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.

PROMISES, PROMISES

No, this is not about the eponymous Broadway musical of the 60s.  Nor need you fear a throaty rendition of the title number which Dionne Warwick  made so popular. Aside from the fact that my musical abilities are not fit to be mentioned in the same breath as Dionne's, the promises are entirely of a different kind.

I was getting ready to renew my driving license, which includes an endorsement for two-wheelers, in Chennai where I now happen to live. I have fond memories of the process of getting a driving license the first time ever, in Tamil Nadu state. A strict parent who was also a stickler for rules only permitted me to apply for a license on completing 21 years of age, not a day before. I felt I had waited long enough. As a result my license was issued on my 21st birthday. I took the test in a small provincial town where the Traffic Inspector arrived at a leisurely 11 a.m. despite having been told that the son of a senior official was waiting to take the test, accompanied by his father, the said senior official. My father proceeded to tell the Inspector that I must be tested "thoroughly". I had to do the mandatory drive around couple of blocks involving  four right angled turns, a bit of driving in the midst of ox-carts, buses, trucks, bicycles, wandering cattle and pedestrians without hitting anyone or looking like hitting anything, topped off by a reversing manoeuvre and parallel parking. The last one was a bit of a laugh given the singular absence of pavements (a.k.a kerbs) in that town.

 I didn't have to make any promises to be good, not to drink and drive or drop acid (a popular form of thrill-seeking those days) while driving. There were no seat belts nor helmets in use. On being told that I could drive a scooter as well, the Inspector promised a "two wheeler endorsement" as well. He didn't test me for it - he took me on my words, skipping over the embarrassing details of how I could have trained on a two-wheeler when I did not have a learning license for it....

The process was rather more stringent and unpleasant in the UK. Not only was I failed when I attempted to save money by not taking the help of a driving school, but decade-and-a-half's driving experience in India was considered as a distinct setback by the Licensing Inspector(s). The driving school taught me how to "game " the test rather than teaching me better driving skills. Like placing a strategic "dirt mark" on the rear windscreen to centre the car while reversing, making exaggerated movements of the neck to ensure the Inspector saw that I was using the side and rear-view mirrors, stopping  to let old ladies cross the road (even when they were only chatting by the roadside), employing the "ten-to-two" position on the steering wheel, "driving like an old lady", etc.. Ah, yes, I wore a proper suit and tie to convince them that I wasn't one of those detested "Ealing and Hounslow types", but a proper gent working in the City. I was failed for stopping unnecessarily (for a lady to cross the road) and "driving at a speed inappropriate for the traffic" (too slow). I had been warned about taking the test at that centre which was notorious for failing Asians - reportedly most of the junior colonial officials who felt betrayed upon Indian Independence and returned to the miserable English weather  and acute rationing from a life of colonial luxuries (huge bungalows, parties and a retinue obsequious servants), hailed from that place where I took the test - their descendants apparently held Indians responsible for their miserable post-colonial lives in less than modest circumstances.


With typical Indian cunning - not to mention minor infraction of the test rules - I had applied to another centre as well, and that test was the very next morning. Needless to say this area had no colonial connections ( was quite popular with Japanese families, thanks to couple of golf links in the vicinity) and I duly passed the test possibly owing to the fact that I spoke and understood English very well and did not keep smiling and bowing, saying "hai". 


But I made no promises to wear the seat belt, check the tyre pressure, consult my mirrors before attempting a turn, parallel park exactly 12 inches from the pavement or even not to kill anyone on the road. It was taken for granted that I would do all of these since the rules said so.


Down in Chennai I have to make promises: 

To wear a seat belt

To wear a helmet

Not to use a cell phone while driving

Not to text while driving

To stop at red lights

To wait for the green light before crossing a junction

Not to hit pedestrians when I have a stop signal

Not to drive on the right (which as you know is the "wrong" side here) side of the road

To drive on the left side of the road

Not to weave through the traffic like a shuttle in a loom

Not to overtake from the left ( this is a serious promise for it is the left where most of the overtaking happens in Chennai. Some say this should be called "undertaking" for it is the opposite of "overtaking" and could most easily result in a visit to the undertakers).

To overtake only on the right

To use the headlights when it is dark

Not to use  the high beam to dazzle drivers coming towards me, but the low beam to let them know of my presence and to light the road immediately ahead

To indicate in advance my intent to turn 

To look for oncoming vehicles before opening vehicle doors 

To look left and right before pulling into a street

To stop and look before entering a main road or a highway from a side street

Etc etc. ( the list, as they say, is indicative and not exhaustive)

None of which, judging by the Chennai driving style, I need observe after gaining the license.