Bangalore: The City of Optimism

Pardon me for starting with a self-referential (if that is the word) sentence – I am an optimist and an incurable one. But the optimism of the ‘concerned’ people in Bangalore amazes even me.

Take the road dividers or medians for instance. The concerned put them, quite often in the middle of the road, with the hope that traffic gets better or smoother or whatever. On road after road this is belied. Not that the traffic does not get any better, it actually gets worse. Life of drivers, and more so, that of the riders of two wheelers, gets riskier.

Wonder why? Pieces of the median are removed at places where people want to cross the road. So if you are driving with assurance that no one will take a right turn in front of you, some one will. (Sounds like a corollary to Murphy’s Law? Perhaps it is.) Or worse, someone from the right of the road will drive in and join the traffic right in front of you. If you successfully avoid all these, you are likely to involuntarily close your eyes in thanks giving to fate or your favourite god or goddess, and successfully hit someone.

Worse still, all those who used to take a right turn after entering a main road, now median-ed, continue to do so and ride on the right side of the road. They join the mainstream whenever there is a break, planned or unplanned but executed, in the median.

Another hazard is presented by medians that look like fences made of steel pipes. The medians also double as places for putting up advertisement boards. After some time and a few accidents later, many parts of these medians are jutting out where they are not expected. (The best example is the Kasturaba Road. Treacherous!) In increasing levels of ill luck you are likely to lose some clothing, or limb or life, respectively.

Another example for optimism is what I call “Monuments to Bangalore’s Optimism” These are the footbridges across busy roads. Monuments are quite often perfectly useless structures that represent something. In Bangalore too are they perfectly useless and only represent the optimism of the ‘concerned’. I have never seen a soul on these bridges. (Nor have I seen a soul anywhere else, for that matter. So, read that as “I have never seen a body, dead or alive, on these bridges”).

Pardon me. Those monuments do serve some purposes, albeit not the intended ones. They provide great space for advertisement hoardings. They perhaps provide an opportunity for all the concerned ‘concerned’ to make some money. One hardy soul, attached to his mortal body of course, who once came very close to fulfilling the dreams of the concerned by using the foot-bridge, assures me that it serves another purpose, especially on a cold windy day, on which you have been lightly dressed and been trying to fit the description of a man about town…..

The other ‘proof for optimism’ are the white paint wasted on lines painted to separate the lanes on roads. If you are a true Bangalorean, you will ask me, or anyone near you, “Lanes? What the heck (or any other suitable four-letter word which reveals you dictional - to coin a word to rhyme with fictional - preferences) are they. Come, come. Be frank for once. You always thought that they were painted on the road to tell you where the road was, on a wet, dark night, right?

Even if that was the purpose, the concerned would have failed – where are roads in Bangalore on a rainy night, anyway?

Talking of roads, roads are the highways of Bangalore’s optimism. They represent the hope that they will last a monsoon - if you are a user, and that they won’t last a monsoon - if you are road-building contractor. The latter of course is more likely to be met since you know the quality, or the lack of it, in your work.

The roads represent the hope that they are not dug up before the last road-roller has moved away from the freshly laid road, by the electricity supply corporation, the Bangalore Water and Sewerage Supply Board (Oooops, that one slipped out, the original coinage of Murthy, the (alas, late) cartoonist of The Deccan Herald) I mean the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board and the various political parties and the various temples and their annual function organiser and the various wedding halls and their pandal erectors and …. The list is practically endless. The most amazing thing is that in spite of the best efforts of all these people, there are still some roads worth the name in Bangalore. I won’t name them even under duress, lest one among the above list makes a beeline to them to set things right.

Long live Bangalore and along with it Optimism, with a capital O.

Taare Zameen Par

Many friends told me that I should see this movie.

I hate movies that bring tears to my eyes.

This movie brought a flood.

I loved it, the movie, not the tears.

Why I hate movies that make me cry is that I cry even when I know that it is all just sentimental crap. That is where this movie differed. It was sentimental but not crap.

What performances!

The last shot is impressive. The boy runs and is thrown up and he flies. With wings jutting forward, looking like one of Burt Rutan’s creations. Lovely

I have great admiration for Aamir the star/actor and Aamir the public person. I once saw him in a TV interview and I was completely mesmerised by his calm and stillness. He was sitting on something like a bar stool and was asked questions for which the answers were, and had to be, nuanced. He carried it off beautifully. He spoke and his face moved and only enough to produce the sounds required and not much more.

He looked like the Buddha.

Very uncommon.

I haven’t still got over it.

It will take me a long time to get over this movie, not that I want to anyway.

Centurion

Sometime ago I read Shruthi’s post celebrating her 100th post. By the time I read it and wrote a comment on it, she had already moved on to her 250th or so post! That is how good I am at celebrating kilometre stones. (We are after all a metric country, aren’t we?)

At that time, I checked the number of posts I had. It was around 85. I then decided that I would have a special post as my 101st post. When I looked next, I was at 110+. So, let me “celebrate my 100th post” by going down memory lane, a little bit.

A couple of years ago Anu sent me a link to an article with the title “Have you blogged today?”. I could make neither head nor tail of the heading. Even after I had read it, I could not make out what the tale was all about. But for some strange, unknown reason, it remained on my mind. When I mentioned it to Anu later, she did not even remember that she had sent the link to me.

Soon after this, my friend and colleague Usha sent me a link to her blog. I read it with great interest and started a blog of my own soon. But the conditions were not conducive to becoming a regular blogger (or should I say a poster?)

Then came Shruthi into the picture. (Well, she being my dear niece, she has been in the picture for years. What I mean is – she came into the blogging picture). I opened a new blog account in Blogger and I was off. (Some people say that I have always been off [my rocker]. Here, I mean that I was off as a regular blogger.)

So here I am celebrating my 100th post in four different blog heads. (Is that how one says it?)

My grouse as a blogger has been that I do not get many comments on my posts. Shruthi has been instrumental in many others reading my posts. Thanks to her, Shruti has become a regular reader of my output and a friend. (Please note that this is a different Shruti, with an h less!)

Talking of comments, the most tantalising comment came from the daughter of my childhood hero, when I mentioned him in one of my posts. I hoped that I could at last contact him - Olufemi Akande. But I am yet to make contact with him since there was no response to my comment on her comment. However, I got in touch with the chh’s friend and fellow collegian from MMC, as he was looking to make contact with chh too. I even met him when he was holidaying in India.

That was very nice.

I used safetvalve as the link to my posts since I was hoping that it would act as a safe outlet for my anger and frustration with the unjust world. (The world has treated me more than justly. I have no complaints. It is the injustices, even small ones, against others that get my goat. That is another story, or is it another post?) It has more that succeeded even though I have written far less about the injustices than I thought I would.

So, here I am an avid but irregular blogger. It has made me more of a writer than I ever imagined. I even have an article published in a magazine – in Kannada. So, it goes on.

See you again on my nth post.

Doctors Stumped

My eyes are as weird as I am. Different defects in each eye. A bright dot appears to me as a vertical line with one eye and as a star with the other – astigmatism - and such strange stuff. During my last eye tests, my ophthalmologist finally prescribed glasses that turned out pretty good in the end. When I collected the glasses (‘plastics’, in fact. The lenses of these spectacles are actually made of organic compounds and not inorganic glass) he made me read the normal board again. He was satisfied with his work. So was I.

Then he gave me a card with small print on it. I wondered for a moment if this was a doctor or a lawyer. After all, lawyers are famous, or rather notorious, for things in small print. All the unimportant stuff is in large readable (I did not say understandable, mind you) font size and all the important stuff in the unreadable, un-understandable small print. It turned out that he wanted to see how my new ‘plastics’ performed when I read small type. My job consists of about 99% reading and 1% writing. Thus, this was important. I could read the small print satisfactorily – to both the doctor and I.

Then I assumed an astonished look and exclaimed. “Doctor, your new glasses (after all, they were still his glasses as I had not yet paid them yet) are so good that I can even read Tamizh and Bangali and proceeded to read the first sentences of the small passages in each of those languages. For a moment he looked so taken aback. Soon the surprised look remained but its character had changed. He was now surprised (mildly) that I could read those languages as well.

Years ago I had been to an ENT specialist since I had some problems in my right ear. (All my problems are in that general area - above the neck. sometimes right between the ears) Whenever I spoke, the sound sounded as if it was resounding in my head. (Perhaps, I should have gone to a neurosurgeon to see if there was a larger hollow space inside my head which was causing this revergeration but, at that time I had decided that my ears needed looking into, literally)

As expected, the good doctor inserted an Otoscope into my ear and looked long and hard and from various angles. He then shifted to the left ear and did all the looking-into all over again.

While I was being so inter-viewed I got the image that he was actually trying to see what was there (if anything at all) inside my head.

Finally he got up and stood in front of me, arms akimbo, and said, quite pensively, “There is nothing organic there…” I put on a disappointed look and asked him plaintively, “Not even a cabbage, Doctor?”

The doctor looked at me incredulously and uncomprehendingly for a moment. Then he guffawed uncontrollably. The doctor was a ‘serious type’ and this guffaw brought the receptionist to the door, she peeped in to make sure that he was fine. He was.

The doctor did not charge me anything for this visit. Oh, not because of my joke as is usual in such stories. It was only because he was my cousin’s associate.

Peter Bendrey(?)

I went to Niri's shop one evening, as I often did. I saw a sunburned foreigner, longhaired, wearing trousers, which were more pajamas than trousers, carrying a bulky bag on his shoulders. I was introduced to him. We were an informal lot and I was introduced to him but he was not introduced to me. The introduction was something like "He is Anil. He is the one I told you about. He plays the Veene". Peter, that was his name, picked my left hand and inspected the middle and forefingers. He was looking at the grove that had formed at the tips of the fingers by years of Veene Practice. It was also black with the paste of the lubricant used for playing the Veene and the oxides formed on the frets.

I was impressed that he knew what to look for in a Veene player.

I hardly realised how much more about him was there to be impressed with. I will tell you a few instances of those.

I learnt that the bulky bag he carried contained his music collection. Almost of all of it was Indian classical music – both Hindustani and Carnatic.

Peter is a carpenter. He specialises in restoring old timber houses in England. As I understand it, he lives on the premises to be restored and over a couple of months restores the house. He does this for a couple of years and then takes a trip to some part of the world. He often visited Mysore. He would appear 'out of the blue', stay a month or so, visit various other places in India and return to England.

Once when he was in Mysore he was looking depressed. Niri asked him why he was depressed. He said that it was because John Lennon was killed. It had happened the previous day. Niri was surprised that it had such an effect on him. It was only then that he revealed that he was once on the Beatles team and had worked on setting up their stage for them. This is something he had not revealed to anyone. I came to know about this only from Niri and never asked Peter about this.

Once when he was in Mysore, I invited him to my home, my parents' home for the evening meal. Dinner is too grand a word I am sure. As he came in, he was taking his footwear off at the door, like a normal Indian. He froze and listened to the music that was playing somewhere in the house. He exclaimed "Ah, Doreswamy Iyengar, the one and the only LP" and continued taking his footwear off. Wow, that was some powers of recognition.

He ate his meal with generous helpings of Chatnipudi (Literally means chutney-powder - an all purpose additive in many south Indian homes. It is mixed with rice and eaten with a dash of ghee or oil. It could replace the chutney, sambar or any other side-dish with Rotis, Dosés and Idlis or whatever. It is mixed with curds-rice to spice it up a bit. It is eaten with bread. Only your imagination, or the lack of it, puts a limit on how you can use it) He ate it with such gusto that I started sweating since I like my food bland. But he was alright. Of course, his ears and nose went red and he was sucking in air over his tongue to cool it. But he was undeterred. He later declared that was one of the best things he had eaten for quite some time.

He also declared to me: "Most people make much of French and Chinese and other cooking. But I consider the normal south Indian cooking as the zenith of the cooking arts!" High praise indeed.

On another visit of his, I met him in Niri's shop again. The first thing he asked me was "Is it true that Maharajapuram is dead?" I confirmed with regret that he was. The next exchange really surprised me. "Is it true that he died in a car accident?" True again and I confirmed that it was so. He shook his head with deep regret and murmured, "oh, not the death for a musician. A musician deserves a better death". It sounds so typically Indian and coming from a 'white man' it was incongruous.

He once came home and I was walking with Peter to see him off at the bus stop near my home. We lived in an area called Saraswathipuram. Some one had started a "Wine Shop" there. (As is the case so often in India, it is a shop where you get many types of alcoholic beverages - except wine!) He stopped in front of the shop and looked at the name with horror. "Saraswathi Wine Stores! Oh, My God!" he whined. "What a travesty. A wine shop in the name of the Goddess of learning? Oh no!", was his lament. I was amazed at his sensitivity. I had seen the name too, had regretted it and carried on.

Then there was something to cheer him up. On either side of the door of the shop there were advertisements for "Soma Beer". They caught his eyes and he smiled and commented, "Ah, that is a little more appropriate!

This is the story of a "foreigner" who was more Indian in many ways. Here was a "hippie" (as many would classify him at sight, those days) who was aghast that MTV was coming to India and declared that it was a "travesty of Indian culture". He was the guy who made the profound observation, "Have you noticed, Anil? The technology for music recording and reproduction is making so much progress and is becoming so much more affordable and at the same time, the common man's taste in music is going further and further down?"

I have not seen him in quite some years and have no means of contacting him. I hope he is fine. I knew him mostly as Peter and remembered him once telling me that his name was Peter Bendrey. When I looked for him on the net, all I found was a production assistant to Yoko Ono! Could it be him?

Films Anyone?

I remembered this – “We remember her saying some years ago how it embarrasses her to be recognised more than her artist father (Jatin Das), writer mother (Varsha Das) and their contemporaries, not because of better or greater achievements, but simply because of her screen roles” when I was writing the previous post. This was said by Nandita Das in an interview in The Hindu.

Why I remembered this was: I wanted to create a link to Dr. N Ratna in that post and found none worth the while. What I did find was The New York Times films site in which it is mentioned that Dr. Ratna acted in the Kannada movie Kaadu!

There is no mention on the net that he was one of the earliest (perhaps the first?) directors of the All India Institute of Speech and Hearing in Mysore and is considered to be – according to the single line in Wikipedia that mentions him – “the father of Speech and hearing in India”

There is something wrong somewhere. Right?

I am sure my question will be answered in the affirmative by the tens of thousands of speech and hearing impaired who have benefited from the institute in Mysore.

PS: Searching for Dr N Rathna provided better results. However, it does not take away the basic premise of my post.

Those Who Can - Do, Those Who Can’t – Teach

I heard this, years ago, as the opening lines of an impromptu speech by a famous and dedicated teacher - Dr. N. Ratna, who is considered to be the father of Speech and Hearing in India. I was terribly amused by this quote and how he used it to elaborate the point he wanted to make.

I came home and told this to my father who too is a dedicated teacher. (When he was asked to work on the English – Kannada dictionary project of the University of Mysore, he agreed on the condition that he would be allowed to teach two hours per week in the college he was then teaching in.)

He was not offended by this quote and continued to discuss the subject in a calm and collected way.

I remembered all this, when I read an article by Ms. Veni Sukumar in The Hindu. She seems genuinely offended by the quote and has defended her chosen profession. Good. She has gone on to modify the quote, some of which are really good. For example - “Those who can – achieve, those who are blessed – teach!” Sure.

I want to add a simple twist to the original. “Those who can, teach. Those who can’t – achieve!”

Teaching is a vocation that quite often is also an avocation. Teaching is a state of mind, not a skill. Skills can be taught. These could even improve an already good teacher. But, training one in these skills alone will not a good teacher make.

Unlike most Indians who want to give the final stamp of approval to their arguments, she has not quoted something in Sanskrit.

Indian tradition has it right -“aachArya dEvOBava” आचार्य देवोबव

Please note: I am NOT a teacher. Having had the good fortune of coming across some great teachers, I have great respect for teachers in general and enormous respect for good ones.

Celebrating Vasanta in Bengaluru

End of winter heralded by the trees bursting out with flowers.

Dry air, chapped lips, scaly skin. . . .

Suddenly feeling more human because there is moisture in the air.

Celebrating the arrival of Vasanta with pictures from Jayanagar 1st and 4th blocks.

Einstein and Religion - II

Sometime ago I wrote Einstein and Religion.

I then said, the English version is coming....

Here it is!

On Womens Day. . .

In my continuing efforts to improve my German language compreshension, I keep reading articles from Der Spiegel, on line. Some times, I print them so that I can mull over it with a dictionary.

When I printed this article a week ago or so, I had forgotten about the significance of today. Today, I thought that it was appropriate to write something on the article is about.

The title of the article is "A conscious cliche".

It goes on to say that more the scientists and researchers dig to find out the mental and intellectual differences between the sexes, more do the differences fade and the similarities show up.

One scientist found that there were differences between men and women in a fifth of the 124 activities researched. Most of those differences stemmed from physical differences (Larger muscle mass among males) rather than cerebral or mental or intellectual differences.

It goes on to explain that most of the perceived differences are due to social expectations and upbringing and such things. Many of the social expectations turn out to be self fulfilling prophecies.

This, hopefully, will be widespread knowledge soon and help women all over the world and over all strata realise their true potential.

I also read an article that said that India has one of the most powerful womens movements in the world. This must make the Indian wome proud and invigorate them.

It is good to end this small piece with a joke.

If women want equality with men, they are not ambitious enough.

Murphy's Law - Corollary

Murphy's Law, as applied to blogging:

However carefully you edit your post, you detect an error as soon as you post it.