I think...therefore I am

A Complete Washout : Washing Machine reloaded!!

2012-01-22T11:20:00.001+05:30

People who had read my previous post are aware of the sinister story of my whining washing machine (Siemens WM-10-16).

After 3 weeks of eager wait and several phone calls, the Siemens service engineer arrived at our house. But wait - we have to start from the beginning i.e the service centre.

I called up the Siemens service centre diligently. With three weeks practice, I had become rather proficient in doing this. For the uninformed, this is more complicated than it sounds.

The call centre has two numbers, both are almost always busy. The trick is to continuously keep dialling them - something like an advanced version of "Fastest Finger First". So I store one number on my mobile and the other on my land line and keep on dialling them simultaneously with my both hands. On the 16th or 17th attempt, I usually succeed.

This time, on the 15th ring, a bored-voiced lady with a typical Delhi-ite English picked up and informed me that my earlier service call number 5936 has been "upgraded" to 6016 and henceforth I should refer only to this service call. That sounded bizarre - I always thought the software companies usually do such things. Nevertheless, I prodded on and wanted to know about the "actual" status of this service call. To this, I was told that the famous gasket (which has to be imported from Germany after placing a call request on Bangalore and a purchase order on Mumbai) - the root cause which has made the machine inoperative for past three weeks, has finally arrived and has been handed over to the service engineer. The lady also told me that the name of the service engineer is Mr. Harit and I should make a note of this. On requesting for the service engineer's phone number, I was told that it is against the service policy of Siemens to give the mobile number of the service engineer. On asking as to when Mr. Harit would arrive, I was told that this is left to the discretion of the concerned engineer and the service centre has no control over this. At this point, I asked rather pointedly about what do they expect me to do with the name of the service engineer. I gave several suggestions like chanting his name in front of the idols that my wife worships everyday or recite his name in a sing song manner to my daughter as she falls asleep but the lady at the other end of the phone could not give a satisfactory reply. She merely murmured that she thought that his name would gladden my heart. I thanked her profusely for this supreme service and kept down the phone.

Then the man came. It was a cold afternoon and there was a thin layer of fog still lingering in the Gurgaon atmosphere. His arrival, nevertheless, was like a bright sunshine in our flat and the smile my wife gave to him was probably the same on or at least from the same series which she used during our first year of marriage. This happy moment was short lived as Mr. Harit, upon seeing the machine was taken aback and he immediately called up the service centre and started conferring with someone senior in a secretive hushed tone. After several minutes of muffled discussion, Mr. Harit informed us that the problem, in fact is far more severe than merely a gasket. It definitely involves changing the drum but would probably need a step-by-step root cause analysis, which, unfortunately, has not been done. He, therefore reinstalled the machine without fixing the gasket and urged us to continue running the machine before it completely breaks down. At this point, Mr. Harit will arrive again and make a detailed analysis and order out the necessary parts.

One has to grant the consistency of a German machine. Barely had Mr. Harit left our house, the machine started misbehaving. On the first day, it did the job but with a noise which would have shamed a turbo-charged jet engine. On the second day, it refused to spin and dry the clothes but chose to entertain us with a tap-dance and move away from its original position. On the third day, it simply refused to wash and thereby resumed to its state of complete inoperativeness.

Again a round of rapid-fire speed dial and bingo - on the 21st attempt, I was through. The summary of my desultory conversation with the same Delhi-ite lassie can be summarised as below:

1. The drum is damaged and needs replacement.

2. This would cost 9k + taxes + service charge

3. The official delivery time is 3 weeks. This has to be calibrated with reality as the official delivery period of a gasket is 10 days but it took 3 weeks to deliver.

4. This will not ensure that the machine is restored to its former glory as the "root-cause analysis" is yet to be done.

Thus the last of my ties with Siemens will disappear tomorrow. It took us 15 minutes to decide on buying a new machine, 15 minutes to check the net, 1 hour to drive down to the nearest shop and buy a new machine. This time, the specification was simple

a) the machine should be movable

b) the service centre and engineers should be accessible

c) the engineer who comes to install it should not talk about centrifugal forces and cosine component of the gravitational force that it exerts on our floor.

There were several ones which fitted the bill and we picked up the one we felt was least intimidating.

Let's hope this one will not be a complete washout like the last one!

Life, Washing Machine and other tragedies

2011-12-29T17:08:00.003+05:30

Forgive me folks if I tend to rave and rant more than usual in this post. A cataclysmic calamity of gargantuan proportion has descended on the Dey household. As the year comes to a close, a deep darkness engulfs us and threatens to disrupt our otherwise nonchalant lifestyle in the most irreparable manner. We are shells of our former selves, walking in a state of philosophical detachment from life itself. Our washing machine is down since past 12 days!!!

Readers who are less adept at grasping the intricacies of life may say "So What?" or "Tschk, tschk" or something equally banal. These are the blokes who are either unmarried or are possibly brain-dead from being battered during the early days of marital life into a vegetative lifeform. Nevertheless, I will try to explain the enormity of the damage in excruciating details so that it is clear even to these guys.

This washing machine, which is one of the pillars on which our delicately balanced marital life rests, is one of those fully automatic front loading stuffs from Siemens. We had bought this when I was still working in Siemens and this "loyalty towards the hand that feeds our household" stuff led to an impressive miscalculation on my part. The fact that this machine came with a three speed selection option (an option, which, ever since we bought the stuff, has never been used by us) also appealed to my technology driven inner self and therefore we displaying an abundance of nerve and blatant disregard for logic, chose to buy this machine.

We should have realized what we are in for when the installation guy had come to install this machine. This guy spent a good one hour trying to align the machine exactly 90 degree with the floor. Not his fault of course, as the builder of our house, sadly, was not aware of the exacting standards demanded by the Siemens A10-16 and had, left some waviness on the floor, a slant towards one side (possible with the mundane reason that water should flow along the slope into the drain) and had used ceramic tiles, whose co-efficient of friction was not what the doctor (read Siemens) had ordered for. At some point of this installation process, it wasfurther revealed that the entire house is not "exactly" perpendicular to the ground but at an angle of 89.95 degree. The last revelation was a crushing blow to the delicate sensibility of the poor fellow and only our strong motivation to have the machine installed forced him to actually install it. The fellow did it but one could see that his heart was not into it. He spoke rather brokenly about how the centrifugal force of the rotating drum of the machine will clash with the cosine component of the gravitational force of earth and how this will permanently traumatize the emotional balance of the machine. While leaving, this broken man implored us not to move the machine, in fact, preferably not to touch it at all, as A10-16 is known to be as prudish about unwanted touches as a village nun of the Catholic church might be.

After moving to Gurgaon, the Siemens guy who had come to re-install the machine was not a supreme perfectionist like his predecessor. His idea of aligning was completely devoid of any tools whatsoever and based on "eye-judgement". Probably this mistreatment caused our otherwise quiet A10-16 to become vocal and demand attention of the service personnel quite often. And in the last of these visits, the service engineer informed us that the gasket of the machine has failed, rendering it to an unusable state.

Before you, my dear reader, come up with the above mentioned banality of "So what?" once again, let me inform you that the state-of-the-art gasket of the piece-of-art machine in question is manufactured in Germany. And for some incredibly complex logistics issue far beyond the mental ability of mere mortals like us, the Delhi service centre has to place an order on Siemens Service centre in Mumbai, who, in turn, has to place an order on Germany. To make matters worse, Siemens has formed some kind of a JV/Collaboration with Bosch and as a result of this, the Bangalore office also has to be "somehow" involved. And all this happening on 20th of December means that one can forget about this machine for next 3 weeks as any self-respecting German company does not work from 22nd December till 7th of January, officially or otherwise.

This realization, of course, meant that this is an SOS situation. An immediate spot-check with the house maid as well as other maids in the society revealed that they have all but forgotten this skill set. Almost all Gurgaon household have a washing machine and to find a maid in Gurgaon who still washes clothes would probably socially ostracize the said household as well as the maid.
The next logical step was to look for a dhobi. One would have thought that after movies like Dhobi Ghat, these people would have gained a certain respectability and would be easily visible. On the contrary, this species also seemed to have disappeared from Gurgaon. I looked for laundry shops all around the place, only to discover that all these blokes have re-invented themselves into "dry-cleaners" and washed off their hands from the wet business. The people who press clothes (what are they called? Not Iron Man - I hope!!) also are specialized fellows and as one of them told me "Hum to sirf saaf kapde pe hi kaam karte hyay" (I only work on clean clothes). Finally one of them surreptitiously advised me to quietly pay a visit to the local market and look for shops which has two water tanks on top and a constant flow of water through their drains!!
Next morning found me roaming the recesses of the local Wazirabad market - looking for buildings with double tank on top and whitish soapy water gushing out of the nearby drain. This search led me to a small shop on the second floor, accessible only by a steep rung ladder. As I reached the second floor, I found a relatively large room with constantly flowing soap water, a huge dump of clothes on the floor and two young guys holding hands and jumping on it. To facilitate this, an FM radio was kept on, which, paradoxically, was playing "tu hi meri fantasy" at that very instant. After the initial awkwardness, these friendly blokes revealed that this, indeed, is a laundry and they would be happy to wash our clothes (which, by now, is enough to fill the entire dickey of my car) except..... Except? Excepting for the fact that due to some logistics issue, they are barred from taking orders directly and I need to go to their front office, which, as fate would have it, is approximately 10 km away from this spot. I left hurriedly to reach this alleged front office - only to discover that it is another of those dry cleaners who also runs an undercover business of washing clothes the regular way.
Now we are driving down every second day to this dry (wet) cleaner with a bagful of clothes. Sentiments about my former company cannot be described as warm by any stretch of imagination and mean statements are being hurled at me for being associated with the said company for sixteen years.
Life!!

A Winter's Tale : Delhi Winters

2011-12-03T20:43:00.001+05:30

The first rays of sun had to stretch itself to pass through the thick "snowish" fog of the early hours in Delhi. After a great deal of refraction, diffusion, absorption and all that jazz, the filtered watered-down light could finally reach our balcony and illuminate the pink Petunias and Carnations. The morning breeze had a distinct edge as it took its first nick on my bristled cheek. The Kashmiri shawl, erstwhile kept as a fashion statement seemed to be an absolute necessity today. I peeped down from the balcony and noted that our rigorous bunch of health freaks (buggers whose early morning antiques cause guilt-pangs in my ever-increasing pot-belly) have all donned thick woolens, lending a very asexual snowman-like look to them.

My coffee cup had gone cold and I wondered whether this weather justifies a second cup of caffeine so early in the day, when I felt a human presence behind me. I turned around to discover the missus of the house with some additional features ; a nose like Rudolf, a voice like Rani Mukherjee and a forlorn look like Meena Kumari. The diagnosis was simple; the Delhi winters have arrived.

For the less informed ones - we don't use thermometers to detect temperature at our place. Fancy concepts like "wind chill factor" have little or no appeal to us. Instead, all three of us in the house are like thermal weather-cocks - having thermal sensitivity tuned to detect every degree C variation with an alarming accuracy.

Take my case. My nose is so famously tuned to dT/dt (for people who are less mathematically inclined - rate of change of temperature w.r.t time) that every variation of temperature causes me to get into a bout of rapid-fire sneezing. This usually is followed by the outer cuticle of the nose becoming hard and brittle while the inner recesses of the nose, remaining moist. The overall effect is somewhat like a well-made cheese omlette - well cooked from outside but slightly running in the inside. Once the temperature stabilizes, all these bouts of machine-gun firing ceases and I just have a mild headache - the intensity of which determines the ambient temperature. Simple, isn't it?

With my wife, things work rather differently. Despite having plenty of warm clothing, she refuses to wear them under the pretext of "what will I then wear when it becomes even more cold". Then her body temperature seem to follow some sort of a sharp saw-tooth waveform - suddenly becomes extremely warm and then drops down to shivering cold in a matter of minutes though the ambient temperature fluctuates in a much more regularized manner. This usually causes her to have influenza and renders her unfit for a few days. People who know her will find this strange as she is known to weather much more painful stuffs like migraine, gastritis and high fevers easily and continue working even under this situation. Influenza, apparently, attacks her like those guerrilla troops with an utter disregard to Geneva conventions and leads to a complete collapse. This seemed to be the present case.

As a dutiful husband, I made a logical recommendation : let's go to a doctor. This was met with utter contempt and complete disregard "Visit a doctor for common cold?" . Second step was to recommend some house-medications like vapour treatment which was also rejected under the clause "yesterday I tried it and see what is my state today". Instead, my wife posted her status in the facebook. And voila - a volley of suggestions landed into our doorsteps from the cyberspace. The suggestions ranged from simple ones like "wear a sock" and "take a hot compress" till more complicated ones like "use a nebulizer". We tried all of them with varied degree of results. I also added my two bits into it by making "Rum Toddy" and making my wife drink it. This seemed to temporarily ease her breathing troubles but had some serious side-effects like wanting to watch a movie called "Namaste London". People who have seen this flick will know what am talking about. For people who haven't seen it - preserve it for a cold desperate day.

It is now 10 pm. Being a Saturday night, the cars have become infrequent and the outside road quiet. The street-side dogs have also become peaceful, probably after a hectic day of barking at the cars. And my wife read out the latest Facebook suggestion : "Go see a doctor tomorrow".

We looked at each other and promptly fixed up an appointment with a doctor at 11 am tomorrow.

The famed Delhi winter has really really arrived now.

Why men should say No!

2011-11-27T18:36:00.001+05:30

This time I have chosen to write on a subject that is of social significance; an issue that I feel strongly about- namely, Gender Based Violence (GBV). For some time I have been following a Facebook group called “Let’s Talk” and their campaign which is known as “Must Bol”. This group of young Turks are doing a great job, and it was, therefore, an honour to get an invite to write on their Blogathon: Men say No!

GBV issues are multi-dimensional in nature, owing to the diverse range of causes and manifestation that tend to vary across countries, cultures, and socio- economic strata. I have tried basing this article in context of Urban Indian Middle socio-economic class – the brand ambassadors of the so-called “India Shining” group. Why do these people allow such things to happen to their women? Why are they so passive about a problem that has acquired such great proportions that one cannot feign to ignore anymore?

Why men do not say ‘No’?

In all probability, many men still think GBV to be a problem predominantly faced by women, and therefore it is “their fight which they have to fight”. At a superficial glance, one has to admit that there is a certain degree of rationale behind this thinking. Many would equate this issue of gender-based violence with other issues like gender inequality / woman’s liberation, etc – causes that are fought by women-centric organisations across the globe. So one tends to associate Gender Based Violence (GBV) also with similar problems, and prefers to leave the women to champion this cause as well. GBV and its associated problems are, however, somewhat complex and more involved. Let's take a bird's eye view to the problem

Solution type: Internal or External?

In general, any problem can be addressed either internally or externally, and the effectiveness of the two methods varies depending on two aspects: nature of the problem and the role of the adversary within the problem. In most of the sociological problems, any one of the two aforementioned aspects plays a major role, while the other one ends up playing the second fiddle. Very few problems can be solved with a mono-dimensional approach. For example, if we try to reduce drinking amongst the working class to improve their quality of life, a major thrust has to come externally in terms of campaigns, restrictions, regulations etc. This has to be supplemented by internal pressures from the family, children, peer group, friends etc. Thus, a combination of both is necessary, though the drive has to be from the external forces.

If we look at Gender discrimination at workplaces, this also has a predominantly external approach. Men have dominated the workplace scenario until now, and it will be sheer foolishness if one expects them to give away their dominant position so easily. However, things have now changed to a certain extent, and the main reason for this is the constant barrage of attacks from the women groups. Organisations have reluctantly being forced to remove regulations which bar women from joining them and later have grudgingly accepted that quite a number of women deserve to be above the “glass ceiling” – the invisible barrier which prevents women from rising beyond a certain level in an organisation.

If we put this in a simplistic step by step approach, it would look somewhat like this :

Step 1 : Organizations accepting women into responsible positions – [External : created by awareness campaigns, litigations, constitutional rights etc]

Step 2 : Women performing at par or sometimes better than their men peers – [External : as women are still not accepted completely]

Step 3 : Superiors acknowledging that Women can deliver at least as good as other men. Also accepting that having women in management can provide certain paradigm shift into management thinking [Internal]

GBV : External or Internal approach ?

In contrast to the above examples, GBV has a completely different dimension. In this case, men are committing the crimes against women actively (not just passively ignoring their rights), and quite a number of these remain unreported. There are several reasons for this lack of reporting, the major ones being:

§ Social Stigma: A woman violated by someone is often perceived a ‘loose woman’ and ‘she was asking for it’. Often this also acts like an ice-breaker in a reverse manner i.e ‘now that she has anyway been deflowered, she will probably not mind a roll in the hay’ kind of a psychology

§ Sense of shame / guilt by the offended

§ Often perpetrator of this crime is a man of social / family position – the husband, the boss, the father of a close friend

No wonder quite a number of women prefer to suffer quietly. This, in turn, emboldens the criminal even further as he realises that he can get away with this.

GBV also has a dimension that the crime being committed is atrocious. Unlike Gender discrimination in workplace, which, at its worst, is a case of being “unfair” and “discriminatory”, GBV is about invading another person’s private space and committing a hideous crime. Quite often, it is something that happens within the house – within closed doors and within the closed family. And for this reason, this battle cannot be merely an external conflict. It has to be fought internally – with the perpetrators (the men, in this case) themselves turning back and saying, “we would allow this to happen any more”.

How do we make men say no?

How do we do this internally? How do we make men say “No” so such crimes? As usual, there are no easy recipes to this. It might be worthwhile to look at some scenarios, which exist:

1) Break social sanctions: There is an “indirect” sanction amongst men about situations when such behaviours are tolerated. Typical examples are:

1.1) Army: It is a common practice that when an army invades another country, the victorious army indulges in ruthless activities, including sexual exploitation of women belonging to the vanquished party. Such practice date back into history and seems to be a well-established military practice even in the modern era. Be it the Cossacks during the First World War, the Japanese during Second World War or the Pakistani army in 1971, all have indulged in this practice rather openly. Our own Indian army is also accused of having used this “weapon” in the northeast. It, therefore, is logical to think that this kind of behaviour has a certain acceptance amongst army chiefs for it to have continued over the ages.

1.2) Community centric: There are certain communities where this is an accepted form of punishment against the “loose” woman. This communities view of somewhat similar to Constable Michael Sanguinetti (of “Slutwalk” fame)’s view point – which is, if a woman dresses like a slut, she is asking for it. Usually these societies have a strong “machismo” complex and such violence against women seem to confirm to this image.

1.3) Emotion-driven: Quite a number of people seem to sympathize with the husband / boyfriend who loves his wife / fiancée so much that he ends up hitting her or violating her – quite like a modern day Othello.

The first step could be to break these acceptance norms amongst men. This has to be done tactfully, because almost no-body will be honest enough to acknowledge existence of such a mind-set in the first place.

2) Creating consciousness amongst men is another important step, and it is important enough for them to stick out their neck when necessary.

This will be a great challenge as the urban upper-middle class is an upwardly-mobile bunch of epicurean cynics (me included) who strictly follow the golden rule called WGOMF (“What Goes Of My Father” – literal translation of “Mera baapka kya jata hai”). To shake them up into some actual action will require massive effort – something akin to the Anna Hazare movement against corruption. The parallel is interesting as the Anna Hazare movement was predominantly a movement of the urban middle class – which seems to suggest that this class of people may not be completely dead yet !!

What do we want men to do?

Very simple things! We are not looking for crusaders. I believe our women can take care of themselves without “knights-in-shining-armours” lurking in the background. We expect:

- Awareness amongst male members in the society (especially young men). This can be done through talking, mails, chats or even Facebook posts.

- be supportive to women who are experiencing such a situation. Women are often subjected to harassments in public places. In such situation, women are generally advised to speak out / protest / shout. Please join them in their protests

- instead of being a passive observer, try to call in help from whichever quarter possible.

There will, of course, be a handful who will take it up more seriously and take this up at a different level by being part of a cause or a movement through different organisations.

This Blog is part of the Men Say No Blogathon, encouraging men to take up action against the violence faced by women.

More entries to the Blogathon can be read at www.mustbol.in/blogathon. Join further conversation on facebook.com/delhiyouth & twitter.com/mustbol

Schools in Gurgaon : a review

2011-11-05T20:12:00.000+05:30

This blog is somewhat different from my usual "all style and no content" blogs. This is a result of the research I was forced to do when I changed my daughter's school. Some of the things written in this blog are experiences shared by like-minded people though most of them are impressions formed by me during my visits to various schools.
I thought of writing this down as we have a huge inflow of professionals moving into Gurgaon from various parts of the world. One of the first things they start looking for is a good school for their children. Hopefully, this blog will be of some help to them.
As per me, the schools in Gurgaon can be categorised into three categories

A) Alternative school (Also known as Progressive schools) :
These are the schools who follow a completely different methodology of teaching. Usually these schools will first stress on teaching orally and students are taught to write at a much later stage. Often these schools will not teach alphabets in their usual sequence but in context to how they are used in the children's perception. Thus they will probably teach "B" ahead of "A" as they would then try to teach the child how to spell "BALL". These schools also believe in not giving any homework and keeping a very low stress level on the children.
Typical characteristics of these schools are
1) Completely different teaching approach at the primary level. Does not follow the NCERT method at all.
2) Teaching is often project-based or experience-based instead of text book based.
3) Usually has a setup for the children with special needs (with separate teaching staffs for them).
4) Merges into regular NCERT / CBSE or ICSE format after class 8.
5) Has plenty of outdoor activities like summer camps etc

There is some debate about this form of schools. The concern points raised by many parents are

their teaching methodology is excellent for young students but not so good for older children. Hence when the students reach Class 8 and is introduced to the conventional NCERT syllabus, most of the students don't fare well.
a child finds it extremely difficult to adjust into any other main stream school (in case one needs to change the school)
unconventional way of teaching - hence finding teachers and retaining them is a challenge.

The schools in this category are

Heritage School (Sector 62) : Pioneer in this form of teaching. Uniformly acclaimed as excellent among the progressive schools. Off late, there has been some report about the standard of the school having deteriorated. Also the students seem to find it difficult to merge into the NCERT based syllabus after Class 8 and consequently, there is a trend of students leaving Heritage after Class 5.
Rating : 4/5
Board : CBSE
Shikshantar (South City I) : Excellent school in Progressive format. Seem to have a better balance between the progressive form and conventional form. Mid term admissions are not very easy.
Rating : 4.5/5
Board : CBSE
Matri Kiran (Sohna Road) : New school started last year (is now till Class 3). The principal is the former principal of Shikshantar. The secondary section will be at Hero Honda Chowk.
Rating : not known.
Board : ICSE

B) International Schools :

The name can be deceptive as most of the schools these days have added "World" or "International" as their middle name. I am classifying those schools as "International" which have the following features
1) Will follow a modern form of teaching (may not be entirely progressive but a close second to this)
2) Will not have excessive academic pressure on the child (in line with international practices). Usually these schools will have less or no homework and parents are discouraged from teaching the child separately.
3) Will have SMART class rooms for all standards and all classes
4) Will have elaborate sports facilities (usually including a few exclusive facilities like Horse Riding, Golf etc)
5) Will have external faculties / institutions coming in for added value (like British council, external Theatre workshop, elocution classes etc)
6) Usually will also have options of other boards (IGCSE, OB etc)
7) If often accused to be a bit too flashy.

The following are the schools which fall in this category

Ridge Valley International School (Near Galleria Market) : New school backed by the India Today Learn India movement. Focuses majorly on self learning / project based learning. Expensive (approx 45k per quarter)
Rating : 4/5
Board : CBSE
Lotus Valley International School (South City II) : New school (presently upto Class 8). Excellent facilities and innovative teaching methodologies. Tie up with several external institutions (British Council, Cambridge Education, Maxmuller Bhavan etc). Already have an established school in Noida which is considered a premium school.Rating : 4/5.
Board : CBSE
Pathways : New school. Good setup. Has separate section for Special Needs children. Extremely expensive (approx 70k per quarter). Predominantly focuses on Expats and NRIs (the admission form asks whether you earn in Indian Rupees or Foreign currencies!!!)
Rating : 3/5
Board : IGCSE (Cambridge)
Scottish High : One of the first true "international" school in Gurgaon. Well established and well known. Off-late have heard a few negative remarks about this including some pretty damning stuffs on mouthshut.com. Expensive (approx 45k per quarter).
Rating : 3.5/5
Board : ICSE
Banyan Tree : Feedback on Internet is quite high. Did not check personally
Rating : 3.5/5 (based on Internet)
Board : ICSE
American Excelsior : Feedback on Internet is quite high. Did not check personallyRating : 3.5/5 (based on Internet)Board : IGCSE (Cambridge)

There are a few others on which I have no feedback like

K.R.Mangalam World School
G.D.Goenka World School
Euro International
Indus World School
Shiv Nadar School (yet to start)

C) Conventional Schools

The feature of these schools are as under

1) Will follow the NCERT prescribed norms. Within this, the good schools with use techniques which are modern and more child-friendly.

2) Academic pressure will be high. It is expected that the parent will also actively teach the child from an early age.
3) Good schools may have SMART class rooms (though this is usually not common)
4) Good schools will have elaborate sports facilities (though conventional ones like football, cricket, basketball etc)

For such schools, it is recommended that one takes careful feedback from students / parents as often what they promise and what they deliver is starkly different.
Grade 1 : Ratings between 3 to 5

Sun City : Rated very high. Teaching style and staffs are extremely good. Good setup and nice balance between education and co-curriculars.
NB : Is known to ask for donations and/or part of the entry fees in cash. I have personally not experienced this but a close friend had this experience.
Rating : 4.5/5
Board : CBSE
Sri Ram International : Could not even enter the reception after trying thrice. I believe one has to admit the child in nursery itself or will have to be a celebrity to even enter the school. Usually the interview will be conducted by the school "darwaan" and you will be shooed off with a flea in the ear.
Rating : 3/5
Board : ICSE
Shallom Hills
New school. Modern style of teaching; child friendly.
NB : Even for Class 1 children, they ask for an entrance test (carefully veiled under a phrase "bench-marking") while they themselves don't have exams till Class 5.
Rating : 4/5
Board : CBSE
Delhi Public School Sector 45 : Standard good school. Academic pressure is on the higher side.
Rating : 3.5/5
Board : CBSE
Amity International Sector 43 and Sector 46 : Standard good school. Nice infrastructure (in Sector 46), large playground.
NB : Even for Class 1 children, they ask for an entrance test <
Rating 3/5
Board : CBSE

Grade 2 : Ratings below 3

Ryan International
Delhi Public School - Shushant Lok / Sector 29
Delhi Public School - Maruti Kunj / Sector 28
Summer Fields
Tagore International : Excessive academic pressure. Old fashioned method of teaching. Has a reputation of hitting children regularly.
Rating : 1/5
Blue Bells

There are many more schools in category 3 on which I have no feedback. A list of some of these are

Presidium Galleria / Mother's Pride
Presidium Sector 57
Alpine Convent School
Salwan School
Manav Rachna

It would be nice to get some feedback or review on these schools.

I got plenty of help from some Internet sites which the readers may also find interesting. These are :
- http://livingingurgaon.blogspot.com
- http://www.parentree.in
- http://www.gurgaonscoop.com
And finally, there is no point in writing this blog unless we have discussions on this. I would sincerely urge all parents having school going kids to put their opinions as comments to this blog. This would certainly help the parents in Gurgaon who are in the hunt for a good school.

Trying to be a new age father

2011-10-31T21:06:00.000+05:30

Parenthood has become incredibly complicated these days. It must have been rather tiresome even in the olden days but at least they were not bound by these new-found theories about how to take care of the kid. In good old days, if the kid was a brat, you called him (or her) a brat and whaled the tar out of the little fellow. Nobody gave a damn about whether it was going to traumatize the kid and leave an indelible scar on the tender mind or, for that matter, tender bum of the child. On top of it, there was also the golden rule of "children should be seldom be seen and rarely heard" which took care of the rest.

Those happy days are, sadly, things of the past. These days you are supposed to "interact" and "instill values" into the child but ensure that her "delicate mental framework is not shattered by the traumatic parental pressure". I had been strictly following this by not trying to instill any of my values into my child (and therefore ensuring that the right values are picked up by my kiddo) but I decided to make an exception a few days back.

In one of my daughter's school forms, there was a field where I had to fill in how many hours I spend reading to my child. After filling this up, out of sheer guilt conscience, I decided to be a "new age good parent" and read a bedtime story to my child. Let me present you a "blow by blow account" of what happened :

Me : Three little pigs. Once there were three pigs who wanted to stay alone.
D'ter : What does alone mean?
Me: Staying without anybody else.
D'ter : But they are three of them - so how can they be alone ?
Me : Hmmmm - I think they meant staying without their parents
D'ter : Then the parents are also alone
Me : Yeah (aside : lucky bastards). Let's continue. The three pigs built three houses.
D'ter : Why did they built three houses? They could have stayed together in one house.
Me : They eventually did that because of the wolf.
D'ter : What did the wolf do?
Me : He blew the house down.
D'ter : Because they had build three houses?
Me : No. Actually the wolf wanted to eat the pigs. He asked the pig whether he can come in. And the Pig said "Not by the hair of my chini-chin-chin"
D'ter : Why did the pig say "chini-chin-chin" ?
Me : Because it is funny !
D'ter : Why is it funny?
Me : This word. It doesn't really mean any thing.
D'ter : What is funny about that? If you say things which doesn't mean anything, is that funny?
Me : Yeah - sometimes
D'ter : Dad - you don't know anything!! If you say things which nobody understands, people will make fun of you ("aapka mazak urayenge")

So it continued till finally, we reached the end of the story. Sadly, this "good parent thingy" did not work out well. Most of the queries of the daughter could not be answered to her satisfaction and at the end, she concluded that anyway, the first two houses built by the pigs should have been given to the old women and children who stay on the pavements. So, the wolf, in fact, did a good thing by blowing them apart and is the real hero of the story.

May be I should start writing a whole new set of "Politically correct fairy tales" instead of trying to be a new age dad!!!

Maggi : My comfort food

2011-06-28T23:31:00.001+05:30

After wearying out the readers with the detailed development of my new house, let me move on to something which almost everybody likes. This blog is about the universal favorite instant noodle called "Maggi".

As a kid, I don't recall being passionate about noodles. In those days, it was not very common to have them. Noodles were either cooked by some "avant garde" type relative (usually as an aftermath of a cooking class) or brought from the legendary Kolkata Chinese restaurant called "Peiping" (on Park Street). Peiping was famous for its "Chow chow" (not to be confused with the ill-temper Chinese dog) - which is basically noodles with plenty of vegetables and some gravy and the entire household seem to go gaga over it. I was the solitary voice of dissent, who protested against this Chinese aggression but was summarily silenced by the women in power. My grandmother used to be somewhat sympathetic while my mother used to dismiss it with her characteristic "motherly" one liner - "He's just being difficult". As was customary in those days, I was usually given the choice of "Take it or stay hungry".

In 1983, a company called Food Specialties Ltd, along with Nestle, came up with a new product called "Maggi" - a type of instant noodles. We, of course, couldn't care less about these trivias excepting the all important fact that they came to our school and, as a part of their promotional campaign, gave every one of us a packet of noodles for free. In those days, such aggressive marketing strategies were unheard of and more so in Kolkata, the so called "hide-bound" metropolis. I proudly took it home and much to my everybody's surprise, fell in love with it. It was, truly, a love at first bite.

From that instant onwards, Maggi has become a part of my lifestyle. Just like the converts show greater passion that the original believers, I became a Maggi-lover with a vengeance. Our household patronized Maggi as if we are majority shareholders in this company and we have three family members in their board. To give you some statistics :

Maggi was offering a small steel plate for every 12 empty wrappers of Maggi. In a period of 6 months, my mother managed to collect about 12 such plates at which point Maggi withdrew the offer and completely broke her heart. Which means in 6 X 30 = 180 days, we had consumed 12 X 12 = 144 packets of Maggi - a hit rate of 80%.

I still recall that Maggi used to come in three flavours, namely Masala, Chicken and Capsika. Capsica was extremely popular, closely followed by Masala. Masala and Chicken flavours have defied all management theories like Product Life Cycle (PLC) and BCG Matrix and are still extremely popular. Soon other flavors like Tomato, Curry etc and some "heath conscious flavours like "Multigrain", "Atta" etc have evolved. About two years back, they also entered the market of Cup Noodles which, hither to was the forte of Nissin. In between, they also faced some competition from Top Ramen - who came up with Smoodles (smooth noodles) which were nice (especially their curry flavour) but somehow they could not dethrone Maggi for long.

In my bachelor days in Pune, Maggi was one of our main stay as far as cooking was concerned. On more adventurous days, we used to add "Chorikos" - the fire brand Goan Sausage into it and avoid adding the Maggi tastemaker into it. We usually used to add cheese / cheese spread into it to somewhat reduce the firepower of the Goan sausages. This delicacy - almost the high-water mark of my culinary career, continued with me for several years till my decrepit alimentary system refused to absorb this any more. Forcing it down the esophagus these days either causes severe acidity or puts the rear side on fire, the next day morning.

I loved the Maggi advertisements all along. I think one of the first ones was where the kids come home and shout "Mummy, bhookh lagi hay" and the mother beams benevolently and says "Just two minutes". As a kid, I often wondered why my mother's reaction invariably was to scowl and shout back "Go to the bathroom, wash your face and hand etc etc" instead of smiling in such beatific manner.
Recently, my friend reminded me of another old favorite of mine

Even their latest one about the cup noodles - "Just add garam paani, aur shuru ho ja jaani" - targeting the new generation of trekkers - is also quite catchy .

A few years back, I was in IIM Bangalore for a short term management course specially designed for Business Managers. As is usual in such courses, we were given enough assignments to ensure that we never go to sleep till 2 am in the night. After the first couple of nights, we started feeling hungry at around 1 am (an old failing, I always felt hungry when I used to study as a kid). On the 3rd or 4th night, we decided to explore the campus to see if any edibles are available. And wonder of wonders - we discovered a small shop selling Maggi 2 minutes noodles, nicely cooked and garnished with scrambled eggs and stir fried vegetables. For the next 5 weeks, this shop was frequented at 1 am by a group of six 35+ mid level executives from an MNC. Malicious aspersions were cast on our moral characters because of these nocturnal visits (this shop, incidentally, was located rather close to the Ladies hostel) but our loyalty towards Maggi was far beyond such dastardly allegations.

Hope this brand survives the test and taste of time and continues to be a gastronomical delight for one and all.

Back to the basics : initial days at the new flat

2011-06-11T21:48:00.003+05:30

For the selected few, who had been waiting with bated breath to know whether we survived the shift to our new "khandahar".....I mean new house, we did!! More importantly, our marriage also survived this terrible ordeal.
The last statement should not be taken lightly. Confinement into a limited space, an omnipresent 1 mm dust on all open surfaces, greater than 100 decibel noise level in the house and incessant invasion into our privacy by the workers was proving to be quite a toll on our mental condition. The whole thing was making me wonder whether this, finally, might become the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. I was visualizing that one of these days, missus will quietly walk into the room and say those ominous four words - "We need to talk". Thankfully, this impending doom has somehow been averted (probably because we were staying in one room only and there was no possibility of physically "walking into the room") and at the moment peace springs eternal. This, of course, is the status as on 11-June-2011, 2147 hrs and cannot be extrapolated for any futuristic predictions.
Let me describe the first 3 days of our stay at the new house to give you a feel of how things were.
Day 1 :

Jumped around the movers and packers to get things packed in an organised manner (failed miserably; they did whatever they wanted in whichever sequence they felt is right and left us with a large number of unmarked boxes). Moved to the new house to discover that not a single room is in a livable condition (even by stretching our imagination beyond its elastic limits). Much heated verbal exchange took place, which predominantly consisted of asking the gentlemen in charge of renovating the new house to get off their back side and show some results. At around 8 pm, we finally got one room to ourselves, with an attached bathroom and a power socket to connect the refrigerator. Subsequent investigations revealed that the bathroom doesn't have any light or any facilities to hang clothes/ towel.

Cooking was out of question - hence walked down to investigate the colony. Discovered Mr. Bindra's "Authentic Chinese and South Indian Dhaba" whose menu consists of Idli, Masala Dosa, Chana Masala and Aloo Paratha (Phoolka on demand). Despite the short menu, the food was sumptuous and we were too hungry or too tired to care.

Life's Lesson # 1 : All Izzz Well.

Day 2 :

Woke up in the morning to discover that the tea kettle has hidden itself in some obscure crate located at the most inaccessible part of the house. Managed to savage a saucepan and two extremely small "road-side quality" cups (bought during by my initial days at Gurgaon and I have not heard the last about my aesthetic sense or the utter lack of it from my missus) and made some tea. Tea strainer was not available, hence left the last 15% of the tea in the cup and used it for tea leaf reading. The tea leaves told me that life is gonna be difficult for next 2 weeks. As if I didn't know this!!

Life's Lesson # 2 : Learn to appreciate the simple things in life (like tea strainer)

We locked ourselves in the sole room which was at our disposal. The rest of the rooms were occupied by the painter, the carpenter, the tile fellow (why is he not called a "tiler" ? Must take this up with appropriate authorities; seems like a case of not respecting dignity of labour et al) and two visiting faculties - the electrician and the plumber. Sometime in the course of the day, the internet broadband service provider arrived and immediately had heated arguments with the electrician. After the dust settled, the wiring was, somehow, done to the satisfaction of both the parties.

Life's Lesson # 3 : When there are too many cooks, pretend to be deaf-dumb-blind and a half-witted-ill-tempered moron. It won't solve your problems but will make you happy.

Day 3 :

Had to go to office. This proved to be an incredibly challenging venture as

a) All my shirts had been packed in huge thailis using the curtains. This, though rather convenient for the packers, is not quite the best arrangement for the shirt. The sharp crease lines of the shirts were smeared giving them a strangely crushed look.

b) The trousers, somehow, had escaped this ordeal but it was impossible to find the right shirt for the right trouser, forget about finding the right socks or the right shoes for them.

c) Only one pair of shoes were found - one which had a white streak on the front part - making it quite like the type Jeetendra used to wear.

d) No trouser belts - hence a distinct possibility that if I don't hold on to my trousers with a one handed death-grip, I may embarrass myself and the community around me by exposing more that what is written in my contract.

e) Couldn't find my shaving cream or kit. Went to office with a two-day stubble. In Delhi, this is just about the worst crime that you can commit barring making indecent passes at your boss's daughter.

Managed to survive in office. Nobody mistook me for a roadside beggar or Hrittik Roshan.

Life's lesson # 4 : You are too small a pebble to cause a ripple in the smiling pool of complacency called life!!

Had pizza for dinner. The Pizza almost didn't get delivered as our main door does not have a name plate / flat number / calling bell. Thankfully managed to catch a glimpse of a man in pizza delivery suit standing pensively at our doorsteps, trying to figure out what he should do next.

Life's Lesson # 5 : When everything fails, pizza works.

Life's Lesson # 6 : It works even better if you add an extra cheese topping.

This interesting journey of our lives is still continuing. The bloke who said "Life is about the journey and not the destination" evidently had never stayed in a house with 6 set of workmen working in the house and constantly complaining about each other.

Nevertheless, the end seem to be near and there is some light at the end of the tunnel. I am hoping for a Hindi filmy ending where finally everything becomes ok and all sorrows, if any, are packed and stored into some remote corner, never to be touched again.

On the verge of shifting base and getting mentally unhinged

2011-05-27T08:41:00.001+05:30

Two days from now, we are throwing our reasonably organised lives into a gargantuan mess by moving to a partially complete and scarcely livable house.

At this point, let me do it the "filmy" way by going for a flashback to update you on the recent events of my otherwise uninteresting life. This is probably unnecessary for the selected few who follow my life-cycle with considerable interest but since the head-count of these "selected few" is in single digit, it makes more sense to give a general update.

Three months back, on a cold winter morning, while sipping super-heated masala tea, we suddenly came to the conclusion that we should buy a flat in Gurgaon. I don't recollect the exact rationale, if any, behind this decision but I do remember that it was taken in our usual Quick-Gun-Murugan style - decided before you could say Jack Robinson!! Subsequently, this proved to be a wise decision, as our landlord is coming back to Gurgaon and we anyway would have been forced to move to another flat.

The next steps were, of course, somewhat more long drawn as it involved finding a suitable flat in Gurgaon, selling our Navi Mumbai flat, applying for loan, applying for NOC from the society and various other mundane stuffs. Arranging the finance was not easy and neither was completing these formalities which usually involves filling long complicated forms where they ask intimate questions like my grandmother's maiden name, colour of my first pet and the measurement of my left thigh.

We finished these formalities with about 10 days to spare i.e ten days before our landlord is going to arrive and take possession of his lawful abode. The next step is, of course, shifting to our new house.

This house that we have bought is not a locked up "Khandahar" of some well meaning gentleman. It is a well lived in flat and people were actually staying there till last month. Theoretically, it is possible to move into this flat without any renovation. We, in the eternal folly that has hounded mankind ever since they started building houses, chose to do "a few things" before we move in. And this single step was the beginning of a nerve-wrecking Odyssey that is likely to hound us for another month or so.

"A few things", we soon came to realize, is a large basket of ideas and can put even the Buckingham palace to shame. After many hours of contemplation, most of it consisting of looking at our bank balances and feeling miserable about it, we decided that we will get the flat painted, put new tiles on the floors and the sanitary fittings replaced. Simple and basic, isn’t it ? Not quite.

To replace the sanitary fittings, we had to break a few tiles of the bathroom. And by a deep rooted conspiracy of the tile manufacturers, any design of tile is available at best for 2 years. This automatically means, we have to replace the entire set of bathroom tiles. From there, the next logical step is also to replace the embedded pipes of the bathroom and then, of course, the electrical fittings also need to be changed and...you get the drift.

Long and short of it is that we now have the following set of people working simultaneously in our house :

- a plumber

- a masonry fellow (who also does the tile job)

- an electrician

- a carpenter

- a painter

- a welder

What made matters worse is the fact that all these aforementioned gentlemen have some peculiar characteristics which, under the present time-critical situation, is quite a hindrance in completing the project on time. A quick summary of these characteristics are as below :

a) Mr. Rajkumar, the painter is a loner who cannot work when other people are in the same room as he is. He also has difficulty in communicating what he wants and expects that you will, somehow, read into his sub-conscious psychological abyss and extract the relevant information. He also refuses to give his own opinion and prefers to take the stand "Jaise aap kahiyega (As you wish, sir"). This, occasionally, can push you to a stage when you would wish that you had a loaded Kalashnikov or Uzi sub-machine gun handy.

b) Mr. Nandan, the masonry worker feels that his work is not being appreciated and he is not getting the due respect for his job. For example, he resented bitterly when one of his precious tiles showed a slight scratch (less than 6 inch long). He complained in the most vociferous manner that this has happened due to the dastardly behavior of the carpenter, who, apparently is the miscreant. Other workers like the electrician et al tried to pacify him by stating that this sore spot will disappear if rubbed vigorously was met with contempt and disdain and fortified his belief that nobody appreciates his job. Left to himself, he would have broken up every tile of the floor and relaid them but alas, in these troubled times, nobody appreciates a true artist.

c) Mr. Prakash, the plumber, believes that it is his duty to forgive the follies of his fellow human beings in the true Christian spirit of "they know not what they do". This sentiment, unfortunately extends towards his employers as well and it is almost impossible to instruct him about how a job should be done. Forceful statements and high decibels does not work with him and the only way is to tentatively give a suggestion and then tip-toe around it in a delicate manner to craftily guide it towards the desired result. This is a time consuming process and also tests your diplomatic skills to their limits.

d) Mr. Baidyanath, the electrician, does not believe in schedules, dates and deadlines. Time, in his opinion, is just an instantaneous point in the infinite space-time continuum of the universe and it is therefore stupid to argue about why something, which was to be done yesterday, is still pending. He dons has a beatific smile when he fails to meet a commitment (a situation which occurs with an alarming regularity) and remains unperturbed by any verbal missile that you might throw at him.

So the D-day is alarmingly near and the progress is not what it should have been. For the past week, every dawn had been bringing in new hope for me and the dusk had been bringing back the broken fragments of this hope. I suspect that our entry into the house will be almost an archeological expedition where we have to wade our way through broken pieces of tiles, marbles and conduits, empty and partially full paint cans and a team of workmen recruited from the mad hatter’s tea party who have no intention of leaving us ever.

How I wish that I had the powers to say “Off with their heads” like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland!!

Yesterday, no more !!

2011-05-01T19:59:00.001+05:30

There are bad days and there are bad days. And there are those days when everything goes wrong. Yesterday seemed to be one of those.
It began with an ominous sign. Involuntarily, I woke up at 6:30 in the morning on a Saturday. It was not provoked by one of those "some people laze around while I have to toil till my bones get pickled" stuff from my wife or my daughter deciding that my reclining enormous body mass is a good for practicing rock climbing. I woke up without any external stimulus and was in a pensive mood, not being able to figure out what was wring with me.

I made some tea (was a disaster as I was in a contemplative mood and therefore the timing had gone for a toss), roamed listlessly and then tried to make some breakfast (boiled the living daylights out of the instant porridge for my daughter) without any spectacular success.

I decided to spend some "quality" time with my daughter (for the less-informed ones : it is now considered fashionably metro-sexual to play some "kiddish" games with your daughter as long as you package it with some pithy advises like "your only competition is with yourself; keep trying" or "understand the hidden morality while you apply the crayons on your Barbie"). After several moments of careful pondering, I decided that golf would be a good bet.

Let me explain this a bit, lest you start imagining that I stay in one of those sprawling bungalow with an attached mini-golf course. Sprawling bungalow, forsooth !! Golf, for me and my daughter, is played in our 12' X 8' drawing room with a plastic golf club which, in reality, is a container for selling jelly beans. The ball is a tennis ball which had appeared on our balcony courtesy some wannabe Sachin Tendulkar trying to hit a sixer. An empty blue can, which, at some point of time, housed an "Indigo" USB stick acts as the golf hole. This is, in fact, the only part of the Indigo USB stick package which is serving any purpose; the USB stick itself had decided to die a happy death within 72 hrs of purchasing the same from a lissome air hostess of Indigo airlines with a brilliant smile (Life's lesson # 32 : Never buy a USB memory stick just because the air hostess has a lovely pair of legs. The sex appeal of the air hostess has nothing to do with the effectiveness of the device in question).

Coming back to the game of golf; my daughter beat me to it. There are several reasons to it like
a) She plays in a unique style wherein she uses the golf club like a hockey stick and drags the ball with it till it is about 10 cm from the hole (or Indigo can, if you want to be technical about it).
b) The plastic golf club swaggers like swagging walking sticks which the Hollywood villains of 1940s used to flaunt
c) Playing golf forces you to bend down, a process which causes excruciating pain in the lumbar region. Also the substantial layers of near-permanent fat around the midriff also causes some trouble in breathing.
After getting beaten thrice in a row, I decided to give it up. This "quality time" was getting on to my nerves and I decided that a return to the traditional tough father was in order. I decided that it is now study time for the kiddo.
Nowadays, there is something called EVS in their curriculum. The full form of EVS has been carefully concealed but from what I could gather, it is designed to teach general knowledge to children. I started with "sense organs" and tried to explain to my daughter that nose is for smell. She promptly pointed out that it is for making noises - the kind I make while I am sleeping. I let it pass, though made a careful note of it for taking up with the missus ("Where is she learning all these stuffs? No respect for parents...blah blah blah). Next were the eyes, wherein she commented that I keep them closed whenever I am at home as I am usually sleeping. She also masqueraded my alleged use of eyes and nose with an astonishing degree of accuracy.
She seemed to have a more than necessary grip on "sense organs", I decided to switch to "My family". Here I explained her "Father", "Mother", "Parents" etc and the progress was generally peaceful till we reached "siblings". Things started hot at this stage as incisive questions like why she does not have any siblings, how are children born, why we cannot get a sibling next day morning etc were asked. Things really started getting out of hand when she started asking whether the "guard" is a "brother" of the "maid" and why they always hold hands and wink at each other. Enough education for the day, I concluded. Let the "idiot-box nanny" with her unending series of Tom and Jerry take over.
It was nearing lunch time and nothing to eat in the house. I decided to drive down to a newly opened eatery and check it out. It is a joint called Big Mouth and has some very fancy stuffs like "Chammak Challo" (Lachcha Parantha with dal, curd, pickle), " Kuddi Panjaab Di" (Chawal with Rajma) and similar stuffs. The key offering seemed to be a dish called "Murgi Phansi Jaal Me" (which, simply put, is chicken curry and rice). I decided to play safe and bought a couple of kathi rolls. These were the weirdest rolls I had ever consumed - a thin semi-cooked roti wrapping mashed Chinese style non-veg stuffs and capsicums by the dozen.
In the evening, I tried another round of golf with the daughter - this time with a hockey stick and in the garage. The results were not dramatically different except that since I was outdoor, I felt as parched as a blotting paper. A dash to the refrigerator revealed that we are in the midst of a severe urban crisis, namely, lack of soft drink / beer / fruit juice in the house. Oh darn!
I was brave enough (and optimist enough) to think that I can salvage the situation by cooking dinner myself. I sometimes cook on holidays and I always find it to be relaxing. Today being today, I chose a safe dish - Pasta, something which I cook rather well on my normal days. Today, however, things were not quite the same. Despite adding mushrooms in copious quantities, spring onions, capsicum, origano, cheese, more cheese, more origano, can of tuna, boiled eggs, the result was a huge bowl of white bland tasty-as-cardboard pasta!! The dinner was as cheerful as a funeral dinner with daughter giving strange expressions while pushing the stuff down her esophagus and wife munching the stuff with a moody silence. I tried to make light of the situation with a great deal of small talk but this valiant effort on my side was met with Al Capone-ish looks from the feminine side of the family.
Finally, the night quietly flowed it. The daughter dozed off to a deep slumber, the wife was still busy on the net and I was feeling drained of all energy and wanted to have a quiet death. Just when I was closing my eyes, my wife spoke with a spine-chilling surety in her voice :
"Hope you have not used too many utensils and have not made the kitchen very dirty!! The maid might not come tomorrow".
I rolled over to the other side, hiding my face from my wife and trying not to think what her reaction would be when she enters the kitchen the next day morning. Amen!!

Delhi and Mumbai : a tale of two cities (2)

2011-04-18T23:21:00.004+05:30

To continue my earlier blog on the same subject...

The traffic of the two cities are also quite different. In fact, both the cities have left hand drive is just about the only thing that seem to be common.

Mumbai (or Bombay; I still prefer the old name) has a highly organised and disciplined traffic. At least it honestly tries to be. It has a strict lane discipline imposed on it and over the years, the same has largely been internalized by the drivers. Cutting a lane, is, therefore, considered a greater sin that cutting a throat (in certain parts of the city, the latter is likely to win you kudos and cheers). While this is quite an appreciable achievement, the effectiveness of this is often subdued by lack of adequate street signs and directions. One is, thus, often stuck in the right most lane and is forced to take a right turn despite it being the wrong turn (right is sometimes wrong, you see). It is impossible for someone to guess where the correct right turn is from a distance unless one has spent good part of his formative years munching "vada-pav" in that particular area.

Delhi has been wrongly accused of having no traffic rules or sense. This is, of course, purposefully maligning the city which has developed a completely unique traffic sense. Best is to list them down :

1) The bigger car has the right of the way.

2) Left is the overtaking lane and is also the fastest lane.

3) Right is definitely the slowest lane.

4) Being on a lane does not mean you have to follow it all the time.

5) It is a perfectly acceptable practice to drive between two lanes. In certain parts of the city, this is the only way.

6) If you need to cut the lane, do so boldly and blindly. Close your eyes, take your favorite god's name and just do it!! You would momentarily feel like passing through hyper space or like the Star-Trek opening lines "...to boldly go where no man has gone before"

7) You can commit the gravest of the mistakes and then smile sweetly and get away by saying "Kindly adjust ("adjust" to be pronounced as "edjust") . If you can prefix the same with an "Oye Paaji", you have really done it. Balle balle to you and whoever is in the car with you.

As you would realize, this peculiar school of driving can only succeed if people possess a certain outlook towards life. You need a kind of benign forgiveness and a smiling pool of complacency to take this in your stride. No wonder people of Delhi are generally more happy-go-lucky and likely to crack some inane jokes at the first instance. If you constantly live in a world which seems like a Govinda movie, you tend to push yourself into a rarefied stratosphere where commonplace things like a dent on the right fender or a scratch on the left rear wheelcap has little or no significance.

This brings up another aspect of life - humour. Mumbai, in general, is a humourless city. People are non-interfering and detached and usually maintain a self-complete (or should I call it self-sufficient) cheerfulness within them. It is not unusual to find people walking the malls, completely alone but not feeling lonely at all. Compared to this, Delhi has an all-embracing sense of humour, which, in its all putrid form, is forced upon you. It is impossible to ignore this, impossible to appreciate this and yet impossible to get angry with these simplistic people who belt out such mawkish jokes at the drop of a hat.

To give you an example :

I went to a small general purpose shop looking for a bottle of jam for my daughter. This shop was devoid of this. The shopkeeper, instead of saying that he doesn't have it, quipped "Jam nehi hay sahab, lekin Jams hay" (Jams - in case you are still wondering, refers to the Cadbury Gems which is popular amongst children). In case you are wondering - no I didn't reach for my Kalashnikov and make a clean job of the shop keeper. I just smiled and moved on.

So, most of the bollywood humours are, in fact, more suitable in Delhi than Mumbai and so are the bollywood dialogs. Thus, the "Virar ka chokra" brand of humour is more a "Janakpuri Ishtyle" than a Bombaiya brand. It also tends to grow on you and after a while, you start enjoying the utter ridiculousness and the existentialistic absurdity of the same.

All Izzz Well for the time being. And yours truly shall be back with another round of introspection after a while. Till then, Sionara!!

Statutory Warning about the movie "Born Free"

2011-04-12T01:12:00.003+05:30

Statutory Warning : It is dangerous to allow children below 8 years to watch the legendary movie “Born Free”. Watching this movie causes certain behavioural changes in the child which could be stressful to the parents, especially for the father. A synopsis of the same is attached below:

Symptom 1 : Roaming around the house with the tongue hanging out and panting continuously. This creates an illusion of having a 4 legged beast in the house which, unless one is really brave and couldn’t-care-less kind of a guy, is rather un-nerving. It also leads to your neighbour avoiding you fearing that your child suffers from hydro-phobia (this, in retrospect, is not such a bad thing sometimes).

Symptom 2 : Occasionally pouncing on the unsuspecting parent (usually the father) with a catlike flexibility and ferocity. The suddenness causes the parent spring into an active position from a reclining posture and consequently leads to excruciating pains in the lumber region and/or lower spine. Possibilities of a cardiac arrest or a near-permanent damage to the spinal column or both cannot be entirely ruled out.

Symptom 3 : Having achieved the desired result with Symptom 2, the child also might lick your face – something, which is definitely bad for the child’s alimentary system and disastrous for the parent’s mental framework. Especially if the father had just tried a new after shave and is feeling particularly nice about it.

Symptom 4 : Instead of Symptom 3, the child might also follow up symptom 2 with a long hysterical guffaw with associated hand gestures which are, to put it mildly, extremely insulting and infuriating. This can force the lifelong pacifist father to reach out for a hard and blunt instrument – an act which, in the court of law, would be ruled as child abuse due to the ignorance of the judges about the ill effects of this movie.

Symptom 5 : Will insist on clutching to his/her “lion soft toy” (which was neglected all these years) all the time. Normally this is bearable except when the child insists on feeding this contraption with dust-laden mare and complains that his/her ‘Elsa’ is refusing to eat. Pretending to act deaf will not yield the desired result as the child also develops a compulsive mental dis-order and will not let you go till you have also tried feeding ‘Elsa’.

Symptom 6 : Will threaten his/her mother that he/she will go away and then “mama” will cry. To make matters worse, she will also threaten that she will come back with three kids like Elsa did. At this point of time, you will be kicked out of your leisurely reverie and will be rendered speechless.

The above is, by no means, a complete analysis as the period of study/ evaluation was in-sufficient. Added to this is the fact that the observer, who also is the father, could not maintain the mandatory clinical detachment necessary for a scientific study. Not only were the aforementioned symptoms nerve-wrecking, it was compounded by the firm assertion by the mother of the child that things have gone so far due to indulgent treatment of the observer/ parent. Such blatantly unjust and malicious allegations also might cause the father to brood, sulk or generally become regressively philosophical about life.

Please spread this link to as many parents as possible. Let them not suffer like I have. I am trying to tie up with FB/ Twitter that for every 100 clicks, they will donate 1 $ which will be used to burn all prints of the blasted movie and make the world a better place for all parents.

Cheerio.

Delhi and Mumbai : A tale of two cities (1)

2011-04-01T23:46:00.005+05:30

Now that I have spent 8 months in Delhi and have actually started liking the place, it might no longer be such a major crime to draw parallels with my erstwhile home Mumbai, the city where I had spent the past eight years of my life.

Mumbai is a vibrant city with a strong sense of detachment. In a way, it is truly metropolitan as this detachment allows it to give similar treatment to it's own “Marathi Manoos” as well as the outsiders. It is, thus, a city in Maharashtra yet not a Maharashtrian city - just like Paris is an aberration to the traditional French culture. There is little that Mumbai can boast as “truly Maharashtrian” – even the “Pao Bhaji” and “Vada Pao”, the signature street food of Mumbai are not quite Maharashtrian.

Added to this, Mumbai has a strong “process orientation” about following a set of standard rules. Something like "the rules of the game" I am not talking only about the legal rules but also of certain commonly used practices. Quite like the GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles – a set of universal accounting principles which are followed by most of the farms world-wide), Mumbai seem to have its own unwritten GALP (Generally Accepted Livelyhood Practices) which everybody seem to follow. Thus the apparently maddening Mumbai locals also have some set rules and codes (including codes about how you should board the train at which station; the technique followed at Andheri Station will be vastly different from the technique followed at Virar Station). Once a person masters this GALP, he is as comfortable in Mumbai as any seasoned Mumbaikar.

The main principle of Mumbai is “live and let live” – a clinical isolation from ones surroundings. One lives truly like an island, with boats and bridges built strictly according to ones own rules. Added to this is a sense of urgency in one’s thought and action, a constant throbbing of pulse, rapid heart beat about getting the things done “asap” and getting over with it!! Mumbaikars like to work hard and play harder. They would work till 8 in office - then travel for an hour to attend a party lasting till the midnight and yet be in office at 8 am in the morning. It really makes you burn the candle at both ends but it certainly gives a lovely light and thus Mumbai, for most outsiders, is a “love at first sight”.

Delhi, in contrast, is a city which will not show its face to you on the first glance. A “Wham, bam, thank you, Mam” approach is not for Delhi – you need to court this old lady with rose petals,fragrances and poetries (or is it "shayeri"?) and all the tools of the trade. And then you would realizethe “pull” this city seem to exert on you and its vast and intricate web of connectivity.

Delhi is essentially “result oriented” and therefore somewhat dis-organised. When you approach a Delhi-ite to get a job done, you will be well advised to explain the person why you want this job to be done in excruciating details. Instructions / hierarchy / SOP have no relevance to a Delhi-ite. The focus is strictly on “why this should be done” instead of “how this should be done”. To give you an example, if you ask a banker in Delhi, how much cash can be withdrawn in a single transaction, you will usually get a counter-question “How much do you want?”. If you answer this question openly instead of considering it to be a personal affront, most of the times you will get what you want. If you approach this in a typical Mumbaikar way and insist that you want to know the “rule” and “how much am I entitled to” and “why should I tell you how much I want”, you will face a virtual stonewall stronger than the real one in China.

Another tradition of Delhi is it’s absolute adherence to the traditional Indian way of “Satyam Badet, Priyam Badet..” Even under the worst emergency, a Delhi-ite will invariably greet you politely, ask about your health, your wife's toothache, daughter's education and the wellbeing of the society in general before actually getting down to business. A lot of things will be left to “thik hai, dekh lenge” till the very end. Trying to put this into a highly organised structure is sheer foolishness as it will be going against the grain of the people. Added to this, Delhi also follows the principle of “still water runs deep”. Activities under crisis also would appear very normal at the superficial level. The code of civility will be maintained, the pace would appear to be the same and it is virtually impossible to push things externally. Yet the job will invariably “somehow” get done within the strictest deadline. You may imagine that this is a one-off case but when you see that this is happening in every time, you will have to appreciate that they seem to have an entirely different way of handling things.

Delhi is inherently laid back and encourages you to take life a little easily. It encourages a better quality of life where people can pursue their other interests. No wonder Delhi has a far greater number of book shops, fantastically stocked DVD shops, regular art exhibitions and other performing arts compared to Mumbai. And please, let us not even talk about the much revered “Kala Ghoda festival” of Mumbai compared to what one gets to see in Delhi. This, probably allows people to have better connectivity with each other. This strict code of civility and bonhomie forces a community feeling to be inbred amongst a Delhi-ite. It is practically impossible to maintain a stoic detachment from your surroundings, the outside society in general will invade into your life at a much deeper level than it would in Mumbai.

To conclude, Mumbai focuses on "being alive and staying alive" while Delhi emphasizes on the subtle difference between living and staying alive. It is not for me to give a fatwa about which is a better way and in any case, there cannot be any last word when we are comparing two parallel cultures. I, however, intend to put in some more observation on this subject (thus the mysterious 1 within the parenthesis in the title) in my forthcoming blogs. So quits for today and will be back soon (hopefully). Till then, cheerio!!

Ashoke Sen, my uncle

2010-12-31T00:06:00.005+05:30

My uncle, Mr. Ashoke Sen died on the 19^th of December 2010, in his home at Kolkata.

Ashoke Sen was a scholar in English Literature who graduated from the Bristol University, UK. On returning from UK, he hop-skip-jumped between several lucrative jobs in prestigious organizations, but couldn’t adjust himself to the disciplined regimentation of any of them. He even worked briefly as the editor of a magazine called Point Counter-Point, but this also seemed too much of a routine job for him. He finally quit working within the boundaries of an office administration, and started freelancing which suited his style of working. He wrote for the two well known newspapers, Telegraph and Statesman, initially book reviews, and later graduated to more expansive literary sphere.

During his initial years, uncle interviewed many well known personalities from the literary world, and published these interviews either directly or wrote articles based on these interviews. His interviews were refreshingly different from the usual run-of-the-mill interviews taken by professional journalists with their set of stereotyped questionnaires. Uncles interviews were conducted after immense preparations and had a lot of background information . What, however, gave his interviews their unique flavour was that these interviews were actually an exchange of literary thoughts between two academicians on an equal footing. They were radically different from mere documentation of the conversation between a celebrity and an eager-to-please journalist. I still remember the immensely readable interviews of Stephen Splendor and Lila Mazumdar.

Subsequently, he became a known name quite well known for his English and Bengali essay writings amongst the scholarly circles in Kolkata, and got involved in editing several Bengali anthologies. He had the natural advantage of being an incredibly avid reader with a phenomenal memory. His forte was his knowledge on old Bengali literature – especially Children’s literature. He was loosely attached to Shishu Sahitya Sansad – the agency responsible for promoting children’s literature in Bengali. He was a leading authority on Buddhadev Bose and his literature, a fact acknowledged by none other than Pratibha Bose (wife of Buddhadev Bose). He can truly be described as a Kolkata intellectual with a wide knowledge on films, theatres, music (Bengali as well as Western) and books but not the usual stereotype leftist-existentialist intellectual (the kind who swears by Kafka-Satre- Camus- Marx etc).

My uncle had a habit of reading anything and everything under the sun. He was not one who would accept someone else’s judgement about anything and would prefer to form his own judgement about everything. I recall one incident, when I, a the then smart-alec teenager, tried to impress him with my fledging knowledge on Existentialism and Albert Camus. It came as a rude shock when he started taking out books on these subjects including the legendary book of Kaufmann called “Existentialism”. Subsequently I rummaged through his library to discover that though he was not a great fan of Camus, he had at least 3-4 books of Camus. Likewise, my ramblings on Satre led to me getting a book on the development of Philosophy from Socrates and Satre, and then having to sit with him for a session on philosophical studies.

Uncle had an encyclopaedic knowledge on Bengali children’s literature. He could recall with ease, as to which the year a particular novel or a short story was published and in which particular edition of a “Puja Barshiki” – a capability which was exploited time and again by the various publishing houses. His favourite children’s authors were Shibram Chakrabarty, Hemendra Kumar Ray, Premendra Mitra, Buddhadev Bose and Kamakshiprasad. What was interesting was the fact that he did not like the conventional popular stories written by these authors but preferred some lesser known well written stories. For example, my uncle did not like “Harshavardhan and Govardhan” series written by Shibram Chakraborti– citing them as coarse low class humour which, according to him, Shibram had written for the masses. Uncle preferred a more subtle, sophisticated form of humour which was expressed better in Shibram’s lesser known stories like “Onko o Shahityer Jogphole (Fusion of Mathematics and Literature)”, “Kalantok Lal Phita (The Deadly Red Tapism)”, “Bibhutibhushon-er Shilalipi (The Stonehenge of Bibhutibhushan)” and “Patale Bochor Paanchek (Five years or so in Hell)”. Likewise, he preferred the Hemen Ray stories / novels like “Pretatyar protishodh”, “Bishalgarh-er Dushwashan”, and "Mrs Kumudini Chowdhury" over the more popular Jayanta-Manik or Bimal-Kumar series. In fact, he thoroughly disliked Jayanta-Manik whom he considered to be a poor copy of Sherlock Holmes series including the bumbling detective Sundarbabu (as Indian version of Lestrade). He advised me to read an obscure series of Hemen Ray – namely Hemanta – Robin, another detective duo, who had featured only in four books (Andhakarer Bondhu, Ratrir Jatri, Mukh aar Mukhosh and Bibhishoner Jagoron). On his advise. I also read and fell in love with the “Mamababu” series of Premendra Mitra (how many people remember that Premendra Mitra also wrote a detective series ?) and the “Chanchal” series of Buddhadev Bose (also a detective series). Other than the famous ones, Uncle also made me read some obscure novels or series of novels by authors who are now forgotten. I read “Sundarbane Saat Bachchar”, "Makorsha" (by Rajat Sen), "Chitragreeb" and "Juthapoti", the war series of Dhirendralal Dhar (Saroj-David series – remember), “Ajaykumar” of Monindralal Bose and "Durgom Pother Jatri".

His influence led me to extensive reading of children’s literature of the yesteryears including the Kanchenjangha and Prahelika series and we spent many a happy afternoon discussing merits and demerits of these children’s stories. In retrospect, I find it rather amusing that a Bristol educated literary personality, who was a leading intellectual in Kolkata, managed to have meaningful discussions with his class 6 nephew, about 30 years his junior on equal footing. This trait in him continued till the very end and consequently most of his friends were far younger than him.

Uncle had a passion for thoroughness and continuity. He seldom used to give any judgment on any author or film maker based on only one book or movie. I recall that he had to write a piece on Graham Greene, a usual run-of-the-mill article, and he bought the complete Graham Greene series just to prepare for this! Likewise he re-read all the Leela Majumdar novels before he took her interview (and me too – along with him; and in the process discovered a wonderful novel called “Tong Ling”, which, surprisingly, does not feature amongst her more famous works). He took me to the British Council for a film festival of Hitchcock but not before I had read “Hitch”, the landmark analysis of Hitchcock and the famous book written by Truffaunt on Hitchcock. I also recall a particular incident when he had discovered a factual mistake on Thakurbari in a magazine called “Sobjanta-Mojaru”. He made me correct it but before that, he made me read the books of Rani Chanda, Mohanlal Gangopadhyay and Abanindranath himself on this subject. Such exposure during the formative years has left a deep and indelible impression on me which probably accounts for my present day love for literature and films.

This thoroughness, of course, had some pitfalls. Quite often, he used to miss his deadlines - a trait which couldn't have made him popular with his editors. Also, when his analysis did not match the opinions expressed by other celebrities, he felt no qualms about ripping that person apart. I recall him criticizing Chidananda Dasgupta, (a legendary figure in film circle who was personally known to my uncle) for trying to put Ray’s Sakha Prasakha on the same pedestal as Charulata. He had no compulsion or inclination to be “politically correct,” and even his closest friends, from time to time were at the receiving end of his acerbic pen.

Uncle also had a remarkable ability of finding co-relations between stories and/or movies, possibly a sign of a good critic. It was refreshing to compare “Batashbari” of Leela Mazumdar and “the Enchanted Forest” of Enid Blyton; Jane Eyre and Rebecca with “Pakhi” by Leela Mazumdar (wonder how many people have read this novel); the multiple narrative style of “Ghare Baire” by Tagore with “Raat Bhore Brishti” of Buddhadev Bose (I also recollect him reminding me that there is a superficial similarity between the plots of “Ghare Baire” and “Raat Bhare Brishti” which is not of much significance). He also could spot the cross discipline similarities and co-relations – about how Dickens has influenced Bergman in “Fanny and Alexander” and how Buddhadev Bose’s “Bipanna Bishmay” is in fact an existential treatment of Jibananda’s legendary poetry “Aat Bachor Ager Ek Din”. He once pointed out to me that when Jibananda had written “Banolata Sen”, Bengali Poetry had also reached its 1000^th year – a fact which led me to rethink about the first line of this popular poem (“Hazar Bachhor ami poth hatitechi prithibir pothe”) and wonder whether this was indeed a romantic poem after all.

I am indebted to him for introducing me to one of the greatest authors of the post Tagore era – namely Buddhadev Bose. I was introduced to his writings through his short stories, some of which are possibly the best children’s short stories written in Bengali. “Meenu’r notun juto”, “Prothom Dukkho”, “Hridayranjan-er Sharbanash”, “Haran Jyatha o Sujitda”, “Baba”, are probably the finest examples of children’s short stories in the world, and it is indeed sad that the world will never get to read or even know about the existence of these great stories. Likewise, for adult novels, he made me read “Golap Keno Kaalo” – an incredibly stylized Bengali novel. As per his usual style, he did not push Buddhadev Bose’s hugely popular “Tithidore” onto me (though he acknowledged that it is a great novel) but made me read “Patal Theke Alaap”, “Jedin Phutlo Kamol”, “Bipanna Bishmay” and “Moulinath”. Then came the articles and analysises of Buddhadev – “An Acre of Green Grass”, “Hothat Alor Jholkani”, “Kobi Rabindranath”, “Sanga Nishshangata Rabindranath” and last but not the least “Mahabharat-er Kotha”. Uncle was a great fan of Buddhadev, and was personally very close to him and his family. Yet he never tried to influence me, or force me into loving this author. He, in the strictest sense, brought the horse near the water, leaving him to drink when thirsty.

How was Ashoke Sen as a person? On first glance, he was not a nice person to know. Withdrawn, non-communicative and somewhat serious, he was not an easy person to talk to initially. He lacked normal social skills and would insist in mixing only with people whom he considered to be intellectually at par with him. If, however, one took the effort to break his shell of apparent impregnability, he was a nice person to talk to. He would then come down from his high horse of intellectual superiority, and become a regular guy. He was, in fact, quite a gossip-monger, a fact which he always denied vehemently (of course, gossip being so ‘non-intellectual’ and cheap) and enjoyed sharing the juicy gossips about the le-creme-de-la-creme in the perfect British manner.

I always felt that he never really came out of his teens – an eternal enfant terrible at large. His being the eldest son of a prosperous family (and therefore pampered) and not having an immediate family (and therefore no direct responsibilities) also reinforced this attitude. Thus he had the mood swings, hyper-sensitivity as well as the self-centered, self-indulgent nature of a teenager. This, to many, was difficult to handle - an intellectual giant with the emotional quotient of a child. This led him to become rather lonely during the last phase of his life, when he craved for a normal conversation with the normal people around him but alas, it was probably too late by then.

At the end of the day, one cannot help but feel sorry him. His Peter-Pan psychology coupled with his self created barriers made him lonesome. Despite his immense talents, my uncle somehow could never find the right direction, and thus could never put his abilities to their fullest use. Like “Kach” of Mahabharata, he seemed to possess the knowledge, but besieged by some unbreakable curse which prevented him from putting his knowledge to use. His last journey to the frontier was therefore a lonely one, mourned by his family and friends, not only about who he was but also about what he could have been, had it been otherwise.

David and Goliath : WikiLeak and the aftermath

2010-12-12T21:41:00.004+05:30

"Endowed by the creator with certain inalienable rights among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". The above line and the first amendment (freedom of speech) has been the cornerstone of liberal thinking for most of us. Though the policies of the United States have often not been fair (to put it extremely mildly), at least “open speech” and “communication” were areas, where even their worst critics didn’t have much to say. So we indeed had a country which allowed people to say anything – send hate mails, abusing religions of the minorities and say various "offensive" things.

Not any more.

The recent WikiLeak revelations about the Apache helicopters, the Iraq war logs, the Afganisthan war logs and the US government’s knee-jerk reaction made it apparent how fragile the US concept of “freedom of speech” really is. Sarah Palin, who is heavily tipped to be the next presidential candidate suggests that the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be “hunted down in the way armed forces are targeting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda”. Assange had to practically go into hiding and finally was arrested in London for alleged sexual offences conducted in Sweden. At the very least, he will face an extremely long drawn extradition fight that would drag on for months.

Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall…

The people accustomed to power games are rather good at disposing of fancy garments like ethics and morality. In the present case, they decided to do a “full monty” – and that too at a lightening pace. Those fancy axioms of “innocent till you are proven guilty” and “equal and fair treatment towards one and all” were summarily dumped with a vengeance. There were some rather quiet, strictly verbal “understanding” with some organizations like PayPal, Mastercard, Visa, Amazon etc which ensured that WikiLeak, and by extension Julian Assange had practically no access to their assets. Their bank accounts were frozen, revenue inflow and/or donations blocked and all other financial transactions blocked. Parallelly, at the sub-surface level, a silent “whispering” campaign was started with the target of socially ostracizing WikiLeak. Messages were sent to major schools including Boston University's School of Law, Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs through their alumni cautioning students against commenting on or posting links to the WikiLeak documents on social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter. So not only was WikiLeak to be financially paralyzed, they were also to be made an outcast!!

In the process, the actual pertinent question about ethical journalism got covered under several layers of ashes and dust.

The way WikiLeak has exposed things throws up the all important question about finding the right balance in journalism. Who has a right to what? It we try to argue that we have a right to know everything the state is doing on our behalf, then the reverse will also become true and it will become rather difficult to argue about the right to privacy for the individual. This is the crux of the matter and should have been argued and finally the judiciary, in some form or the other, should have been brought into the game to draw the line. The government officials, however, decided to draw the line themselves and take actions on their own.

Quite often there are objectionable things published on the net - like criminal activities, fraud sites, child pornography, copyright offences etc, when the government has to do a very legitimate "notice and takedown" or a straightforward takedown. Incase of information which tend to compromise the national security of the country, there is an absence of a clear judicial process. This, however, should not become an excuse for the government to act in any way they please, thereby making a farce of the constitution and fundamental human rights. By not respecting the law, by not respecting the ethics and by trying to violate the first amendment, they have opened the door for others also to act in an irresponsible manner.

Violence begets violence. In this case, the violence was bloodless, strictly digital and happened in cyber space!

The strike back was led by a group of hacktivists (hackers cum activists) who call themselves “Anonymous” or “Anons” (short for Anonymous). They have came up with their own “manifesto” in an open letter: "We are not a terrorist organization as governments, demagogues, and the media would have you believe. At this time Anonymous is a consciousness focused on campaigning peacefully for Freedom of Speech. We ask the world to support us, not for our sake, but for your own,"

Within a span of two days, Anonymous has attacked, in sequence, the Swiss bank PostFinance (the bank holding Assange’s bank account and had stopped all transactions in this account), Online payment service provider Paypal (who had refused to accept payments to WikiLeak) and the credit card majors, Mastercard as well as Visa (credit card companies who have refused to accept or allow donations made to WikiLeaks). All these companies have experienced a kind of digital Armageddon of requests which has blocked their servers and causing a slowdown or complete stoppage. The Anonymous have also declared their next target – the online book retailer major Amazon.com (who did not allow WikiLeak to store their documents in the Amazon servers but is selling WikiLeak’s top secret United States diplomatic cables online).

What the Anons are doing is technically called Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). The DDoS uses the social networking sites to gather a substantial following and then provide these followers with small software programs which are designed to repeatedly send messages to the target site. If a large group of people do this simultaneously, and the attacks are carefully timed for maximum effect, the computer servers that host the websites are bound to crash for a period of time. This technique had been used by the Zapatista rebels of Mexico way back in 1994 with the help of a software company called Electronic Disturbance Theatre. The same company launched the first DDoS software called FloodNet in 1998 and today, this is the biggest artillery in the hands of the hacktivists worldwide.

How would people have reacted to such acts under normal circumstances? I believe most would have categorized such acts as cyber crimes or extremely immature irresponsible acts. In the present context, however, these acts have become protests against the totalitarian establishment. There is a certain romanticism which has also got attached to this ; a bunch of unorganized young computer geeks who have decided to stand up against the big bad wolf – a modern day tale of David and Goliath. This war is now a fight for the freedom of speech, a modern day saga of a freedom struggle where new phrases like “net neutrality” and “information is free” are its slogans and banners.

What the coming days would reveal is that it is far more difficult to contain the Djinni once it has come out of the bottle. These computer geeks, who are usually recluse and socially inept mavericks are experiencing their first taste of power. And nothing corrupts people more than unchecked power. We would have to wait and see whether these hacktivists limit themselves only to this or similar causes or start using their newly gained power to become the next terror on the net.

We are in the midst of the first Cyber world war which is going on between the establishment and the free spirited netizens. As a strong believer of freedom of speech, an ardent netizen and a romantic at heart myself, my sympathies are naturally with these techno-nerds who have taken the American bull by its horn. But what will happen after the twilight?

Only time will tell.

The shifting face of emotions

2010-10-10T16:31:00.011+05:30

Amongst all the changes that we encounter in our journey through life, the most difficult one to handle is the emotional changes that we have to undergo. More specifically, we tend to find it difficult to accept that our relations with someone close to our heart - be it colleague, a friend, a relative or someone more intimate has changed with time and this person has moved on.

What we sometimes fail to realise that human relationships, quite like the human beings themselves, also change with time. The emotions felt today, however deep and long lasting, is still transient and will change with time. This does not make these emotions any less valuable – just like the fleeting nature of the sunset does not rob away its glory. Even when the relationship has changed, the wondrous moments it had given us in our memory amongst many other magical moments - a walk on the wet grass on a summer morning, the smell of freshly baked cake that we tasted on a holiday or the single dew drop on a near perfect rose in our balcony.

Take for example, the relation between a mother and a daughter child. As time passes by, the initial closeness between the mother and the daughter tends to wane as the daughter develops into a separate individual. This, quite often, is shattering for the mother who keeps longing for the old closeness that they once shared. She cannot fathom why her daughter, who used to come home every day from school and tell her what happened at school in excruciating details , seem so withdrawn now. Why the daughter prefers to interact with her countless friends for hours together on the mobile but refuses to share her cries and whispers with the mother. The books that they read together suddenly seem "childish" to the daughter, the movies she saw with her mother while growing up are too "mushy" or "preachy", even the private jokes that they shared also seem stale and hackneyed. Most of the mothers find it difficult to handle this phase and often fail to maintain an emotionally satisfying relationship with their daughter in the later part of their lives.

Similar emotional upheavals are experienced by every person at some point in their lives. Usually people find it more difficult to handle when they are approaching their middle age and are deprived of the all pervading inner panacea called youth to help them out.

In our youth, we tend to be more in touch with our softer self. We believe in the magic of "raindrops on roses" and "whiskers in kittens" and the "bright copper kettles" at home which make the most amazing tea in the world. A good book leaves as breathless, a nice romantic movie leaves us weak in the knees and the entire world with its sunlit days and cheerful breeze tends to spread happiness all around. In this phase, we also make plenty of new friends even with the most unlikely person and often these casual friendships blossom into a heartfelt emotional bonding which both the parties cherish. As we grow old, we somehow lose this joie de vivre, this automatic ability to connect with people and life in general. It becomes difficult to find new friends to have meaningful conversations, to share our fears and uncertainties or just to have a casual banter over silly things to de-stress ourselves. We sometimes try to connect with our old friends and discover that the old magic is somehow missing. This usually leaves us grumpy, dissatisfied and generally peeved with life or forces us to become cynical hard-headed realists who refuse to see anything good in life.

How does one handle change in the middle age in that case? I don’t think there is any sure-shot formulae for it but I think if we accept the transcendental nature of life as well as our emotions and do not try to hold on to them, we can handle it better. Just like we cannot keep our beloveds alive for ever, however much we may wish to , our relationship with the world and its inhabitants cannot remain stagnant. Instead of mourning what we have lost, we should try to find happiness in what we have; and try to explore the new things that come into our lives. For this, perhaps, we have to be break the shell of our comfortable existance and be in touch with our inner self to discover what we really like. Much to our surprise, we will probably discover that the inner core also has changed and has found new sources of joy which we have been depriving it from. We have to discover the child within us and allow it to explore the world around and find out what really excites us today.

We will find that the rainbow still has enough shades to brighten our lives and the wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings will still steal a smile of two from our weather-torn shell-hardened cynical self.

Gurgaon Diaries - 2

2010-06-13T11:55:00.005+05:30

Gurgaon, I was told, is completely devoid of public transport system. The government is probably proud of it as well. Being from Navi Mumbai (Kharghar), I can well imagine this. My initial days at Kharghar, when I did not have a car, involved plenty of walking, wooing and cajoling auto-rickshaws to go my way and showing that famous horizontal thumb gesture indiscriminately to any passing vehicle. Gurgaon promised to transport me back in time to those days!!

As a first step, I asked for the nearest market place and was told that there exists a “well established” market called the “Hudda Market” about a km away. I walked down to this market and found it to be a dingy little place with a bunch of shops set up in a distinctly claustrophobic manner. It has only one proper eating joint inside and five medicine shops around it which seemed to cast some suspicion on the quality of food being dished out by this place. Other than this, this market also has an abnormally high number of Unisex saloons which also makes you doubt about their true purpose of existence. This market also has the only liquor shop of this area (which was surprisingly well stocked; the guy had Carlberg / Budweiser/ Tuborg/ Foster beers along with the usual Indian fare) very strategically located at the extremely corner of the market – immediately beside a small kabab-wala. A subsequent visit in the evening revealed that the kabab-wala sets up plastic chairs & tables in the small stretch beside the booze shop and serves kabab and booze over there. The kabab-wala has a decent choice of offerings with those typical glass-single-window-thela and multi-coloured kababs (I could find red, orange, yellow, brown, green colours) hanging on sheeks – ready to be served at a moment’s notice. One also has the comfort of sitting in open air, very close to the boundary wall of the market so that any sudden visit of the authorities in khaki can be handled by quickly jumping over the boundary wall and running cross country across the dark grounds surrounding the market. There would, of course, be a certain amount of danger of breaking your leg or getting bitten by the innumerable dogs that seem to infest the surroundings of this market but one must accept it as a part of the charm and excitement of visiting this place.

Though the official opening time is ten, it is only by eleven when you can see some activity in the shops. The shop keeper would come by that time, yawning away to glory and if you dare to question him about the reason for this delay, you would be given a long lecture which will start with “aise bhi kya jaldi hain..” and then move on to sentiments like how we do not have time to stand and stare any more. To be fair, these shops stay open till about 10:30 or 11:00 pm (the booze shop and his kabab partner till 1:00 am in the night) and one has to give some leeway on account of this.

Another interesting this about this market is the complete diversification the shop keepers seem to have achieved. There is a milk booth which also doubles up as a Xerox shop, an internet café (the only one in this area) which also functions as ladies tailor, a duplicate VCD shop which also sells stationeries and one of those unisex saloons also sell mobile handsets. The most unique one will have to be the shop which sells ladies undergarments and towels (and which happens to be the only shop selling both the items in this market). I had a rather embarrassing moment when I had to enter this shop to buy a towel (I had forgotten to pack one) and had to wade through a sea of women of different sizes and shapes who gave me very dirty looks.

Just when I was about to give up on this market, I discovered that there is a better version of this market available just behind this market. This was more of the present generation market – which has three supermarkets including the Aditya Birla group “More”, the “Grahneez” (a popular local supermarket chain) and “Mandi” – an exclusive fruits and vegetable market. These are the new generation air-conditioned shops with bar-coded materials on well lit displays and English speaking staffs – shops to which we have now got used to. I also discovered that there is a shop which sells an amazing range of frozen foods including Japanese foods, pork and beef cold cuts and diet ice -creams. And this new market also has a Pizza Hut and several small food joints – all of whom are ready to deliver at home.

One could easily notice that Gurgaon is like a small island amongst the traditional Haryana lifestyle; an island with wide roads, plush cars, educated executives and call-centre crowd maintaining an air of exclusivity within it. It is an upwardly mobile place with a somewhat cosmopolitan culture and expensive lifestyle. I expect that this probably would have created a rift with the local people, as I had seen in Kharghar. It is too early to comment – one needs to observe more.

Till then, let me feel at home – now that I have discovered that I have a Pizza Hut less than 1 km away!

Gurgaon Diaries - 1

2010-06-12T20:18:00.006+05:30

I landed up in Gurgaon on 2^nd June 2010, after an eight-year stay at my adopted hometown Mumbai. The welcome was not altogether pleasant as it was hot (37 deg C at 8:30 pm in the evening!!), my luggage was the last on the conveyor and I was tired. The tiredness was probably more mental than physical – caused by the psychological effort of moving out of my comfort zone, both in terms of location as well as job.

The hotel, a simple and unpretentious one in Gurgaon called “Bax” (god knows who chose the name), fortunately could provide me a room immediately and also promised that food will be available incase I wish to partake the same. The room was perfect except one near-fatal defect – namely, the air conditioning does not work. To be fair, it switches on, makes a great deal of noise, its flaps move when I press the appropriate switch on the remote and even it displays the temperature. It only refuses to cool down the room temperature!! I suppose some undemanding gentleman would accept this rather than be a terrible bother but at 37 deg C, I couldn’t care less. A quick visit to the reception and a brief eye-to-eye no-nonsense conversation with the receptionist ensured that I was immediately shifted to a different room with an ambiguous assurance that this new room has a “Split AC”. I was too tired to explain that I have no moral objection to window ACs, especially so since I happen to have two of them at my place; my requirement – and this I am rather tiresomely firm about - is that the AC should function. When I say function, I mean there should be a perceptible drop in room temperature once it is switched on. This new room with the “Split AC” which was so highly spoken about, unfortunately did not quite fulfill this demand of mine. For sure, it was better than the previous one but the improvement cannot really be described as substantial. On the other hand, this room had a television whose remote required strong fingers and a very purposeful mind as every button had to be pressed with extremely hard and that too several times. The effect was also somewhat unpredictable as often the channels changed on their own – some sort of a delayed effect of the remote being pressed 15 minutes back.

Having explored all possibilities with the AC and the TV, I picked up the menu card. A call to the room service revealed that only about 5% of the menu is actually available and that too would probably have a waiting period of at least an hour. I chose to have only plain curd – which seemed to be the safest bet amongst the available 5% menu and was promised that this would be delivered in less than an hour. This proved to be true excepting the fact that when the plain curd was delivered, they also delivered two plain parathas with it as "complimentary" . I had a long and desultory conversation with the room service and subsequently with the manager wherein I insisted that I wanted plain curd and just the curd – without any accompaniment of parathas, however tempting they might be; the room service chap maintaining that it is against their policies to serve “just a plain curd” to any of their guests. It seems that it is impossible for an honest and innocent man to have "just plain curd" in this hotel without severely offending the delicate sense of hospitality of the staff.

After this ratherbeventful night, I moved into my new flat on the next day. This part went through like a clock-work. The watchman, a friendly bloke called Mithilesh proved to be one of the most well organized gentlemen I have ever met. Within 5 minutes of me entering the flat, the newspaper-wala was fixed up, housemaid was arranged for, a plumber was sent to check whether there is any leakage and the telephone number of the nearest grocery store was handed over. The aforementioned gentleman, very helpfully, informed me that the grocery store does home delivery and also promised me to introduce to the nearest restaurant who also delivers food at home within a reasonable time. I was seriously contemplating on whether to offer him a job in my previous organization as the facility management head and finally decided not to do as it lead to his losing his entrepreneur spirit and eventually becoming another of those rule-abiding, moss-laden dimwitted nincompoops which only a large conservative organization can produce.

Thus ended my first day in Gurgaon; non-functioning AC, weirdly hospitable waiters and a quick-gun watchman. Let's see what the next days reveal.

To Sir With Love

2009-12-26T16:02:00.004+05:30

I recently read the classic novel "To Sir With Love". I had read it when I was in the 12th standard. I remember loving it for the language as well as the structure of the book. After many a summer, I felt like revisiting the book.

My original copy was nowhere to be found in the house, so I picked up a new copy. I managed to finish it in 3-4 sittings. And I was disappointed!

It is really strange how an old favorite book or novel does not seem to stir the same emotions within you at a later date. I recollect vividly the heart-wrenching feeling and overwhelming emotions after watching "The Roman Holiday" when I was 14. I watched the same movie again around 2 years back. Though I yet felt it to be a nice movie, it did not quite overwhelm me to that extent and I, somehow, felt sad and betrayed by myself. This book seemed to have the same feeling in me.

The language was still fascinating - lucid and free flowing. It was a typical British English - the classical "Queen's language" with the occasional tongue-in-cheek humor. One reads with a smile and occasionally has to nod ones head in silent appreciation of the expressions. The book, however, did not move beyond this.

The sentiments and emotions in the books seemed 'slightly' sterile, the philosophy 'slightly" simplistic and the overall approach 'slightly' copybook. Something did not quite ring true - or rather seemed quite naive. The hero seemed too much of a 'good guy' with the honesty of an exaggerated simpleton. It seemed to lack a real depth of understanding - an actual feeling of the pulse of the fellow human beings.

One is inclined to compare it with "To Kill a Mocking Bird" - which is also on similar themes. "To Kill a Mocking Bird", even after so many years still unfailingly brings tears to my eyes. It is written through the eyes of a 10 year old girl and the author has been able to bring out the most profound thoughts about life in rather simple words and actions.

With the passage of time, we indeed tend to become more casual and unfeeling. This is our natural defense against the real world and in some degree or the other, all of us experience this. Only the books or movies which are able break the shell of our self-chosen cocoon merits to be called a "Classic".

"To Sir With Love" could not break this shell. It did not make me cry this time.

Stiff two finger : two bits about Whisky

2009-11-18T22:00:00.001+05:30

In this article, I have ventured into a somewhat “dangerous” subject – the age old, ever popular drink called whisky. “Dangerous” not because of what it does to the person who consumes it (though one can argue that drinking it in copious quantities and then attempting to manuevre a vehicle has often resulted in loss of limb or life or both), but because it is an incredibly well researched and documented subject. Any search on the internet is a testimony to this and further, there are books, research papers, exclusive clubs (“Single Malt” club immediately comes to your mind) and several other sources and forums where this is discussed. One can argue that it is almost impossible to come up with something new on this, unless you do some research on some obscure whisky manufactured in some un-pronouncable part of the globe and probably consumed on extremely rare occasions!! Nevertheless, I felt it worthwhile to organise my thoughts and two bits of knowledge on this subject in this article.

The general problem with most of the articles written on whisky is that they are maddeningly specialised. The author assumes that the reader is extremely well versed into the subject and therefore is well conversant with the jargons and finer nuances of the process. It banks too much on its exclusivity and therefore has a tendency – either by design or otherwise, to intimidate the average run-of-the-mill reader. This article is therefore for the commoners like me, the rank and file whose have progressed in life and tend to enjoy a peg or two after sundown. May be, by virtue of reading this article, these lesser mortal souls will not be at the receiving end of the scornfully upturned nose of a connoisseur for not knowing the difference between a bourbon and a scotch.

Let us start by getting the basics right. What is a whisky?

Even such simple question seem to have many complicated answers and variants (how else will the so called connoisseurs survive!), but the most popularly accepted definition is that it is a drink made from grains. What type of grain will decide what type of whisky it is. The most commonly used grain is barley – which when soaked for 2-3 days – germinates into “Malt” – and hence the name malt whisky. The other most commonly used grain is corn – which is the source of most of the American whiskies including Bourbon.

This definition, however, questions the basic existence of the common Indian whiskies – the Bagpipers, Aristocrats and Director’s Specials which were our main stay during college days and even in the initial years of employment. These whiskies are all made from molasses – which is a byproduct of sugar cane and therefore not a grain. Internationally these whiskies are not accepted as “whisky” but are classified as Rum. Major dispute is going on on this subject – predominantly because Mr. Vijay Mallya of UB fame is gunning for getting the Indian whisky accepted abroad. Till this is done, there is a unique contradictory category of whiskey called Indian Made Foreign Liquor or IMFL which has come up. Typically these are the slightly higher class of Indian Whiskies which are often known colloquially as the “Indian Skotch” but are technically IMFL. These whiskies have about 10-12% actual whiskey and the balance supplemented by the molasses whiskey. The popular brands in this category are Signature (the which comes in a delightful case in which my aunt used to keep biscuits), Blender’s pride, Peter Scot (an Indian Whisky manufactured by a company called Koday India – not a scotch by a long shot), Antiquity (lousy stuff but somehow immensely popular in the 90’s) and later on Royal Challenge (“RC” to the hardcore drinkers).

Even the spelling of whisky has a certain amount of mystique around it – is it whisky or whiskey? This also, like everything related to whisky has several answers, but most popular definition is as follows: “Whiskey” means whisky made in US or Ireland; Whisky made in the rest of the world is spelt as ‘Whisky”. It was probably discovered in Scotland (though the Irish also tend to stake their claim on this).

Now we come to the ‘scotch’ – which, according to many, is the only stuff which should be called whisky. It is a whisky made in Scotland and Scotland only. It can be made from Malt (Malt Whisky) or grain (Grain Whisky). In Scotland, Grain whisky is almost always used to prepare a Blended whisky – i.e a mix of Malt and Grain whisky. Malt whisky can further be classified as Single Malt (made from malt of one distillery only) or a Vatted Malt / Blended Malt (mix of several Single Malts). The other type of Scotch is the Blended whisky – the popular brands in this category being Johnnie Walker, Whyte and Mackay, Cutty Sark, J&B, The Famous Grouse and Chivas Regal.

Johnie Walker, the whisky which has a huge following in India has several brands of its own. It starts from the basic Red Label, a standard blended whisky without any declared age; Black Label (my favourite) – a premium blended scotch atleast 12 years old; and Blue label – the supreme whiskey from the Johnie Walker stable which comes in silk-lined box with each bottle serial numbered and having a certificate of authenticity. Johnie Walker also has two vatted malts – the Green Label and the Gold Label – both being blends of around 15 single malts and having an age of 15 to 18 years.

Another extremely popular whisky and probably the largest selling blended whisky in Europe is Chivas Regal. Extremely smooth with a soft mellowed taste, this king of scotch has a huge fan following in India. Categorised into 12 years (premium), 18 years (extra premium) and 25 years (superlative and mind boggling; costs around 300$), this whisky never fails to surprise and overwhelm me.

Let me now venture into another esoteric area of scotch – the years of maturity. Scotch has to be matured in wooden casks. The most popular casks are reused casks of Sherry or Bourbon which are made from white oak. The alchohol has to be matured in these casks for atleast 3 years to qualify as a “Scotch” (though any self-respecting scotch would probably be matured for 12 years). In the process of maturation, some part of the whisky evaporates – a portion which is known as the “Angel’s share”. And no, the whisky does not mature any more once it is bottled!!

Let me now cross the Atlantic and talk about the American Whiskies.

The top of the line is a whiskey called Bourbon. This is a grain whiskey with greater than 51% corn into it (though most of them actually have about 70% corn and the rest as rye and malted barley) and has to be manufactured in the Bourbon county, Kentucky. It also has to be matured in new white oak barrels (reuse not allowed; hence the cask is reused to make scotch!) for atleast 2 years, preferrably between 4 to 8 years.

While US has several popular brands of Bourbon (Jim Bean et al), the most popular whiskey brand of US continues to be Jack Daniel’s Black – a drink immortalised by the super cool dude Frank Sinatra. A stiff two fingers of JD on the rocks (or with water) to be drunk in a “rocks” glass while holding it right handed (a must – it’s supposed to be a gentleman’s drink) – for years this was the symbol of ultimate machishma and the symbol of the rat pack. It is actually a drink made in Tennessee with corn and rye and filtered through charcoal which gives it a very distinctive wooden flavour. The whisky comes in a rather distinctive square bottle instead of round – which is also part of its attraction.

I think I should call it a day now – else I might fall into the same trap as those “specialists” and make the article too difficult for human consumption. Instead let me take a stiff two finger Black Dog scotch, a good book and ease myself on the reclining armchair. Cheers!!

An Idylic week at Goa

2009-09-30T12:33:00.000+05:30

I always thought Goa is the land of cheap alchohols, lovely beaches and scantily clad women all around. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it has also got a long history behind it and as per the legends, it dates back to the Mahabharatas!!

It seems that Goa had been ruled by the Mauryas, the Satavahanas, the Chalukyas and various what-nots till it came under the Portugese rule in the early 16^th century with the arrival of Alfonso de Albuquerque. It remained a Portugese settlement till 1961 when it was won over by the Indian Army through “Operation Vijay”. Due to this long association with the Portugese, Goa developed its own unique Indo-Portugese culture with a large Christian population.

We stayed at a resort in the south Goa – close to the Mobar and Cavellesim beaches. These are less crowded than the north Goa beaches. The resort itself was very nice – with swimming pools of various shapes and sizes (obviously for people who felt a dip in the pool to be safer than that in the ocean), flowers and a decent restaurants. As is usually the case with such resorts, food was on the steeper side. Since the villas have a full fledged kitchen, one can counter balance this by occasionally cooking some of the meals and thereby keeping the economics as well as the stomach under control.

In different sessions, we visited the beaches – the Mobar on the first day, the famous North Goa beaches – Anjuna, Baga and Calingute on the second day and the Colva beach on the third day. We also had a peek at the so called “secret beach” in Dona Paula. Calingute is the most famous one and as is usually the case with these “famous” toursit spots – it failed to live upto the reputation. It does have a wide sandy beach but unfortunately the huge flux of tourist has made it almost as dirty as the Juhu Chowpatty!! One can have a nice bath in the ocean but it is not as exciting as the Eastern India beaches like Puri and Gopalpur.

The Anjuna beach was quite spectacular with a green coconut trees along the coast line. There is hardly a beach over there as the sea comes right upto the rocky shore. It is also one of the “famous” ones and therefore has several small shops all along the coast and a band of virulent energetic shopkeepers who pounce on the unsuspecting tourist to the their individual brand of useless junk. The only difference seem to be the energy level of the shop keepers – which was much less than the usual shop keepers. Probbaly this is due to the usual laid back culture of Goa.

I found the Colva beach to be most attractive – picturesque, not very crowded with ample opportunity to have a bath in the ocean. We visited this place on two occasions and on both the occasions, we found it to be enjoyable. There is a place with taps to wash your feet for people who restrain their sea-faring only upto ankle deep waters. There is also a small children’s park outside which keeps the child entertained while you philosophise on life while sitting by the sea shore.

Goa, due to the Portuguese influence, has a large “converted” christian population and an interesting culture. They still some of their Hindu roots firmly entrenched into them. They have a rigid “quasi-cast” system with Braganza’s and Fernandes’s considered to be of higher cast !! Their happy-go-lucky nature is a byword and their curious concoction of English – marred by the word “Man” in every sentence is hillarious.

And food!! This itself can consume several pages but I will try to restrain myself..

We stuck to typical Goan foods at cheap joints – the Longuino’s in Margao, the Georges in Panjim etc. These places are all absolute no-frill joints with the sole focus towards the food. Ambience takes a back seat and cleanliness or hygene has a completely different meaning altogether!! I shudder to think what would happen to most self respecting Bengalis if they ever get a glance of the kitchen where these delicious Goan preparations are made.

We had the classic goan curry rice – prawn as well as fish. Squid was a remarkable discovery – simply stir fried with butter garlic or cooked with masala, either way it was delicious. We also tries mussels and found them to be excellent. In meat preparations, we had the famous traditional goan preparations like Vindaloo, Sorpotel and Xacuti. We also pigged into the Choricos Biriyani – biriyani with the spicy Goan sausages in fond remembrance of my misspent youth. During my days in Pune and later on in Mumbai, one of my favourite “short cut food? was Maggi with Goan sausages thrown into it. It tastes delicious though not a dish for people who cannot handle spice stuffs. Vindaloo also has a similar reputation though the ones we tasted in Goa (chicken) were not very hot.

We also gorged on a sweet dish called Bebinca and had some excellent local beers (Kings). These two serve as a nice counter balance to the fiery stuffs.

Goa served as a complete rest for me. The resort had very poor WiFi connection and even worse mobile connectivity. The mobile phone used to work only in one corner of the resort and that too rather whimsically. This forced me into incommunicado with office and the rest of the world. We ended up eating, drinking, vegetating and playing rummy to our hearts content. The resort also had plenty of flowers (Heliconia) and we spent some time photographing them. There was a solitary kingfisher who used to pay regular visits to the tree in front of our cottage and we spent some quality time trying to capture this illusive bird.

Like all good things in life, this idlylic deary came to an end after a week and we came back to the harsh reality of hustle and bustle in our very own Mumbai.

Growing up with coffee

2009-07-11T21:48:00.000+05:30

As I was relaxing at Barista in one of the shopping malls and sipping my cup of mocha, I was caught in an idyllic reverie about this extremely popular drink called coffee and how it has now become a part of our metrosexual personality.

In my boyhood, Coffee was not very popular at our home. My parents were avid tea-drinkers and there used to be lengthy discussions on Assam Tea vis-à-vis Darjeeling Tea, “Half dust tea” vis-à-vis “Long leaf tea” and other fineries of tea. Coffee, in those days, was the more exotic drink – kept aside for some special occasions or a few specific guests who preferred coffee to tea. I recollect that on such occasions, when a guest had asked for coffee instead of tea, my grandmother used to grudgingly leave the centre stage of the kitchen and give way to my aunt who would then be given the ominous responsibility of making coffee. My aunt would the add one teaspoon of instant coffee with an equal amount of water and sugar and beat it till to death (i.e till it becomes a light brown caramel-like paste) and then add water and milk (usually more milk than water). This milky fluid with a mild aroma of coffee would then be euphemically described as coffee and would be served to the privileged guest.

I caught-on to coffee rather early in life and somewhat accidentally. Like most kids, I had a severe aversion towards milk and no amount of additives could make me drink it willingly. After trying out all the additions like Horlicks, Bournvita, Drinking Chocolate, Maltova, Protinex etc, my aunt, out of sheer frustration tried adding coffee in my milk. This was the beginning of a long love affair, which peaked in my college days – when I was a hard core coffee addict drinking several cups of black coffee. Though over the years I have shifted to drinking tea, my love for coffee still lingers somewhere in the background and I end up sneaking a cup of coffee during the day.

I was recently informed that Coffee was discovered in Ethiopia and then moved to Egypt / Yemen and eventually entered the muslim world. Finally it entered the “European” world through Italy. In fact this drink was banned in the Ottoman Turkey in the 17^th century as it allowed people to remain “sober” and therefore conscious enough to criticise the state and monarchy!! This lead to a large number of coffee traders moving out of Turkey into Italy, Britain, France and other European countries. I was quite surprised at this as I always thought coffee to be a pure European drink.

Coffee, in India was then dominated by Nescafe. Much later two smaller brands “BRU” from Brooke Bonds and “Sunlight” came into the market, the latter eventually was taken over by Nescafe. We also briefly had the Tata Café – an extremely nice brand which, surprisingly, sunk without a trace. There was, ofcourse, the so called parallel line of coffee drinkers, predominantly from the southern part of India, who drank “Filter Coffee”. I believe that it is impossible to make “Filter Coffee” this properly unless your roots are in one of those four southern states. Anybody else trying to do this ends up preparing a curious coffee with a distinct muddy smell!

We got introduced and gradually aclimatised into the world of “international” coffee with the advent of the coffee chain called Barista in the year 2000. This was originally a coffee chain founded by Amit Judge of Turner Morrison and was the pioneer in creating branded coffee shops in India. I think its first two coffee shops were in Delhi, strategically located near the Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Indian Institute of Technology to capture the college crowd. Needless to say, both were instant hits and Barista soon expanded into other cities in the country. We fell in love with the “global” coffees - the single shot “Espresso Italiano”, a 30 ml strong black coffee, it’s watered down version called “Americano”, the milky “Latte” , the chocolaty “Mocha” as well as the international favourite “Capuchino”. More than that, we got addicted to the “atmosphere” of a coffee shop.

It was a paradigm shift from the traditional coffee houses across the world where we were served coffees in tiny, slightly stained coffee cups with uninspiring accompaniments like sandwiches and masala dosas. Barista and Café Coffee Day completely changed our perception of a coffee shop. Instead of the old dusty rooms with old dusty furnitures, we now had spotlessly clean air conditioned coffee shops with high stools, comformable chairs as well as extra comfortable sofas. The shops were decorated with color schemes as per the brand, with bright cheerful tongue-in-cheek posters and a wide variety of mouth-watering eatables – grilled sandwiches, muffins, cakes, puffs and patties. And most importantly, the wiff of good coffee which almost hits you in the chest when you swing open the glass door to enter any of the coffee shops.

Suddenly these coffee shops became socialising joints to hang out with friends, to go with your family for a change as well as to spend some time in solitude. I remember walking with my cousin along the marine drive after a late dinner till eleven o’clock in the night and then walking into the Barista near the chowpatty to have an expresso and a game of scrabble. There has also been many moments when I have gone into the coffee shop with a good book and have spent a good two hours completely alone.

Today coffee has become an integral part of the urban Indian culture. It has seamlessly integrated into the other urbal culture of shopping malls. Every mall has atleast one – usually two coffee shops (with Café Coffee Day usually being one of the two). New theme coffee shops have come up (like Mocha, Java Green, Costa et al) with further additions to their menus (Ethiopian Qahwah, Kenyan Safari, Brazilian Coffee , Colombian Coffee et al ). The old Barista has also gone through a make over – a love affair with Lavazza, the Italian Coffee giant which operates in Europe under the name Café de Roma. It is no longer uncommon to have a full featured coffee machine at home and discuss whether to buy the Dark Forest brand or the Café Coffee Day Charge brand. People have also graduated to the level of discussing the exact proportion that should be maintained between coffee and chicory and whether to top it up with a dash of a hazelnut flavour!!

It’s a long journey and from the looks of it, the horizon is nowhere near. Let the journey continue as we savour every sip of all variants of this ecstatic drink.

Himalayas - a romance in snow

2009-07-06T19:33:00.000+05:30

Himalayas always had an appeal to me. It, in fact, would appeal to anyone who loves solitude. Though I am furiously social and generally like to be surrounded with people, there is a certain degree of detachment within me which seem to match with the himalayas in its spirit.

Himachal is one of the most attractive parts of the Himalayas. Its derives much of its charm from its proximity to the snow-capped mountains. And amongst the various districts of Himachals, Kinnaur, is one of the most popular one among all others mainly for its virgin beauty.

Kinnaur is at the north-eastern side of Himachal and is approached from Simla. Its connectivity with rest of Himachal is via treacherous roads which often get blocked due to landslides and snows - making it somewhat remote and inaccessible. The Kinnaur valley moves along the Sutlej river and has an entry to the mystical land of Tibet. It is also famous for having the Kinnaur Kailash (one of the residents of lord Shiva; the other two being Kailash near Manasarovar in Tibet and Manimahesh - which can be seen from the north-western part of Himachal).

Our trip to Kinnaur had a short stay at Sarahan - a nice quiet stopover before the eventual visit to the splendid Kalpa. Sarahan boasts of the Bhima Kali temple, an archaic wooden temple with one of the most intricate wood carvings in the midst of lush green mountains. It also has a "Raja ka mahal" - the kings palace which is in a rather dilapidated condition at the moment. Sarahan also has a very comfortable HPTDC guest house with "larger-than-your-fist" size roses along the wall and a very accommodating staff inside. Tea and Coffee was served at an abundance and with something to munch with it at regular intervals.

The next stop was Kalpa. This is supposed to be the most picturesque place in Kinnaur. My experiences with most of the much hyped-up places has been a feeling of disappointment but Kalpa was a welcome aberration. Simply put, it is one of the most amazing snow points in the entire himalayas. HPTDC, as usual, had picked up one of the best locations in the place and as we were staying at HPTDC, we weren't complaining.

Our room was a comfortable double bed room with a window which gave us a view of the entire snow range including the Kinnaur. It had a room heater, several thick blankets and connection to the kitchen through an enclosed wooden walkway. This wooden walkway seems a simple taken-for-granted stuff but when you need to walk to the kitchen to order for a cup of tea (the telephone in the room was very erratic) at 8 O'clock in the evening with outside temperature at around 8-9 deg C, you tend to appreciate these simple pleasures of life.

We spent almost a week at Kalpa in Kinnaur - a feat which left most of the usual tourists agog with horror. "You will be bored", "There is hardly anything to do" were the most polite statements that we heard, the impolite ones being mean digs at our cerebral health and aptitudes. We used to have short leisurely trips to the nearby locations, short treks but mostly long stretches of sitting idly and looking at the mountains. Being regular bookworms, we had several thick novels with us - nice and engrossing ones which would have demanded our undivided attention under normal circumstances. Kalpa, however, proved to be a greater enchantress. Often we were found to be looking at the mountains, with the book kept upturn on our laps.

We made a short visit to Recong Peo, the nearest human habitat euphemically described as a town and found it to be rather plain-jane affair. It lacks the grandour of Simla or the solitary beauty of Kalpa - a rather curious hybrid. We ventured out to have some momo from this place and were rudely made aware of the fact that local flavours look the best only on TV shows. This momo was no where near the mouth-watering delights available in the small bylanes of Kolkata inhabited by the tibetans for several generations now.

On our way back, we stopped at Simla and were again enamoured by her ageless charm. This was our third trip to Simla - and yet again we found it to be wonderful. A drastic opposite of the quiet Kalpa, Simla always enchants the tourists with its colour, energy and spirit. We went into a shopping spree - spending several hard earned currencies to buy stuffs which, till that point of time, never featured as an important stuff in our lives. We remembered several long lost relatives, pined for them and bought several gifts for them with tearful remembrances. Thankfully our stay at Simla was not for long and we came back before things reached astronomical proportions.

We came back from this memorable trip with a heavy heart and heavier bags and a thin wallet!! We made several solemn promises of not spending so much and how trips are not meant to be shopping expeditions - knowing fully well that we will again fall folly to these temptations at the end of the next trip.

Ah, well, such is life!!

In an antique land : Turkey

2009-07-04T06:56:00.003+05:30

The name Turkey or Turkiye evokes memories of my old dusty dog-eared history book. As a part of our European history lessons, we had read about “Asia Minor” or “Anatolia” – though had nobody bothered to explain that the same place is now known as Turkey. Similarly, we were taught about Constantinople (what a lyrical name!) and its history without ever mentioning that the same place is now called Istanbul and is one of the most popular romantic destination of the Europeans now.

I, therefore, was looking forward to this trip when my “call of duty” demanded that I must visit my clients in Istanbul. In the past two years, I had three opportunities to go there but only during the last visit, I had some free time to see a few things albeit in a cursory manner.
Constantinople was originally called Byzantium. It was renamed after emperor Constantine I (who is famous as the person who gave some sort of a "structure" into Christianity and gave the catholic church its identity) when he shifted the capital of the “Eastern Roman Empire” to Byzantine. Interestingly, in the 3rd century AD, under the roman emperor Diocletian, the roman empire was “functionally" split into the Western and the Eastern Roman Empire having separate emperors (called Co-emperors) with each having a "Caesar" to help him. This system was known as Tetrarchy, a rather interesting way of ruling. This system, however, did not last for long and the Roman empire was officially split into two parts at the end of the 4th century AD.

The Eastern Roman Empire, which later came to be described as the “Byzantine” empire, lasted for a thousand years, much more than the Western Roman empire. It was characterised by the a mix of Greek and Roman culture with a gradual shift towards the Greek culture ("Hellentistic" culture). This empire finally crumbled with the advent of the Ottoman Turks in the 14th Century who then gave the name Turkey and created the Ottoman empire which lasted till 20th century. Turkey infact played a significant role in the first world war and after the defeat was broken into several small countries. The present day Republic of Turkey originates from this.

Turkey is a country which is partly Asian and partly European. It is surrounded by the the Agean sea, the Marmara sea and the Black sea. The Marmara Sea (name derived from the word "Marmar" which means Marble) and the Black Sea are connected by the Bospherous Sea – an extremely important landmark of Istanbul. Bosphoreous flows through Istanbul, splitting the city into the Asian side and the European side. The European side is further split by a small stretch of sea known as the "Golden Horn". Most of the people stay in the Asian side and travel to the European side to work. Istanbul has an extensive ferry and boat network which acts like their main public transport. Bospherous and Golden Horn also offers tourists some opportunities to do fishing and it is quite common to see people hiring a fishing line and engaging in this solitary sport on the Galata bridge across the Golden Horn.
Despite being a Muslim country, Turkey is surprisingly liberal. It was refreshing to see women without burkhas - in western-ware and working in offices (that too in steel plants!). Namaz is not compulsory, Friday is a working day, there are no embargos regarding the namaz time during the Ramzaan days.

In Istanbul, the most famous monument is Ayasofya or Hagia Sophia. This was originally a basilica church known as the "Church of Holy Wisdom". When the Ottoman Turks conquered Istanbul, they converted this into a Mosque. Fortunately they did not destroy the entire building but merely added some typical Islamic structures like the Mihrab (a structure which points towards Mecca and which serves as the Altar for the prayers) and Mibbar (a structure similar to the pulpit in a church). This monument has some rather interesting architectural constructions like its dome which is supported on “Pendentives” (Pendentives are a construction design which allows a dome to sit on top of a square base) and the forty windows below the dome which creates its famed “mystiqal light”. To be perfectly honest, I did not find these to be of great architectural grandeur. In my uneducated eyes, the detailing as well as the architecture falls far below the architecture seen in India. Hagia Sophia had some other interesting artifacts like two huge greek marble jars made from a single piece of marble and two marble candles on either side of the Mihrab. The place also had a rather photogenic cat which kept on giving poses in front of the marble jars and kept the tourists entertained.

Just opposite the Hagia Sophia is the Blue Mosque or the Sultan Ahmed Mosque. It is known as the blue mosque due to the blue tiles on its top. It looked rather similar to Haghia Sophia and was interesting in parts. What I found amusing is that when we enter the mosque, the gatekeeper gives the visitor a plastic bag to carry the shoes and for women, a cloth to cover their head. Both of these articles have to be returned when we leave the mosque. It is, therefore, acceptable to carry the shoe with you when you enter the mosque and even when you sit for your prayers but you are not allowed to wear it!! Also, the head covering for the women was also merely a formality – most of the women were carrying it around their necks like a dupatta. Women clad in jeans or skirts or even shorts (not too many – a pity!) were allowed inside the mosque without any religious fanatic raising their eyebrows.
The area near these two mosques was known as the Hippodrome where chariot racing used to take place and was the centre of the then Byzantine civic life. It is now known as Sultanahmet square and is now the centre of Istanbul’s historical, cultural and touristic activities. It has got small eateries all around with unassuming but comfortable chairs and exquisite fruit juices. I have never tasted a better orange or pomogranade juice! There are also nice small street shops selling interesting souveniors and slightly bigger shops which sell carpets and bags. These shops make splendid “killing” of the tourist, with their friendly behaviour (they address every male tourist as “brrrotherr”), their apple tea (another unique stuff I tasted for the first time in Istanbul; wonderful!!) which is served the moment you enter the shop and unending offerings to choose from. One can spend hours roaming around this area and never get bored.
This area also boasts of some monuments of the old era – like the Obelisk of Theodosius, a bronze serpentine column and the column of Constantine. The Obelisk of Theodosius was an egyptian obelisk which used to be in front of the Karnak temple in Luxor (Egypt) and was brought to Istanbul in the 4th century AD. It is made of pink granite with hieroglyphics all over and reminded me of the obelisks which Obelix (the comics character from Asterix) used to carve. The bronze serpentine column is a green coloured eerie looking stuff with three headless snakes wrapped around each other. It had a sense of evil and reminded me of Harry Potter and the Basilisk in the chamber of secrets. There was also another obelisk which looked like a structure made of bricks which seemed to have developed damp all over!! There was also an octagonal German fountain in this area which had a flock of pigeons gathered around it to drink water!!
The Sultan Ahmed square also has the Basilica Cistern (Yerebaten Sarayi) – a huge underground chamber which can store water. It is supported by 12 X 28 pillars which have lights at the base of the pillar – giving it a very tasteful look. At the end of the Cistern, there are two pillars which has got the head of Medusa as the base. Surprisingly, the head of Medusa is rotated by 90 deg (i,e sideways) in one pillar and 180 deg (i.e upside down) in the other. They have not given any explanation to this but there were some signboards telling us about the legends of Medusa - the Gorgon who had snakes as her hair, who could turn people into stones by her look and who was killed by Perseus. Being a hard core 007 fan, I remembered that this cistern was shown in “From Russia With Love” where Bond and his contact in Istanbul uses this underground cistern to go near the Russian Consulate and spy on them!! I forgot to check where the Russian Consulate is in Istanbul but it is certainly not anywhere near this cistern. I heard that there used to be a light and sound show also in the cistern but this was closed when I visited this place. The cistern now has a small coffee shop inside which I did not get to explore.
I also had a brief look at the Topkapi palace which was walking distance from the Sultan Ahmed square. Topkapi gives a nice view of the Bosphoreous and was on my way back to the hotel. It also has a large number of museums which I could not cover partly because of lack of time and partly because most of them were closed for restoration. I took a long walk from Topkapi to the hotel along the Marmara Sea and could see the famous walls of Istanbul which were built to protect the city from invasions. They served their purposes till the gunpowder came after which, naturally, the walls could do little to protect the city.
And finally - the food. Turkish cuisine is extremey tasty and extremey unhealthy. I was told that the present generation of turks have become health conscious and the present food is no where near what they used to have earlier. The oldies were lamenting about the days when they exclusively used butter as against the now used olive oil. But even in its present form, the food will give shocks to any health conscious person. But ooh, the taste!! There was a dish called Laygana which is made with eggs and eggplant (and laced with oil ofcourse) which was to die for. They also have a dish called Meze made from mashed tomatos, onions, herbs which is normally to be tasted with Pita bread. I also tried plenty of Kebaps like Sis Kebap (Kebap made on skewers), Adana Kebap (charcoal grilled food), Beyti Kebap etc and found all of them to be very nice. Usually these are served with a herbed yogurd preparation. They also have a watery form of yogurd called Aryan – which was like a thick version of Butter Milk. For breakfast, we used to have bread with a white cheese called Peynir (sounds quite like our “Paneer”), atleast 3 types of olives and turkish coffee (awful stuff; tastes like mud). I also tried out some seafood preparations like Kalamar (squid), octopus etc and found them to be good. For sweets, they have Baklava, Helva (sounds like Halwa) etc which my friends used to swear by. I tasted a few morsels but uniformly found them to be too sweet for my taste. For drink, the turks drink Raki (a foul tasting liquor made from cloves which looks colourless but becomes white the moment you add water to it!!), Apple tea (delicious) and Turkish Coffee (no comments).
It was a nice experience but at the end of the day, it felt good to be back home.