Stiff upper lip…my foot!

What do these firangs think of themselves? Just because they ruled us for 200 years, do they, by any chance think that they are a superior lot? What else would explain a semi-literate (I assume in my hopping mad state of mind) office assistant to turn down my request to take a message for his boss, that too on international call.
Have been chasing this lawyer in London all day, running down to this cubbyhole of a telephone booth outside office (office here does not have ISD) to call him up only to be told curtly “call him back after half an hour”. Initially, I didn’t lose my cool, trying my other techniques to get through him such as “put me on to someone else in the office in that case” meeting with the same irritating response “please call up after half an hour”.
In regular circumstances I would not have lost my cool. But, because this man insisted on repeating the sentence despite my rather polite requests (repeated three times) to leave my name and number, the man simply repeated “call up after half an hour”. And I lost it.
I told him that as an office assistant the least he is expected to do is to take down my details and ask his boss to call me back. The man, I assume, can only speak not hear. Or, he turns a deaf ear if it’s an Indian on the other end of the phone. And so he said for the nth time, “please call up after half an hour”.
Well, now after having shot a stinker to big man writing damaging things about his office assistant, am still seething.
I just feel that firangs do believe that they are notch above us and can get away with murder. What explains the racist abuses hurled at call center employees in India.
Was reminded of an incident at the Asian Development Bank meeting, when this group of firangs sniggered rather condescendingly when an Indian bureaucrat asked a state chief minister on why students from his state were not considered `employable’.
Am pretty certain that these unemployable graduates from India would make for far better office assistants, who will, if not anything else, have simple phone etiquette.
Huh!

Bad Monday

After a rather nice and peaceful weekend, i dont think it was a good idea for me to check things that upset me. I did. And I started hating my job.
Don't wish to say much.
MY favourite cartoon character's expression says it all.

That's me on a buggy!!

Hopped on to this buggy from the Nizam era at Chowmahalla Palace this afternoon. It felt rather royal...the upholstery, the size of the buggy...it was good fun!

An addict’s story

As a child, I remember watching the popular tele-serial ‘Chunauti’ on Doordarshan with rapt attention trying to figure out why young college boys were injecting stuff into their bodies and shuddered to see them whine in pain when they did not get the drug they were addicted to. I didn’t understand the serial much at that point in time.
I could never understand what pushed people to drugs and, honestly, I couldn’t care less. But, yesterday, when I came face to face with an addict, I found myself wanting… I lacked the understanding or perhaps suffered from `disinterest’ in an issue that didn’t affect me.
His story, however, made me discover the dark side of the world I am living in and put me in an awkward situation as well, as I didn’t know how to respond to his desperation to end his life.
“Curiosity killed the cat” he said at least five times in the one hour that I spent with him. He said the saying applied to his life, literally.
The man, in his mid-30s started doing drugs about 16 years ago “out of curiosity” when he had just joined college and ended up in a situation where he tried killing himself three times. He showed me a deep gashes on his neck from his first suicide attempt, slash marks on his wrist were proof of his second bid to end his life. He was telling me about his third attempt when I asked him to spare me the details.
The life he had lived over the last 16 years that he narrated calmly with remarkable honesty made me think of the `dark world’ that coexists with this regular world that I live in. People in the dark world do not socialize with those outside their circuit. The sun shies brighter on the other side, the man said, but narrated how he would lock himself up in a room for days together if he was unable to get his daily dose of one gram heroine.
“I would turn to alcohol then, finishing off two bottles of vodka or whisky everyday. But alcohol could never give me the same kick.”
He had friends who did drugs with him. Two of them died in front of him. “I was shaken, but still did not quit,” he said.
He said he took pride in the fact that he maintained friendships with a couple of `normal’ boys. “I would look at them and wonder how I reached this stage. I wanted to be like them, but even when I was hanging out with the regular bunch, I had to take my daily dose to keep me sane.”
From a rich family and pursuing medicine, the man had lost touch with his family and would take up odd jobs to buy his daily drug dose. “I have worked in food stalls, sold fish in the market, only to make enough money to buy the drug,” he said, his hands still shaking from years of abuse.
Now in rehab, the man said that he never thought he would ever get back to a normal society with normal people. Then he said how he felt terrible for having wasted so many years of his life but was glad that he didn’t get married. And then he paused, collected himself and said he was ashamed of himself and the life he had wasted. He had nothing to look forward to in life.
Since he is in rehab, I hoped he would have more to look forward to in life. I could not give him much hope, smiled at him, said all will be fine and walked out. On hindsight I think I could have wished him luck.

Films on books

I have never been this lucky. Within a few days of having finished reading The English Patient, I promptly found the film’s VCD. It was perhaps after a very long time that I saw a film as moving and wonderful as this and I cannot decide whether I loved the film more or the book. It is so rare to find films so true to the books they are based on. Be it the patient’s room, the kitchen, the cave…and even the appearances of the nurse, Hana, and Kip, the Indian sapper, were just the way I had imagined them to be while reading the book. While Kip’s role wasn’t as big in the film as it was in the book and the film and the original text did not really end the same way, yet, the film was certainly true to the spirit of the remarkable story.
While reading the book there were a few lines that stood out (call me a die hard romantic for picking up these as favourites from a book full of gems) like “When you leave me, forget me" and “I just want you to know, I don’t miss you yet” (to which Katharine says “you will”) and these were so movingly said in the movie as well.
However, its not always that you fall in love with a film based on a book that you adored. Most films are disappointments and one that comes to my mind is the film Tim based on the book by the same name by Colleen McCullough.I read Tim over a decade ago when I was still in school but, to date, itremains one of my favourite books. For, it was a fine love story realistically told. The love story of a mentally challenged 22-year-old Tim with a woman in her forties, who is described as one with harsh features and not really the kind of a woman men Tim's age would fancy was not only unusual but it also had the most unusual ending, a non-mush, bitter truth end to an otherwise perfect love story.Tim's helpless attraction to Mary when she takes him out on long drives and his first child-like attempt to kiss her end with Mary and Tim getting married. At this point, I remember wondering why there were so many pages still left in the book as I thought the story ended with the two getting married and living happily ever after.However, in a freak kitchen accident Tim lands up in the hospital and Mary like alovelorn teenager runs around looking after him. Reality bites, when adoctor attending to Tim asks a visibly ageing Mary to take rest and not getovertly anxious about her `son'.
Well, I would have perhaps liked the film had I not read the book. For me, the book’s charm was in the way it ended and the film simply glossed over it. I would have loved to see the best part of the book performed to perfection but was so disappointed to see it end abruptly (at least I thought so).
Another film which was strikingly true to the original text was Maqbool, based on Macbeth. Before the film released I wondered how the director would adapt the Shakespearean play to contemporary Indian context. The opening scene of the film dispelled all doubts in my mind. The film started with the thunder and lightning that characterized the opening scene of Macbeth with prophecies being made by two evil cops playing the three witches in the play who drive Macbeth to destruction. While some friends called Maqbool a rather dark film, I simply felt that the director was true to the book and did not take the so-called “creative freedom”.
I gave full marks to the director for having brought out my favourite part in the play so well: Lady Macbeth scrubbing her hands clean of imaginary blood (“even the perfumes of Arabia will not clean this little hand” in stark contrast to what she had told Macbeth earlier in the play after he kills Duncan “A little water clears us of this deed”). Tabu, as Lady Macbeth, was mind blowing.

Chinese Torture

That’s precisely what I have been subjected to over the last ten days. But, it wasn’t torture initially. I enjoyed it the first day for exactly 12 minutes… but it started hurting me slowly, the pain is now excruciating and I can’t take it anymore.
I was suspicious from the day four office boys came to my floor and started playing with a few wires. I knew they were up to something fishy and now I know that my fears were not unfounded. I dreaded it more when they put a white metallic net kind of a thing on the ceiling, it looked like a speaker to me and I wondered what it was for.
Now I know for am subjected to its incessant blaring all day. For an inexplicable reason I have radio at my workplace and believe me I can do WITHOUT this music. Can you write a single sentence with Mr Reshmaiya’s mind numbing `jhalak dikhlaja’ playing in the background? Or, for that matter, can you make a single conversation with any of the current crop of songs playing on your head, literally.
Thankfully, after repeated complaints and requests of shutting the radio down completely, the volume has been lowered and is not really disturbing to others. But, I am ultra-sensitive to bad music. Had it been old classics, I would have not reacted like this for sure, but then, the world seems to be rocking to the beats of `aap ki kashish’ (why, God, why) so who really cares to play the simply awesome `ban ke panchi gaaye pyar ka tarana’. Huh.
The main problem with most radio channels, I think, is that they don’t play music in tune with time and weather, which I strongly believe can be their USP. I really think that most of the channels play the same set of songs, have almost the same programmes, but rarely make an impromptu choice of a song to play in line with the weather or the time of the day (radio expert friend cum blogger, I know you disagree).
A few days ago when I was in Bombay, it was raining and all the channels were dishing out the same set of numbers__ from aashiq banaya aapne to aap ka surorr. But, among all the channels one stood out, Vividh Bharati, that was playing the choicest of monsoon melodies.
And, even as I am writing this it’s playing, `chalo ishq ladaye’. Do I care?

Forrest Gumps? Nah!

``When XYZ came to Hyderabad, I went running to ABC, a far flung suburb, to get his interview…all the reporters here were running that day after him,’’ said a colleague a couple of years ago just when I had moved to Hyderabad. Soon, I realized that a lot more reporters I came across in the city measured their quality of work from the miles that they had run for the story and not the story’s content.
For instance, they would have run a hundred miles for a press conference and termed their 248-word report on the same as ``valuable’’ contribution, not to journalism, but to fill space.
I have never been able to understand this yardstick of measuring quality of reports__ the distance traveled for a report that is. So, if one goes to, say, Hi Tech City in Hyderabad everyday, his/her work is the best qualitatively? Is the quality of stories reflected in how worn out your shoes are?
Cover a workshop on `mind management’ just because the other reporters too were `running’ around covering similar inane stuff or being asked by a fresh college grad to cover an elocution as there was nothing better happening in the city __ suggestions of this nature were made to me routinely to ensure that I ran as well. Memories of covering some of these `important’ news events such as one earth-shattering kids and dogs carnival will make me shudder even in my grave, am sure.
I write this because I see this person everyday, running, even when going to the loo. What could be the breaking news there…I wonder. The person runs up and down, left and right all day, through the month. I watch the person with disinterest my head shaking the way it would while watching a lawn tennis match.
Not too long ago the person was running to get a report on some politician who had written a poem!! Yet another reporter ran to get a quote from a breaucrat on his plans for the city (innovative, indeed). Not to forget this one person (a non-runner) who was made to run to find out how people were reacting to bus conductors opting to shout to the bus driver to start the bus than making the `ting-ting’ signal by pulling the string.
Well… I choose to use my running shoes more judiciously.

“Youngsters make mistakes”

Yeah, Mr Vajpayee, I agree with you. After all, what did Rahul Mahajan do? Snuffed a bit of cocaine or was it heroine… whatever… the poor hapless chap made a ‘mistake’ …just about a mistake. Not a punishable offence.
These are exactly the kind words of support the country’s youth expect from our senior leaders, who understand their situation and sympathise with them. After all, how will it help if a senior leader says that doing drugs is a crime and criminals should be punished? Will it reform the poor child in bad company? Our leaders know that these youngsters who have gone a bit astray need handholding not punishment.
So, a statement like “such mistakes happen in young age” would go a long way in helping…ummm…well… at least Rahul Mahajan.
In fact, going by that logic, we should free all the “youngsters” `trapped’ in prisons. After all, they too have been arrested for committing similar offences…nay…mistakes. They too fell in bad company and robbed, looted, raped… but then… such mistakes happen in young age.
The police should actually keep a list of these innocent youngsters ready and none other than Rahul Mahajan should free them from the country’s jails when he walks out of the hospital. What a warm gesture it would be!! Showing kindness to these innocent babies lost in the woods.
He will then go on and win a key position in a political party, win an election… smile and wave at television crews that once discussed whether he consumed cocaine or heroin. He will then give interviews thanking god, his father, mother and all those who stood by him at his hour of crisis. His now sensational case will in some time find a mandatory mention in the last para of crime stories on drugs that will read like…it may be recalled, Rahul Mahajan was in the midst of a cocaine/heroin controversy….
But, much before any of that happens, a glossy newspaper supplement or a television channel will have an exclusive interview with Mahajan Jr with a headline: “I have moved on”. Ah! Readers will feel so good to see/hear that.

(I, for the record, admire Mr Vajpayee. But, for the life of me cant understand why he didn’t issue a stern message instead of making himself appear like a doting mother who is so blind to his child’s vices)

Really?

I was watching a debate on reservations on CNN IBN, on the day the resident doctors called off the strike, when a pro-quota panelist said that just about 25 per cent Indians fell in the `other castes’ category while the remaining 75 per cent comprised SC/STs and OBCs and so it was valid to give them 50 per cent reservation.
Really? Could anyone please enlighten me on this? Had no idea that the backward classes constituted the country’s majority.

Of thunder storms and a bagful of memories

An overcast sky, high tidal waves, the gusty winds shooing away the sweaty summer in Bombay __ that’s just how I love the city I lived in for over a decade. Predictably, I was overwhelmed to be there to welcome and absorb the first monsoon spell as I zipped across city's roads from Churchgate to home in Bandra, chatting up with a friend I met after ages and then spending the latter half of my cab ride enjoying the view… the breeze…enjoying being in Bombay.
Well, I just got back from Bombay and though have about a hundred mails to delete and a few to respond to apart from of course finding out what’s happening in the city, I cant help give blogging the first priority also because I just could not get over the city I had once hated so much.
The cab ride home yesterday with thunder and lightning orchestrating each raindrop falling on the ground, licking ice cream in the drizzle made me more nostalgic about my days in Bombay than ever before.
The buildings looked cleaner, the trees greener…I ignored the puddles, the overflowing garbage at some points… even the hour-and-a-half long traffic jam between Mahim and Bandra I was stuck in…nothing stopped me on my trip down memory lane.
I thought of the innumerable days I would cab it up home only to enjoy the sea breeze either at Marine Drive or at Banra-Worli sea link. Or go out with friends after office for a while before heading home. Asking the cabbie to play the radio particularly after night shifts in office when even the funky channels would play `bhoole bisre geet’ would always set the mood for a relaxed drive back home after calling up the fire brigade and the police all evening asking them `kai vishesh’.
But, it was not always like this. I hated the first three years in Bombay. I hated the muck, the people (I always saw them running), the overcrowded locals. I hated the rains and the dirt floating around. In the packed ladies’ compartment I would close my eyes and visualize my house in Dehra Dun, the litchi trees, the comfortable life there.
I have changed now. I don’t close my eyes in Bombay anymore.

Pic: www.hindu.com