madness??? THIS....IS...INDIA

This is from a person who has written his last few blog entries with nothing like fanfare surrounding them. I have never wanted my blog to be a 'hit'in the conventional sense of the term, but this is one article that i would like to see a lot of comments on. Because that is why i am doing this, this is plain old publicity and an exaggerated sense of importance in a world where little that i do actually makes a difference in people. And of course this is my anger boiling out into an unseen corner of the world wide web. And now, however boring that was, please read on.

When you live in India you get used to many forms of looting, you know you need to pay a bribe to get a driving license, that when smiling Gandhi is on your side, you may be Osama Bin Laden for all the system cares. You know that India runs on money of the black variety. And we still try to hold on to the few things we hold dear in our country, from the idlis and the chappathis to taking solace from the fact that even if a politician has looted enough for him to live in peace with a (very) fixed deposit in a not-so-neutral country called Switzerland, which pays 3% according to Jeffery Archer, he can expect to get a one hour of restlessness and public humiliation at the hands of Karan Thapar.

As an aside, here are some nice numbers to crunch, as they crunch our tax away.Assuming he siphoned of 1% of the government loss, and at 1% interest P.A, his annual income is 1.76 crores, and i hardly need say tax free. Contributing a few points to the second decimal in that figure will be his salary as a Member of parliament. And we were thinking he'd fret about an hour with Karan Thapar.

And so we are all not surprised by this sort of looting, now a different strain of looting has come to surface, and this has managed to shock me, because it not only looted, it attempted to rob from the grave of truth. And truth is something i thought was important to the vast majority of India. It died and was buried the day we started worshiping our icons in the film world, and giving them the same power over our destinies in the real world. It's corpse turned the day we started worshiping a lady who almost turned our country into a dictatorship, not to mention her family. And today they rob its grave, they deprive it of the dignity of being thought of as correct by the average person. They refuse to show a woman who has won a lot of awards for journalism lobbying to loot us. They refuse to show the way the only people who had the public reach to challenge our flawed system now join the bandwagon dancing at truth's death procession.

But here's why i shouldn't be surprised. When you do something for 60 years, with a remarkable cooperation and an immense knowledge sharing capability, your product becomes good, as good as peter england shirts or Godrej cupboards. And you become immensely efficient at what you are doing. This is corruption in India, since 1947. After a point of time, it is the small chinks in the armour that you have to repair, and that is what they are doing now. As for the members of the media, they realized they weren't making great progress anyway, so why not make a quick buck while suffering no possible damage to your image and still being the "bastion of truth". As i had once said, people will always do what is good for them, physically, mentally and monetarily.

Now ladies and gentlemen, you are faced with a choice, you can either join the bandwagon by doing nothing, and therefore piss on truth's empty grave. Or try and climb the mountain with small steps. To elaborate, if you feel you are comfortable enough today, join them, there is nothing wrong in free, informed choice. On the other hand, if you feel that you would benefit from a future absence of looters, mentally, physically or monetarily. Let us climb the mountain of improbability facing us by taking small steps. What you find below represents the choice, take the choice, and you feel you have done the right thing, direct a few possibly interested people to this corner of the world wide web. For it is on the web that the whispers which will start this revolution will begin.

Barkha dutt Nira radia tapes Russel Peters on Indians

To march on....

It is a challenge I have taken upon myself to look at my life and the circumstances objectively and as dispassionately as possible. This seemed a reasonable goal for a person who doesn't like to blame circumstance for any of his failures. There is, of course, the flip side that i refuse to attribute any of my successes to circumstance as well. However, I seem to be facing many challenges in the above task recently. For things are rarely as easy as they seem. Now it seems to me that I had created this cushioned air-bag of denial of things that did not affect me. I was never in denial of their existance, just their ability to affect my life in any way. Recently that airbag was ripped apart into insignificance.

It is perhaps a collective ability to renounce our decision making that distinguishes us as a nation. And I shall carry on blaspheming until someone stops. The first knife that plunged into the airbag was a splinter that flew from the Ayodhya verdict. I'd now like you to imagine a guy working in a city 3 hrs away from his grandparents' house. This guy decides to surprise his family by arriving without warning one Thursday night. He books bus tickets a day in advance, books a cab a day in advance, and eagerly awaits the look on his grandparents' faces come Thursday night. The cruel and very-much-expected twist is that the bus is cancelled, the guy catches another bus, and reaches home at an unearthly hour. He is extremely out-of-sorts throughout the journey home, and decides to write about it.

As I write about it, a second knife, or rather bullet, fired from the hand of an andro-humanoid named Chitti ( What a name ) , plunges into the airbag. And there emerged a second, more drastic example of our ability to suspend our reason at the twist of a dark glass and a word, a word which would have been ridiculed into infamy had it come from any other mouth, DOT. It amazes me that the mere name of a protagonist should instantly banish the grey cells from our system. The director is brazen enough to say that the year is 2010. Not even resorting to the cheap excuse that the movie is set in the future. I agree that the man possesses an uncommon charisma and ability to make ordinary things seem extraordinary. This charisma is, however wasted when he is made to seem innately larger-than-life instead of an ordinary man with the attitude of a champion. The scene in which he picks out the impostor from a flock of robots was brilliant, simply because it made no use of the fact that the antagonist was a robot and could make himself into a giant cannon if he wanted to. I frankly did not see much in the movie other than the obvious flaunting of the director's budget and an excuse, a wafer-thin one, to ingest all the stunts that we would have seen anyway. We accept all this by saying that this is all we can expect from a small industry like ours. To those people i would like to point out that we have come up with brilliant art and have a creative brain second to none.

After all this I march on, sad that i will not find a person to ingest my blasphemy and vomit out the taboos that force us to dismantle our mental weapons whenever the conditions demand it. And i march on in the hope that since there is a mountain in sight, a valley must follow, and that I can think, think about the valley and how it could be better. That I can think and rest in those thoughts.

As a parting thought I'd like to say this, a friend once told me that not everything is made for me to think about it. To him I now reply, when you can think about everything, Why not?

A return to maturity

After quite a long sabbatical, it seemed appropriate to post this at a time when i am going through an existential crisis of sorts. The question is, for a person to whom atheism came so quickly, why is patriotism so hard to let go of?

The origins of religion and patriotism seem to me to be similar, as can be said of any group practice. It is just a question of need. I could let go of the concept of god in a heartbeat when it seemed unnecessary to me, but the concept of nation and national pride seems, surprisingly, to take longer to let go of. Here too we find two sides to the coin or, shall we say, to the border. On one side we have a nation of people stooping low enough to accept abnormally low salaries to do the work of other nations' firms. why? because we do not need the same amount of money to live comfortably. Why? because we have lower standards. As Lalit Bhanot very funnily put across, "Western countries have different standards of hygiene." different meaning higher. On the other side, we have a country that is so proud of its ethnicity and exotic image that it's people are willing to be whipped into submission rather than watch the chaotic, but free, demise of their nation. That nation was able to stun the world with an event that oozed efficiency and intent to amaze. And then there is India.

Many in the west believe us to be a nation of snake-charmers. Now we seem to have gone to great lengths to show them that we are worse than they believe. Despite all this, I still can't let go of my sense of patriotism however hard i try. Whenever I try to laugh at what a foolish people we are, i think of how much better we can be. Whenever I laugh at the poor state of affairs, the laughter gives painful birth to a sadness. A sadness that doesn't lend itself to temporary solutions.

Maybe a return to childish innocence is what is required. Or maybe that is what this is. I gladly laugh at a doctored video showing how foolish Americans are, without giving a thought to improving their lot. Had someone done the same to India, I would have been seething behind the smiles. It would be great to experience that moment when I could let go of all this and be a ctizen of the world.

I am still hoping this is that moment, India is dead, We must save India.

The not so sacred games

I seem to have lived life with the wrong ideas till now, until Mr. Salman Khursheed came along. There was this beautiful line he gave when questioned about that-which-must -not-be-discussed. He says "we have found out some mistakes and are rectifying them, that's what supervising teams are for anyway." This line would have been of great use to Mr. Ramalinga Raju had he thought of it then, just replace supervising teams with the fraud squad. Post-Kalmadi, I am very clear on how to live life, the mantra is not to have morals, it is to be open enough in your misdeeds to be deemed incorrigible. The world doesn't look so cruel when you look at it through these glasses.

The mess that we find on our hands seems to beg the question, how did we win the bid in the first place? The only sight I can remember is one of Aishwarya Rai, Rani mukherjee, and co. Dancing away to glory at the Melbourne closing ceremony. They were supposedly giving a taste of what was to come in Delhi. A true taste would have been to hire one of our Chennai water tankers and have them spray muddy water on the audience in a surrealist demonstration of India's bureaucratic inefficiency. That probably started the trend of hiring dancers to grace every ceremony, I also suppose our film stars took this as a sign from the higher-ups that they must take their show abroad. Now music launches are going international, Kuallywood anyone?? Back to the games, a friend of mine recently visited the commonwealth games "stadia" and said there was no chance they would be completed in time. Maybe that is Mr. Kalmadi's master plan, maybe he is planning to show the world its blunder in choosing a city to host an international event and thinking its pride will ensure the smooth organization of the events. While writing this, I have a vivid image of Mr. Kalmadi standing on top of one of the stadia and shouting "everything drowns", bearing an eerie similarity to the joker.

Having conveyed my thoughts on the organizing of the games, I'm going to try and give three possible scenarios that could pan out come October 3^rd :

1. Shame, no doom
   

   An independent committee steps in, Kalmadi is fired and exiled to Rio (the world is never cruel to him). The games are restored to some semblance of order. By order I mean the swimmers need not wade and the sprinters need not swim.
   

2. In Bollywood we trust
   

   We witness the return of our heroes as the opening ceremony, by dint of extreme planning, is made to last the entire 12 days, in the end the baton is passed on to Glasgow, all the gold, silver and bronze medals are melted deposited in a certain Swiss bank account.
   

3. Doomsday
   

   My nightmare comes true, to top it all, Kalmadi paints his face in the colors of the Indian flag, and wears a purple Sherwani. I become an oracle and adopt Mr. K's business model, my chair costs Rs. 70 lakh you know.
   

   
    

By the way, writing satirical posts is extremely relaxing, try it out.

An appeal to reason

This post starts with a pledge. From this day onwards I pledge never to sign any important documents or start any important activities at times other than those considered inauspicious. I pledge to have someone inquire about my destination whenever I go out. I shall eat heartily at the peak of every solar and lunar eclipse. I shall step into every house with my left leg. I am even considering buying a black cat to let loose every time I leave my house. I suppose you realize where this is heading. If I have a say in naming anyone, it will be the worst possible numerological name.

Well, time for some introductions, I am Harshavardan (not Harshavardhan), named according to the principles of numerology, I live in a house which stands, not due to the laws of physics, but due to the blessings of the demon whose picture hangs at the entrance, supposedly to ward off other demons. Demonic pacts apart, every brick in my house screams of strict adherence to Vaastu, which, for the uninitiated, is the Indian version of Feng Shui. This has resulted in an outdoor staircase which leads everyone to think that my house is an apartment with another family living on the first floor, hence we receive double copies of every pamphlet and menu card that is circulated free to households. Another side effect is that everyone from the carpenter to the electrician dutifully reports upstairs when the problem is downstairs and vice versa. Once you enter my house, you will be greeted by a framed picture of a donkey, which apparently thwarts the evil eye. The concept of evil eye is one unique to Tamil culture. According to this theory, we are all supposed to possess an evil eye, which we place upon objects we are jealous of. The logic is that after seeing a donkey, you will not be jealous of the house. And there the logic ends. Another beautiful theory is that three people should not start a journey, this results in me having to walk to the end of the road every time I leave anywhere with my parents.

There are a set of people who tell me that superstitions are superstitions only because we don't know the reasoning behind them. For example, we should not sleep facing south, this has been explained as an effort not to intersect the earth's magnetic field lines, hence avoiding a very small induced current that flows through our body, disturbing our sleep. This however doesn't explain why we are allowed to sleep facing north. We are not allowed to eat during eclipses as the absence of the sun or the moon results in an unhealthy atmosphere for eating. I tried to find any scientific justification for this on the net, the closest one stated that as there used to be very little artificial lighting in olden days, they wouldn't eat during eclipses in order to avoid sharing their meal with lizards, cockroaches etc.. In the age of artificial lighting that is in some ways more powerful than natural lighting, to follow such rules seems foolish to me. It will serve us well to remember that these are the superstitions that I've tried finding justification for, the others don't even qualify for that privilege.

On a more simplistic basis, it seems improper that there are a hundred rules as to when not to do something, or how not to do something when there is no time in which you must work. Being educated, intelligent people it is amazing the way we subconsciously imbibe these rituals from our parents. So now, I am consciously debunking this. For I am going out now and am asking my brother to ask where I am going.

On a totally different note, two of my friends have recently started blogs, Balakrishnan (http://whyshouldinamemyblog.blogspot.com) and Ashwin (http://impru.blogspot.com). Best of luck to them, hope they keep posting.

 

 

My take on "the conference"

As you all know, the World Tamil Classical Language Conference (WTCLC) is currently going on in Coimbatore and every Tamilian is expected to follow this on TV. Yes, on Kalaignar TV. Having written on similar lines before, I’m forced to return to this subject because I’ve heard so many opinions that I’m compelled to offer my own. First I will try to clarify some issues that I think a lot of people have trouble understanding. Then we shall go onto the facts and some deeper stuff.

Firstly, a common misconception is that the conference is aimed at making people realize the glory of the Tamil language, which is apparently, one of only six languages in the world to be declared ‘classical’. This is what the conference is designed to make you think. If that was the purpose, the conference would have been held under the auspices of a university, with the attendees all being people who hold degrees or are otherwise qualified linguists capable of conducting research into the language. Second, many people tell me this is no different from foreign embassies spreading their languages in all other nations. This is again a misconception, no foreign embassy directly involves itself in even conducting foreign language classes, it is done by organizations devoted to the language like Alliance Française (French) and ABK Aots Dosokai (Japanese). The International Association for Tamil Research has apparently refused to recognize the WTCLC, saying it is a political stunt. I would also ask you to think about the abnormal number of members of Mr. Karunanidhi’s family presenting their so-called works at the conference. Apart from the TN chief minister himself, two of his granddaughters have presented poems at the conference. With Pratibha Patil and Surjit Singh Barnala presiding, it seems almost funny when people try to tell me there is no politics involved. Out of the eight poets who presented, seven dedicated their verses to Kalaignar, no there is no politics involved. The eighth apparently praised a guy who set himself on fire during the Sri Lankan offensive against the LTTE demanding ceasefire.

Having set the facts before you, I shall go on to my opinions. Our government has spent 380 Crore rupees on this conference. This amount has led to huge protestations among the more sensible citizens of Tamil Nadu. I, however think that the amount hardly matters. What matters is that the government has spent money on something it has no business spending. Languages are just arrangements of strokes (written) and sound (spoken). To say that one such arrangement is superior to another is pure nonsense. There have been practical difficulties in many languages and these have been corrected over the ages by borrowing and integrating other languages. Hence, this Tamil superiority is just a political tool invented by people like Anna who spotted an opportunity to create a unique vote bank. There are people, even among the highly educated who talk about superiority of languages and that is just sad. This is again a result of the foolish division of states on a linguistic basis. We have given unscrupulous politicians a chance to arouse dangerous regional passions, which they have taken with both hands. I have already tried to suggest a solution to this problem in my earlier post (read it here). The problem is especially acute in Tamil Nadu. This is apparent in the undue support LTTE receives from Tamilians all over the world. To me the LTTE is just another terrorist organization which deserves no sympathy from any of us. It is in fact, beneficial to us that the Sri Lankan army quelled the uprising and killed its main leaders as this will stop the refugee problem in Tamil Nadu. This is equivalent to Urdu-speakers supporting the Pakistan-based terrorists because of their common language. Yes, that’s how ridiculous it really is.

To conclude, I’d like to congratulate our Kalaignar (artist) on a grand success in his real Kalai (art), swindling.

Why I talk..

Yesterday I was witness to a huge spectacle, a 50-year old man is helped by another 50-year old in climbing an 8 foot wall, sadly, onto the speaker’s seat of the Orissa Assembly. Equally sad is the fact that those two men were MLAs. This gives me an opportunity to shed light on India’s most restricted-entry business, politics. It would be unfair to call it an oligopoly for two reasons, the word oligopoly hides the quality of the people already in the business, and, the magnitude of the market involved is huge. For example, the difference in the money the government could’ve got and did get via the 2g spectrum was 22, 000 Crore Rupees, even if our king of bad times pocketed 10% of this amount, he can get admission for a whole district in Anna University, it apparently costs around 20 lakh per seat as you have to go through governor’s quota.

Another reason I am writing this is because I am fed up of people telling me that I am all talk and will not do anything to improve my nation. I will now prove how our dear nation cannot be improved unless we do something drastic. The simple reason is that entry into any form of public life in India is severely restricted. You only have to look at a set of people called the Lok Paritran to realize that. We are all victims of an extremely self-perpetuating polity. Look at the so-called leaders and their families, other than the obvious example of the Nehru-Gandhi family; we have every politician worth his salt cultivating his son or daughter as an heir-apparent. This is not the only reason for restricted entry; the main reason is that India is a highly polarized society with a huge percentage of illiterate people. And our ‘leaders’ make sure it stays that way. Simply because that is their business model. If India had a 100% literacy rate, half the goons who occupy the seats of power will be looking for a job. Politics has now become the first refuge of the scoundrel. Every party accuses the other of polarizing society while doing it in some other form. It seems amazing to most of us that open thieves like our Raja can win elections. But the reality is different, winning an election in India does not require an agenda, a manifesto, or even an ability to speak or think about national issues. The only ability required is that of keeping yourself in favor with the people in power. Let me tell you how the servant maid in my house uses her right to franchise, she votes for congress because Jayalalitha is a foreigner. I’ll try to explain the unexplainable, she doesn’t believe Sonia Gandhi can be a foreigner because she has the name Gandhi, but Jayalalitha is a foreigner because she owns land in Hyderabad it seems. Confused? So am I.

So, our political parties have a steady vote bank and the rest can easily be convinced through buckets, cycles, and now the star attraction, TVs. Why will anyone invest in TVs, buckets etcetera to win elections, simply because the returns are tenfold. As returns are increasing, in the future we will see free blackberries, laptops, possibly even cars. It’s called profit that’s re-invested. Political parties will criticize each other outwardly, but I’d like to point out that most of this is a stage-managed show. The congress and BJP cooperate on a local level in states like West Bengal where neither party has a huge presence. BJP and the left cooperate in Kerala, and the Congress and the left were coalition partners in the previous government. The point I am trying to make is, the main aim of politicos is not to win elections, but to perpetuate this system of government, and to make sure that ten years down the line, their sons and daughters will occupy their current posts.

To all those who accuse me of all talk and no concrete action, I only have this to say, I talk because I my hands are tied but my mouth is not gagged, yet.

Thanks to Ch@#an Bh@#at

I seem to have a fascination for the number two, it may just be the Illuminati in me coming out. Duality of purpose is something beautiful and is something mankind has embraced with religious zeal. This is especially true of India; one is reminded of notebooks doubling up as containers for peanuts, bhel puri, etc. etc., CDs as decoration on cars, and a host of other such uniquely Indian sights. The title also has a dual purpose, as you shall see.

The first is about a problem and my solution to it. The above-mentioned author has a penchant for stating problems with our society; however, suggesting solutions seems to be beyond him. His latest work, Hollywood plot apart, dealt with the problem of state separatism. He has a point. I have visited some 6 countries but only one state above the Vindhyas. India boasts of possessing unity in diversity, to me the ground reality seems to be different. The north-eastern states have been very vocal in their demand for many separate states and, in some cases, countries. South India is not far behind, the support LTTE finds in many parts of Tamil Nadu is alarming to say the least.

The situation bears an eerie similarity to that faced by Austria-Hungary at the beginning of the twentieth century. The dual monarchy which was then ruled by the Hapsburg dynasty was unable to quell the separatist tensions arising from its various ethnic minorities. This was one of the main causes of World War I and the eventual sundering of the empire into the many Balkan states we see now. Ethnic separatism also played a part in the German capture of Czechoslovakia before World War II. To non-Indians, the logical solution will be to give independence to every state or region that asks for it. But this will eventually result in as many states as there are houses and I will need a passport to visit my neighbors. At a time when the need is for consolidating the world into a union with common aims, we seem to be heading towards further and further fragmentation.Thanks to Ch@#an Bh@#at for getting me started.

The only solution that I could infer from Ch@#an Bh@#at’s book was for all south Indians to marry north Indians, we could probably work out a system by which every state is assigned another state from which to find a mate. Another solution, this time my own, is to create what I call “focus zones”. A focus zone is a region, consisting of a set of states, which serves as a hub for certain essential functions of the nation. For example, we could take north-eastern India and make it a hub for education, this means all institutions of higher learning in the country will be located in that area. Think of it as a huge campus spanning the whole of the zone. Location-dependant industries like oil refineries will still be located there, this provides a platform for the training of the students educated there. We could even have all the services there managed by student trainees, fostering improvement in most professions. Such a scheme could also be worked out for software and other business activities, something like a region-wide SEZ. This is again something that cannot be done overnight and needs decades of gradual rearrangement. But I think at the end it will foster unity as all people will have to stay in all parts of the country at some point of time or the other.

Moving on to the second purpose of the title, the world seems to have developed a sudden fondness for empty gestures. This meaningless use of symbols in place of profanity, changing the phrases used to describe people with physical and mental disabilities, and lots of such things. I don’t think it makes a difference to a disabled person if he is referred to as disabled, differently abled or otherwise abled. It is just a name and changing the name doesn’t change the attitude. In a society where intransigence borders on phobia, these gestures don’t make a difference. Hence, I am going to balk at this stupidity and reveal the name of the author (yes that was a suspense), it’s Chetan Bhagat.

Harsha

Two Bus Journeys

The first bus journey is where i decided to start this. A blog is no huge achievement, but I am seeing it as a mossy stepping stone to the elysian fields of achievement. Mossy because there is a huge chance I'll slip at this step.

The place is Trichy, a town in southern India. Its early May, and the sun is beating down with a vengeance. On a 1 hour bus journey to my college campus, I met a guy who wanted to be what he was probably from 3 years of age, a bus conductor. A person only had to be in the bus to experience the infectious happiness with which the guy carried out his work. It is the only mark of a guy who really loves what he does. It was probably the only thing that could have made an hour's foot-board ride interesting. Meeting a guy like that really puts your life into perspective, I am an Electrical Engineer who will be the first to admit that I am useless at it. At a time when the world runs to the american fuel of money, I guess it is time to introspect on the ways and means. That bus conductor is probably much happier than most professionals out there. To me that is just a sign of a nation crying out loud. India has never been a nation of money-makers, we just adapt very well to it because we are, by nature, great thinkers. We are the kind of people who write the Ramayana when the world is hunting for its next meal. We are the kind of people who invent Zero and predict the distances to the stars, who have thought so much about our life that we can write 4 vedas 18 upanishads, and a host of other philosophical material. Hence, it is natural that, at a time when thinking can get you money, we mint it.

The second journey is in the city i call home, Chennai, a place where you will find a philosopher in every house. Here, everyone has their view on life and it will probably be their favorite topic as well. A place where people decry corruption over the tea table while passing the bribe under it. The journey was to a movie theater from my house and when it was over, I was left contemplating ways to enter a 5 star hotel that stood near the bus stop and kill a few people. Thankfully, my friend arrived in time to stop my dangerous thoughts. We were supposed to meet at a stop near my house but the bus i got on didn't stop at his stop and he had too catch another bus. The real beauty is that the drivers decided to stop at alternate stops for the rest of the trip, meaning we couldn't meet till the destination station, where i had to pressure the driver to stop. My sincere thanks to the two insincere drivers for making me angry enough to write about it. They formed the perfect example of two men looking to cut corners at every instance possible. A trait of people who hate their job. Thinkers that we are, on applying our minds to the problem of skipping work, we have arrived at the optimal solution and you will find most Indians unwilling to lift an unnecessary limb nowadays. And we wonder that our ancients were able to build a temple whose shadow doesn't fall on the ground. That was the work of a set of craftsmen who loved their work, not slaves working because they had no choice. That is what we need to move towards if we are to realize the great Indian dream of being a superpower. A society where no job is done by people who need it for their meal, where every job is done by people who need it for their soul.

Harsha