Goddess, all

2003-04-23T05:17:00.000-07:00

Bengali food

Am feeling especially homesick, so here are yums straight from Ma's kitchen. These two are made from left-overs.

Daal pora, aka Burnt lentil soup
The authentic sizzling Bong taste that can only come from mustard oil.
Ingredients:
left over daal.
mustard oil.
Method:
take a thick bottomed wok and pour the daal into it.
put wok on fire.
let it simmer till all the water evaporates and the daal is just one step short of drying and cracking up. the bottom surface of the daal should have burnt to brown.
take wok off fire, scrape of burnt daal and scramble it around.
let daal cool.
sprinkle a few drops of mustard oil on the scrambled burnt daal.
make as many balls of daal as there are places at the table.
slit some long green chillies and plant one into each of the balls.
serve burnt daal balls hot or cold with plain white rice.

Aloor khosha bhaja, aka Fried potato peels
Excellent way to get rid of potato peels. Also possible with other thick peels, but none so tasty as potato.
Ingredients:
peels from potato used for some other dish. for better taste and more fun, leave a little flesh on while peeling.
thick paste (shouldn’t run) made of poppy seeds, water, chilly powder. add a pinch of turmeric powder if you like the taste. i don’t.
salt to taste.
enough oil for deep frying.
Method:
add the salt to the poppy seed paste.
coat the peels in the paste.
deep fry till a munchy golden brown.
Serve hot as snack with tea or drinks, or as a side dish with rice and lentils.

2003-04-21T23:07:00.000-07:00

Posts from another site

Today I decided to clean out and organize my web sites a little. I realized that though I write most on this blog, I also have some good posts on another web site I used to write on last year. That site was good, with lots of graphics and artwork, but I don't seem to get time enough to do that sort of work any more.

So I've decided to close that site. Here are the three articles I like most:

Made by others

The good thing about writing about myself is that it gives me a chance to write about others. Others whom I love and who make me what I am, whose thoughts and directions give me the characteristic that— take it or leave it— is myself.

I want to thank my father for giving me his love for books and his disregard for money— qualities that go together very well indeed except during the Calcutta Book Fair.

My mother taught me the value of fun activities like trekking and chatting and eating out, and defined my whole life philosophy on my 13th birthday by saying, "Don't look up at anyone. And, don't look down on anyone."

My younger brother Jeet possesses rare courage from the day he was born, and
when he was six days old I had made up my mind that I should inherit it from him. Jeet is also the restraining factor in my life— the trusting face that prevents me from piercing my navel and running away and becoming a sailor.

My aunt, who cooks and embroiders with as much style as she explains Apery's Constant, showed me that feminity and a razor sharp mind are not necessarily antithetical, and that it is not uncool to like to dress up and buy nice smelling stuff for yourself.

My friend's doberman Victory taught me a hard-hitting lesson one day when I looked into her face and realized that it is dignity of character, and not mascara, that makes the eyes look beautiful.

Lastly, I learnt from my erstwhile mentor at a previous job that a person can only advance in life by doing things NOW, and by doing things RIGHT. It is from him that I learnt the value of research and analysis, and he is the most unassuming person I ever met. I try and emulate him once in a while.

But despite, DESPITE all these beatific influences in my life, a majority of human kind calls me a stuck up, slovenly, money ferreting whatever who has a walnut for a brain.

I wonder where I get these characteristics from. It must be my me- genes, which scientists say are located to the left side of the brain.

And I have to confess; I AM a little left heavy.

Oh Mirror of Mine

My mirror is my best friend. Every morning, before I brush my teeth, I stand in front of the mirror for at least 5 minutes. I follow this habit strictly. I do this even when I wake up at 9:20 for the 9:30 am class. My mirror tells me many things. It tells me that I need a chin tuck, a nose job, a gold facial, a pearl lotion, an intensive ozone therapy. It suggests mystic-mauve eye lenses and beyond-blue eyeglasses. It exhorts me to try algae gel on my hair and SP2.6 on my lips. It informs me that my bare arms would look much better with some stick-on tattoos, and maybe I would forego lunch for a fortnight to buy some designer ones at …? And it kills me everyday with its frowns at my flab, and its suggestions of a multi gym.

I always listen to my mirror because it tells me the truth. It told me that I would look like Dolores Mary O'Riordan Burton if I cut my hair, and of course so I did. My mother said I looked like a widow. My best friend moved houses. My niece caught the flu. Only my mirror stood by me, and with its gentle smiles and silent applauds softened the rude words, the unfeeling glances, and the hoots of laughter. I look to my mirror for confidence and courage. People often whisper that I am an anorexic with behavioral disorders, but, who cares? My mirror tells me that one day I could have the neck of Nicole and the body of Bundchen, and- why not? All it needs is the purse of Turner, after all.

I have a dream. When I make lots of money, I will build myself a room with mirrors on the walls, ceiling and floor. I will sit in that room all day, wearing my little black dress and 6-inch shoes. In the evenings I will dab on a little rouge. With all the beautiful mirror people around, I can easily pretend that I am at a party, and have lots of fun with them. And then I can sleep for as long as I like, with no one to meet but my mirrors when I get up.

There is a very old English saying that the dog is man's best friend, but I much prefer having a good mirror around.

Calcutta- my crowded city

Many visitors to my city, Calcutta (its still Calcutta for most of us), complain that there is hardly anything to see there. They are both right and wrong. Right, because coming as they do from cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Pune and Lucknow, they do not 'see' those urban hallmarks that they are used to- modern architectural delights, mile after mile of shopping malls, automated underground car parks, diamond markets, beautiful people. And yet, they are wrong too, for you must possess the wrong pair of eyes if you do not find anything worth seeing in Calcutta.

Hate it or like it, you can't help noticing the Calcutta crowd. There are 11,200,000 people in my city. So, if you are out at, say, 10 am, be prepared to be tossed around in the surge of humanity, in which, unless you are experienced, you might not even find toe space to stand in. This is especially true for the bus services to the city center. Seven women clamor to sit on a seat meant for two, and this gives rise to a lot of imaginative language, like, "Sister, can you condense yourself a bit?"

But the same crowd looks pretty elsewhere. In the cultural arcadia of Nandan-Academy of Fine Arts-Rabindra Sadan, hundreds of youngsters amble around, singing, play acting, reciting poetry, putting up their easels to paint. Nandan, our avant-garde cinema hall set up by the late Satyajit Ray, has a very sleek auditorium, except that the chairs sometimes jump up and bang you at the back of the head- serves you right, I say, for sleeping during a movie.

Take the screening of Schindler's List in 1995. There were reports of stupendous crowds. To be on the safe side, I went to Nandan at 4 am to buy tickets and found a small queue of seven people. One bearded antel (that's a Bong word. It means 'creepy intellectual') wrote down my name on a long list. "What's that for?" I asked, "There are only seven of us here; who will jump the queue?"

"What about the 180 that have queued from last night and are now sleeping on the Victoria Memorial grounds?" he questioned right back.

The annual boi mela (book fair) at the maidan is also a good place for crowd watching. People travel 150 km from Durgapur to buy books, the red dust flies, there are 1,000,000 visitors, Tagore's music wafts from the amplifiers, and it feels wonderful to interact with book lovers, writers, and publishers. Legend has it that if you are caught stealing a book at the fair, you are quizzed rigorously to test your love for reading, and if you pass, well, you get to keep the book. One young chap tried to test this theory, but they never caught him- he was faced with the interesting moral dilemma of whether to keep the book or return it. (Being a dyed in the wool Bong, he took it home, read it, and returned it the next day.) The publishers are very understanding of this bibliomania. "We try to nab them of course," said one veteran publisher some years back on TV, but books are so expensive, those that love books have no other option but to steal."

And last, the Durga Puja crowd in my darling city is the happiest crowd in the world. For four days, the whole city forgets its worries, dresses up, eats out, and stays out all day and night, laughing, singing, and pandal hopping. On the fifth and last day we are sad, and cry, for our sister and daughter is going away for yet another year.

This is another emotion that the nonCalcuttans find difficult to comprehend. "Its just a clay statue, after all," is their opinion of my beautiful elder sister Durga. But- there again- they are wrong. For if they had the right kind of eyes, they could see the dimpled laugh lines at the corners of Durga's mouth, and the tear drops that slowly trickle down her cheeks when the women of the house kiss her goodbye.

2003-04-16T04:35:00.001-07:00

Kill the creatives

I am very angry with some of my colleagues who just don't realize the value of time. "I will give you the rest of the feedback in half an hour", a guy told me at 2:15 pm. As I write this, it is already 11:13 am the NEXT day. This same person has often promised feedback on Tuesday and not delivered them till NOW, and he usually replies mails three days after receiving them. Sometimes he (and I should be wrong if I do not mention that most of his team members also function his way) does not reply mails at all. This is because the guys don't usually READ mails at all. Another very important thing to note about the men is that they don't give you a reason for their delay. Ever.

This is one of those legendary 'creative' domains. In India, in the 'creative' IT industry, there is a feeling that the 'creative' people, consisting of visualizers, graphics and audio artists, and writers, are not party to the general social law of timeliness. Thank God for flexi timing!

It seems that if you know how to tweak around a little with SoundForge and Flash, and if you have published a four line poem in the local paper seventeen years ago, you are entitled to be 'creative'. You are entitled to walk around with an expression that says, "Don’t touch me I am CREATIVE." Doh. The thing is, so much has the myth about creative people being weird been spread and glamorized by civilization that any one who wants to find an excuse for not doing their work finds one in creativity. Doh. Doh. Doh.

2003-04-09T00:33:00.000-07:00

The Song of Solomon (3)

I am reading The Bible now, and I can only wonder at the loveliness of the language and the feelings that are expressed. The following passage makes me cry because of its beauty...

"On my bed during the nights I have sought the one whom my soul has loved. I sought him, but I did not find him. 2. Let me rise up please, and go round about in the city; in the streets and in the public squares let me seek the one my soul has loved. I sought him, but I did not find him. 3. The watchmen who were going around the city found me, "The one whom my soul has loved have YOU men seen?" 4. Hardly had I passed on from them until I found the one whom my soul has loved. I grabbed hold of him, until I had brought him into my mother's house and into the interior room of her that had been pregnant with me. 5. I have put YOU under oath, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the female gazelles or by the hinds of the field, that YOU try not to awaken or arouse love [in me] until it feels inclined."

2003-04-08T01:10:00.000-07:00

The girl from yesterday

The girl from yesterday is beautiful. She has a yarn for pretty clothes and smells. She is usually a working girl, but doesn't have a head for money. She is generous to a fault. She recommends crooks for jobs in inventory, backs morons to enter film schools, and lends her epilator and laptop to technically challenged women friends. She writes strong poetry (or has an awesome singing voice) but murmurs instead of talking. She keeps a blog but marks it private.

Towards the end of her faded human life, she doesn't speak at all.

She's mad for marriage. But, if she's married, her husband's cheating on her. If she's employed, her boss is writing out her pink slip. If she's on the bus, the men are unclothing her with their eyes.

She says there are many things she wants to do. "I want to ask the manager his reasons for not making me lead." "I want to begin a short story." "I want to enroll myself for Italian lessons." "I want to resign." "I want to give him an ultimatum." But she procrastinates. And even before she's done all these things, her manager has promoted an upstart over her, her writing skills have gone rusty, the Italian teacher has married and moved to Parma, she's been sacked, and she has been slapped by her boyfriend for being a slut.

Don't you see? She belongs to yesterday, and she isn't here anymore. She’s a wraith; and she’s got no power to retaliate against today. So today, the darned today that is young and new and so scared inside that it needs to do someone in to feel brave and worthwhile, does her in. Does her in by insulting her, laughing at her, ignoring her, so many times and in front of so many people that in the end she just shouts out in anger.

And then they call her mad. And divorce her. And sack her.

2003-04-06T21:44:00.000-07:00

Momentum? Fate?

Something is happening to me that has never happened before. When I read now, I notice things that I did not notice ever before. For example, I just finished reading "One flew over the cuckoo's nest." And just as I was in grips over the plot and the language, I was as much enthralled to see the structure, the sections one to four and how they were metaphors in themselves, the paragraphs, and the cold, hard flow of logic.

I am scared to even put in words what this might mean. All I know is, this is the third book for which this is happening... so it can't be a one off thing. Does this mean... finally?

I hope my God gives me strength and humility for whatever task He has in store for me. And I hope He has a task.

2003-03-27T07:08:00.000-08:00

Names of children's schools in Hyderabad

Ok, this is another one of those Cal-Hyd things I fail to understand but appreciate much:

The schools in Hyderabad have such wonderful names!!!! No, really!!!! I myself read in a school called Loreto Day School, Bowbazar. My brother read in a school called Calcutta Boys' School. My niece still reads in Calcutta Girls' School. My sister read in Gokhale Memorial High School. My friend teaches at Haryana High School. My father's friend's son reads at South Point High School. My mother... Ok.

In my state, the schools ALWAYS have unfunny names like these. But in Hyderabad- no ma'm, no! Here the schools are called Greendale’s, Blooming Buds, Gitanjali (an offering of songs), Little Hearts, Walk Your Own Way, etc.

So I lied about the last one. But the others are (more or less) true, leaning more towards the more. What do these schools look like? Looking at the half page color advertisements these schools often put in the papers, I find several things in common. They are situated outside the city. This means they have a 'city office' (like a brokers' firm). These schools are huge. They have 'lush green landscaped fields with options of tennis, swimming, football, judo, and wrestling.' There are hot and cold baths and a choice of meals. Teacher student ratio is 1: 20. In a country like India, it sounds too good and too ugly. How much do parents have to pay to get their kids into these places? How much money do the schools donate to voluntary causes? Do they have an open school for the poor? Do the children help out in old age homes?

I bet not. And even if they do, they don't unless they are featured in newspaper articles, presenting cheques worth 25 grand to the chief minister of the state.

The school I would really like to see is called La Meridian. Is it a school, or is it a hotel? The name is so intriguing. All I know about the La Meridian School is that it has a golden yellow school bus that takes children to school at around the time I come to office.

2003-02-16T04:32:00.000-08:00

What the heck!

I just received a troubled mail from my friend Prathibha in Bangalore. Now, Prathibha (or Prat, as we call her) is the sort of girl who is hardly ever ruffled. So I sit up and take notice when she is worried.

Prat works for a Bangalore based newspaper called "Vijay Times", as do a lot of my other class mates from journalism school. One of these class mates, who for some unknown reason has always had several axes to grind with both Prat and me, has alleged that Prat has passed on one of my previously published articles as her own. Yesterday, Prat had a day off at work, and this other woman spoke to several of their colleagues about this crime.

Amen to that. First of all, this other woman is being foolish. Anyone who knows how thick Prathibha and I are should realize that they are up against a wall if they are trying to create a rift between us. If Prat reuses my articles, she has my support. However, because our friendship is based more on respecting each other than on taking advantage of the friendship, Prat will never do something so gross as this. Nor will I. We will never do such a thing, whether to each other or to others. We both write passably well, and we are happy and at peace with our own stuff!

And, the very funny fact is: Prat is NOT reusing my article!!!!!!! She wrote it herself while at college! She was the Chief Sub Editor for our college newspaper for that issue, and she wrote two editorials on Valentine's Day. She reused one of these, which is a perfectly acceptable journalism practice, seeing that neither of them were previously published in mainstream professional journals or magazines.

What made the other woman rave and rant, I do not have a clue to. Possibly she wanted to tarnish Prat's smiling, happy, friendly, popular image. Well, she can't, nobody can, because that's what Prathibha really is.

I rang up Prat, and she seemed to be well recovered from the shock. She was watching cricket on TV, and she was just going in to clean and cook the chicken, she told me. We had a good catching up conversation and decided that we had done the other woman a good turn by allowing her a little anger at our expense. We decided not take any notice of her.

2003-02-03T06:02:00.000-08:00

Confirmed

I am now a confirmed employee of DigitalThink, Inc. For the last six months, I was on probation. Good going, what?

2003-02-03T05:57:00.000-08:00

Reading Camus

I read Albert Camus' "The Outsider" last week, and now I am reading "The Plague". Like many other books in my life, these two books, I can feel, are changing my life. Back in my home city, where the air and the clay breed culture and intellectualism, there is a common phrase that goes, "Coffee-house, Kafka, and Camus". This is usually followed by hoots of derisive laughter; the phrase being used chiefly for those intellects that make too much of a show of their prowess in that field. What we want to express with this phrase of ours is: you do not have to be sad, hopeless, cynical, and sit in dark, dingy coffee houses to be an intellectual. You can do just as well in the profession if you are cheerful and love human beings.

So I grew up with the idea that Camus was a high-browed author who was supercilious and that he misused his gift of writing to denigrate lesser mortals. How wrong I was.

"The Outsider", in which a man is sent to his death because he did not cry at his mother's funeral, was a revelation for me. How like me Camus thinks, I thought! And, as I thought so, I did not feel ashamed or guilty of equating myself with Camus. The author, I felt, would not mind me doing this. How compassionately he looks at the world. How tolerating he is of the follies and peculiarities of man. How observant he is of the little details of every day life, and how precious they are to him.

Not for him the glories of the Church. Nor for him the glamour of the government. Not even- for him- the wonder of nature, though he does talk of the nature of the small village and the small town with as much love as he does of their inhabitants. Camus talks of life as the faceless mass lives, and dies, and he shows the hero in the common man, the hero who is a hero chiefly because he does nothing great except living in the face of hardships and fate.

Some one told me that Camus is an existentialist writer. I do not know what that means. But, if it means some one who salutes the existence of the common man- Camus is an existentialist.

2003-01-28T20:11:00.000-08:00

Water In The Sky

listen as she speaks to you
hear the voices flutter through
the barriers arranged by you

close the shutters draw the shades
filter out the everglades
glistening with evening dew

thunder calls through waterfalls
rising tides and ocean walls
I can hear you when you sigh

listen as she speaks to you
hear the voices flutter through
watch them fall and let them lie

I can hear you when you sigh
through the water in the sky

-- Phish

2003-01-27T06:04:00.000-08:00

Met an old friend today

I met Aishwarya today. This is the girl who smokes like a chimney and writes sexy prose (and poetry possibly. I was never close enough to know that deep dark secret of hers). I always liked her, but she was often too much to handle, even for me. And she pretends more than she is- harmless childish- I know. But it sort of puts me off.

Anyways, it was a pleasure even to talk to some one cerebral and from the past. She is working now, but promised to call me up for a drink.

2003-01-24T23:31:00.000-08:00

Sirisha, Shafia, and Pallavi

As I sit on the first floor typing this out, Sirisha, Shafia, and Pallavi are eating lunch downstairs. They are very good friends. I work with all three. Shafia and Pallavi work with me in the Learning Strategy domain. Sirisha works for the Quality Engineering domain.

I had lunch with them too, and they asked me to stay back and chat awhile, but... I don't know. Sometimes I find so much peace in being away from my friends- feeling relieved that they are happy and chatting and laughing and that even if I am not there, they will continue to feel happy!

2003-01-24T06:54:00.000-08:00

A very corny love poem

You are in the city.
I even have a map to where you are.
Your friend gave it to me, saying, "Follow the directions if you want to come. Ignore if you won't."

I want to go.
I know you are there, looking gorgeous in your intensity, quietness, and smiles.
I also know you won't talk to me.

"A mere child," you had said.

I met you on Friday. "Hi," you called.
And then you went with another girl to withdraw money from the bank.

2003-01-24T05:53:00.000-08:00

My favorite colors

My favorite colors are blue, green, and brown. I have many pleasant and vivid memories of these three colors. I wear a lot of them too.

Green tops the list. Even the least poetic of us knows that green is 'feminine', the color of the trees and the woods, the color of fertility and life. I love looking at (and climbing) trees, and I also love growing and tending creepers, herbs, cacti, trees, and flowers. If the world was a desert and there was just one patch of grass on it, it would not be a very bad place for me to live in. It is strange, now that I think about it, that I like the leaves much more than the flowers on a tree!

Many of my favourite clothes are green in color. I have a little sleeveless top of moss green cotton now, with a half moon pocket in front and yellow embroidered periwinkles on the shoulders and on the pocket. It is very pretty. I also have a very tight moss green T shirt, and my friend Anju says I look like George, in Enid Blyton's Famous Five's Series when i wear it! Then there is this bright leaf green kameez I have, which I team with a sun yellow salwar. It never fails to cheer me up, and neither the people around me.

I used to have a bottle green double breasted salwar, with tiny gold and red flowers on it. I loved it very much, and wore it for six years. My first 'dress', so to speak, was also a dark leaf green in color, made of rough, hand woven cotton. It had little orange and yellow embroidered parrots, and looked best with an orange or a yellow shawl. I wore it for my eldest brother's marraige, when I was 16. It was only then I realised that boys look at girls when the girls look good.

Most of my present wardrobe is blue. I have blue skirts and shirts, several jeans, one blue sundress, blue suits and salwars, and many blue sarees. I even have some blue shoes and bags and jewelry and belts. My favourite blue dress at the moment? My flowered cotton mini skirt in blue and white, which I team with a white shirt and brown leather wedge heels. I am also wearing my faded blue 30" Wrangler jeans like second skin (my actual size being 26") for the second week now. My favourite blue dress through my life? My hand woven electric blue salwar suit, with high shirt collars and brass buttons. I loved the way it flattered my chest!

I love blue. This color, like green, fills me with hope and happiness. There is just this one difference, though not one that makes me like blue more than green- green helps me sleep. Blue helps me wake up. I need both.

And last and not the least, but third- brown. Not many people notice that brown is as feminine a color as green. Green trees wither and brown in winter. Rivers wash down fertile brown soil from the mountains. Leaves are green and stems and branches are brown. Walnuts, wood apples, potatoes, and apricots are brown. Green is a scrubbed school girl, and brown is her elder sister just gone to college.

I do not have a brown dress at the moment. I have a yellow and brown batik salwar back home in Calcutta, and some maroon shirts and kurtas, but nothing that is purely mud brown- rough, true, and see me in my true colors type.

So I must buy some brown clothes for me next month.

2003-01-23T05:32:00.000-08:00

An unbelievable day

Today, after maybe four months, I have had a work day in which I did not have work. I came to office early, and completed a lot of my work. Then Catherine and I sat down to discuss that, and all went well. She and I finalized it and wrapped it up in no time at all! Then... well then... I actualy did not have any work! Browsed a lot of my favourite eye candy sites- Claire's, naho, and of course, Kirsten's. They look as pretty and as effectively designed as ever. These sites, even though primarily meant for illustration, give me a lot of ideas on instructional design, which is what I primarily do for a living.

Why is that? First, they give me a very good idea as to what Flash can achieve. Second, they are often examples of crazy but effective navigation. A .5 cm square red box in one corner of an orange square? a dot that jumps in catch me if you can fashion across the screen? Very effective and exciting communication. The challenge for instructional designers being: how to textually transmit the energy and effectiveness of the dot? How to make 'red' text peep out of 'orange' background? If you are most comfortable in illustration sites, these instructional design tricks will come automatically to you. Or, with less effort than it does to the benighted ones.

Now that I have a little time, I am thinking of building, or extending, my web sites. A nicer blog, with graphics, perhaps. Or a site with some really good writing examples, not a daily diary, but some fiction, poetry, etc. And colors, and buttons, and icons, and illustration jobs. I have been writing so much that I want to draw for awhile now. I would need a little flash and swish, and I am also hoping to download dreamweaver.

Today I went shopping with Catherine. She is very, very pretty, and very shy and sweet by nature too. We went to Gurjari. She bought two salwars, and one really nice sea greeny cottony material for a summer dress. I bought a coral necklace and a string and bead belt for my jeans. Cath says I look like a hippie!

F>I>N>A>L>L>Y>!!!

2002-09-26T06:39:00.000-07:00

Bangalore

I just returned from a short Christmas trip to Bangalore. I love Bangalore. I do not feel lost and old and provincial in Bangalore as, for example, I do in Mumbai. I do not feel terribly superior (Delhi) or sinister (Calcutta). In Bangalore I feel like I am in a great big college where I can have fun all day. Bangalore is also better than college (though, to be very honest, I do not know if anything can be better than my college- Presidency, Calcutta) because now I work and earn pots of money and what better place to blow your money than in Bangalore???

As I was saying, I feel good in Bangalore. I know the city just well enough to shop all day, go and visit all sorts of old friends in ad agencies and webcomps and newspaper offices, and then have German lunch at Axel's restaurant high up, watching the city amble among jacaranda trees. The perfect Bangalore weather must play a very big role in this enjoyment.

Bangalore is also the place where Pratibha lives. Pratibha is my friend from J-school and she epitomizes Bangalore. She is hep and beautiful and clever and honest and daring and funny. She loves to spend money and eat out and shop and dance. Being with her is like being with a child woman, and your worries can go to hell!

Can't wait for my next trip down there!!!

2002-09-24T22:28:00.000-07:00

Automatic death

I swear l'll die in an auto rickshaw in Hyderabad. Remember Arturo Benedetto Cartofolli etc, the taxi driver in Herge's "The Calculus Affair?" Hyderabadi auto-drivers are of the same breed. In a way they are the finest, because their only aim in life is to drive to their destination. But when all 25,769 of them focus so single-mindedly at 8 am, the roads tend to get a little difficult to cross.

I am, of course, understating. The Hyderabadi auto-driver uses the horn to store his son's marbles. He has absolutely no requirement for a road (which I, driving challenged as I am, thought was a primary need); he can do his job on dirt tracks, dead ends, small animals, school children and road dividers just as well. He has around eleven mirrors hanging from the wind-shield, which he adjusts so that every angle of the passenger's face is reflected therein for him. And if the passenger happens to be a girl returning from the beautician, he looks back and smiles and waves at her (right hand) at a frequency of about twice per minute.

And another thing. The drivers here are absolute bloomers for directions. "Take the left turn and then go straight, brother," you instruct, overflowing with the milk of human kindness. He looks back, waves (right hand), and nods. And then goes straight and takes the second left turn and stops in front of the cemetery. "Here you are, sister," he announces, "right at the gate."

This, when your original intention had been to go the bank. As previously sworn, I'll die in a Hyderabadi auto rickshaw some day. Or, if that gets too difficult, I just might kill a Hyderabadi auto-driver or two.

2002-09-24T06:16:00.000-07:00

Alarming

As an weapon of mass destrcution, the alarm clock must rate even higher than the atom bomb. If I ever came face to face with the inventor of this gadget that robs millions of legitimately personal and blissful time, I would ask him why he did it. Did some one steal his wife, or did he have a very bad tooth-ache that day?

You sleep blissfully, covered by the green silk duvet your mom spent 36 days in making. Outside, the breeze blows like its Floyd. The incense has burnt itself down to sweet nothing. You smile a little in sleep, dreaming of handsome and honest men, of good food, heaps of money, a house by the sea, childhood friends, your home town, when, suddenly,

--WWWWRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!--

Its that stupid little cherry red hippopotamus alarm clock your boyfriend bought you last Valentine's Day. No wonder he's not your boyfriend any more.

As a rule, I like clocks. They are sometimes nice looking, and they are usually very cheap in India. They also keep time. My disgust for the alarm clock stems from (clever of you to guess) the alarm. When I am sleeping, I want to be woken up by a gentle touch, one that modulates its voice to go with my helpless sleepy state. Preferably by a mother or a sister or a niece or a girl friend. (No, I do not have this thing for being woken up by a hunk smelling of tobacco and me.)

But the alarm clock must always be punctual, and it must ruthlessly continue to do its job, permitting itself no diversion, no break, until it succeeds, or until it is forcibly stopped. In its working, it is similar to neighbourhood leaders, mediocre preachers, and spinster teachers who are so enthused by doing their job that they neither permit themselves nor others even a plastic fork's worth of stabbing at leisure. And, like such human beings, alarm clocks are also shrill, and they say the same thing over and over again. In fact, 'Same', 'Continue', 'Always' are operative words for an alarm clock.

The best way to treat an alarm clock is to do it (them, in this example) in like Hugh Grant did in "Four Weddings and a Funeral." Even if you have a million alarm clocks on your tea-table, waiting to scream you out of stupor and sloth into Christian virtues like work and the fulfilling of obligations, get up, methodically unwind the million, and go right back to sleep. People have successfully dealt with despots that way for ages.

2002-09-21T04:34:00.000-07:00

The Seven Sisters

We tear hair over the burning of Kashmir, while seven other states- Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya and Tripura- smolder in northeast India.

We Indians have an unreasonable way of treating the disturbed regions of our country. As we did with Kashmir, and look where it has landed us now. In Kashmir, the government followed a policy of stifling popular dissent with cushions of subsidies, grants and exclusive provisions that the rest of the country hadn't the luxury to enjoy- because unlike Kashmir, it was at peace. This had a two-fold effect- the small-state mentality grew and the Kashmiris thought their demand for secession was legitimate. We non-Kashmiris, who have been smarting from the non-inclusion on the subsidies list, naturally blame the Kashmiris for this, but the Government is equally at fault.

So also in the north east, where the situation is further compounded by the presence of myriad tribes, cultures, and sub cultures. The tribes are historically nomadic, and they have only a vague sense of territory. With rising populations, the struggle over homelands among the tribes is one of the biggest problems of the region, but New Delhi likes to think of the problem as merely international. An important cause for drug trafficking is the matriarchal system that is prevalent through much of the region, especially Nagaland. The men have little money of their own and still fewer skills, and they are forced to traffic to earn.

But the government formulates myopic policies like allocating over 90 per cent of the grants in 00- 01 (which amount to Rs 450 crore in 2002) to transportation and development of power and only 5 per cent to the development of human resources- so that the men learn of no new employment options.

Consider also the geographical and ethnological factor. Itanagar, the capital of Arunachal Pradesh, is more than 2500 km away from Delhi. Jammu, the administrative head of Jammu & Kashmir, is less than 550 km away. Add to this, natural calamities, mongoloid origins, prolonged social rejection, and the sense of belonging to the Indian nation naturally diminishes. Where is the representation of the northeast in our popular culture?? Where are the soaps based on northeastern life? Where are the food programs? Where are the cricket matches? Where are the cultural icons? Even in politics, the only person after Bordoloi to come out of that bamboo wilderness into India and make a mark was P A Sangma, back in the early nineties.

Doordarshan, the government owned national TV channel, transmits a north east special every morning- when the men have gone to work, the youngsters to college, and when the women have turned the set off to finish the chores. Like in every thing else in life, it's not the giving that counts, but also the thought behind the giving.

Foreign Ministry begs to differ. The Indian government is especially sensitive to the northeastern issue, it says, and Articles 244(2) and 275(1) of the sixth schedule are specifically meant for special administrative tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram, while Articles 371-A, B, C, G, and H are special provisions meant for Nagaland, Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, and Arunachal Pradesh. Ninety per cent of central assistance is in the form of grants; the region hardly has any loan burden. Per capita devolution of funds- both central and local- in some of these states is the highest in the country.

But what the government does not mention is that until recently local people were not included in governance; that it covertly set up one tribe against another; and did little to extricate the flourishing tea trade out of extortion and violence.

Little wonder that "chinky" (as the northeasterners are inclusively called by us other Indians, by a blanket term that owes its origin to "Chinese". As if people are alike merely because they look alike.) politically conscious students from Delhi tell things like "We are leaving India on the 28th and will reach Nagaland around the 3rd," just before their holidays begin.

The government also blames China and Pakistan for fomenting discontent in the north-east. But what of the proof that former Assam chief-minister Prafulla Mohanta's Ahom Gana Parishad had covertly supported the ULFAs during the late eighties? And what of army corruption that is little reported, but nevertheless present?

Now the government wants to bury the neglected people in a mountain of money, the more disturbed the area, the more the amount, as can be made out in the recent case of Arunachal Pradesh, where disturbance has recently started on the far border with China. Last year, Arunachal Pradesh received about 30 per cent of the total grants.

We need to involve local people, promulgate policy in keeping with the socio cultural subcultures, and make an active effort to adopt the mindset that the states are India, after all. Else resistance is going to continue. We fight a losing battle if we cannot control the enemy within.

2002-09-17T03:51:00.000-07:00

A pigeon's wings

I know a pigeon that has broken my bathroom window-pane with the flapping of its wings.

2002-09-13T03:10:00.000-07:00

KP

I want to know why we all like KP so much. Is it because he is so warm, and knowledgeable, and honest and humorous and idealistic; or is it that we all want to be known as people who have personally interacted with "one of the two reporters who exposed the alleged match-fixing scandal in Indian cricket in Outlook magazine"?

I like KP because he is so warm, and knowledgeable, and honest and humorous and idealistic.

2002-09-12T01:32:00.000-07:00

Third week in the Chelsea

- Jefferson Airplane

Sometimes I feel like I am leaving life behind
My hands are moving faster than the moving of my mind
Thoughts and generations of my dreams are yet unborn
I hope that I will find them 'fore my moving gets too worn
If only I could live to see the dawning of the dawn

So we go on moving trying to make this image real
Straining every nerve not knowing what we really feel
Straining every nerve and making every body see
That what they read in the Rolling Stone has really come to be
And trying to avoid a taste of that reality

On an early New York mornin' a mirror in the hall
Showed to me a face I didn't know at all
Lines were drawn around a pair of eyes that opened wide
When I looked into the mouth there was nothing left inside
So I walked into the little room and whistled like a sigh

As dawn light closed around me my head was still in gear
Thinking thoughts of playing more and singing loud and clear
Trying to reach a friend somewhere and make that person smile
Maybe pull myself away from that old lonesome mile
That often comes to haunt me in the morning

All my friends keep telling me that it would be a shame
To break up such a grand success and tear apart a name
But all I know is what I feel whenever I'm not playin'
Emptiness ain't where it's at and neither's feeling pain

Well what is going to happen now is anybody's guess
I can't spend my time at love I guess I need a rest
Time is getting late now and the sun is getting low
My body's getting tired of carryin' another's load
And sunshine's waiting for me a little further down the road

(for JJ, JD, Bumpy, and me)

2002-09-11T06:31:00.000-07:00

Hyderabad Blues

Some gawd awful girl in this world, who's stayed in Bombay, Poone, Bhopal, and Mysore before settling down in Hyderabad, told me an hour ago- "Oh everything goes in Calcutta."

I hope she never goes to Calcutta. She'd be puzzled to find that she doesn't go with Calcutta at all! My city could do without these intellectual cretins.

I am increasingly puzzled by the lack of sensitivity towards cultural issues among people in my age-group. This same girl also told me, "Please, please don't say I look like a Hyderabadi." What, pray, is wrong with looking like one? Hyderabad is such a pleasant city! (see first entry on goddessall.) It's got a rich Mughal history, just like Lucknow, and I personally am more intrigued by Hyderabad because, unlike Lucknow, its a southie city. The south, historically, has always resisted northern influences in India. And yet Hyderabad is such an amazing confluence of north and south Indian traditions- be it in food or language or dress. And being a small time city, its got a laid back pace, old world courtesies, and many quirks that I thought would be a welcome change for a person who's previously stayed in Bombay, Poone, Bhopal, and Mysore. And, as KP advised me 20 days ago, "A city is only what you make of it."

But- there you have it! She doesn't even want to look like a Hyderabadi. She would go fabulously with some girls at my last J-school, who happily said things like "Stop troubling about the north-east yaar, nobody even cares!"

2002-09-11T03:28:00.000-07:00

A rose in the dirt

I admire Jennifer Lopez. This might be inconsequential to most of you, but for those who know my "60's music is the best music" fetish, it might be one of those et tu moments. Rest assured, hippies! My taste in music remains as ever. But I respect Jenny as a sister, just as I respect Tina Turner and Madonna. (I also respect Alanis, but she probably doesn't qualify for this list.)

Jennifer is so strongly and proudly beautiful. Like all real beauties, she has the wonderous capacity to make mundane things around her look beautiful as well. Curlers look like tea-roses in her hair. Garcia Marquez writes of the bulges on her tummy. When she dances to the juke-box in I'm gonna be alright, oblivious to the world feasting on her legs, I can suddenly envisage how and where she grew up, and what part music played in her life. Imagine a little girl in a latino ghetto, with a mother hassled with children and overwork and infidelity, and a father the little girl hardly saw. Later in her life, to avoid the fondling and the gaze-letching, the little girl (she'll be a little girl till her last day) listened to music all day long, in the process earning the wrath of the over-burdened mother.

To me, little Jenny looks like she's first been scared completely out of this world. She turned back only when she reached the end, and then, only out of the animal instinct of survival, said- enough. And then she started to sing. See Jenny's eyes; they're anything but vaccuous, despite whatever Puff Daddy (ex-bf) and Eminem (ex-bf) have to say on this issue.

2002-09-08T23:38:00.000-07:00

My first blog, and other such nursery rhymes

This is my first blog entry and I really have so many things to write about that I don't know which to chose. Possibly I'll write about all of them. So be prepared for a deluge of writing. After IIJNM, I just can't stay without writing every day.

First, I withdrew money. Heaps. Though I didn't get the thrill of my first salary. I've gotten used to money, it seems. I am gonna blow it this evening. Which reminds me to write about my old friends back in Cal, at Aesthetic, who've lost their jobs. How could this happen? The brightest group of young people in Multimedia. I can't imagine people like JD, JJ, Kau, Kancha, and Sishu losing jobs in this world. They're the best!

All for the fault of one guy.

Anyways. The laws of the world are unkind.

I quite like my new job here at Hyderabad. But DigitalThink's not got the style of Aesthetic. The people look deeply conventional, and I wonder how they'd take it if they found me sitting in the back yard and smoking. Or boozing. Or discussing the intricacies of 'bhut bosechhe shiyore' with Upal. Or Coltrane with Mainak, for that matter. The boys are sweet (a quality I love only in dogs), and most of the girls have the usual vices (Shafia's a darling, though!). Give me Maari, Sneho, Nilu, Prats, and the amazing Punju pair of Roopali Gadgala and Mandeep Kaur Janeja any day. Give me even Mahalaya.

But- the perverse thing is- I don't seem to mind this lack of intensity. This absence of Calcutta grunge and Bombay beauty. I mean, I know that grunge is my past, my future, and my life, but-- don't you sometimes want to run away from life? Hyderabad and DT are my alter-egos. They put me at peace and I am amazed by the innocence and conventionality of the people around me. It makes me feel very at ease. This is the first time in my life that I've thought cooking an egg curry could be nearly as much fun as reading Toni Morrisson.

Apparently, my ascetic hunk friend, JD, is getting married. To Ananti. We had our little affair on the side, didn't we? I don't know whom to feel sad for in this menage-a-trois- JD, Ananti, or Mahalaya. JD's now in Rome. And Venice. And Parma. And Bologna. How are the women, JD?

Someone remind me to put up 'Third Week in the Chelsea' on the board.

And I've made up with my best friend, my brother Jeet. The kid now wants to go to Ivy League. Which is not difficult for him, I hope he goes.

And fucks all the mediocre people in our combined Flat 3C family life.