Thank You, Dad!

My father was not a famous man Or a rich one. But he was a good man. An upright, honest man who taught me that a good night’s sleep only came with a clean conscience. He died with his affairs all neatly tied up, his duties done, not owing a penny or a grudge, leaving behind enough so that his beloved wife of forty-seven years would never want for anything for the rest of her lifetime. And for his daughter he left behind a treasure house of memories. How when I was ill as a little girl, he could tell exactly how much temperature I had by just gently pressing my hand against his face. How he’d let me lick all the cream inside the cream biscuits and then imperiously hand over the shells for him to eat. And how when I was older and the roles were reversed, he’d pretend nonchalance at the gifts that I took home for him, and yet when I wasn’t watching, relish them with the joy of a small child.  They weren’t big things – just a box of his favourite sohan papdi or milk sweets, a watch that could do everything but knit you a sweater. But then, that’s the other lesson he taught me. That the greatest pleasures in life were in the smallest things.

I love you, Dad, and miss you deeply.

How the Himalayas Came to Mysore

As the story goes, when the Pandavas were in exile and on their way Badrinath, they decided to take a break at Pandukeshwar, the place that their father had built. One day, Draupadi - as is the habit of the ladies of our epics, was bathing in a nearby river when she sighted an exquisite flower floating downstream. Naturally, she had to have it and sent Bhima in hot pursuit of it. The mighty Pandava set off and after a while, he suddenly came upon an amazing sight – a saucer-shaped valley, filled with the most breathtaking array of flowers.
We don’t know if Bhima accomplished his mission, but he had come to the right place because this spectacular patch of paradise was the flower’s home. We now know it as the Valley of Flowers. Nestled in the Western Himalaya, such is the wealth of flora and fauna that flourishes here that in 1982, the UNESCO declared it a World Heritage site.
And the flower that had so enchanted Draupadi?
Brahma Kamala. (Botanical name – Saussurea obvallata). State flower of Uttarakhand.
And Draupadi must’ve been bathing at night because this flower blooms only after dark and that too, only once in a year. I’ve no clue how this gorgeous Himalayan beauty strayed into Mysore but it did and into my garden as well. This year, we were specially blessed with more than ten buds on one plant, of which five bloomed all at once in one single night. Here they are – the photographs unfortunately can’t capture the heady, delicate fragrance of these glorious blooms.

…

The Flames of Bhopal

Technorati Tags: bhopal,gas,disaster,victims,Warren,Anderson,Dow,Union,Carbide,India,champa,rasheeda

Enough already.
Enough of the rage and the shame.
That we allowed the penalty for the destruction of the over 20,000 lives to be 25 rupees per life.
That we allowed a factory to be built in Bhopal that was using an “unproven” technology “ - meaning nobody knew if it was capable of handling MIC, a chemical so volatile that the only way to muzzle its ferocity is to keep it constantly refrigerated. (The refrigeration unit in the Bhopal factory had been switched off to save money.) That, on December 3rd, 1984, when this chemical spewed a 30 foot high tidal wave of toxic gas over Bhopal, nobody told the people that simply lying on the ground and holding a wet cloth over their noses and mouths would’ve protected them.
That 14 years later, after thousands had died and hundreds of thousands more were dying in a living hell, the Government of India settled for just 470 million of the 3.3 billion dollar compensation that it had asked Union Carbide to pay. When Erin Brokovich helped the tiny American town of Hinkley to sue the Pacific Gas and Electric Company for leaking the deadly Chromium 6 into the ground water, the company was made to pay $333 million for just over 600 people – or $5,50,000 per person. The average compensation paid out to a Bhopal victim is $500.
That 25 years later, the factory still stands, leaching deadly toxins into the soil and water that ultimately find their way into the breast milk of the women who live nearby.
Enough already.
Because it is time to look for a light in this terrible darkness
But to find it, you must first break your heart.
You must go and watch a little documentary on YouTube called “The Bhopal Chemical Disaster”. In which two women talk about the children. The ones who are unable to breathe properly or digest their food and suffer such agonising pain that they can only sleep at night with the help of sleeping pills. And the ones who were baby girls that night and now young women whom no one wants to marry because the gas has seared their reproductive systems with disease. Irregular menstruation, sterility, menopause at age 25-30, uterine and cervical cancer. So, many of them can’t conceive and when they do, the babies born are often terribly disabled or deformed – with cleft lips, cerebral palsy, bone deformities, growth retardation and brain damage.

These women should know.

When the gas exploded that terrible winter night, Champa Devi Shukla was the 32 year-old mother of two daughters and three sons. Twelve years later, her husband had died of bladder cancer; her eldest son, unable to bear the constant chest pains and breathing problems, committed suicide. (Her youngest son also died, but in a road accident.) Her remaining son married but two of his three children were born with deformities, the third died soon after birth. Champa herself and her two daughters, one paralyzed, fight a daily battle with ill health. 28-year old Rasheeda Bi was already crippled by poverty and a mentally disabled husband when the gas struck. It went on to destroy 6 members of her family with cancer and left her partially blind.

But it is not their terrible stories that make these two women unique – there are thousands much worse off.
It is unwavering light of their indomitable spirit that lights this darkness.
In 1985, when the government offered the women of the victims’ families training and jobs at a stationery factory, Champa and Rasheeda signed up only to find that the promised sum of 150 rupees a month materialised to just 6. But it shocked them into finding their voices - and each other. Their protest got them the promised amount. But more importantly, it fired them to form the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karamchari Sangh.
And that was only the beginning.
In 1989, along with 75 other women, Champa and Rasheeda walked 470 miles to Delhi, often begging for food and shelter, to petition the Prime Minister to get their jobs regularised and higher salaries. (They were currently earning just 20% of the normal rate.) Though they did not meet the Prime Minister, their demand was ultimately met. Champa and Rasheeda now set their sights even higher – on bringing Dow Chemicals to book. From 2002, with a series of hunger strikes and dharnas, they confronted Dow officials all the way from Mumbai to Netherlands and finally in America.
Dow Chemicals still brazenly refuses to acknowledge any culpability. But in 2004, Champa and Rasheeda were awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize. Every cent of the 1,25,000 dollars of award money was used to set up the Chingari Trust, a non-profit organisation that provides support for the survivors of the Bhopal gas disaster.
Think about it.
Two poor, physically debilitated, barely literate women have done more than what the Government of India could not/ did not do. At the award ceremony, Rasheeda ended her acceptance speech by saying, “Hum Bhopal ki nari hain; phool nahin, chingari hain.”
So, enough already about the outrage.
In the words of those two brave little flames of Bhopal, this is what we, the people of India, demand.

 Extradite Warren Anderson and stand him to trial.
 Make Dow pay for the medical treatment for two generations of victims.
 Give the survivors full economic compensation for lost employment.
 Make Dow clean up Bhopal’s poisoned soil and water.

yogashala

 

Me, My Cell Phone and the Coconut Tree Man

It was only last week, while I was gazing at my coconut trees and thinking how grateful I was for my cell phone, when the results of the WHO Interphone study arrived. The study was looking for any connection between the over 5,000 brain tumors that had occurred between 2000-2004 and prolonged cell phone usage.
But first the coconut-tree-cell-phone connection.
Now, my relationship with my cell phone could be described at best of times as tricky.
Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against cell phones. But if I didn’t have one, it’d only be a slight exaggeration to say that I’d miss it as much as I would soggy toast. For one, it almost always rings when I can’t find it or can’t answer it. And when I do manage to answer it, it’s never James Cameron asking me to write his next film. Or George Clooney telling me that he’s madly in love with me. Or Steve Jobs offering me stock options in Apple (Move over, Billy-G.) If I talk for more than 30 seconds on it, my ear gets all hot and sweaty and squished up and I feel as if I’m talking on an iron, not a phone. And now that I’m considering getting one of those smart phones (only to keep up with the Jaykumars), I’m worried that it’ll turn out to be so smart that I won’t know how to use it.

And I’ve noticed that other people’s cell phones don’t make them behave any better either. They clutch at it hotly at all times as if it’s a reluctant lover about to make a getaway and when it rings, they rush to answer it as if it was James Cameron calling. Or George Clooney. Or Steve Jobs. And just in case one of them will call one day, they drive with it, take it for walks, to the movies, the loo (what else did you think was that plonk-plonk-sploosh-gurgle sound when you called your boss this morning?), even to bed. Apparently, the next piece cell phone wizardry will allow you to have your phone implanted into your..,er, never mind.

So, the only time I’m really happy that I have a cell phone is when I look at the two coconut trees in my garden. Lovely creatures, really, swishing their fronds seductively like hula dancers and keeping us always topped up with nariyal pani and luscious, freshly plucked coconut flesh. But the trouble with coconut trees is that you can’t train them the way you can dogs. So, every now and then, without so much as a hey-ninny-no, they shed coconuts and dried palm fronds. And since both the trees are near the compound wall, my relationship with the neighbours is, to put it mildly, frosty and distant.
But that was till I found a coconut-tree man with a cell phone.
For the uninitiated, a coconut tree man is someone who nimbly shimmies up coconut trees and divests them of coconuts, dried palm fronds and other such neighbour-unfriendly objects. The problem is, most coconut-tree men are rural folk who come into town only when there’s no work back home and it almost never when your coconut tree is ready to shed its load.
Except if the man has a cell phone. Then you have him on call, like home delivery. (Naturally, I always call from my landline.)
So, when the Interphone study results arrived, I was worried. You see, I always had this niggling fear that if every time I talked on the cell phone, I was sending into my brain the same stuff that scrambles eggs in a microwave oven, it can’t be a good thing, right? Yeah, yeah. I know it’s in the teeniest-tiniest doses, but it’s still electromagnetic radiation, right? And over time, things add up, don’t they - even the teeniest-tiniest? Studies say that electromagnetic radiation is killing off honeybees in the USA and that men who keep cell phones in their pants pocket have shown a significant decrease in sperm counts. Now I haven’t seen any honeybees nattering on cell phones or men talking on the ones that are in their pockets…
So, did the Interphone study confirm or allay my fears? (Would this mean good bye to my coconut tree man?)
Er.
Firstly, even though the results of the study were ready in 2004, the researchers delayed publishing them because they couldn’t agree about how exactly to present the data. (You’d think a study that cost 24 million dollars and covered over 10,000 respondents in 13 countries would be more sure of itself.)
When they finally did decide to publish, this is what they said.
There is no obvious connection between cell phone use and brain cancer.
But…
If you are a heavy user, you have a 40% higher risk; a heavy user being defined as someone who uses the cell phone on an average of 30 minutes a day. According to a 2009 article in the Wall Street Journal, rural Indians talk on their cell phone for about 17 minutes a day. I’m willing to bet my smartphone (the one I still have to buy) that this figure would at least double for the average urban Indian techie-teenager.
Incidentally, the study did not include any teenagers. Or children. Or for that matter, anyone under the age of thirty even though world wide, (and especially in India), most cell phone users today are under age thirty.
Niether did it include rural users. According to Devra Lee Davis, Carnegie Science Medal winner and Founding Director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, cell phones in rural areas emit significantly more radiation because they need to reach more distant antennas.
And if you are still not getting the message, this should reassure you.
Dr. Elisabeth Cardis, the scientist who led the Interphone study had this to say after the results were published. “Until stronger conclusions can be drawn one way or another, it may be reasonable to reduce one’s exposure to cellular radiation. It can’t hurt.”
Actually we shouldn’t worry about brain cancer. Because using cell phones while driving is a far greater threat. Compared to 300 possible brain tumours annually, it is estimated that about 8 people die every day in America in auto accidents caused by cell phone distractions. I shudder to think what that statistic is in India.

Coming Clean ((Or How I ound Enlightenment in a Trash Heap)

Development.
Big word.
And one that has always confused me. Used more liberally than salt in French fries, it’s a particular favourite of politicians. But what does it really mean?
It’s a question that has haunted me since….
Well, lemme start at the beginning.
Twenty-five years ago, when my dad decided to move to Mysore after retirement, it was a sleepy little town, dreaming happily of days when it was the glittering capital of a golden kingdom. Nothing much happened here except Dussera, but nobody was complaining. After all, what was there to complain when the Goddess was on Her hill and the sparkling waters of the Cauvery were indisputably ours and the sandalwood flourished and the air was scented by our very own Mysore mallige.
Ah, the Mysore air.
You know, normally Mysoreans are modest folk, preferring to hide their mallige under a bushel. But the one thing – other than palaces and Mysore pak - that did make us puff our chests out and brag was the fact that when we built a house, we didn’t allocate a budget for fans. We didn’t need to. The Goddess and Her verdant hill made sure - with judiciously timed showers - that for large parts of the year, fans were dispensable.
Ten years ago, when I moved to Mysore from Mumbai it was pretty much the same story. But the whispers had already begun.
“Development!” they hissed, “Mysore needs development!”
And strange things began to happen.
First, the invasion of the two-wheelers, spawning furiously like a pestilence of mechanical rodents, the banks playing eager, obsequious midwives with no-questions-asked-no-paperwork loans. And as they gobbled up road, air and parking space, the cars arrived, hatched by VRS and car loan melas. And then the first traffic jams made their Mysore debut.
Development, I wondered?
As I did, Mysore began to sprawl in every direction in an untrammelled epidemic of residential colonies where most of the “houses’ so flagrantly violated every construction bye-law that you could not only smell your neighbour’s fart but also tell exactly how many pods of garlic ent into that avarekai saaru. Perhaps this was “development”, I thought, as I tripped on another mound of rubble and cement because a neighbour was building a “maadi”. 
But I wasn’t sure.
Even when the malls and commercial complexes – ghastly, glittering-glassy-eyed monsters – began to appear, uprooting the beautiful old bungalows that we were almost as proud of as the rest of the palace-pak enchillada. And what puzzled me was this. If this development thingie was supposed to mean more jobs for our young folk, then why were so many of them still leaving town for “better prospects”, leaving their old folk to rattle around in these bungalows and ultimately sell them off because they couldn’t maintain them any more?
I wasn’t sure even when forests of mobile towers started growing out of our rooftops and mobiles in place of ears and when the mallige started coming Tamil Nadu. And not even when we had to use fans - sometimes even in winter. You see, since we were running out of urban-sprawl space, we decided that surely one Goddess didn’t need an entire hill all to Herself. So, we started regularly stripping it of its beautiful green cover, even burning some of it. Naturally, the Goddess, in disgust, decided we didn’t deserve those cooling round-the-year showers any more and the famous Mysore air slowly withered and shrivelled up.
Even then, I wasn’t sure.
Till recently, when I have finally found the answer - in garbage.
The area where I live was once a boringly clean neighbourhood. But now piles of garbage and overflowing garbage bins dot it. And that can mean only one thing.
Yup, development.
Here’s how. Development, I’m told, means more money to spend. And more money means more consumption. So much more that our poor Mysore Municipal Corporation can no longer handle the resulting bumper crop of shi…er, I mean garbage that we generate. 
I know – you’re outraged that I could write something like this when Mysore has just been declared the second cleanest city in India And compared to most Indian cities, it is still is - one of the cleanest and the prettiest.
But not for long. Mysore’s infrastructure is already stretched to its limits. The JNNURM projects inspire nobody’s confidence and almost every week we’re privy to squabbles between the officials and the city authorities. Potholes are routine, drains overflow with raw sewage every monsoon and every summer we play the roulette of water shortage. If Mysore hasn’t collapsed, it is because the threat of making it a Tier-II city still remains a threat.
This road leads to only one destination.
In other words, it’s time to wake up and smell the garbage.

Technorati Tags: mysore,development,JNNURM,Chamundi

Mala- wati

 

I was worried.
Because I noticed that of late, what once used to shock and thrill, to titillate and bring on paroxysms of outraged ecstasy now barely evokes a half-hearted, bored twitch. That when that Nithyanada video broke the news, we watched (normally at least 40 times but now barely once), yawned and went back to checking if there was a new flavour in ear wax while wearily thinking,
“Oh puhleez, Nitzy. Your video may be beta quality, but ND Tiwari already beat you to this. At age 85. And with three women.”
So, thank God for Behenji and the Maha Mala Mela.
While the sight of what looked like a pink, velcro Loch Ness monster undulating around Behenji and her clutch of fawning party men was riveting enough, what had me glued to the telly was trying to figure out what the Maha Mala was made out of. (And for once, I was grateful to the news channels for looping 3.78 seconds of footage 831 times.) Roses, my mum declared grandly – gulab for  Gulabo, hai na? Rubbish, I thought, surely Behenji was capable of coming up with something less ho-hum than a few hundred thousand roses even if they looked as if they had been genetically engineered to sport the correct shade of Maya-pink...

She did.

Now, there are many amongst us who are outraged by those 1000-rupee notes, damning it as a brazen, blatantly vulgar display of whatever-it-is that Maha Malas of 1000-rupee notes are supposed to be. But they judge Hamari Pyari Behenji too harshly – you see, the only reason the notes scored over orchids or tulips or for that matter chameli ke phool was because they were the only ones that came closest to that Maya-pink…
But why the Maha Mala? (Which, according to most estimates, is worth more than 5 crores, but according to Digvijay Singh of the Congress, it’s upwards 22 crores.) Wouldn’t a modest knee-length garland, punctuated by diamond studded blue mini elephants have done the trick?
Ah.
Well, lemme explain. As we all know so well, Hamari Pyari Behenji’s life’s mission is to turn Uttar Pradesh into the Utter Paradise that it was always meant to be. And towards that end, she has worked tirelessly erecting statues, building memorials, museums and parks; sparing no expense and even regularly forgoing her weekly quota of diamonds.
Naturally, unable to stomach her success, her jealous detractors have been weaving a malicious fabric of nasty lies about her and her beloved Uttar Pradesh.
That for the vast majority of its people, life in one of India’s most backward states is so dismal and hopeless that along with Bihar, Uttar Pradesh has the highest rate of people migrating out of the state. (At least one in every three persons in Uttar Pradesh is below the poverty line.) That on almost every parameter on economic and human development – education, communication, health, power, roads - Uttar Pradesh scores among the lowest. That with a woman as a Chief Minister, Uttar Pradesh has one of the lowest female to male ratio, one of the highest incidence of infant mortality and maternal deaths (twice the national average).  If you are born a girl in Uttar Pradesh, you are five times less likely to reach your fifth birthday than if you were born in Kerala. And if you somehow manage to survive that long, you will still live 20 years less.
Now tell me.
Would the CM of such a state nonchalantly wrap a 5-crore - oh, alright, Diggi Raja, a 22-crore Maha Mala around herself?
Of course not.
And would the CM of such a state, where the average wallah’s monthly income doesn’t amount to 2 of the notes in the Maha Mala, tot up a net worth estimated at anywhere between 60-70 crores (not counting the Maha Mala but counting 72 properties and 54 bank accounts)?
Never.
And would the CM of such a state where every second child between the age of 1-5 years is malnourished, own a silver dinner set weighing 18.5 kgs and perhaps even dine off it?
Unthinkable.
I rest my case.
And that leaves only one other matter – a reminder, actually to the chappies designing currency notes at the RBI. I hope you fellas will have a new note ready for Behenji’s next Jan Kalyan Divas…er, I mean birthday.
Naturally, it will have to be upwards of a thousand rupees.
More importantly, it will have to be pink.

ratna.rajaiah@gmail.com

Thank you, Tiwariji!

There.
All the people who think that politicians are inkblots on the copybook of humanity have once again been proved wrong. And we have before us another shining example of the fact that politicians are not just the salt of the earth but the chow in the chowmein and the idli in the sambar.
I speak of course of recent events involving the till-recently Governor of Andhra Pradesh, our dearly beloved Mr. N. D. Tiwari.
Now let me explain why.
First of all, politicians like Tiwarji are heaven-sent boons for writers like me who spend most of the time desperately scavenging for thought-provoking subjects to write about.  Subjects that will incite, inspire, arouse (not what you’re thinking) and generally set in motion if not the wheels of change, then at least activate all the flush toilets in Kurumpasiddy.
So, just as I was thinking about writing about the impact of Jairam Ramesh’s blow-dried tresses on the climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, the Curious Case of the Raunchy Governor fell plop into my lap.
So, thank you Tiwariji.
Second of all, for the millions of us who have begun to hear the terrifying stomp of the March of Time and live in constant fear of things withering, drooping, sagging and generally letting us down in our Hour of Need, Tiwariji has become a shining beacon of hope. Because we now have irrefutable proof not only is there life after 85, but that it begins at 86. (Of course, what kind of a life it will be may depend on your ability to ensure that a steady stream of naked, teenage girls is delivered to your doorstep every day with morning milk.)
So, thank you, Tiwariji.
Third of all - move over, Tiger Woods. Actually, to tell you the truth, the Woods business had me real worried. Think about it. Porn queens, lingerie models and sex in the church car park -where could we go after that? What was there left to make us gasp and giggle and rapturously whoop, “How disgusting!” Was this the end of the road, the death knell for sex scandals as we knew it? Would we now be reduced to watching bisexual seahorses on the Discovery Channel for our daily dose of dirty shockers?
I am happy to report that the answer is a resounding “No!”. “N D Tiwari” now has more hits on Google than “Tiger Woods”.
And naturally so.
I mean 11 mistresses is all very well but all that Tiger had to show for it were some silly text messages and one mangy voice mail. And that too in this day and age of multimedia.
I mean, yawn, really.
So, once again, thank you Tiwariji.
Of course, this is all based on the assumption that the gent in that video is indeed the erstwhile Governor. Two days after he resigned, Tiwariji told a TV news channel that he had been framed. No, not by the Abominable Snowman but a few supporters of the Telengana movement who were angry with him because he couldn’t grant them an audience with the President of India.
Ah.
Tiwariji, we’re not sure what exactly you mean by “framed”. Does it mean that it wasn’t you in that video, but that someone (your OSD, Arvind Sharma, perhaps?) had managed to arrange a very clever double?
If so, Hollywood, Bollywood and Kim Jong II would like to thank you (Saddam Hussein would have thanked you too, if he were alive) and could we have his contact numbers please?
Or do you mean that you were so swamped by the Telengana supporters that it somehow escaped your attention that three naked young women had taken your trousers off, thrown you down on your bed and were doing things to your honourable person that made Bill Clinton, Tiger Woods and the rest of that bunch look like they were friends of Winnie the Pooh?
If so, we’d still like to thank you because you have just given us the modern day version of the Trojan Horse. And it works something like this.
Identity target. Swamp the place with commandos who are in disguise – i.e., they are naked. In the ensuing melee, while everyone is gawking at aforementioned naked commandos, send in clumps of nubile, naked girls armed with state-of-the-art spycams. (They’d have to be state-of-art – how else do you conceal a spycam on a naked woman?)
Surround target.
Divest of clothing.
Kiss, fondle, nuzzle. Et al.
Shoot.
Then sit back and watch things topple.
In other words, thank you Tiwarji.

The Christmas Truce

Christmas looms.
You’re thinking, dark clouds loom, last date for filing IT returns looms, but surely a season of peace and goodwill cannot loom?
Well, it does
And the challenge iss to be jolly yet meaningful, to rise above the trite and the maudlin, to get the reader to stop right there in the middle of stuffing that Christmas stocking and mutter, “Now bless my little mistletoes, who’d have thought of that!”
So, I desultorily began to trawl Youtube in search for…well, to tell you the truth, I didn’t really know what. Amy Winehouse’s version of Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer maybe? Osama bin Laden’s Christmas day message?
Which is when I stumbled on a recording of the late Walter Cronkite hosting the annual Christmas concert of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. And almost instantly, I was riveted by Cronkite’s narration of an extraordinary event that took place nearly one hundred Christmases ago…
December 24th, 1914.
The war in Europe was five months old, already far too old for one that had been expected to last just a few weeks. What had started as a glorious cavalry charge fired by patriotic fervour had become a sullen, savage battle fought from trenches that would ultimately stretch for 440 miles all the way from the English Channel to the Swiss frontier. Trenches six to eight feet deep that the cold - often four degrees below zero - and the rain transformed into freezing, waterlogged hellholes as winter set in. As one soldier wrote home, “bullets are a secondary consideration to the cold, rain and mud.” And decaying bodies remained unburied because there was no let up in the incessant artillery bombardment for the living to claim their dead.
But that night, the rain had stopped and as Private Albert Moren of the Second Queens Regiment in a trench somewhere near the French village of La Chapelle d'Armentières recalled, “It was a beautiful moonlit night, frost on the ground, white almost everywhere.” And with the rain, the guns also seemed to have fallen silent.
It was an unaccustomed, unnerving silence, eerie in its stillness.
Suddenly…
“Grave and tender voices rose out of the mist….”
The song they sang was a beloved, familiar one – “Silent Night, Holy Night”. Except that the words were in German because the singing was coming from the German trenches! When Lovell, a British soldier in the 3rd Rifle Brigade, looked out from the top of his trench, he could see “a sight which I shall remember to my dying day. Right along the whole of their (German) line were hung paper lanterns and illuminations of every description, many of them in such positions as to suggest that they were hung upon Christmas trees.”
And as the singing continued, what followed is one of the strangest and the most beautiful events in the history of war…and peace.
First, cautious heads soon began popping up on both sides; in a few places, placards with Christmas greetings in German and invitations to impromtu concerts written on them. Then voices began to call out to each other, using derogatory nicknames like “Fritz” and “Tommy“, but no one minded. Finally, someone summoned up enough courage to stand up and wave. And within minutes, unarmed soldiers swarmed out of the trenches from both sides on to what was called No Man’s Land, a hideous, shell-torn stretch of land, sometimes just 30 yards wide, that separated the trenches of the two armies. And where till now, it was peopled by only the “unburiable bodies” of the dead, who lay decaying in the frozen mud.
It was an incredible sight. Men who, just a few hours ago were killing each other now shook hands, swapped salutes and cigarettes and gifts; barrels of German beer, plum pudding, uniform buttons and badges, even helmets, tins of jam and beef bully. They showed each other pictures of wives and sweethearts and families that they had left behind. They even visited each other’s trenches and shared their Christmas rations.
There was laughter and singing and even more incredibly, in a few places, there were free haircuts. And soccer matches.
And in the midst of all this, they gathered for a more sombre task. As the 23rd Psalm was read in German and in English and as someone played the Last Post, they buried each other’s dead in massive common graves, giving the poor, frozen, rotting remains of their fallen comrades a hero’s burial.
Suddenly, they were all just men inextricably trapped together in the same terrible predicament of war.
The truce lasted through the night and all through Christmas Day. When Boxing Day dawned, everyone knew that it had to end. But on both sides, they were loath to pick up their guns again and in one unit of the 107th Saxon regiment of the German army, mutiny broke out, the men refusing to resume the war.
But it was a brief rebellion.
At long last, as Captain J C Dunn, Medical Officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, recorded in his diary, “At 8.30 I fired three shots in the air and put up a flag with "Merry Christmas" on it, and I climbed on the parapet. He (the Germans) put up a sheet with "Thank you" on it and the German captain appeared on the parapet. We both bowed and saluted and got down into our respective trenches, and he fired two shots in the air, and the war was on again.”
It is estimated that about 100,000 men - including as much as half the British troops - took part in what is now called “the Christmas Truce”. It was an event so extraordinary that if it weren’t for the hundreds of letters that poured back home and the entries in diaries and journals of those who were there, it would have been dismissed as the deranged imaginings of minds all but destroyed by the savagery of war.
But it did happen.
We may well sneer and say, “and fat lot of good it did”, because the war continued for four more devastating years at the end of which, half of all the soldiers who fought in it were either be dead or wounded. It was supposed to be the war to end all wars, but it failed miserably in its purpose because twenty-one years later, the world was at war again, this time adding Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the decimation of six million Jews in concentration camps to its enviable record of causalities. Then came the wars in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan; the chronic epidemic of wars that regularly break out in Africa and the Middle East and our own wars with China and Pakistan…only to name a few.
But consider this.
Amongst the thousands of British soldiers who took part in that truce was Murdoch Mackenzie Wood, a young Scottish lawyer. Sixteen years later, speaking as a Liberal MP in the House of Commons, he said this about what happened.
"A great number of people think we did something that was degrading… The fact is that we did it, and I then came to the conclusion that I have held very firmly ever since, that if we had been left to ourselves there would never have been another shot fired… It was only the fact that we were being controlled by others that made it necessary for us to start trying to shoot one another again..."
So, maybe that is the message from the Spirit of that Christmas Past, so many, many years ago. That, when left to us, to ordinary folk, war will always an impossible thing.
Some of the men who took part in the Christmas Truce tried to make sure that we would never forget that. In 1999, a group of them went back to the site of the truce in Ypres in Belgium and put up a large wooden cross as a memorial.  On it was engraved this message
“1914
The Khaki Chum's Christmas Truce
1999
85 Years
Lest We Forget”

                *******

There’s a Tiger in our Woods

There’s a Tiger in Our Woods

”Tiger is a model for how athletes should conduct themselves…. He handles himself with class, and he's articulate. There's no silly talk in public from Tiger.”
That is an excerpt from the eulogy that Roger Federer wrote about his pal Tiger Woods when he was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in world by the Time magazine in April this year.
By which time, even if only a few of the allegations that are pouring out faster than rats out of a sinking ship are true, the laundry list of Wood’s very, very dirty linen must have already included the following:
At least 11 er, “lady friends” (some reports peg that number at 16) including two porn stars, one specializing in kinky-sex.
Regular orgies with members of a female escort service.
Sex in a church car park (but inside a car, we are relieved to note.)
And if Jamie Jungers, the cocktail-waitress-cum-lingerie model for a brand of lingerie called “Trashy” (what else) is to be believed, sex with her in Woods’ bedroom while his father lay dying in a hospital. Ms. Jungers also claims that Woods paid for her liposuction procedure.
Naturally, as a public perpetually starved for scandalous bilge, we are delighted.
I know - we should be outraged and shocked, dismissing all of it as largely slander from publicity-crazy gold diggers until we have indisputable proof. (More “sext” messages, maybe?) Well, we’re trying very hard to be but the truth is, we need something to take our minds of the fact that we may be soon buying potatoes in tolas and what better distraction than a juicy concoction of sex, porn queens and voicemail?

(I’m wondering if there would be less snide snickering if there was one less leading-lady-of- Diary of a Horny Housewife and at least one rocket scientist amongst that list
of er, lovelies?) 
But besides that, I have two points to make
First, I’m jaw-hanging-down-to- my-navel awe-struck.
And here’s why
Nobody is a saint but Tiger Woods came so close to becoming one.
Child prodigy, greatest golfer in the world, devoted son, perfect husband, adoring father, American hero, Mr. Squeaky-Clean and buddy-buddy with the President of the United States of America to boot. The cover of the January 2010 issue of Golf Digest has Tiger posing with Obama for a story titled “10 Tips that Obama can take from Tiger.”
And if he hadn’t crashed that car, we’d be all nodding our heads and saying who better than Woods to give the Prez tips on how to run America.
Now, we’re thinking - maybe it should have been “10 Tips that Clinton could have taken from Tiger.”
What I mean to say is that from the looks of it, the countryside is lousy with cocktail waitresses and “ladies of the night” of various denominations that Woods was apparently regularly er, “seeing”. And nobody, not even the American paparazzi had a clue? And please don’t give us that crock about Tiger being a private guy (EVEN if he christened his yacht “Privacy”), that golf is a private, elitist sport etc., etc. I mean the man wasn’t er, cavorting with polar bears in the middle of Siberia for crying out loud. (They would’ve been spotted by Sarah Palin, though  who, on a clear day, can see into your underwear.)
And Elin, you poor, poor dear. I know they say that the wife’s always the last to know, but surely you must’ve smelt a cocktail waitress?
In other words, how did the man do it?
Which brings me to my second point.
Woods started playing tournaments at the age of 3 and winning them before he was 10. He is the only golfer to become PGA Tour Player of the Year nine times and his record of 14 major golf championship wins is only bettered by Jack Nicklaus. Tiger Woods’ participation in golf tournaments can hike ticket sales by as much as 20 percent and television viewership by a whopping 50 percent. He is also the world’s first billionaire athlete
A star as bright as this blazes but once in a lifetime. So will Wood’s sexual shenanigans, however disgraceful they may be, dim the lights on his spectacular achievements?
I think not.
In a perfect world, the most gifted people in the world would also be the best human beings.
In ours, genius often has nothing to do with being a nice guy (or girl).
So Woods will still be one of the greatest athletes in the world. Even if the Tiger-Woods-Mistress index touches 35.
We’re kinda hoping it will – how else are we going to forget that tuar dal, not diamonds, may soon be a girl’s best friend?

The Power of One Paisa

(Or How to Take Your City Back)

"Over the past 80 years we have been building cities for cars much more than for people. If only children had as much public space as cars, most cities in the world would become marvellous." Enrique Penalosa
Let me tell you a little story.
Vicks Vaporub – that doughty fighter of coughs and colds that has been a household name for decades.
Many years ago, this balm was packed in little, indigo-blue coloured glass bottles, made by only one company that had a very curious name – Paisa Fund Glass Works. But even more curious is how that name came to be.
About a hundred years, when the fire of the Swaraj and Swadeshi movement was being stoked, a poor school teacher from Ratnagiri calleded Antaji Damodar Kale came up with a revolutionary idea that would seed India’s first co-operative fund. It was to collect at least one paisa from every person and use the money to finance earn-‘n-learn educational programs that would in turn generate jobs. The idea caught the attention of the great Bal Gangadhar Tilak who promoted it so actively - even writing editorials about it in his immensely popular newspaper, the Kesari – that many people attributed the idea to him. But more importantly, it caught the imagination of the people. And so, travelling all over Maharashtra and parts of Gujarat, Kale collected 14,000 rupees, a huge fortune at the time.
The money was used to set up a small glass-making unit, more of a training centre than anything else, but in about 3 years time, it became a fully-fledged commercial glass manufacturing factory – India’s very first. And they named it the Paisa Fund Glass Works! A hundred years later, even though the little indigo-blue bottles have now become plastic, Paisa Fund Glass Works is the only supplier of the glass lenses that change the colour of the millions of signals regulating traffic of over 18 million passengers and more than 2 million tonnes of freight that travel every day on the 63,327 kilometres of the Indian Railways
All this with just one paisa?
Yes.
In other words, never underestimate the might of the tiny drop. Not only does it make the ocean, it is also makes something called public will.
Which is nothing but a collection of our individual one-paisa worth of unshakeable, immutable belief that we can change things.
And that brings me to a second little story.
About a city called Bogota.
Capital of Colombia, nerve centre of the country’s economy, accounting for 30 percent of the country's GDP. And like so many such cities in developing countries, the gap between the quality of life of the rich and the vast majority of the poor is a chasm; luxury apartments and glittering shopping malls cheek-by-jowl with huge shanty towns and slums.
Bogota was also one of the 20 most polluted cities in the world, 30,000 tons of contaminants spewed into it everyday, making the New York Times dub it a “snarled, toxic and crime-ridden mess”. Bogotans themselves considered it a divine punishment to live in the city.
But that was till 1998.
When a man named Enrique Penalosa became mayor and decided that it was time to take back his city from the hell that it had been consigned to. And one of cornerstones of his campaign was to declare “a war on cars”. 70% of Bogota’s population did not own a car. Yet traffic congestion and the attendant pollution was one of Bogota’s most crippling problems.
So what Penalosa decreed was close to urban blasphemy.
For two days a week, every car in Bogota had to be off the street during rush hour, three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon. Every Sunday, he closed 120 kilometers of Bogota’s main roads to cars for seven hours so that people could come out to ride bicycles, jog or simply gather around. (A million and a half people did so joyously!) And he declared the first Thursday of every February as the annual car-free day!
Today, Bogota is one of the most flaunted examples in the showcase of sustainable cities. Penalosa’s policies freed public space for other quicker, cleaner means of transport. Bogota’s TransMilenio Bus Rapid Transit system, set up a fraction of the cost of subways and flyovers, the favourite by urban planning experts, is so ‘rapid” and so efficient (it even has wheelchair lifts) that 20% of Bogota’s car owners commute on it every day! (Penalosa’s inspiration came from the Brazilian city of Curitiba where the green area per inhabitant is four times the World Health Organization standard and where they recycle buildings and trim the grass of their vast parks with a flock of 30 sheep!
And for parks (the largest is 40 acres and was once a slum), bikeways (one that is 340 kilometers long and one of the longest in the developing world) and libraries , places where Bogotans forgot that they were sardines stewing inside a can and remembered they were humans, entitled to happiness.
Forget the prizes and awards that Bogotá has won, the real measures of Penalosa’s success was that Bogota’s crime rate dropped by 35 % and enrolment in schools went up by 30% and the city is now a tourist destination!
Impossible, you gasp. As impossible as India’s glass industry being started by one paisa?
The success of Penalosa and Kale and so many others like them was based only on one thing – the power of that one paisa.
All of us have it – 7 million people of Bogota city and 6 million Bangaloreans.
So, it is time to spend that one paisa to buy this city back
Now.
Because even as you read this, there may be a Penalosa or a Kale somewhere in this city, waiting to collect that paisa fund.
And how about we start with the most simple but most brilliant of Penalosa’s ideas – a vehicle-free day?
That each of one of us choose one day of the week when we will not use our vehicle….

A Rough Guide to Terror Tourism

(Wrote this a year ago, about a week after the Mumbai terror attacks)

“Ram Gopal Varma ki yahi kamayee
Do sarkar banaye, ek girayee.” On SMS

Bungee jumping. Paragliding. Skateboarding.
I mean – yawn.
Because on December 1st, as I watched our dear Chief Minister tour the ravaged interiors of the hotel Taj and Trident, I knew it was time to make way for the hottest, hippest way to take a break, let your hair down, tune out, switch off.
Terror tourism.
Now I don’t know about you fellas but my motto is - “be prepared”. So, I write this in preparedness for the outside chance that someone amongst us might just get as lucky as aapro Vilasji did to tour the latest terror hotspot. I also write this in preparedness for the even more outside chance that a certain male relative of a certain gent who was once known as Maharashtra’s Remote Control might be reading this.  For tips and tippanis for his very own impending terror tour. Which should be happening anytime now?
So, without further shilly-shallying or beating around the bush, let me begin.
First and foremost, this is an extreme sport, not for the lily-livered, the yellow-bellied, the milksops, the pusillanimous chickens. For example, right now, there is a huge misconception doing the rounds that the brave hearts of the Mumbai terror attacks were the NSG commandos, the hotel staff of the Taj and the Trident, the cops etc. etc. What a crock.
Because the bravest of them all was our beloved CM-saheb, strolling so courageously through that ghastly burnt-out shell of the Taj. With nary a thought for the extreme danger that he was putting himself in. After all, any minute, his beautiful white neta-in-mourning kurta could’ve been picked off and blackened by one of those deadly soot-covered walls. Or lurking around the corner could be a deathly bullet hole waiting to ruin his manicure. And we shudder to think what terrible fate awaited his freshly dyed-for-the-telly, carefully coifed hair in the hands of that terrifying rubble-dust.)
In other words, be a terror tourist only if you have the guts for it. And only a few very, very brave people do.
Second of all, if you are one of those me-alone-communing-with-nature kind of people, then it’s best to give this a skip because terror tourism is a group activity, best enjoyed in the company of friends and relatives. And that could include your third grandson’s personal potty-trainer, your fourth second cousin’s ex-wife’s current mother-in-law, your pooch’s psychiatrist, your dhokla-khandvi chef and your dhobi’s donkey.
Not to mention your friendly neighbourhood film director.
I know what you are thinking. You can see how a rousing round of bullet-hole-spotting and musical bloodstains in company of kith and kin help to unwind, unclench those teeth, relax that sphincter and generally aid world peace.
But the film director?
Ah.
How else could he get people to forget that he made a film called “Ram Gopal Varma’s Aag”?
Third of all, it’s very important to have a tour guide at all times After all, you need as much to be able to tell the blue-bottled fly from the blue-bottomed baboon as you do to differentiate rubble from rabri (no relation to Laloo) and charred ballroom from charred toast. (Ideally, the guide should be the cop who held the terrorists at bay for eight hours before the commandos turned up. Adds globs of “realism” to the enchilada.) The important thing though, while listening to the guide, is to constantly make hissing noises and scrunch up your face in expressions of horrified commiseration. (Don’t worry if it looks more as if you’ve just smelt some very nasty navel jam - you can take tips from your actor son before your next trip.)
Fourth of all, the walk. (I’m sorry, fellas. We do plan to get cable cars and limos very soon, but right now, you’ll have to do it all on foot.) It’s very, very important how you walk through the…shall we call it “terror sanctuary”? What you need is a measured slow amble, all the while sticking out your well-toned, six-paunch, spelling out a pleasant post-beer-‘n-biryani perambulation with wifey on Marine Drive. This will serve two purposes. It will make your bowels move. And it will terrify the terrorists. How, we can’t say exactly as yet, but it will.
(We are thinking of asking future terror tourists to whistle as they walk to make the terrorists even more terrified, but that will be only allowed in a more advanced version.)
I could go on, but for the moment this much will suffice for you to go off and practice your terror tourist moves.
Which leaves two things
First the tricky question that’s trembling on everybody’s lips.
Will one get to see live dead bodies? Or at least a few body parts? After all, after a point, how terrifying can a few mounds of blackened rubble and a few tons of broken glass be?
Er.
Lemme put it this way. Terror tourism is taking its first baby steps. (Though with the kind of patronage it already getting, that baby is gonna grow up very fast into a full-blown adult.) So, for the moment, I’m afraid you’ll have to make to with bloodstains. Not much, I’ll admit, but it’s a start.
Finally, terror tourism is the sport of the future and for two reasons. We’ve already covered one - the strike-terror-in-the-hearts-of-those-naughty-terrorists bit. The other reason is that it’s a great stress buster, especially for high-powered folk like chief ministers. This was obvious when our beloved Deshmukhji faced the press the day after that epoch-making terror tour. Fresh as a daisy, not a furrow on brow or a bag under eye, unfazed by all those pesky journos bombarding him with silly questions like, “Do you take moral responsibility for these attacks?”
I mean, for crying out aloud.
Moral responsibility? (Or any other kind for that matter.)
Duh. Wot dat?
(After watching the footage of Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s terror tour, I thought that in terms of sheer shamelessness, callousness and crass insensitivity, nothing could beat it. But I was wrong. I underestimated our politicians. This morning’s newspaper said that according the said Chief Minister, the television footage of his visit was provided to the news channels by the government. Meaning him. Of course it was.
Did we not tell you how terrifying that walk was?)

All the World’s a Parking Lot

(Appeared today in the BANGALORE MIRROR)

We’re drowning in traffic, they tell us. Slowly choking to an agonising death on roads that are more pothole than road. And so, the End of the World – according to some, just a short 1095 days away – will be because we will all fall into a Giant-Pothole-in-the-Sky.
Naturally, with such doomsday prophecies in the air, I have become a keen observer of traffic. And have come to the conclusion that the problem is not only that there are too many vehicles and too few roads. (Forecasters predict that very soon, roads, along with the tiger and the fruit bat, will be extinct and future generations will gaze at pictures of them with the same wonderment as they do of dinosaurs and gasp, “Look, Ma! A road!”) The problem is also that traffic rules are outdated because we have forgotten to take into account a marvel of automotive engineering designed purely to facilitate safer driving.
I speak of course of the cell phone.
So, in order to set things right, I propose a rule that, in one fell swoop, will un-jam the jams(if the Oxford dictionary can have “unfriend” then why not “unjam”?), unsnarl the snarls and make traffic flow faster that a reality show contestant’s tears.
And the rule (heretofore known as The Rule) is this – Never-ever drive without making sure that you’re talking on your cell phone. It is a well-researched fact that talking incessantly on the cell phone improves the bowel movement, shrivels up hangnails and increases the population of fruit flies in Jalpaiguri. How exactly it helps to unjam those traffic jams and make our roads safer we don’t know as yet, but suffice to say that it does.
Now as you do this, you may notice (or not) that you’re hitting things with fairly regular frequency, many of them people. Or vehicles with people in them. Don’t let this bother you because most of the people you hit will also be talk-or-texting on their cell phones and chances are they won’t notice.
Of course, this rule applies to only learner drivers. Once the L-plate comes off, a sub-clause of The Rule immediately comes into force. Which makes it mandatory for you to not only talk on your cell phone while driving but to also read and send text messages, using at least two phones.
Now let me explain why this rule is so effective.
There are many things that have been put on the roads by evil minds to distract you while you are driving.
For example, you may have noticed (or not) strange, mysterious, multicoloured markings and signs that are all over the place. Lines, some dotted, others dashed; some straight, others squiggly. Arrows pointing this way and that; sometimes even squiggly arrows. Some of them are painted onto the road; others are on signboards. Now some poor fools amongst us think that these are traffic signs, meant to regulate traffic. (Whatever that means.) The truth is that nobody knows what they are or what they mean but experts are now of the opinion they could be coded messages left by an alien race of super cockroaches from a yet-to-be-discovered planet who plan to colonise Earth into a giant garbage-dump-cum-public-loo.
(Yup, somebody else beat us to the idea!)

Then there are all those dratted lights. Some are called traffic lights, but are actually leftover decorations from the last three BJP chintan-baitaks, obvious from the way they change colour every few minutes. Others are called indicators and you’ll spot them winking lasciviously at you from the sides and rear ends of vehicles. Nobody knows what they indicate, though it could be the timing and venue of the next Reddy-garus tantrum.
And finally, there are those men in funny uniforms standing inside even funnier kiosks plonked right in the middle of the road. (As if we don’t already have enough congestion problems.) They periodically make strange (though not obscene and thank God for that!) gestures with their hands. Again, the aforementioned poor fools think these chapss are traffic cops (whatever that is) but if you look at them closely, you’ll notice that all of them look vaguely familiar. That’s because they’re actually contestants from Bigg Boss out on their weekly task or politicians practising waving-to-the crowds in readiness for the next state elections. (Which I’m told may happen before we disappear down that Giant Pothole.)
Naturally, the only thing to do about all these pesky distractions is to ignore them completely, which you will automatically do if you follow The Rule because you won’t see any of them since you will be too busy talking-‘n-texting. And we will do our bit to help you by providing regular and lavish supplies of smog, exhaust fumes and other emissions to keep your eyes constantly watering and visibility only enough for you to be able read what’s on your zara-zara-touch-me-touch-me cell phone screen.
(I know, I know – the brilliance of The Rule is taking your breath away! It did mine too.)
I end with a related matter that needs urgent attention - parking space. (According to one estimate, before we disappear down that Giant Pothole, the planet will be one giant parking lot and we humans will be centipedes, slithering our way around billions of stationery vehicles, parked in the same spot for thousands of years ago. Only four roads will be left, all reserved for VIP traffic.) The inspiration for the solution comes from observing the er, nonchalance with which so many Indian men publicly relieve themselves anywhere and everywhere. So I’m thinking, if all the world’s an urinal (forgive me, Shakespeareji), why can’t it also be a parking lot?

The Future Super Power

(MY COLUMN IN THE BANGALORE MIRROR TODAY)

“Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking.” Dave Barry

Well, it’s finally official. Karnataka will now have regular load shedding – two hours a day in Bangalore, four hours a day in “other urban areas” and twelve hours a day in “rural” areas. And there’s no need to gasp in outrage about that twelve-hour bit. After all, what does a farmer need electricity for? To watch his paddy grows?
Besides, I have a more important point to make and this realization dawned upon me one relaxed, peaceful day just two weeks ago when we had had no power for almost ten hours. (I mean, we never said there wouldn’t be any  “unscheduled” load shedding, did we now?) As I sat renewing my acquaintance with my navel, (navel gazing was a popular pastime during the Dark Ages and led to the invention of the toothpick and other such marvels that altered the course of human history) I thought to myself - there has to be a cosmic explanation for this.

It has to be beyond the one that we consume more electricity than we make. (Please don’t ask silly questions like “when are we going to make enough?” That’s like asking how many pink salwar kameez outfits does Mayawati own. Nobody knows. Even though our CM did recently say that we hope to end the power shortage in 3 years. But if you notice, he didn’t say three years from what date. So it could be 3 years from 2028, 2076, 2145 etc., etc.)

And beyond the one that there isn’t enough water in the hydel resevoirs. An explanation that held water (pun intended) earlier this year, when the monsoon had failed so miserably that we barely had water to drink. (We’re just a week away from dying of thirst, the newspapers screamed). But that was then. Now we have so much water – especially when we factor in our CM’s recent crying jags- that we’re ready to re-enact Noah and the Flood. Except that there’s a strong rumour going around that there will be room on the Ark for just one politician and not two. (For those who skipped their Bible study classes, God asked Noah to stock two of each kind of animal - one male and one female – so that after the flood, they could reproduce and multiply their kind.)
It has to be beyond the “technical snags” in the thermal power stations and their dwindling stocks of churimuri. (It is a little known fact that neither water nor coal will yield a single watt of electricity if a judicious amount of churimuri is not mixed into it.) Or the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) beating up Mumbai roadside romeos for eve-teasing in Hindi instead of Marathi. It had to be beyond the fight that apparently broke out in the BJP high command as to which sweet dish Reddy-garu and Yeddyurappa-avaru should so lovingly spoon into each other’s mouths before they kissed and made up.

And then it hit me, much in the manner of the apple that plopped on Newton’s unsuspecting head.

We were all being weaned off our terrible, crippling addiction for that nasty, disgusting thing called electricity! With same loving but unrelenting firmness with which our mothers weaned us off …well, a lot of things too numerous to count including sucking our thumbs and picking our noses.
So that soon a day will come in the not so distant future, when they will come crawling and grovelling to our doorsteps offering us free, unlimited electricity. Every person taking a new electricity connection will be rewarded with a lifetime unlimited supply of free puliogare and gobi manchuri and 8-nights-41-days’exotic holiday in the Reddy mines. It will be then, in that moment of glory that we will blithely spurn them. Because by then, a new kind of power will running everything.
Mosquito power.
Generated by the only thing that is abundantly, freely and perennially available. (Even as we speak, there are reports of an invention that will harness the bloodsucking talents of the mosquito for blood banks.)
The news just out is the Chamundeshwari Electricity Supply Corporation Limited, Mysore, has received an award for excellence in Field Inspection and Technical Assistance Services. We applaud heartily, but for those of you who aren’t quite sure what that means, “Technical Assistance Services” is helping you to find the candles during the 10-hour load shedding when even your inverter gives up.
And “Field inspection”?
Ah. Hold on while I call up “Technical Assistance Services”.

The Truth About Calendar Girls and Chastity Belts

It’s quite astonishing how many misconceptions the average pappu-pinky-on-the-street has about stuff. And I count myself to be one such pappu-pinky
For example, the popular belief is that the Miss Universe and Miss World contests and the annual Kingfisher calendar exist because there are many amongst us who like to ogle at pretty women, preferably in minimal clothing.
Wrong.
The real reason  – something that Donald Trump, Julia Morley and Vijay Mallya have known all along – is that every 10-second ogle of a woman in swimsuit saves upto 10,000 Ridley turtles, feeds one million starving children in wherever-it-is-they-are-starving and arrests the meltdown of at least one Antarctic iceberg. Also, the briefer the swimsuit (preferably a bikini), the more turtles saved, kiddies fed and icebergs re-frozen. And if the organisers would be so kind as to consider g-strings next year, it may even end the suicide bombings in Iraq, save Pakistan from blowing itself up to smithereens and smoke out Osama Bin Laden.
Which of course is the only reason why the hunt for next lot of Kingfisher calendar ladies will happen on a reality show on NDTV Goodtimes.
Similarly, like many of my fellow pappu-pinkys, I thought flood relief meant providing food, water, clothes and shelter; massive feat that first involved marshalling enough resources and then distributing them in a way to reach every one of the millions of flood victims. And that this would mean that the entire machinery of the state government would be working 24x7, under the constant, vigilant, watchful supervision of our ministers and MLA’s, the elected representatives of we the pappu-pinkies
Wrong again.
The thing is, food packets and blankets and kanji-centres are all very well. But the most critical part of flood relief work is something else altogether, something that our ministers/MLAs have known all along. It involves one gaggle of ministers (also known as mine-isters) deciding bang in the middle of posing-next-to-the-kanji-cauldrons-for-the-cameras that this is the perfect time to settle unpaid, pending pounds of flesh with the Chief Minister. And before we can say “kanji-cauldron”, the aforementioned ministers with their faithful band of chela-MLA’s quickly rush off to temples/resorts and mutts of their choice. The government teeters and totters, everybody else drops their flood-relief photo-op kit and hotfoots back to base camp in Bengaluru and the entire state screeches to a horrified halt.
Naturally, the question that pops into the mind of the average pappu-pinky is – how will this help the flood victims?
Ah. We knew you’d ask this silly question but we understand - after all you’re just a ignorant pappu-pinky.
So, let us explain. You see, this masterstroke of flood-relief planning envisages that one of two things will happen. First that the flood victims, fed up of waiting for help to come their way, will go way and try and find their own means of staying alive, not to mention staying. Or that they will die.
Either way, the problem will be solved and the thousands of crores of money intended for this silly flood relief work will be saved and can be spent on buntings, bouquets, archways and kesari bhat for the next cabinet meeting. And we all live happily ever after.
Which leaves one more misconception that we need to cover.
And that is chastity belts.
Now, those pappu-pinkys having a smattering of knowledge of medieval history may think that chastity belts are iron er, ladies’ innerwear into which knights leaving for the crusades would strap in and lock their ladies into, to deter any infidelity that the ladies may consider indulging in during their absence.
Well, that may be so, but hundreds of years ago. Today, chastity belts are much roomier than ladies’ underwear. They are the resorts/hotels in secret locations into which politicians secrete their supporters. Not only because they, the supporters I mean, deserve a much-needed rest from posing next to flood-relief kanji cauldrons, though that too. But also so that, it will stave off any temptation to indulge in a bit of “infidelity” with politicians of the opposing camp, hoping to lure them over.
Politicians.
Every five years, they land up at our doorsteps, oily, obsequious and ingratiating, littering the neighbourhood with themselves and their lies.
Bent at the waist, they smile smiles that never reach their crocodile eyes, making promises that both of us know they will never fulfil. And thus, they bow and beg shamelessly for our votes.
And we, the eternal suckers, give it to them.
Shame on us.

(My Column in the Bangalore Mirror today)

Post-Diwali Peregrinations

 

I’m confused.
The recession is over, they say. And it must be.
Firstly because the experts say so. After all, aren’t they the ones who warned us about the collapse of the stock market and the Satyam scam, well in time for everyone to pull their money out? And aren’t they the ones who so accurately predicted the monsoons? That the miserable “below normal” trickle would suddenly turn into an “above normal” deluge so monstrous that it would wash away everything in sight?
And because young nieces and nephews, the ink on their software degrees still wet, are back to earning upwards of 40,000 rupees a month. And because the price of gold and the Sensex have dizzily climbed up like an item girl’s hemline, flashing seductive hints that they may climb up even further.
And because though the Diwali firecracker sellers moaned about slow sales, the stalls were up well in advance to make sure that everyone was stocked up on their cocktails of vishnu-laxmi-mallika-sherawat bombs and 1000-feet laddis. Not because we are callous creeps who didn’t care a whit about our poor, flooded-out-of-home-‘n-hearth
fellow Kannadigas languishing in some miserable relief camp without a phuljadi to their name. But to make sure that on Diwali day, they, like the rest of us, would be deafened, nerve-wracked and almost asphyxiated to death and thus be filled with festive cheer.
A display of collective thoughtfulness that moved me to tears.
The final sign came right and early on Dhanteras day, when every alternate page of the morning newspaper was a full-page advertisement displaying a frightening array of everything we’ve always wanted in plasma TV’s and home theatres but were too recession-pressed to buy.
So, I thought to myself as I agonised over microwave with built-in massage parlour versus plasma TV with 1.06 billion colours and automatic candidature for Rahul-ka-Swayamvar – yup, the recession must well and truly be over.
Till a report about the flood relief work on the neighbouring page caught my eye. According to which the amount sanctioned by the government for a house that had been totally destroyed by the floods was 35000 rupees - but only if it was a ‘pucca’ construction. The poor fools who could not afford to microwave their houses and had “kaccha” ones, would be granted the princely sum of 10,000 rupees.
I know. You’re thinking – 35,000 rupees may not buy enough space in Bengaluru to swing a dead cat in but surely in Backofbeyondinahalli, it would be sufficient to build…well, if not a mansion befitting Donald Trump, certainly an abode worthy of a flood-devastated Backofbeyondinhalli-wallah?
Er, no.
I know that many of us, worrying about where our next smart phone is going to come from may not know this. But apparently the cost of a basic one-room kitchen house, just large enough to swing the aforementioned dead cat in and no Italian marble in the swimming pool is about one lakh of rupees.
Even in Backofbeyondinahalli.
Now I’m thinking - why just 35,000 rupees? I mean, money should not be a problem, now that the recession is over and happy days are here again, thumbs up, thumbs up, is it not?
Ah. Good question.
You see, there was a lot of careful, sagacious thinking behind the government’s circumspection about doling out the flood relief moolah. This way, if we were a flood-hit, homeless Backofbeyondinahalli-wallah (which we aren’t, thank God), we build just one-third of a house this year. Then, hopefully if the gods oblige with floods next year and the one-third remains standing, we will know how flood-worthy it is and get on with building another one-third. And then, if the year after that, the gods continue to rain down their munificence, we finish off the remaining one-third, just in time for Diwali.
Gosh-‘n-golly. I never thought of it quite like that. But now that you have explained it to me like that, who would’ve thought that our policy makers are capable of such brilliance.
Anyway, while the Backofbeyondinahalli-wallahs slowly cobble back together their washed-out lives and build their one-third houses, we shouldn’t be too cock-a-whoop about the receded recession. Apparently the floods have destroyed so much of the standing crops that this time next year, a plate of idli sambar may cost more than a smart phone.
Incidentally, I’d like to tell you that I opted for the plasma TV with 1.06 billion colours and automatic candidature for Rahul-ka-Swayamvar. I mean, which woman in her right mind would pass up an opportunity to be Rahul Mahajan’s telly-bride?

About time, Manna Da!

Belated congratulations to the great Manna Dey! Unassuming and very often looked over because of his more high-profile colleagues - yet no one can beat this man on pure, unadulterated mellifluousness. This, one my favourite Manna Dey songs, amply demonstrates Manna Da’s command over melody. And the composer is another musician who did not get his due - none other than Geeta Dutt's brother, Kanu Roy!

 

Of all the duets that Manna Dey and Lata Mangeshkar have sung together - and Raj Kapoor's films notwithstanding - this song from the film “Jyoti” has to be one of the most hauntingly beautiful. I can't decide what is the best - the utterly enchanting, sweet singing by both Lataji and Manna Da, S.D. Burman's exquisite composition or Anand Bakshi's poetry...

 

Not too many peole know that some of the best "comedy" songs have been sung by ...the great Manna Dey...and with great aplomb! This is a great example – film Bhoot Bangla and who else but Pancham could whip up this effervescent foot-tapper!

 

 

Finally, after Lata and Mohd. Rafi, Madan Mohan's most successful collaboration was with Manna Dey. And this fabulous composition from Bawarchi is a fine example. Incidentally, one of the female voice in the "chorus" is Govinda's mother, Nirmala Devi!

The Tenth Night – Dusshera!

 

The Tenth Night – Dusshera!
A 1000 too little.....
This is my last post on Navaratri.
The nine nights are over and today is the triumphant tenth day of the power of the Devi - even Lord Rama vanquished Ravana with the secret weapon that he obtained after invoking Her blessings

When I listen to the Lalitha Sahasranama and try to write about it English, I am struck by limitations of the English language that can never truly translate the vast, expansive, expressive grandeur of Sanskrit.
And perhaps some of the most enthralling parts of the Lalitha Sahasranama are those which describe the incredible beauty of the Devi, so dazzling that in one of stotram, the splendor of her toe nails is described as so radiant that it dispels the darkness of ignorance in the devotees prostrating at Her feet!

She is Sagara Mekhala - whose girdle is the sea.
Her nose is like a freshly blossomed champaka bud.
Her lips outshine the redness of fresh coral and bimba fruit.
Her smile is so radiant that it floods the mind of Kamesvara, Her consort.
Her eyes, like the petal of a lotus (Padmanayana) or of a doe (Mrugakshi), are so beautiful that She is Kamakshi, the beautiful eyed One.
Her form is so exquisite (Charurupa) and her smile so charming (Charuhasa), that She is Mohini, the bewitching beauty and Shobana, the radiant beauty.

She is sometimes Raktavarna or rosy complexioned,
Sometimes Shyamabha or of a shining darkness,
Sometimes Shuklavarna or white complexioned,
Sometimes Pitavarna or golden.
In fact her beauty is so awesome that She is Mahatripurasundari.

If She is all this, then what else can She be but omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent?
The Devi herself declares in Devi Bhagavata,
“I myself am the knowledge, grace, courage, memory, sincerity, intelligence, modesty, hunger, thirst, capacity, luster, peace, sleep, aging, blood, bone, marrow, nerve, skin, sight, truth, untruth — and everything else in this Universe, believe me, I am. What is there that I am not?”
When the sage Vyasa was once questioned about the birth of the Devi, he said that when even Brahmavishnumaheswara are not capable of thinking about her origin, then how can he?
Om Sri Devi Ma!

The Ninth Night - Why not 10 or 11 0r 8?

Divine Nine
For nine days and nights we have celebrated the triumph of the Goddess over evil.
Navaratri.
Why nine, you might ask?
Why not 11 or 8 or any other number for that matter?
Well, maybe because nine is quite a number, it seems!
The “Complete” number
From the vantage point of pure mathematics - and we Indians are somewhat of an authority on the subject - the number 9 is considered to be a complete or “puran” number. Why? Because do anything to this number and it remains unchanged, unaffected, like Devi Herself. Multiply 9 by any number and the answer always totals to 9. Add it to or subtract it from any number, the answer always totals to the number or the sum of the one that you added or subtracted, nine remaining serenely untouched, unmoving.
23 x 9 = 207
74 x 9 = 576
5 + 9 = 14
25 + 9 = 34
87 – 9 = 78
13 – 9 = 4
This concept is explained in the Upanishads.
The primordial, celestial number
A human being spends 9 months in its mother’s womb before it is born. At the rate of 15 breaths a minute, a healthy human being takes an average of 21600 breaths in 24 hours or 9 x 100 breaths in an hour!
The number nine also leaps up and strides across the heavens - in the form of the 9 celestial bodies or the Navagraha. Planets, would you say? Well, I don’t really know because only 6 of the planets in the Western or solar system of astronomy figure in the navagrahas. Also by the Western system, the Sun is a star, and Rahu and Ketu aren’t planets at all. And the earth, Pluto and Neptune don’t figure at all which should leave us serenely unaffected by all the recent teeth-gnashing about that poor lil’ dwarf, Pluto!
Sun (Surya),
Moon (Chandra),
Mars (Mangal/Bhaum),
Mercury (Budha),
Jupiter (Guru/Bruhaspati),
Venus (Shukra)
Saturn (Shani)
Rahu and
Ketu.
Also, the navagrahas aren’t considered just planets, but also divine entities to be both worshipped and appeased. Surya, for example is the son of sage Kasyapa and Aditi, while Shani is Surya’s son. Chandra (the moon) is a Deva who took the 27 (9x3!) stars (Nakshatras and daughters of Daksha) as his wives. Bruhaspati (Jupiter) was the teacher of devas, a mighty scholar whose utterances made it into every branch of Indian philosophy. Budha (Mercury) is considered the son of Chandradeva while Sukra (Venus) is a benign deva so wealthy that all the precious stones are in his possession and Kubera lives by constantly borrowing a quarter of his wealth from Sukra!
The Ecologically Correct Number
The navagraha puja gave rise to the concept of navadhaanya or the 9 sacred seeds or grains offered to each of the 9 grahas. And if we look at them beyond just offerings in a ritual, we see the embodiment of life itself and what the principle of what now an eco-fashionable word – biodiversity. Because these 9 seeds and grains are the perfect balance of cereal (wheat and rice), legume (Bengal gram, green gram, horse gram, black gram and red gram) and nuts/oilseed (sesame) which is the principle behind crop rotation in agriculture, now making a “comeback” among agriculturists as one of the most powerful and enduring ways to enrich and rejuvenate the soil.
The divine number
So, I guess the Devi picked the right number, don’t you think?
And nine has a special significance for the Devi in other ways.
In Bengal, during Durga Puja, a special Devi is made out of 9 plants called nabapatrika. Each plant represents one avatar of the Devi - the banana plant for Goddess Brahmani, the colacassia or arvi plant for Kalika, turmeric for Durga, jayanti denotes Kartiki, bel or bilva (wood apple) for Goddess Shiva, pomegranate for Raktadantika, the ashoka tree for Sokrahita, arum for Chamunda and finally rice for Goddess Lakshmi.
Every one of those plants are nutritionally and/or medicinally potent!
But the ultimate divine significance of this number is in the fact that across all religions, the name of God is invoked in multiples of 9. The japamala or prayer beads used by Hindus, Jains and Buddhists has 108 beads. (The Buddhists believe that the 108 beads represent the number of mental conditions or sinful desires that one must overcome to reach enlightenment or nirvana.) The Quran list 99 names of Allah and so the Muslim prayer beads known as the tasbeeh usually has sets of 99 counting beads for each of the names and one elongated terminal bead. The Jains chant the panchanamaskara in multiples of 9. And in Christianity, the word “novena” itself is from the Latin word “novem” or 9 and so this prayer is chanted in sets of 9 – 9 consecutive hours, days, even weeks or months.
The number of life
Finally, let us come a full circle – literally - and rest where we began. With mathematics. Or with the meaning of life itself, depending on how you want to look at it. We talk about the circle of life. The zero as well as the wheel is a circle, without which much of what we call civilization or progress, would not have happened or existed. All the planets including the sun, moon and the one that we live on are, when viewed in one dimension - a circle. And the circle is the ultimate symbol of infinity – that which has no beginning and no end. So then consider this – in geometry, the number of degrees that make up a circle are 360.
Or 9 x 40!
Source material: Puranic Encyclopedia by Vettam Mani

The Eight Night - A Raga and a Rain Song

Naturally, no discussion on the Goddess Saraswati can be complete with music
And her presence in the glorious, infinite ocean of Indian music is all pervading.
Indian classical music and bhakti have always been the weft and warp of the same fabric and not just Hinduism
It is said that the azan or the call for prayer sounded by the muezzin sounded very similar to raga Ahir-Bhairav
The Sikh holy scripture, Guru Granth Sahib is divided into 32 chapters where each chapter has the name of a Raga.
And the first Raga is Raga Sri
Sri - The Devi’s most beautiful name that fits into it the entire universe and more it.
Gauri
Hemavati
Durga
Ambika
Saraswati
Kalavati
All names of the Devi and all names of ragas.
And almost like a musical Sahasranama, the ragas named after her have lent their magic to countless evergreen Hindi film songs.
Here are a few
Raga Bageshree
Radha na bole na bole re. AZAD , Lata Mangeshkar/ C. Ramchandra 1955
Chah barbad karegi – SHAH JAHAN K L Saigal/ Naushad 1946
Aja re, paradesi – MADHUMATI Lata Mangeshkar/Salil Chowdhury 1958
Ghadi Ghadi mera dil dhadke - MADHUMATI Lata Mangeshkar/Salil Chowdhury 1958
Hamse aya na gaya - DEKH KABIRA ROYA Talat mahmood?Madan Mohan 1957
Raga Madhuvanti/Ambika
Rasm-e-ulfat ko nibhaye DIL KI RAHEN Lata Mangeshkar /Madan Mohan (1973)
Raga Durga
Geet gaya patharon ne - GEET GAYA PATHARON NE Lata/Ramlal 1964
Raga Kalavati
Hai re woh din kyun na aye - ANURADHA Lata/ Pt. Ravi Shanker 1960
Kahe tarasae jiyara - CHITRALEKH Lata/Roshan 1964
Koi sagar dilko bahalata nahin – DIL DIYA DARD LIYA Naushad/Rafi1966
Na toh caravan ki alash hai –BARSAAT KI RAAT Roshan/ Rafi, Manna Dey,Asha Bhosale/Sudha Malhotra/Batish 1960
And of course, Raga Bhairavi.
The raga that gave birth to the glorious musical collaboration of Raj Kapoor with Shankar – Jaikishen in the film Barsaat in 1949. It also made the till then unknown Lata Mangeshkar into a household name with the song "Barsaat mein humse mile tum."
Awaara hoon from Awaara (1951).
Mera joota hai japani, Pyaar Hua Ikraar Hua and Ramaiyya vastavaiyya from Shri 420 (1955),
Mera Naam Raju and Hoton Pe Sachhayi Rahati Hai from Jis Desh Me Ganga Baheti Hai (1960).
Bol Radha Bol Sangam Hoga Ke Nahin and Dost Dost Na Raha from Sangam (1964)
All based on raga Bhairavi
The list of Bhairavi based Hindi film songs is a Sahasranama itself. Accomodating – like the Devi – every kind of music director, every kind of film, every nuance of emotion, every shade of mood. Everything from Ai Mere Dil Kahin Aur Chal from Daag (1952), one of Talat Mahmood's greatest hits to April Fool Banaaya (April Fool (1964)
Saraswati, most popular as the Goddess of learning and the arts, actually represents much more.
tranquility,
purity,
tolerance,
moral and spiritual strength,
concentration
eloquence.
And as the river Saraswati, she represents the flow and movement from the darkness of ignorance to the light of knowledge.
Source;- Wikipedia and www.asavari.org/songs.html