously is normally not known among humans. Goes to show how far behind bees we humans are in some respects.

Their direction-finding is nothing short of miraculous.We have difficulty in giving and indeed understanding directions in two dimensions. We are quite imprecise with our "lefts" and "rights", to the point of pointing to left even as we say and mean right. . There is even a joke - quite accurate, I might add - about how accountants can give you precise directions which are perfectly uninformative and utterly unusable like most information they provide. Bees' instructions to their fellows is a three-dimensional flying map involving not only distance, but the angle to the sun as well. If you factor in the fact that angle of the sun changes with the time of the day, the complexity of their mapping abilities becomes clear.

Their hives are truly architectural masterpieces. The shape of their cells - hexagonal- made of what is essentially soft and pliant wax acquires enormous strength when put together and can support huge colonies weighing tens of kilo grams. Many modern day structures, including advanced armour, use honey-comb patterns for strength without paying the penalty in weight. How did the bees figure out that the hexagon is the right shape? How do they then proceed to build it? How did they figure the 3 dimensional polar coordinate system needed for their navigation when even the mathematically adept humans find it difficult? Surely their language and communication must be very sophisticated indeed to communicate the complex building instructions and flying  directions.

A bee society is complex. There are queens, generals,  workers, and eggs and larvae which need protecting. Each one knows its allotted role and plays it perfectly in order that the whole may survive and indeed flourish. Some get killed defending their colony but no one seeks a "safe posting", away from the front lines. There is no resentment against the allotted social roles, nor against  the real or perceived inequities in this social order.

Idols on the other hand are a different matter. Usually they are lifeless except when shedding alleged tears of blood or milk depending on your religious persuasion. They don't move,  in one, two, or three dimensions, save when enterprising felons cart them off to be sold in far shores for profit. They don't mean anything by themselves - they only have meanings , powers and persona attributed to them by us. Idols are literally and figuratively human creations; they are expressions in stone of our imagination.

They are pretty useless too. Admittedly they do help us structure time as when we visit them to unburden ourselves and seek blessings and material gains, breaking a coconut or two in the process. Some times we even propitiate them with offerings thus attempting to tempt them with a bit of human corruption. They only are what we think they are and thus can be one thing or another depending on ones point of view. They sometimes are also convenient political pawns. In their defence it must be said that they are all uniformly good looking - obviously because they are meant to be easy on the eye. Idols do not achieve anything; they inherit their qualities from whoever made them.

Why then do we have so many aspirants to be "Idols" and so few to be "Bees". Look at the numerous "Idol" competitions on the popular telly and the so few "Bee" competitions. Doesn't it say something about ourselves? That we prefer to receive than to earn? That we prefer to be entitled than to struggle to achieve?

I think we want to be worshipped, revered and even feared for our inheritance than to be respected for what we do or have achieved and prefer the idle life of an idol to the busy - and sometimes unavailing - life of a bee.

What would you rather be - an Idol or a Bee? As for me, I  would rather be (pun unintended) the latter, and would prefer to die of overheating in a jolly scrum - preferably one involving close proximity to, and a lot of wiggling from, Mallika Sherawat.