MATRIMONY ON THE NET

Disclaimer: This is NOT a plug for any website professing to make matrimonial alliances simpler and more efficacious (none of them claims happier or longer-lasting marriages).

I walked in on my father this morning to hear him advocating the convenience of Skype (this is no plug for Skype either) in forging matrimonial alliances. It was particularly impressive, considering that for the major part of his life personal computers were unknown in India and that he does not know how to use one. He has however, chatted with his grand children in the USA (where else?) via skype and thus knows what it can do for us.

Some things haven't changed, but some others have.

The view that marriage is considered a good thing - even necessary - for human happiness has not changed; the means of attaining that objective have. Parental view of marriage has not changed: it is a restraint (Tamil: "kaal kattu" - literally shackling one's legs)  against "boys" of a certain age going "astray". How that restraint is placed on them has changed - albeit only superficially.

Parents here are rather attached to their sons as people in the West are attached to their Pension and 401K Plans. That's because the son IS their pension plan. At least amongst the vast middle class. Keeping track of the intimate details of the young man's daily life is the norm rather than the exception. Recently I was in receipt of a real-time update from the father of a young man of the latter's progress towards North America. The updates included when he reached a European midway point, what he did there (how he changed some  currency, what he purchased, an aside on the extortionist prices in European airport cafeteria, etc. Mercifully, I was spared the details of his bowel movements). Tiger Moms might consider this as "involvement" in their offspring's' life and make a few millions describing it. We are not money minded. We are interested in our children's welfare, period.

Back to matrimonial advice involving Skype. The young man in question is apparently showing no great urgency to get his legs shackled despite having just landed himself a job overseas - a real job with "good prospects" and not one of those short-term body-shopping expeditions. His father cannot understand this lack of urgency. This is like a young man declining the car keys and a driving license when they are finally handed to him, after having chafed at the bits all his life to drive a car. Father is worried and wonders - as all parents at some point in their children's life do - if he already has a car on the side that the parents know nothing about. As an involved parent, ideally he would prefer to choose the "make and model". There is unexpressed fear that the son might be throwing his money on Taxis.......


The arrangement finally worked out between my father (Advisor-in-Chief and a comforting shoulder besides being the elder statesman of the family) and the father of the "boy" (they are always referred to as "boys". No wonder that eligible young women don't show much interest in them, preferring instead grown men) is that the father would short-list desirable young women  after matching horoscopes and family circumstances. The young man would further prune the list whereupon a skype chat and email exchanges would be encouraged with one. My father blithely went on, "let them meet on Skype and finalise it", as if it were a business contract,  unaware of the profound discomfiture the suggestion was causing to the father of the boy. Such an important decision, being left to the boy and the girl!


I must clarify here who a "desirable" girl is. It is someone who is not short, but not taller than the boy; well-educated, but not more than the boy; has a good job but not earning more than the boy. What is left unsaid is  that she should be eternally grateful to the boy's family for having rescued her from life-long spinsterhood and be willing to find her happiness in catering to their every whim. She should be sociable but just so; subservient to the in-laws, but still stand up to the husband should he stray from the straight and the narrow; rid the boy of all bad habits his mother didn't succeed in eliminating; and not capable of replacing her mother-in-law in her husband's affections. How the planetary configuration of a horoscope ensures these requirements  remains a mystery to me.


In the olden days personal references tried to ensure (and often failed) that the desired qualities were genuine and not faked. The reciprocal arrangement of  matrimony between the girl's brother and the boys sister was practised where feasible - the fear of  Mutually Assured Divorce was supposed to ensure the the pair of marriages was happy. In the days of Internet, Computer Horoscope Matching, Skype and Face Book, there are more effective ways of ensuring marital happiness, it appears. 


I have heard of some wedding celebrations being streamed alive on the net for the benefit of key relatives and friends who could not be physically present. I reckon that such will be the norm in future rather than the exception. One can reasonably expect that in the near future the A to Z of matrimonial alliances will be concluded on the net, including a broadcast of the wedding celebrations.

However, I do hope that the marriage itself will become private, a matter between a man and his wife.

DON'T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT

Back in the 1980's Europe led a blessed existence. No credit crunch, no ratings downgrade, no China, India or Brazil for that matter to worry about, USSR was collapsing, NATO was ascendant and there was no bottomless  pit now known as Greece. And they had a wonderful crop of golfers in Ballesteros, Woosnam, Torrance, Langer, Lyle, Faldo, et al. The French did not care much for golf but had President Mitterand who first nationalised the banks and then privatised them, just for fun. These golfers did not make as much money as even fourth rate American golfers did, but were just beginning to taste the big bucks, mostly in the form of endorsements. A charming advert for American Express cards had Seve Ballesteros  exhorting the general public, in his cutely Spanish accented English, "don't livhhome without it" (ie, don't leave home without it).

Now it is my turn to make that exhortation. Don't get me wrong, I don't play golf, nor can I remember a single current player's name save that of priapic Tiger Woods.  Nor am I  plugging for Amex or any other card.

Also back in the 1980s a group of us in London were engaged in trying to tell good companies from bad ones so we could smartly lend to the good ones while avoiding the bad ones. The idea was that while our competitors were counting the cost of their lending misadventures, we would be on some beach sipping diquiris and admiring beach beauties. Paul, my friend from those days used to declaim "if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, IT IS A DUCK", the exasperated capitals occasioned by my unwillingness to apply this maxim to India's fastest growing business house of that time. I thought Paul was a bit odd - after all he used to get all excited by female legs in patterned tights during our postprandial walks to the Barbican library, "god, I fancy that"- and did not take much notice of quacking ducks. I swore then that when it was my turn I shall also exhort others with something similarly pithy and witty.

Later on quacking ducks began to make a lot of sense as did the need for Paul's exhortation.  We routinely missed common sense and folk wisdom and would invoke Godel's completeness theorem and its implications for the future of computing while considering a loan to a computer firm,  just as easily as we compared Aliber's logit-function failure-prediction model with Altman's linear regression one. It is easy to take leave of common sense in a thicket of exoticism and the latter was like a comfortable, warm and familiar blanket.

That is exactly what happened in the sub-prime crisis. Consider this: if you let 5 glasses of muddy water to settle for a while and then decanted the top 80% of each glass you could have 4 glasses of clean "potable" water (triple A grade drinking water); then if you mix the remaining 20% of each glass, let it rest and again decanted the top 80% of that, will that be the same as the earlier decanting? The financial charlatans of the Wall street said yes, it is as good, and Triple A too. The investor community agreed. After all a lot of mathematics was used, differentials integrated and integrals differentiated, equations solved and Gaussian Copula was invoked. In short, quacking ducks were considered golden geese (which they were, for the privileged few on Wall Street). 


We indulge in this every day. Not the differential equations, mind you, but this self delusion that a duck is something other than a duck simply because someone chooses to describe it in some esoteric, incomprehensible way using Greek letters and squiggly symbols. Take the general public for example: the poor things do not realise that in the name of giving their children access to education, the government has actually de-based the latter and now what they have will be worth nothing in the job market, thus making no difference to their futures.Their expectations having been raised (to a non-manual employment in salubrious conditions), the next-gen has become incapable of pursuing their traditional family vocation. The public is smart enough to not accept the offer of a shirt from a naked man; then why do they accept empty promises and (apparently) free cash from the Government? 


Governments throwing money at people only creates a culture of dependence and inflation. Both hurt the poor more than the rich. Far more. The culture of dependence is far worse than the inflation. You only have to see the beggars who line Mumbai's Marine Drive on certain days. They patiently await alms from wealthy merchants. Their faces have no hope, not even anger; there is resignation,  a certain passivity, a fatal acceptance and unwillingness to even try. You know that they will forever wait to be fed by someone or just lie down and die. But somehow the people are persuaded that a good government is one that gives them freebies and a better one is one that gives them even more. In their own personal lives are they similarly persuaded? Apparently not. Somewhere along people pick up the habit of willingly suspending  disbelief.


Why do thousands of earnest young MBAs (mostly from colleges of dubious credentials, I admit) go to work everyday and spout absolute drivel from long-forgotten text-books without sparing a thought to what they are saying? Why are they afraid to call a duck a duck? Why are they ready to believe that "ordinary life"  is somehow different from "work life" and that the laws of the former do not apply to the latter? 
Why don't they subject what they see and hear to the test of Common Sense?
Why do they leave it at home when they leave for work or school or college?

Everyone should post this sign on the inside of their front door at home so that they are reminded of it every time they open their door to step out: Common sense - don't leave home without it. 

BERLO FOR PRESIDENT

The Indian Presidential race, while not as exciting or of as much consequence as the American one, is unfolding. Perhaps it is accurate to say unravelling, especially if you are Sonia Gandhi. It does not matter who resides in our Rashtrapathi Bhavan (ie, Presidential Palace) for the Indian President does not matter at all. Even in India. Especially in India. But still, a contest is exciting especially if the dramatis personae have much riding on the outcome. What is even more exciting are the intrigues that accompany it, the rumours, the hard news, the moves, counter moves and the hype that surrounds it. A Martian may be excused for thinking that we are electing the President of the World with his fingers on the Intergalactic Gamma Ray Weapon's trigger.

The moves, the counter moves, the waiting game, the counter-waiting game, the speculation, the inspired leaks, it is al so exciting. The uninitiated may not understand is what the fuss is all about.

Being President of India is the easiest thing. To paraphrase Neil Diamond, even chicken can do it. Some chicken have. Some turkeys too. You only need to be a Gandhian monkey to be President: hear no evil, see no evil and dont speak at all. Like the current incumbent.

You get a magnificent residence, a fat remuneration and you get to jet around to countries you didnt know existed and whose names you cant even spell in your own mother tongue. You get to take your entire family with you at tax payer's expense and divert national carrier's flight for this purpose. You get to authorize important legislation without even a look, and you get to display the special skill of signing anything and everything placed before you. You get an opportunity to communicate eloquently through silence.

Some got an opportunity to sweep the floor someone else walked on; and someone signed away democracy in the middle of the night. All get the opportunity to make inane speeches and lofty promises to the people at large on important occasions regardless of what happened to earlier promises. In America they say that some Presidents are lucky that nothing sticks to them. In India the President is Teflon by design.

Retirement benefits are very good. You get to live in a huge bungalow in Delhi, have security detail escorting and protecting you, no security checks at airports, a car with revolving red lights and, in addition, a generous pension. You can also get, for free, valuable real estate in a place of your choice if you have been nice to the ruling party. You can escape your past dodgy financial dealings for we don't believe in embarrassing our Presidents - they do well by themselves without outside help. You dont even have to electable to dream of this wonderful life - you just have to be nice to the ruling party and practice your signature a lot.

So it is no surprise that many people want to be President of India.

Who are in the race this year?
 Pranab Mukherjee, a man of flexible convictions who can sup with the devil even as he sings with the angels. He is willing to be emasculated in return for the presidential sinecure. He can also be handy in the event of a fractured electoral mandate in 2014. His refusal to make a deal with Bengal has lost him some support, but the calculator that he is he has found the support elsewhere. His chief rival appears to be a former president with a bad haircut. The left calls him a "war monger" even as it glosses over China's arms build up He is preferred by the intelligentsia and the middle class. But he has a serious flaw: he reads the papers placed before him and even dares  to ask questions and clarifications. He is not quick to draw his pen or a broom. A very unsuitable person, for some. Then there is a former Speaker whose principal credential appears to be his tribal origins. In addition you will have the usual cast of eccentrics, attention seekers and spoilers hoping to split the votes.

The ruling party wants its own man and the main opposition is not sure what it wants. The left waits to see what the others are up to. Didi flopped, Mulayam flipped and Amma is flip-flopping.

I have a great suggestion: Bring Silvio BERLUSCONI. He is very rich and presumably not interested in small change. Colourful. Charismatic. Above all, he is Italian. When real power vests with one why not another for an ornamental position?

Imagine the "Bunga Bunga"  parties at the Rashtrapathi Bhavan with Berlo as President. All of Bollywood will shift to Delhi for those parties and Shobhaa De will participate, clad in a toga.

We can have Sunny Leone as VP!  What a coup that would be!

IN PRAISE OF SPANKING

These days you can't spank anyone; I mean in a non-sexual and disciplinary way. Government, misguided by even more misguided social scientists have made sure of that. Our social  scientists are largely educated overseas and when they returned, they came back bearing  gifts much like the ones Greeks took to the Trojans. Instead of being beware of such gifts, the government simply accepted them and as a result we can't spank anyone, least of all erring children. As for spanking in the "other" way, the government diktats had no impact on their use anyway - spankers spanked and spankees loved it.

In the U.K.up until the '60s schools and parents could spank children for various kinds of infractions and look what it did to that nation: Lloyd George, Churchill, Montgomery of El Alamein, numerous pilots who saved the English bacon in the battle of Britain, Frank Whittle who invented the jet engine, Paul Dirac  and Arthur Eddington both of Physics fame, Turing of cryptography and computers, Hammond, Hutton, Larwood and Jardine of cricket, Crick and Watson of DNA fame, Issigonis who designed the Mini (car, not the skirt), the Beatles even, were all products of  an era of sound spanking. And look at how they all turned out. Then some misguided social scientist came along and recommended becoming friends with children instead of raising them. See what happened then. We haven't had a single great Briton in a country that calls itself the Great Britain. An air force that cannot save England from Scotland, an auto industry that doesn't exist any more, a middling cricket team and unmemorable cricketers, a nation where nothing is invented, a country which cannot even make safe mortgage loans. Britain has been reduced to a nation where form matters more than function (look at WAGS and footballers),  and whose PM carouses with the rich and the famous and leaves his 6 year old daughter behind in a pub. The greatest single failing in all of this is the absence of spanking.

When we were young, any infraction brought on swift and certain disciplinary action: a stinging slap across the cheeks. Swift, unpremeditated, instinctive reaction to a perceived crossing of some boundary. The progressive mums might have given a hug  later on, after allowing sufficient time for contemplation and a sulk. When matters got a bit more serious and landed in the domain of the father, the punishment was much more painful and usually administered with a fine cane whose "swish" through the air was sufficient to induce a wince and evasive action. The last mentioned usually doubled the quantum of punishment. Poor grades in quizzes tests and exams, insufficient preparation for the above, spending too much time at play and too little with books, poor condition of school books and workbooks, giving the glad eye to some girl if you were a boy, receiving the glad eye if you were a girl (you were supposed to be invisible and not get noticed, especially by boys which kind of negates being pretty and attractive which every parent wanted their girls to be), items of clothing which even remotely suggested immodesty or fashion etc etc were all grounds for receiving some strict old fashioned disciplining.

Telling lies and being economical with the truth may be much preferred political attributes lately, but back in the days when gay meant being happy and pansy was a flower, they didn't cut any ice with parents or teachers and brought on swift and punitive action. And look at how we all turned out: god fearing, parent fearing (which are the same thing really), teacher-respecting, law abiding upright citizens who stop at red lights even in the middle of the night when there is no traffic,  never cut the median yellow line,  pay their taxes and who look after their grandchildren in old age.

Corporal punishment, as it was fashionably called in the 70's when discussions were on to abolish it, differed in the means of execution but had a single objective: to inflict maximum pain in the swiftest possible manner with the longest lasting effect. It was claimed that it formed character - variation of  "what didn't kill you made you better", "iron is forged in fire", etc. line of thinking. And raising kids was all about forming character those days. Literature suggests that in English schools, there may have been an element of sexual nature in administering such punishment, especially while caning the rear ends of errant boys. Boarding school stories of such nature are a legion. But then the English have always had a fascination for human male rear ends and  what The Economist once referred to as "a fondness for buggery". In India that was not the case at all, perhaps because the Indian parents and teachers were aware that gluteus  maximus, being a substantial muscle, was capable of  enduring the pain of a cane or a palm. The preferred Indian locations were the palm (and if you caught the cane) the back of the palm, funny bone in the elbow, cheeks (usually with the palm) and calves (try taking full force of a fine manilla cane  there). There was no hanky panky of a sexual nature in punishments in Indian schools or homes.

Look at what happens now: parents don't raise their children; they merely finance them. If they so much as lift their fingers to admonish the errant ones, there are at least half a dozen laws under which they can be arrested. The teachers have been taught, wrongly, that they must not resort to corporal punishments. No wonder we don't make jet engines, design minis, win Nobel prizes, discover the secrets of the universe or even produce good cricketers. We drive like maniacs as if there is no other road user, take every conceivable short-cut in every endeavour, and cannot even think of a single consensus candidate to ornament the Presidential Palace. We can't read, we cant count and we certainly can't integrate. Differentiate we do well  but only based on religion, skin colour, caste, tribe, sub-sect and real and imagined historical neglect. Our dams leak, our exam question papers leak, our nuclear stations leak, high public offices leak, and two-thirds of the population does not have roof over their heads, leaky or otherwise.

We don't work and blame lack of results on social divisions. We expect everything to be given to us sugar coated. We are not empowered but we all feel entitled to everything. We want to escape the coils of the accident of our birth but demand benefits based on that birth. We don't want to feel the pain of making the effort.

I say enough of this soft-parenting. Bring back corporal punishment. Spank everyone who does not do what he supposed to.

The image of Manmohan bending over and Sonia administering a cane to his rear end is strangely troubling as its is exciting, cartoon controversy or not.

CUCKOONOMICS

I was indulging in my morning cuppa and newspapers when a cuckoo called outside my window. Now the Indian cuckoo (koel) is a much glorified bird, due mainly to its sweet call. Many a female singer has been feted as the "koel" of India. It is fact that we Indians find a pre-adolescent female voice attractive- the further south you go, the more pronounced this preference. Shades of  paedophilia.....? Lets keep that for another post.

For all its sweet voice the cuckoo has no other redeeming feature; but a few that are shocking. It is not a particularly good flier known for its aerobatic abilities. It does not have noteworthy plumage. Unlike the humble crow it does not clear up the mess that we leave behind. It is not social, preferring a lone existence.

 It takes no responsibility for its offspring, abandoning them to the care of someone else. Specifically, it has this habit of laying its eggs in the nest of a "host" after dislodging as many of the host's own eggs as possible. The mother cuckoo plays no further role in the upbringing of its offspring. Resembles politicians, doesn't it?  Passing the consequences of your deeds to someone else?

The cuckoo chicks for their part grow faster than the host chicks, are more ravenous, and compete  vociferously (and more successfully, I might add) for the food the host mother brings. Some chicks are even known to push the host chicks out of the nest. If all that sounds like Mamata, it does so because it is. All in all, despite its sweet voice glorified in Indian poetry, there is nothing glorious about a cuckoo and a lot to despise, even hate.

Cuckoo is used in slang to denote a crazy, silly, person or a simpleton. Going cuckoo denotes going out of one's mind, becoming mad. As we have seen so far, the word cuckoo doesn't stand for anything admirable. Cloud-cuckoo-land is a place of fancy, unreality. The sort of place politicians usually inhabit. Manmohan lives there.

Cuckoonomics results when cuckoo politician meets real economics.

Cuckoonomics is practiced when you buy votes with subsidies and the like, leaving the economic eggs to hatch in someone else's watch, leaving that someone else to feed the hatchlings. When you refuse to take responsibility for your electoral dalliances and liaisons and leave someone else literally holding the (economic) baby, it is cuckoonomics. When you empty the coffers of state, when you pile up deficits, when you hand out doles to those shouting the loudest, when you make Tughlaqian retrospective tax laws out of pique and then claim it has not frightened off investors (presumably the $12 billion that exited was to pay overdue electricity bills back home) it is cuckoonomics.

Our FM, Pranab Cuckooji,  doesn't believe that our growth is faltering, and asserts we will grow at  9% until the facts are too overwhelming to continue the denial. Analysts and rating agencies are the eggs that this cuckoo kicks out so that their views don't survive. Mr Cuckooji does behave like an ostrich in the face of adverse news. This particular imitation of an ostrich by a cuckoo has not been observed elsewhere.

Oh, by the way, the Cuckoo's Nest  is at 10, Janpath and nothing flies over it..

MACHO IN MADRAS

Machismo in Madras consisted of being wiry with an extravagant handlebar moustache  twisted into fine points at the tips; crisp white "veshti" starched to stand a few inches apart from the lower limbs; an even crisper and whiter shirt unbuttoned just far enough to show that the owner had not had an open heart procedure; sleeves rolled up to mid-biceps which, while clearly showing a healthy musculature, were by no means a foot in circumference. An occasional gold chain was sported, with an amulet to ward off evil eye or as a mark of obeisance to a favourite deity. There were also the visibly overfed slobs with buttons open all the way to the navel displaying thick gold chains and significant man-cleavages. While the latter were aspiring "minors" (a derogatory term for wealthy reprobates, perhaps originally referring to the dilettante play-boy sons of wealthy men; minor as in "junior"), they didn't carry much street-cred as the macho men - too fleshy and way too soft for all their swagger. That their hall mark was an "arumbu meesai", a thin line of incipient moustache, did not help. Real men had real moustaches - dark, luxurious, and pointed; occasionally turned up at the tips a la Dali but not for comic effect. Arumbu Meesais may have gotten you sobriquets like "Kaadhal Mannan" (King of Romance) but they did not cut it in the world of real macho men who did not cry.

Macho men of Madras respected women. This respect was manifested as keeping their distance from women whether belonging to their own family or not and was not in recognition of women as independent humans - which they clearly were not- but out of a sense of  chivalry which had been dinned into them. This sense told them that women were the weaker lot, they needed to be protected and as macho men it was their duty to provide this protection. They classified women into three groups: mothers, daughters and mothers and daughters of others. Then there was a rarely spoken-about fourth group, the "other women". This category of women were generally as good as wives but prettier. They would share the macho men's bed but not their wealth. Theirs was a fully functional family except it was not a "legal" arrangement. A macho man's machismo was questionable if he did not have such an arrangement. The wives overlooked such liaisons as a necessary outlet for the sexual energies of macho men provided the interests of the "legal family" remained inviolate.

The macho men of Madras had an innate sense of fairness, even in business. They did not exploit the weak, or cheat even when no one was looking. There simply were certain things they didn't do. They also didn't cringe and crawl for favours political or otherwise. They demanded favours where they felt entitled to. Even as they derived their status, power and position from inheritance they were quite proud to showcase their own achievements.

Madras became Chennai. and a lot of things changed. Including the macho men.

The veshtis remain but now worn as a political statement rather than as a garment appropriate to the climatic conditions. The thin gold chains have long gone and given way to ones as thick as ones pinky. Fingers are festooned with chunky gold rings set with stones of all colours shapes and sizes in the belief that they brought money, good fortune, long life, and certain prowess to the wearer. The white shirts have mostly given way to  tight Tee shirts which proudly display the bulge in the middle. The handlebar moustaches have given way to caterpillars dyed an improbable shade of black  The  face today is hidden behind huge, shiny  "shades" which in the olden days used to be aviator style "cooling glasses". Today it is important for macho men to look like their political heroes.

The Chennai machismo doesn't much care for women. They like their women alright, but not in the same way as before.Women are a nuisance who are becoming competitive, insistent of their rights,  demanding respect and generally unpleasant. They don't know their place and do not defer to men. It is not uncommon to see modern macho men pushing aside women to get ahead in a queue. When the opportunity arises, they are not above copping a feel.

The latter day macho men don't travel any more in  Ambassador cars with open windows and second world war surplus jeeps of various manufacture. They travel in huge SUVs with heavily tinted windows, flying flags of their political affiliation.

You see, they derive their machismo from the flag and the SUV.

TENDER CROW

Crows have been all sorts of things to all sorts of people. They represent death in some cultures (Irish). It is believed that they (raven) protect the fortunes of Britain  at the Tower of London. In the Nordic myth crows fly around in the sky and bring information to Odin much like the modern-day American drones do. Closer home in India they are considered ancestors and hence the practice of feeding them during the annual tributes to one's ancestors (sraaddha). Almost every civilization which has seen crows incorporates them in its mythology. Perhaps this is a tribute to the bird's ability to adapt and survive.

They are considered to be quite clever and are known to use tools, and even create tools for their use, the New Caledonian variety topping the list. New research suggests that they can recognize human faces. Tamil folklore has it that their crowing presages imminent visitors - do they see new faces heading this way or just guess that all that delicious aroma of cooking couldn't possibly be for the regular members of the family?. Crows apparently top the avian IQ list. I wouldn't be surprised if they even have their own MENSA club. But for all their intelligence, they fledge Cuckoos until the latter exercise their vocal chords and thus get kicked out. So much for crows' ability to count - how else could they leave 3 eggs in their nest and come back to find 5? The intelligence of crows may be a tad overstated. On the other hand, I have personally experienced consternation and alarm amongst roosting crows in the middle of the night before I felt the earth tremble. May be they can sense earth tremor long before we humans can, but them taking SATs is still some way off.

Crows have one of the most bizarre collective nouns, "murder of crows" which is a staple in many a quiz. It is even more bizarre than "a parliament of owls" (I would say that that collective noun is more appropriate to asses, at least in India) or a "clowder of cats". Something to do with their perceived behaviour of gathering together to punish one of them with death. Sounds like a "khap panchayat"  to me. In no way are they to be considered a murderous species, although they are not above eating one of their own or a struggling fledgling of another species.

Crows are often held up as examples of communal sharing of food. Apparently they call to collect  their clan together when they spot food; however there is no evidence of their ability to call collect (I suspect  there is more than altruism at work here; they seems to know that in numbers there is safety). But such social behaviour is anathema to the American right for whom being  social is only slightly less abhorrent than being a socialist which tops their list of All-time Top Ten Sins. It would seem that Americans are not fond of crows judging by the phrase Jim Crow. I guess crows being black does not help matters.

I am not sure if white (but social) crows might evoke less violent emotions in America (as against black and social which certainly doesn't). A "white crow" has an interesting connotation in Tamil. "Showing someone a white crow" means, in Tamil, selling an improbable dream. My brother, when he was still in primary school, earned the life-long enmity of a porter in a nearby railway station doing precisely that. The said porter was used by visiting family which had to make a trek of a mile and a half from the station to reach my grandfather's place where everyone gathered for the summer vacations - those were the days before strolley bags and there were few taxis in the suburbs. The porter would pile flat pieces of luggage on his head and grab a bag in each arm for good measure. He was a strong fellow but a bit simple minded. Once when he was thus laden, my brother pointed up at the sky and cried "look, white crows". The simple fellow looked up with predictable consequence. From that day my brother had to take a long detour whenever he had to pass by that station.

Intelligent they may be, social they are, and even murderous if you believe some. But loved they are not. Despite the useful role they play. They clear up much of the waste humans produce, especially in a land like India. It was easier when the waste was all organic. With plastic waste exceeding organic ones the crows' job is getting well-nigh impossible. My father, who knows such things, says that presence crows is an indicator of human pollution. As evidence he cites the fact that the crows are now in plentiful supply in hill-towns like Ooty, Kodai or Shimla where they were not seen a generation ago. It seems that they see humans as an easy source of food and merely follow them. They seem to adapt to the cool weather very well and appear smart enough to come down to the plains - on the rain shadow side of the hills - when the rains start.

Crows are not admired. They are the universal example of something that is ugly. In Tamilian matrimonial discussions reference to crows is a signal that the groom is distinctly ugly and only enormous quantity of wealth could compensate for it. Where prospective brides are concerned, reference to crows is the kiss of death, blighting her chances of marital bliss for ever. A left handed compliment to maternal love in Tamil has it that even crows consider their fledglings golden.  In other words don't be fooled by a mother trumpeting her son's virtues; she would, wouldn't she?

Pigeons and doves are the emissaries of love, swans are the surrogates for the beloved and high-flying geese are enjoined to carry the lover's message to the loved one over the mountains and long distances. No place for crows in romantic poetry. Are they romantic themselves? They are not known to pair-bond for life, nor is their romance, if there is such a thing, the stuff of poetic imagination. But today I saw two of them in a tender scene. Looking out of my window I spied two crows on the branch of a neem tree: one was bending its neck in a question mark, looking down. The other was tenderly grooming  the back of former's neck. I would like to believe that they were male and female. If not, then I can only say that they have gotten more than food from us humans....

GYMMING IN CHENNAI

Real men of Chennai (or what passes for real men) hit the gyms. And they have biceps bigger than a foot in circumference. They are to be seen wandering around in tight T shirts, sweat-pants and trainer shoes; mostly in gyms. No handle-bar moustache either, turned up at the tips or otherwise. It is quite amusing to observe these wanna-be macho men at the gyms. What am I doing there? Well, having been given an ultimatum by my doctor about various highs and lows (high in bad things and low in good things, generally) and a stern lecture on the need to get my rear end up and moving, I have been reluctantly dragged off to the nearest gym by a concerned spouse. While at the gym I have been keenly observing the rest of the crowd more from the perspective of getting the most output from the least input. If you are depressed, starved of entertainment and generally about to end it all, I suggest you enlist in a gym at once - the experience might be life-altering in more than one sense.

You get to see different types at the Chennai gym.
The first are the so-called personal trainers and the gym-rats. The former are supposed to help the users get bulges in the right places but are too preoccupied with their own, often seen preening in front of the wall to wall mirrors. They critically examine their left profile and then their right  until reluctantly and resentfully answering a gym-user's cry for help.They are usually in T's and sweats with the gym's logo on them but even otherwise they are easy to identify: they walk around  with their torso inside a parentheses formed by their bulging arms. My interactions suggest that all this body building sucked the material out of their cranium leaving a vacuous and uncomprehending hulk. But they seem happy. Who am I to complain.

The gym rats walk around with a special swagger which comes naturally only to those running 10 miles in 30 minutes, lift weights with nonchalance and walk backwards on the treadmill at 6 mph even as most of us struggle to walk forwards at 6 Kmph. These don't have the one foot biceps that the Trainers possess, but are competitive: they lean over to see what others are doing and do it longer and faster. The gym-rat exhibits a rare bonhomie with the Trainer, frequently indulging in friendly competitions with the latter. Then there is a sub-class, the trainer-in-the-making, usually identifiable as the one who does everything the trainer does but without the bulges. They are noticeable  for their preoccupation with high-protein diets such as dozens of egg whites a day. They obviously cannot or unwilling to keep up the schedule of training; drop out regularly and resurface again to start a punishing exercise regimen only to drop out for the next week or two, and so on. The wannabe torso-in-parentheses can't seem to conjure up the requisite amount of will-power and egg-whites.

The pink panthers, as the name suggests, are visions in pink, top to bottom, all four and a half feet (top to toe as well as left to right) of them. The reference to panthers notwithstanding they are far from sleek and are unlike ever to be so. A mass of quivering jelly covered in pink designer-wear their first port of call after the gym session is a "jam session" at the nearby deli / pizza shop where they tear into carbs and fries with a desperation that can only come from 5 minutes on the treadmill at 2Kmph. Their form might suggest that they are far more regular at the deli than at the gym. In a variation, attributable to recessive genes, they are in all black with shoes of fluorescent green, yellow or pink. In a further variation, the shoes too are in black but the shoe laces are in brightest orange, green etc.

This being a movie-town I can hardly fail to mention the filmy-type (translation: everything from a Producer to a light boy aspiring to be a Producer-Director some day) whose objective seems to be to look good on the casting couch. They have an interesting and symbiotic relationship with the trainers: they hope somehow the latter will sculpt them into an impressive mass of irresistibility and the latter hope to achieve body-building nirvana as "body sculptor" in a box-office smash-hit.

Chennai is also a Tech city and that means you will have a sprinkling of Techies at the gym. They have the geekiest physiques as well as the most determination to bend their bodies as much as they do their minds at work. Usually very young their gym wear betray a recent longish sojourn in the U.S.of A. Their cell-phones constantly beep and  in between gasps on the treadmill they pant out instructions on coding - at least that's what I think the panting is all about.

And then there's the retired, retiring types such as yours truly who have been dragged to the gym kicking and screaming. I get  there when there's a waiting line for the equipment, do a spot of crowd-watching and leave in an hour.

IMPROVE OR IMPROVISE?

I was channel surfing  (between two muscular men slugging it out on the red clay of Roland Garros and some pretty young things, and quite a few ugly ones, trying to sing) when I heard a pretty aspirant to the title promise to " improvise" the next time she came before the judges. I was confused. Surely she meant that she would do better the next time around. And then again, did she? Leaving the muscular men to their own gladiatorial confrontation, I tuned in to the singing sensation. Apparently the judges felt that she was  making some elementary errors. Which comment brought on the above promise. She evidently meant to say "improve" but felt  that it was far cooler and hep to say "improvise".

Her predicament, I can confirm, is not a rare one. It is much more common than is supposed. Even in adult circles. Especially in corporate circles.  I have witnessed this "improve - Improvise" confusion amongst corporate high-fliers who shall remain  nameless. There appears to be a feeling that "improve" is ancient and  somehow needs to be replaced with a more modern-sounding equivalent, "improvise".  Why improve when you can improvise?

This reminds me of  a time long ago in London when I had taken an English colleague for lunch at a Brick Lane Bangla Deshi (Indian) restaurant. The Dockland area then was in the early stages of redevelopment and was still free of the monstrous gherkin which later became a landmark. The area was run down,  houses in bad repair and the aroma of food items frying in mustard oil filled the air in the streets. My friend Paul swore he never imagined mutton could be made to taste so good. Tucking in to the Brick Lane delicacies, I happened to overhear a conversation between two Bangladeshi gents. One of them was writing a letter and wanted to spell the word "appropriate". He was asking his companion if the word had three P's or four. The second gent, after ascertaining the purpose and content of the letter - a job application - opined that while he was nearly sure that there were only three P's, given the importance of the letter, four would be better.(To be really effective this story must be narrated in the best East Bengali English accent).

The reason "improve" metamorphoses into "improvise" seems similar. If it is an important discussion, lecture, or presentation, make it "improvise" rather than the staid old "improve". For one thing the former has "ise" at the end, clearly a sign of action; a sign of something being done to something or someone and Corporate endeavour is all about doing things to people and things.  It is active and corporate life is all about action and dynamism. The older verb sounds passive, old, and reeks of musty old libraries and conjures images of letting things happen rather than doing things.

For a while I deluded myself that the users of the modern version really meant to improvise, to find an unconventional solution to the problem at hand, make do with the limited resources and still achieve something those resources were considered inadequate for - what we in India loosely term "Jugaad".

When I realised that  the malapropism was precisely that and nothing more,  that there was no great intent to make some fundamental and meaningful changes to our world,  and that it was a poor and vain attempt to impress with empty sounds, the scales fell off my eyes.

That pretty girl on the telly might still make us happy for a few moments with a well-sung melody, but the Corporate improvisers will continue making empty noises.