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02 luglio The Greatest Show on Earth- dubbed in IndiaDear India,
i know this blog entry comes as a surprise to most. i don't want you to consider this a half ditch attempt at resurrecting a "Ghost Blog", but as a sincere message to every Indian to wake up and smell the coffee.
Tanzanite is a stone lacking a single electron in its atomic structure, due to which it is left a dull green /purple stone, lacking the lustre and hype of its more fortunate isomer, the Diamond. this sounds eerily similar to our country India, who for sheer lack of good leadership, is stuck in the Doldrums.
If you think about it carefully, Indians love a good family saga. for the last sixty years of Post-Independant India, and a couple of years before that, one family in particular has managed to market the Ultimate Indian Cinematic Marvel. from a population of less than half of what is today, sixty years ago, to today's 1 billion, this is one saga whose TRP's are unparalled. we have watched in foolish awe as one particular political family has governed our nation for the better part of the half century, silent spectators to their follies. a family that has made its fair share of mistakes, for which WE are paying the price today. we are the products of a single family's ambition and short-sightedness. we are a star-struck audience, staring passively at the Greatest Show on Earth. we are the couch potatoes who refuse to turn off this ridiculous show. the commercials carefully interspersed show us that "india's shining", show us images of Modern India being a world player, cleverly lulling us into a deep stupor. we forget to question the integrity of the main show that's running before our very eyes. we merely gape at each twist and turn in the tale.
the price we are paying is high. it is almost too much to fathom. yet we continue to promote this ridiculous show. we don't care who the actors are, we don't question their dedication to our country. we merely chase a brand name, that has done more harm than good. little wonder we're called the Blue Billion.
regards,
an Indian 23 marzo life's lessonsthe fan mail continues to pour in, the masses wait on tenterhooks, begging for more, and so i decided to drop a quick line and resurrect this gasping, pulseless blog. contrary to what most people imagine, it isn't the new harry potter book that's on everyone's mind, but the Mystery of the Missing Person!
recently i found myself in a couple of amusing situations. the first one started as mundanely as every other ward day, with me standing in front of a ward filled with patients, screaming out their names, while occasionally one of them deigns to raise a finger skywards and draw attention to where they are sitting. most of them look around sleepily in a drug/disease induced stupor, while their relatives who should be responding continue to stare blankly in their permanently stuporous states. so the other day, i found myself with a syringe in one hand and a spirit dotted swab int he other screaming "bhagwan, kaun hai? bhagwan kaun hai?" like a crazy woman when a friend of mine started laughing. we both had to agree that this was a funny way to find out the Truth that many a philosopher and saint have spent lifetimes pursuing. in my mind's eye i saw myself as a bag lady in the streets of New York with a white placard hanging around my neck saying - BHAGWAN KAUN HAI? MAIN AAPKA KHOON LENA CHAHITI HOON!" lesson #1: dont call your child Bhagwan! it's high praise!
the second instance came in true Medical Sitcom-style. 30 Male patient bitten by a snake, comes into the Casualty on his own, speaking an unintelligible dialect. my Houseman asks him "which snake has bitten you?" the patient mumbles the name in his local dialect, leaving the houseman and me at a loss. finally i pop up with a question "saap ke sir pe chashma tha kya?" lesson#2: don't come to me if you are bitten by a snake! 09 gennaio DDLB- the legend continuesa couple of years ago i wrote a script about the Desperate Diabetic Lipstick Bomber. today i found myself very much in the same position- trudging off to the US Consulate for a Visa Interview, with the singular advantage of having been coached by the DDLB.
8:30 am: dada's holding the lift door ajar shouting "if u dont hurry up i'll be late for work!!" i'm scrambling to get all my documents into a politically correct plastic bag. dada asks me y i haven't combed my hair. "i paid 550 bucks for this look!" i retort, somewhat irritated.
8:45 am: madhukar drops me off at the building at mahalakshmi. you see, the mother has paid 150 bucks for me to take a little sojourn down a road that i must have walked a million times since childhood- from mahalakshmi to breach candy. anyways, i'm hustled into a waiting room.
8:46 am: aishwarya rai is working herself up into a lather with "nimbuda nimbuda....nimbuuuuuuuda" on the screen on the wall. since my last association with this song was less than satisfactory on a perilous bus ride back from pune, i couldn't help feeling just a little nauseous. the man behind the food counter insists i have the complementary Starbucks. "no, no," i decline politely, "i'm feeling Vomitty."
8:50am: young man in black sits on the chair next to mine. "hi" he says in a quiet voice. "uuhh....hi," i reply disinterestedly. at this point i'm about to realise that in the US Visa office, people find it mandatory to talk with american accents, a priviledge previously restricted to those who had been as far as Sahar Airport. now it was the trend to start early, and what can be earlier than the visa office itself!
8:51am: "so are you here?" asked man in black. "here? ya i'm here" i reply confused. "oh so where here?" he asked. "in.....mumbai!" i state the obvious. by then i realise that in this sacred zone "here" is america and "there" is india. "over here i live in florida," he voluteered. "i'm there on vacation."
8:52am: i tried to avoid further conversation by staring at the TV screen. not so bad...its Mahive thats playing. i begin to eavesdrop on the conversation between a gujju father and his 10year old daughter in an little itemnumber number. the poor thing was struggling with a tight body-hugging blue dresscovered in sequins with a formidable slit that reached pretty high up when she sat down. "papa vo kya hai?" she asked pointing at a picture of the Statue of Liberty. "vo to phreedom ka statue hai", the father replied patiently. this was all too much for the Parsi lady sitting next to them, looking disapprovingly at the rising slit. "thats the statue of Liberty!" she stated emphatically. "hanh hanh" the father nodded in aqueisance.
"to papa vo kya hai?" asked the little girl pointing to a picture of Mt. Rushmore. "vo to ek rock hai, jisme saare presidents ke faces chisel kiya gaya hai," replied the Parsi lady out of turn. she then proceeded to name all 52 american presidents! oh boy, i thought to myself, if anyone deserved to pass this interview it had to be her!
9:15am: man in black has finished telling me how his saaftware career is so fulfilling. how he finished his engineering from "swami vivekananda" in mumbai, which has said with such a heavy accent that i almost didn't understand what he meant.
9:30am: choli ke peechche kya hai is beginning to play on screen. THANKFULLY at that moment they called for the 9:15 group to get into the bus.
9:35 am: reached the consulate. call for all single men to please leave to bus. a group of four single men from the same company continue to remain seated. they thought single men meant those travelling without a group. the consulate people consider "single men" to be those travelling without a family. a minor quarrel ensues.
9:40 am: single women and families yanked off the bus.....a big disrobing session follows as we remove belts, coin, watches etc.etc. at the gate. i'm searched by the security officers and allowed inside.
9:45am: the process is highly efficient. a big comfortable room where constant entertainment was being provided by a 3 year olf gujju kid, whose only distraction from wailing was slapping his father on both cheeks. the father was trying to console him in his american-gujarati. the kid was inconsolable till his mother appeared on the seen. she was a woman with flaming red cheeks. i could tell the kid had been busy!
9:46am: all annoucements including the ones in gujju are made with southern drawls- pa-tell nu baari, jamalbhai pa-tell ni parivar baari no. paanch pe aave". i'm amused.
10am : my no. is called. i happily go in to interview with a delightful american chinese lady.
mission accomplished! 05 gennaio of signboardsa few of the funny signboards that i saw en route from shirdi to mumbai.
it was a deliciously cold day today, with the temperatures in the car dropping to below zero with my father's fetish for keeping the a/c at its most effective. i found myself cocooned in the backseat wrapped in a dozen blankets feeling eerily like a mummy, trying desperately hard to wiggle my toes in their tight encasement in a vain attempt to prevent gangrene from setting in, while staring out at the scenery on the mumbai-nashik NH3. its a beautiful time of the year to be travelling. the bare arrogance of the mountains standing defiantly tall in the distance was a pleasant contrast to the lush fields of farm land at the foot hills. we saw several tiny hutments with a bunch of cows tied to the door ways, along with the occasional spot of a bright pink sari on a lonely figure working on the land.
just as i found myself trying to remember the words the "the Solitary Reaper" with my father volunteering his own version of the poem, we were slapped out of out reviere by the sight of a huge inverted saucer. "lo and behold!" i thought to myself in true roswell style. "is it a bird? (obviously not!) is it a plane? is it a flying saucer?" it turned out to be "SUNDAR restaurant known for its fine dining and vegetarian food (cooked in a separate kitchen)." i was certainly never going there.
further down the road we saw "MANAS FAMILY RESTAURANT. FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY. WITH BAR.FOR PERMIT HOLDERS ONLY."
and so this charming little restaurant expected the entire family to come with permit-holding kiddos for a meal. how sweet!
a few miles ahead came the more sophisticated sign boards of the Taj group, and some others. the Taj signboard was particularly eye catching. on top of a picture of a champagne flute ran the words "VISIT THE CITY OF PILGRIMAGE. AND HAVE A DRY MARTINI". huh?
and just when i thought the fun was over i saw another one, which was either trying to be exceedingly modest, or simply sticky about morality- "VIKAS HOTEL- FOR DECENT ACCOMODATION."
full marks for creativity! 10 dicembre stealinghave u seen that ad on television? the one where that girl stuffs a music system into her bag and that guy steals an entire television set, after which the words "U WOULDN'T STEAL A TELEVISION SET, SO WHY STEAL MUSIC!" comes in big scraggy letters. it was that ad that sparked a gigatic debate, a war of almost mythic proportions, between my irritatingly virtuous split personality Rupaji, my dear friend Hector Kapur and myself. confused? i'll splice:
1. i saw the ad on tv a couple of months ago, and like all other commercials it was filed in some tiny corner of my brain, along with the Dove soap ad (with the litmus paper test), the ads for "ghost hunter" or ghost whisperer whatever its called, sanitary pad ads (as a woman i can tell u, those actresses in their white pants need to be slapped), and all life insurance ads.
2. spoke to my dear friend boob sometime in the week. she proudly declared that she was never going to download songs from the internet, so influenced by the ad, was she.
3. wrote this off as another one of the boob's eccentricities. she does weird things like buying hand creams after seeing them on tv.
4. continued to do the illegal.
5. Rupaji surfaced a few months later. she tends to appear in times of stress, and torments me with her ridiculous suggestions. after switching the lights on and off 17 times, checking if the locker was locked 6 times, checking if the handbreak is up in a parked car a zillion times i decided it was time to give Rupaji the axe.
6. had a bitter fight with her, where amongst many other things, she accused me of being a thief~! "WHAT!" i thought to myself, "HOW DARE SHE!"
7. stress of exams persisted, so schizophrenic personality remained. rupaji, after continuous nagging convinced to stop doing the illegal.
8. nokia released their new N series, with its fabulous soundtrack. this ad was instantly stored in the front of the front lobe of my brain. the song stuck in my temporal lobe and refused to budge. rupaji and song were fighting for space in my overloaded brain, like people fight for space in the 6:00pm churchgate local.
9. finally decided i had to have the song. rupaji vetoed the idea.
so this is the first fight.
next conflict was between me and Hector.
1. i told hector to download the song for me. he still does it you know.
2."why don't u do it youself?" he questioned. "because it's like stealing!" i replied, horrified that he would think so poorly of me.
3. hec rolled his eyes. he's known me for sometime now.
result- i didn't get the song eventually. exams got over. rupaji died a timely death.
as it so happened, the other day i saw a book i've been wanting to read for sometime now, in the bookstore. like all books in that store it was overpriced, and already looked like it had been read by ten people before me. saw it at the traffic signal that very same evening, and mentioned to Hector that i wanted to buy it.
Hector who never fails to remind me of my eccentricities immediately replied, "but buying pirated copies from the road is STEALING!"
i conceeded defeat.
MORAL OF THE STORY. downloading songs from the internet, though everyone in india seems to do it, is stealing. buying pirated books of the traffic lights is like encouraging stealing. so just watch the ads on tv instead. that's ok.
i'm without both the song, and the book.
19 ottobre the smell of treasoni was flipping through a well reputed International magazine when i stumbled upon a strange picture. what looked like a child's stick figure artwork turned out to be a picture with terrible implications. a crudely drawn circle filled in with yellow crayon had a steel rimmed set of specatcles on its face, an inverted shoe brush for hair, two bent matchsticks for a nose and a lock for his mouth. on closer scrutiny, the slanting eyes were actually two missiles pointing at each other, and the seemingly innocuous mushroom in his hand, could only represent one of mankind's greatest fears.
the entire caricature was to represent North Korea's Kim Jong 2 and his most recent entry into the nuclear powers of the world.
i'm a worried person.
who makes the rules? why do some have it and then expect others to follow a policy of disarmament? why was this even invented and USED in the first place? whatever happened to the old adage of pointing one's finger at a neighbour and having three more pointing back at u? we can't turn back the clock...we can't erase the irremediable mistake of a Big Country. we can't erase the number of people's lives it has irrevocably changed. and we can't tell other people not to protect themselves from enemy countries.
but who is going to pick up the pieces of this ridiculous race? who is going to bear the expense of nuclear research and the making of bombs? more frightening is the question, who is going to bear the loss of someone actually using the bomb?
the child on the road, to whom OPV wasn't administered due to substandard immunisation programs, due to substandard budgets?
the malnourished family of ten children in a slum?
the haath-gaadi worker who can't afford surgery because he can't afford that one meal a day?
another article that caught my eye was one entitled TREASON, with a list of guilty people from the United States. out of sheer curiosity i opened the dictionary and looked up the word.
BETRAYAL. BREAKING OF AN ALLEGIANCE.
why aren't we trying the perpetrators of the 1993 blasts as well as the recent train blasts in Mumbai for treason? is it becuase their acts of terror don't fit a legal definition of the word. why are they only being tried as terrorists? aren't they guilty of an even greater crime, of killing their brothers and sisters on NATIVE soil. doesn't it mean anything to be a Mumbaiite, an Indian?
killing people is condemnable.
war is a curse.
but betrayal stinks to high heavens. 30 settembre in the face of fearA train of thoughts chugging through my mind
The panic sets in
I see a face in the mirror before me
The girl of yesterday has gone.
The girl with the chocolate eyes and carefree grin...
Here is a face drowning in fear
Cynicism
Disillusionment
All crowding up the chocolate eye till it is stretched so wide , it might tumble out.
A million thoughts burst in my brain.
I feel the noose around my neck.
(the image of a man i once saw, with the tell tale burn at the base of his neck.)
I see the chocolate eye melt.
Each drop trickle out, thick, rich, brown.
Courses down my face.
(tear cancer, a basal cell carcinoma that occupies the "tear region" of the face. Or maybe because the patient finds nothing but tears on seeing a face he can't recognise.)
I feel light headed now.
The ground seems so far below.
My thoughts are replaced by images
Of faces once seen.
And now forgotten.
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