Short note on why I support caste-based census

For a very long time I was a typical urban-educated upper-caste twit who balked at the idea of Reservations (or was I just being what the economists call a Rational Individual?). Some time in the last decade I became convinced that in a massively unbalanced society like ours equity can only restored with the helping hand of affirmative action. I won't go into the details of why I reached that conclusion, but I am a supporter of reservations, although I have huge issues with how it is being implemented; I'd prefer it to be timebound, statistics-based and more importanly executed on economic rather than religious lines. However, we are where we are and in order to get to the claimed objectives, we should be able to measure what percentage of a particular caste benefits from the opportunity handed out to them. We need to compare the stats across castes, states and over time to evaluate the efficacy of this scheme . For all this it's important to document the numbers and I can't think of a better way than through that mammoth data-collection activity that we already indulge in. While a caste-based census carries the risk of perpetuating divisions in society, not collecting numbers is bound to lead to massive abuse and a total lack of accountability.

Having said that what really gets my goat is that I can't mark my religion as "none" on the census form.

Give me back my zero!

I hadn't heard of Joel Stein until I came across a piece he wrote for Time called My Own Private India. It was one of those pieces that make you prime yourself for a laugh or two, but you end up not even cracking a smile. After I finished wondering about the point of that whole piece, I did concede a belated grin; not because the commentary was humorous, but because it poked fun at Indians and that was going to elicit a lot of drama. We weren't going to dismiss this insult and move on, because our skin might come in different shades of brown but it's uniformly thin as muslin. We are a nation that took to the streets when Billu Barber was released because, well, it offended barbers by calling them barbers.

I was hoping for boycotts, statements of outrage issued from the highest diplomatic echelons, burnt effigies, garlanded donkeys. Inexplicably, nothing happened. Not even that customary, time-honoured email forward that says "17% of NASA engineers are Indians. Indians gave the world Zero...now go join this facebook page to register your protest". Just when I was going to give up hope some dude called Rahul Parikh appointed himself leader of the chest-beating orchestra and wrote this masterpiece in overreaction. His hyperbolic sign-off read "...the Statue of Liberty should shed a tear. And Mahatma Gandhi just did". Just to educate the ignorant Joel Stein, Mahatma Gandhi was our former minister of Trivial Pursuits and Hypersensitivity.

I have a feeling that 5 years hence, when the two authors read their respective pieces, Parikh will be the more embarrassed one.

Oranje

There are several things to like about the Netherlands. I love the dutch language. I really like Amsterdam (there's a lot more to that city than nudge-nudge-wink-wink). Apart from one incident when a dutchman, having caught me leaning against his car -I was doing that to stabilize my camera- called me a "Pakistani" (totally diluting the intended insult in the process), the people there are universally sweet and pleasant. On occasion they've showered me with a lot of adulation. But perhaps my favourite thing about the Netherlands is their football team.

I fell in love with the Oranje when that old show on DD called "The World of Football" featured Johan Cruyff and his brand of Total Football. Even in those grainy video clips the fluid movements of the players in orange was as trance-inducing as a space cake in an Amsterdam café. The addiction has lasted a long time. My fanaticism continued when I was in high school although the only thing I knew about dutch football was what I learnt from the backs of the sport cards that I got free with Champ chewing gums. Even with that limited exposure I was a fan of Ruud Gullit and Marco Van Basten. Later on, I continued to follow them through the reporting in the Sportstar. That magazine also gave me a Dennis Bergkamp poster that adorned one of the walls in my room.

Even after I outgrew sport cards and posters, I continued to root for them in every single competition. While watching football in the pubs I remember passionately making a case for my favorite dutch players; Zenden, Overmars, the De Boer twins, Seedorf and so on. Even now I retain an affection for the Robbens and the Sneijders that's as illogical as the passion for one's own team. While I make this post, Spain and Germany are fighting for the right to play against the dutch. Both these teams look better than the Netherlands, but my loyalty is unconfused.

D*** of the month - Joe Barton

I accompanied S-man on his trip to the RTO, where, when we were not rebounding from desk to desk, we were being made to wait for no other reason but that one sadistic clerk wanted to assert his dominion. After an experience like that I invariable turn libertarian and I want the government to get out of my way. I do see merit in that argument; the government's role should not be to entrench itself but to setup structures so that it can render itself redundant. But for taking that idea to an absurd extreme, I give you the d*** of the month, Joe Barton.

The BP oil spill has screwed up a huge water body, several beaches, numerous livelihoods and countless birds. After that disaster, the first decent thing that BP has done is to agree to spend $20 B on those affected by the disaster. But before they could put that money to use, Barton, Texan republican and member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, had this to say to the CEO of BP Tony Hayward when the latter appeared before congress
"I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation (BP) can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case, a $20 billion shakedown, with the attorney general of the United States. But I apologize. I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong is subject to some sort of political pressure..”

Thank God we'll never let something like that happen in India. Right?

Lessons in Journalism - The Story of Pothan Joseph

Link to the book.
The stories from the indian struggle for independence can never bore me. Between sepoys rebelling, folks walking to the sea to make salt, young men lobbing grenades into the parliament, intellectuals building armies in exile, there's enough to keep a reader entertained for eternity. Yet I can't help feel that our popular history texts trivialize the characters turning them into single-layered cardboard figures, and reduce the happenings to a Ramayanic good-vs-bad narrative. There were a bunch of other visionaries who played their part; through their letters they shifted the consciousness of an empire and chronicled the goings-on for future movements to emulate. Pothan Joseph, one of the stalwarts of that tribe, offers an exhilarating study. Joseph edited dozens of newspapers and was directly responsible for the Hindustan Times, the Indian Express, and the Deccan Herald to rise to such heights. Joseph's body of work, of which I was woefully unfamiliar till I read this book, is a rich collection of some of the most inspiring stories of the Independence movement. Along the way you meet some unheralded characters; freedom-fighting brits such as Annie Besant and B.G.Horniman who challenge our predilection for an indian-good-english-bad outlook, pathbreaking journalists such as Khasa Subba Rao and Frank Moraes. Most revelational for me, however, was the introduction of a fresh dimension to the well known protagonists - Gandhi, Jinnah, Sarojini Naidu, Rajaji etc. not as freedom fighters but as journalists and media managers. One of the most enjoyable biographies I've read! Be warned that at the end of the book, especially after you read the appendix containing reproductions of Joseph's articles, you might feel disdain for the Indian print media in its current form.

Notes from the Thanjavur Trip

* I remember that the Bruhadeshwara temple had taken my breath away when I saw it for the first time nearly 18 yrs ago. Later, I learnt that the top dome on the tower is a single stone weighing 80 tonnes - the Cholas built a 4km ramp to move that stone to that height. I visited the temple again this weekend, and I must say it's one of the most awe-inspiring structures in this country.
* They should send all the cooks from all the Shanti Sagars in Bangalore to Thanjavur for an idli-sambhar making course.
* It was my first journey on a sleeper bus. Before the bus started moving, the berth looked exactly like those on trains. From the start of the journey, however, dealing with all the haphazard movements due to the bends in the road, the roadhumps, the bad driving, and the torque shifts that accompany gear changes made it one uncomfortable experience.

Keeping the Small-talk holster handy

R & M hadn't seen each other in a while before they met in the elevator car. "Hey R". "Hey M". It would have been perfectly ok to end that conversation right there. It would have been acceptable etiquette to spend the remaining 15 seconds staring at the LED numbers. However, R said "How are you?". "I'm fine", M replied. That would have been yet another place to put a logical end to that exchange. Just 5 more seconds to go. But R chose to prolong it "Anything special going on?". "Nothing much really". After this there were only two ways in which this could have ended well. The elevator could have stopped and exactly one of them would get out mumbling a hurried "Catch you later". Or R, as the initiator could have come up with an interesting enough leading question. The weather, the evergreen fallback, was out of question because when you are in an elevator you tend not to be sure what it is like outside. Faced with the lack of ideas, R got too busy rueing his poor judgement at having dragged this little interview too long. As it turned out, they just stared at each other awkwardly and went their separate ways after an interminable journey to the top floor. Both will remember this the next time they meet. That lack of closure will cause a discordance that will linger on, especially for R. Several potential topics flashed through R's head while he was walking away from the lift lobby. He can't wait to meet M again so that he gets a chance to erase this memory with a complete conversation. Until then he'll stow the burden away in a dark corner

Auto-wisdom: Love is poison

I like to blog more than I like to tweet, because I find the 140 character limit severely restrictive. I have enormous respect for people who can pack a pithy punch in almost no words. That's probably one of the reasons why I am so fascinated by the wisdom on auto rickshaw hoods. Each one of those aphorisms tells a story that goes beyond the words. Like this one above ("I suck at spelling!")

Anyway, every once in a while, there comes an auto-rickshaw driver who plays on a stage much bigger than the one destiny picked for him. Then the hood is not expansive enough as a canvas. And the result is this most endearing website. If the "My Friends" page doesn't make you smile, you're probably clinically dead.

Sunfeast 10K - Third Edition

I finished the Sunfeast 10k in 55:07. The good news is that my rank was 447 for the category I ran in. The bad news was that I was at least 3 minutes slower than last year. And then the deeply humbling news was that the winner of the competitive format completed the circuit in half the time that I needed.

The Zenrainman Museum

Zenrainman's house qualifies for a sustainability museum. It looks radical enough from the outside, and then the inside wows you further but the rooftop finally drops your jaw and temporarily stops your breathing.

Here's the living room; the suspended lights are all powered by solar energy. Notice how well this room is lit without the lights being on. Notice also, that there are no ceiling fans. Having visited the house on a hot forenoon, I can testify that you don't really miss the fans.


We then move into the kitchen area. This piece of groupie-gloating-trivia has nothing to do with sustainability, but that sturdy little cycle you see in the pic was presented to Z by Angela Merkel.


And finally, the roof holds all the, if you'll excuse the cliché, pièces de résistance. This is where all the water is harvested and reused in ways I hadn't imagined was possible. On the roof is grown vegetables, chillies and, hold your breath, rice. Hold your breath again, 40 kilos of it, in a year!

The water runoff from the washing machine is caught here and purified using a plant called cattail that captures all the phosphates from the detergent and leaves the water pure enough for irrigation. Notice in the picture below, a glass bottle in which rainwater is being UV-treated (naturally) so that it becomes potable in a day or two.

There are other ways in which the water is stored and reused. Each of the containers has a story to tell. This one for example houses guppies so that mosquito larvae don't breed in the stagnant water.


If all this strikes you as an extreme way of life, you should thank your stars that I didn't feature the lavatories. As for me, I think I just saw what my dream home would look like.

Malleswaram goes Tirupati

"Bangalore's decade old dream is realized" says the head priest. We are getting our own version of the Tirupati temple, right in my own neighborhood. I would have had no major problem with this development if not for how badly this new construction is going to affect the quality of my own life, especially the traffic situation around here.

I shudder, because Malleswaram has been victim of this kind of indiscretion quite often in the recent past. First was haLLimane, a restaurant that made life hell for the residents on 3rd cross. More recently, it was that monstrosity of a mall that made traffic unbearable in a radius of at least a kilometer and is almost certainly going to cost the lives of all the beautiful rain trees that line Sampige road. Now it's this temple on 16th cross. But I don't want to be irreverent enough to mention a mall and a temple in the same breath. They are of course different. One of them is a symbol of splurged money, disregarded building codes and a harbinger of horrible traffic jams, and the other is Mantri mall.

Notice how these always seem correlated, that in countries with abject poverty and pitiable infrastructure, there live gods with obsessive compulsive disorders. This particular god apparently loves gold. He's just been established here, but I'm sure that in no time, he'll have a throne, crown and a sanctum all made of gold. I guess, if I overlook the ecological cost of digging out gold, you could say that a deity's lifestyle choices are none of my business. But what justifies the problems of traffic in what was thus far a peaceful residential area? Those truly awesome laddoos, perhaps?

Football World Cup is here!

Picture source
The football world cup is here. I'm thankful that there won't be HSBC Corner Kicks, no British Petroleum Slick Goals, no Goldman Sachs smart Substitutions. I'm glad there won't be advertisements while players are writhing on the pitch. I'm marginally pleased there will be no cheerleaders. I'm happy that there will be no stupored population so thrilled with the gladiators that they'll excuse the basest and wilest of their masters' orgies. I'm looking forward to not having to spend every lunch break of mine talking about the previous night's game. Most of all I'm relieved that Ravi Shastri and Sunil Gavaskar won't be getting wet in their panties and squealing "There's the boss!" every time the camera spots Sepp Blatter in the stands. And I'm glad that after the mayhem we won't see the circus again for another four years. Ah! Innocent times. Relatively, at least.

Masinagudi again

I visited Masinagudi for the fourth time. Thinking about the other times I've been there almost made me shake my head in disbelief about how different life turns out from what you imagine. It would have felt like four different births if I hadn't chronicled one of them right here on this blog. But some things don't really change. The wildlife still looks very healthy


This black mongrel called Goonda still stands sentry at Jungle Retreat.


...and this weird tea maker that you will not find any where else but in Tamil Nadu still rules.

Auto Wisdom

Social commentators have relied on several indicators to get a taste of the zeitgeist; google search trends, metro-station graffiti, twitter tags, lavatory engravings and so on. I think there's another neglected source that gives a pulse of my city; the slogans at the back of auto-rickshaws. Social indicators or not, they are bloody amusing and here's the first of what I hope to be a series.

Solitary Reaper

He lives alone on a faraway farm, hedging his bets on an obscure system of agriculture called Analog Forestry. He's not quite a Christopher McCandless in his rejection of civilization as you're likely to find him bent over a laptop in his cozy little house that was built a full 150 yrs ago. His social isolation is also not total, for even today he was visited by a bunch of students that wanted his counsel on various projects that they were doing. Moreover, he's got a pet too, and a very unusual one at that; a charming old stray horse! Yet, there is some uncomfortably melancholic wisdom that hangs around him that almost makes me scared. The feeling is a simultaneous hybrid of "this is how it's meant to be" and its exact opposite. I have a feeling that my friend, LCN, is going to turn into a legend.

Lost and Found

I forgot my bag in a crowded part of Cubbon Park for close to a couple of hours, and found it right there when I came back looking for it. Here are some theories
* The dull green colour served to camouflage it.
* People's paranoia about unattended luggage ensured that nobody ventured near it.
* The park was so crowded that there was always someone near it, and hence people didn't realize it was unattended.
* Maybe my pessimism about people is unfounded.
* The universe was feeling extra benevolent to me.

Eureka moments on Bangalore water

Today was earth day. We were surrounded by the endless motifs of lost-cause-ness that modern environmentalism brings to the fore. Even the prescriptions of those little constructive mini-steps -such as biking or recycling- are depressing in their insignificance. Every new finding, every new study, every new insight seems to just add to the cynicism. That's why it's always a little brusquely surprising when some data proves that things may not really be all that screwed. These are some of my favorite eureka moments from the several water related discussions we've had over the week.

* I always thought that we were irresponsibly draining our aquifers, and that underground water was drying up faster than we can hope to replenish. Turns out that that's not the case. In some parts of the city, like in several other modern cities in the world, the water table is actually rising! The reason for this, however, is not so encouraging. We lose a large portion of water in the distribution network (upto 40% if you believe some stats). That combined with the seepage from all the sewer contributes to the rising levels in ground water.

* I've always considered that one of the perquisites of living in a western country was the potable water that gets delivered in every tap. That seemed to me like the ideal to aspire for. I am being forced to reconsider. Considering that only about 1% of the water delivered in all the taps is actually used for drinking, all the remaining water has to needlessly go through the really elaborate purification routines. It's like using your aquaguard water to wash your car! The western system might be unsustainable in the long run. The method of localized purification that the Indias and the Chinas have adopted, where only the water meant for drinking is purified, might just be significantly more energy-efficient.

* I always thought that using ground water was an undesirable but unavoidable fallback option, when the state administration is not good enough to organize a proper distribution network. Turns out, with a proper replenishment infrastructure in place, individual borewells might be a lot more efficient than centralized distribution. It costs Rs 37 per kilo liter to get water from the Cauvery, and only Rs. 3 if you get it from an open well (and roughly about Rs.8 for a borewell).

Glad everything's not lost yet.

IPL

Picture source

Test cricket, one of my favorite forms of professional sport, is surely going to be a victim of Twenty20. We're soon going to see the end of the richly layered plots, the idea of the honorable draw, the triumph of aesthetics over competition, the epic demonstrations of concentration and perseverance, and all those other archaic values that Tests used to symbolize. Yet I'm not in favor of artificial intervention to keep something alive just to keep purists happy. Despite my allegiance, I admit test cricket is a waste of time. But the death of tests is not the only cause of my T20-anxiety.

I recently had the chance to moderate a group discussion on whether the IPL is beneficial to us or not. Unfortunately, given the shortage of time, the group never really scratched the surface. The advocates talked about the increased employment opportunities, the unquestionable recreational value, the very visible CSR gestures and so on. The detractors brought up the ethical issue of the misplaced resource allocation (should we have power cuts at the cost of the IPL games), the loss of productivity, the grossness of the expenditure, and the extent of commercialization.

For me, there are other issues that I'm struggling to make up my mind about. I see people spend all their energy talking and tweeting about the IPL games. A bulk of the lunch table conversations that I overhear in office are related to the previous night's games. How does the cost of this misplaced (IMHO) passion compare against the purported "psychological benefits"? Are there studies that analyze if massively popular sport movements like the IPL revitalize the economy or further concentrate wealth in the hands of a few? What about the power of the IPL in forcing even the normally sane Tharoor to resort to such jingoism and waste his time on something that's not closely relevant to his ministry or his constituency? Chomsky summed my apprehensions in "Manufacturing Consent" .

"...sports -- that's another crucial example of the indoctrination system, in my view. For one thing because it offers people something to pay attention to that's of no importance. That keeps them from worrying about things that matter to their lives that they might have some idea of doing something about. And in fact it's striking to see the intelligence that's used by ordinary people in [discussions of] sports [as opposed to political and social issues]. I mean, you listen to radio stations where people call in -- they have the most exotic information and understanding about all kind of arcane issues."

Right now I don't have the answers or the data and I'm probably taking this issue too seriously. However, for me, T20 is guilty until proven innocent. I'm sticking with my boycott.

Emerging Leaders - People Leadership

Picture source

The most recent leg of the Emerging leaders program was titled "People Leadership". Over 4 days spread across two weekends, we touched upon "Negotiation skills", "Doing business in intercultural settings", "Organizational Politics" and so on. Note-worthy moments from this module
* Watching "Twelve Angry Men" as a study of negotiation. I can never have enough of that movie, although I wish Prof L.Prasad had given us more time to discuss the movie.
* We played a game called "Lost at sea", in which the participants are required to arrive at a consensus on the things to carry on a hypothetical raft soon after their hypothetical ship starts to sink. Among other things, I learnt that a mirror is a very useful attention-drawing prop. Since the whole discussion was video-taped I also learnt a lot about myself. That my diction isn't as clear as it sounds in my head. And that I touch my nose a lot. Body language experts interpret that as a sign of lying. I still insist it's hay-fever!
* Prof. Alexandra Benz's lectures on intercultural settings was fascinating. She was like Russell Peters without the irreverence. I can't think of any other person who can say things like "Indians have poor thought-word-action consistency. They don't say what they think, and seldom do what they say" and still make it sound non-threatening.
* The most intriguing part was a session by a famous male Kathak dancer who brought us his insights on how to connect to an audience. I spent the first 15 minutes fixated on observing how effeminate the guy was. And then he performed! All his failure to make us see the virtue of connecting to the transcendental in our own chosen vocations was forgotten when he started to make the floor thunder with the foot-tapping. He even coaxed us into dancing a bit towards the end. In a matter of minutes he had roused a bunch of self-important wannabe leaders and set them shaking their legs silly. He needn't have said a word.

Fishing in the Bhadra

For several years, I flip-flopped on the subject of vegetarianism, because I was never convinced about the reasons to relinquish meat. The every-animal-has-a-soul didn't make the cut. Cholesterol didn't discourage me too much. The cruelties of industrial scale husbandry was out of sight from my conscience. Finally, after a lot of reading on the subject, I was completely convinced that if every person on the planet turned to meat, we'd be screwed real bad. Too much of the meat that we eat was coming out of unsustainable ecosystems. I'm now convinced that any food grown without giving nature a chance at replenishment is going to cost us a lot in the future. The stewardship argument had finally pushed me over the edge into vegetarianism (not that farming was being done in a sensible way!).

Last weekend, I visited a fishing camp on the banks of the Bhadra river in Chikmagalur, where they practise a model of stewardship that I'd like to see in every goddamn part of the world that man inhabits. People are allowed to catch for their daily means but large-scale fishing is completely prohibited. The river is closed for fishing during the spawning season. The result of this is that the fish population in the river remains a constant, and the other predators that depend on the fish also thrive. If only you could teach the Jap whalers to take care of their waters like this. Anyway, since the stewardship was firmly in place I decided to indulge. Peter, our host, cast the net and in no time we had a handsome 2 kilo Karnataka Carp.

While walking back with the fish strung to a water weed stalk, I watched it flail about, and gasp for breath. I never thought fish are able to make noises, but this one did. Just when I allowed myself to feel relief that it had finally died, it would garner enough reserves for one more thrashing of the tail. In the end, it returned to me in a plate as one of the tastiest, non-smelliest fish dishes I've eaten. Yet I still can't take the image of the struggling carp out of my head. It's official, I'm a sissy!

Did you know? The Deaf Applause

When deaf people need to show appreciation, they wiggle their hands over their heads. This visual applause is called the Deaf Applause.

Airline Etiquette

The steward announces over the PA system "Please remain seated and do not switch on your phone until the seat-belt sign is turned off". I ignore that, because I'm busy fetching my bags, all 3 of them, from the overhead compartment. I snigger at the advice on the mobile phone because I never bothered to power my cell-phone down in the first place. I've traveled so many times without turning it off and not once has my flight crashed. That's proof enough for me that the rule is an unreasonable one.

While I'm waiting impatiently for the doors to open, I'm in the aisle in ready position calling all my dear ones telling them loudly that I've landed. As soon as the doors open I need to push, shove and even climb over my co-passengers so that I get into the shuttle as quickly as possible. I know that there is no point in hurrying because we will all meet each other at the luggage carousel, but I have important business to take care of. I need to get there so that I can help construct a wall of trolleys that will put the conveyor belt out of reach of the stragglers among us. Once that is done, I twitch uncomfortably while those standing behind me helplessly watch their bags go round and round.

The bags take very long to arrive. I curse the system before heading over to the parking lot. There I leave my trolley where it can inconvenience maximum number of people and head home. That took longer than the duration of the flight. Did you say I'd be better off if I cooperated and not acted like airline checkout was a race? Who do you make me out to be, Chinese??

My experience with the consumer court

Roughly two years ago, to the day, I bought a very nice-looking couch set from a reputed outlet in Bangalore. It was fantastically comfortable. Its awesome coziness drastically reduced the net metabolic activity of the household because you just couldn't help being a sloth when you came in contact with it. It made me so lazy that even my cat, who only woke up for his two daily meals, was ashamed of me. The couch served us wonderfully for a full year. Which is when the warranty ran out. Which is when my story begins.

It was almost like the sofa came with an embedded smart-obsolescence module. Almost on cue, at the beginning of the new calendar year, the upholstery started to peel off. I duly called the customer support and they duly ignored me the first dozen times. Persistence paid, eventually, and their executive came over, surveyed the situation, almost apologized, and claimed he could replace the upholstery in less than a week. Before I could thank him, he broke the good news. He expected me to pay - Rs. 13,000 no less- for the new upholstery, because, well, the warranty had expired. But rest assured, said he, for the new upholstery came with a one year warranty. I hadn't seen that coming! I gave him sufficient time to catch the irony himself before I asked him if the new couch will moult too, at the end of the year. He gave me a dismissive smirk, like he had never heard anything more ridiculous, and left.

That's when I enlisted the long arm of the law. With the help of my awfully smart lawyer, I sent a legal notice with generous invocation of section 12 of the Consumer Protection Act. Life changed almost the very minute the courier delivered the letter to the sofa company. My skepticism about the legal processes in India were laid to rest when the representatives started calling me more frequently than my girlfriend ever did. They wanted to know when they could come over and take the sofa away and give it its new skin that it so richly deserves. As I write this, my sofa is getting new upholstery at the company's expense, and it's admittedly too early to celebrate. Yet, I feel all-powerful, as if I just discovered that I had super-powers. This morning, a regular Bangalore driver cut me off on the inner ring road, and I swear, my first impulse was to send him a legal notice.

Who's blind?

Bank Executive: Ma'am, I'll need your visiting card along with your payslips.
R: (hands it over) here you go.
Exec: Can I have another one?
R: How many do you need?
Exec: I need a proper one, this one has holes.
R: That's my name and number in braille.
Exec: I don't know that ma'am. I want something without holes.

R & I have alternately laughed and felt outrage at the executive's ignorance. From today, after we used that anecdote to good effect in delivering a difficult presentation, we feel nothing for above bank executive except gratitude.

Pet peeves

* Traffic behavior - Green by Induction: This is when vehicles assume a green signal for themselves because the vehicle ahead of them got a green. Very similar to how when you are pouring honey out of a bottle, one continuous viscous thread of honey keeps falling out even after you have willed it to stop. Similarly, one long chain of vehicles always has to keep on moving after the signal has turned red, as though all of them are part of one unbroken chain of vehicles joined at the bumpers. During peak hours, the last of the offenders usually end up stopping right in the middle of the intersection.

* Music: If you pluck out Nickelback's lead singer's vocal chords and examine them closely I'm sure you'll either find a stray splinter or a torn diaphragm. Whenever their songs come on the radio I feel like clearing my throat on his behalf.

* Impostors: Can people please stop calling Shakuntala Devi a mathematician?

* Mourning: I liked Vishnuvardhan. For a few hours after watching Suprabhatha as a kid, I thought it was cool to be a Petrol Pump attendant. I was sad to see him go. How does it give me an excuse for vandalism and arson? Here's my request to movie stars; please don't die, just walk away into the sunset. More coherent rant here.

Reading in 2009

There was a time when I read like there's no tomorrow. "Reading" wasn't just a hobby, it was an absolute life-necessity. To not read was to admit a failing. When I met people I registered life-long prejudices against them depending on whether they read the "right" kind of books, the wrong kind or not at all. I got along great with other readers because after all there are so many things to talk about; Ulysses is so pretentious, you don't get the same satisfaction reading on an electronic device, oh I have a huge library, here's my top 5 favorite books ever, that guy there is a Dan Brown lemming and so on.

So I continued to claim to be a reader, sometimes added that hatefully overused adjective "voracious". I brandished it around like a badge every chance I got, in small talk in parties, Web 2.0 profiles, resumes, everywhere! This year I decided to put my religion to the test and kept a log of everything I read. And here's what I managed to do in an entire year!

* The Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Reading)
* The Leadership Challenge (Didn't complete)
* How the Mind Works - Steven Pinker
* Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
* Chomsky Reader (Didn't complete)
* The Comfort of Things (Didn't complete)
* The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson
* Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates
* Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
* Plan B - Lester Brown
* Red Queen - Matt Ridley

Seven complete books in 365 days! Time to find me a new cult.

Avatar

The only thing wrong with Avatar was the Pandora horse. What are the chances that in a distant planet, evolution would have thrown up another equine beast of burden that looked exactly like our own horses but had two bonus appendages? There was some shoddy lack of creativity there.

I start my review of Avatar with that nitpicking because I want to deliberately temper my absolute infatuation for this movie. With most good movies I walk out of the hall and get rudely jolted back to real life when I walk out of the exits (which for some reason, are universally grimy and non-slick) . With Avatar, however, a full three days have elapsed and I've still not been jolted out. I wanted to gush over how brilliant an allegory it is for harmonious living and for current state of international politics, the wars in particular, but most of what I wanted to say are covered by three other commentators/reviewers that I happened to read; Ebert, Berardinelli and Kunstler. I won't repeat them. What does merit repetition is my strongest recommendation to go watch it.

Fuzzy Logic

Fuzzy is the god of spontaneity. Here are just a few things he did in one calendar day. He invited random people on the street to N's sister's wedding because, well, he thought they looked like good neighbours. At the wedding hall, he got up and danced when the nadaswaram band started playing. He stood right in the middle of traffic on dispensary road and performed an elaborate arm-waving ritual just to gather my attention.

In the past he's done crazier things. He's crossed Cubbon road in an exaggerated slow-motion action just to make a point to a driver who honked unnecessarily. He stood in the middle of the Westside store in Forum mall and shouted out, at the top of his voice, the names of his friends because he didn't like them dispersed so much. I could go on, but right now I'm thinking about why he does these things. It can't be attention deficit syndrome because he grew up as the youngest kid in an enormously affectionate family. It can't be because of his confused lineage; he's got afghani, pakistani, Indian and english blood flowing in him. It can't be that he's trying to make us aware of intangible social rules by deliberately breaking them, because he's never been guilty of such intellectual pretensions.

Frankly I don't know what makes him tick. I do know that when he's around the texture of all our lives are a little different. It's a shame that he lives in a distant island called Maldives and is probably not likely to return until the sea has completely claimed that country. Come to think of that, Global Warming doesn't seem so bad after all!

Koramangala Smartvotes

If you live in Koramangala and/or want to be part of a remarkable political experiment, read on. Inspired by the example of Adolf D'Souza's election as an independent citizen councilor, Smartvote is attempting to bubble up a citizen candidate for the upcoming BBMP election in Koramangala. I've explained the process in my post on praja. This movement requires a lot of help in co-ordination and campaigning. Please do reach out to the folks mentioned in the poster if you want to help out.

I happened to go on the door-to-door campaigning once and it was eye opening. Firstly it was very uplifting to watch how active resident associations are in Koramangala. While each of these groups have done very good work in their own isolated turfs, this campaign is networking them, and making them huge pressure groups that politicians can't afford to ignore. In places like the 3rd block, everybody seems to know everybody else, something that you hardly see in Bengaluru these days. Surprisingly, everybody is informed about and geared up for the local elections too. I'm convinced that there are models in play here that can solve the upper middle class apathy and resignation that plague most other constituencies. While every educated person is talking about how useless it is to vote, it's a pleasure to meet all those passionate people putting in that much effort and time to solve a problem that, by most people's estimation, is unsolva

Stick no bills!

A few weeks ago, BBMP came up with an idea to prevent public walls from being used as a place to stick all sorts of publicity material. They hired a bunch of painters, gave them enough of their wares and let them loose on the city. Suddenly wherever you look, you see garish paintings. Some are not-so-bad but most of them are grotesque. Aesthetic judgement aside, are the paintings having the desired effect? Apparently, yes!

This particular wall is very close to the Kempegowda Bus stand and is usually littered with Kannada movie posters. The lower portion of the wall is almost always covered by paan stains. However, now I've been watching this wall for more than two weeks and nobody seems to have touched it. I can't really tell why it works, but I'm glad it does. I'm even getting used to the tastelessness. I'd rather see kitsch on my wall than have a sweaty angry Emran Hashmi or Duniya Vijay stare out of it. Besides, there's some innocent charm about the whole scheme. I had a friend who used to be fascinated by examples of such color overload. She used to say "This is so INDIAN" with an affectionate familiarity. I kinda relate to that now