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.

Miracle

I received an SMS. ‘It’ asked me to recite a couple of lines softly that stated that I believed in a certain saint. Further it asked me to forward that SMS to eleven others. If I did so, I would see a miracle by night. For a change it did not threaten with dire consequences if I did not forward it.

Since the sender is a dear friend of mine, I called him up and told him that I was not sending the SMS further. He being what he is, a dear old friend, understood.

Then I told him that if all the recipients of the original forwarded it and the subsequent eleven also further down without a break, the only miracles that would be seen were at the cash registers of the mobile telephone operators and that I was not interested in creating miracles for them. I did not want to send them “laughing all the way to the bank.”

The reason for not naming the saint in this post is that I have a lot of respect for him as a man. Humane. If the SMS had said that if I did not forward it, something unspeakable would happen, it would not have made sense. I am glad. The saint was the farthest a man could be from malevolence.

The Mystery of Palmistry

I was a very thin teenager. Perhaps, “painfully thin”.

I had gone to Bangalore to attend a wedding. After the wedding I visited an aunt of mine. Her husband dabbled in palmistry. He casually ordered me (he was that type of a man) to show him my hand and I meekly thrust my hand out. He brought a powerful lens and studied my hand.

After some time, he asked me, “Do you suffer from constipation?” I was impressed. I did suffer from it frequently. I nodded apologetically. As if it was my fault.

He growled, I will teach you an exercise and if you do them regularly, (the heavy emphasis was on the ‘if’, mind you) “it” will go. He taught me sit-ups.

I surprised myself. I did do them regularly.

I was very bookish. I was so bookish that my father had to drive me out of the house, in the evenings. (Oh, I am ever so grateful to him). Now, I developed some interest in my own body and learnt a few more exercises. Push-ups, pull-ups and many other free hand stuff. As coincidence would have it, “Science Today” published an article called the “daily dozen” which taught a dozen exercises to keep one reasonably fit. I started doing them all except the one with the bar bells. I did not have one.

After a few months I went to my tailor to get some new shirts stitched. He enquired, “The last measurements?” I said, “No! New ones!”, proudly. I can imagine him suppressing a smirk as he took out his measuring tape. He took the chest measurement and gawped. He checked his tape to see if he was holding it right. He was. He rummaged through his drawer of his cutting table, fished out his note book and located my earlier measurements. There was a 4 inch difference, in the chest measurements. (Tailors did use inches in Metric India then)

“Ye kyaa baa! Kyaa hogaya there ko” he started off in his “chaste” Mysore Urdu, forgetting that I did not speak or understand that language. I could still divine the gist of it. The wonder in his eyes spoke for him. I had a semblance of a masculine figure now in comparison to my, perhaps, 28-24-30 figure earlier.

Well, a little later I went to Bangalore again and my uncle promptly accosted me and asked me, “how are you and how is your constipation?”. It was then that I realised that I had not had an incident of that in the intervening year or so. I was amazed. (We do tend to take our good health or fortune for granted and crib when we lose it) I told him that I had not had it for a year. He looked me head to toe with a satisfied smile. He was genuinely happy and proud. He was in deed fond of me.

I have often wondered how he knew I was prone to constipation. Was he so ‘good’ a palmist?

I do not think so. He was, in fact, a body builder in his younger days. My father had actually seen him pull a car with a rope as exercise! I had seen him bend fairly formidable looking iron rods with his hands in his workshop. His understanding of the human body must have told him of my state as soon as he saw my palms. It used to be clammy, pale and had red spots.

Then on, I have never suffered that particular ailment again.

After all, it was my fault that I had constipation. I was not taking care of my own self!

So much for the power of palmistry . . .

Sphice of Life

There was this hoarding of Spice Jet Airlines, at the junction of Residency Road and M G Road near Mayo Hall. Perhaps, driven by the fear of incurring the wrath of the self-styled defenders of Kannada the hoarding had the name in Kannada too. It was as shown in the lower line in the picture above. Transliterated, it would be Sphice or Sfice. The line at the top shows the correct way of writing it.

I wrote to the marketing department of the company pointing out the error. I also asked them if the advertising agency's bills had been paid. I also wondered if the bill would have been paid if the same mistake had been made in the English version. I received no answer.

The self-styled defenders of Kannada blacken boards and hoardings in English but never boards which have bad or wrong Kannada. What a pity.

With no Comments

Karma and DNA

I read the obituary of Maharshi Mahesh Yogi with great interest. I too learnt TM popularised by him, in the seventies. I have practiced TM, off and on, and have benefited from it. That would be grist for the mill for another post.

What is of interest at the moment is the report that says "as told to Anubha Sawhney Joshi" by Deepak Chopra, about the passing away of the Maharshi.

It describes the incident of Deepak Chopra giving his blood to the Maharshi. Very interesting! The Maharshi at first refused to accept blood from Deepak Chopra because he did not want Chopra's Karma to flow into him. When Deepak Chopra convinced him that red blood corpuscles do not carry DNA, the Maharshi acceepted the blood.

So we carry our Karma in our DNA! That is news to me and am sure so is it to the thousands of people who work in the field of genetics.

What a load of rubbish!

Pranab and his Award

Padma Vibhushan Pranab Mukherjee said that there should be no room for controversy about is getting that award.

He is absolutley right. No room for controversy. It is WRONG that he was given the award.

To see the contrast, see the conduct of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad here.

Another similar story is that of the First Bharat Ratna awardee Sir M Vishweshwarayya. When the cabinet decided to honour him with that award, no one wanted to inform him! Because of his reputation as a man who did not mince words.

Prime Minister Nehru himself wrote to him and requested him to accept the award. True to form Sir M V wrote back sayaing that he did not want to accept that award if it curtailed his freedom in anyway to criticise Nehru's government if the need arose. Nehru, equally gracefully wrote back that it was for such upstanding ways of his that he was being given that award. It was only then that Sir. M V accepted the award.

Alas, unbelievable, in these days of "moral pygmies"

Measles?

I saw hoardings all over Bangalore proclaiming as above. It says Amma in Bangalore.

When I saw it the first time, I could see just the top part of the hoarding. My immediate reaction was one of consternation. Was there an epidemic of smallpox in Bangalore? Or was it chickenpox or measles? There is already gastroeneritis - cholera. Now this?

Then the bottom part of the hoarding became visible. It was announcing the presence a religious/spiritual person, popularly known as Amma.

Even though amma means mother and I call my mother amma, seen as a banner headline, it could mean what I first thought!

Uffff...

Einstein and Religion

Einstein is once supposed to have said something like, "Religion without science is blind, science without religion is lame". This is often quoted to say something like "See? Even Einstein said that religion is important. Most do not realise that Einstein had his own definition of religion, which was quite different from what most people usually take it to be.

Here is the original article: "Religion and Science" - New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930

Here is an article in Kannada on the subject by my father, J R Lakshmana Rao, published in the January 25, 2008 edition of Prajavani.

The same article English, is coming soon. . . Here it is!

For your reading pleasure. . . .

Bombay?

There was this Englishman friend of mine, Peter, who visited Mysore frequently. He had fun by going to an autorickshaw and asking the driver "Bombay?". The drivers would melt, fidget and grin. Then he would pat the driver on the shoulder and tell him where he really wanted to go.

One day he met his match.

There was this autowallah, sitting in the drivers seat, with his legs crossed, reading a news paper. Peter goes and asks him: "Bombay?"

The driver unhurriedly uncrosses his legs as he folds his paper, with his eyes still on the job of folding the paper and says calmly, "Yes, Five Thousand Rupees". You should have seen Peter's face!

He recovered, guffawed and shook the driver by the hand and said, "OK, OK, for now, Saraswathipuram will do"!

Auto Wisdom

Autorickshaws in Bangalore are painted on their backs with names of the owners' children, names of movies, "Hi - somebody-or-the-other" and sometime some aphorism. Some of them gross, some are hilarious, some are even wise.

I love looking for them. Here is a gem that I saw today. For those who can not read the Kannada script, here is the transliteration as per the Baraha translitration aplication:

aaDu muTTad soppilla . .
aaTo nuggada galliyilla

It declares with pride that "there is no leaf that a goat does not eat (a famous proverb in Kannada) . . There is no alley that an auto does not elbow its way into!"

That is definitely pride in his work I admire it.

Note on "The Sensation"

My story The Sensation elicited many responses, in person.

In the years gone by, many self styled astrologers and palmists have tried to tell me my future. The common things that they said were that I would never step out of India and that my "Education" was complete and that I would never even acquire another certificate, let alone a degree.

I have been abroad several times and did get an M Tech (Reliability Engineering) from IIT Kharagpur.

So much for the power of these "arts"

Sign of the Times

The most irritating aspect of traffic in India is the incessant honking. I have a host of sticker ideas about it, which I have never executed, though.

I saw a great one the other day on the rear mudguard of a bike: "Honk, If you are an idiot"

I want to put up, "Honk away, I am deaf anyway!"

Dyspixia

At work, I belong to a group of people who read and analyse patent documents. Whenever I see a patent on the screen, the first thing I notice is the drawing on the first page. I identify the document from the picture. Quite often, if I come across the same document at a later date, I recognize it from its picture.

I found at least one colleague to whom the picture does not make any sense. She reads only the words - the title, abstract - on the first page. She says that she does not even register the picture. What a difference! I asked a few other colleagues and they confirmed that they too look at the picture first.

To describe her state or method or inability to "read" a picture, I invented a word - dyspixia - similar to dyslexia.

Before writing this post I put the word into Google and found one site! You put any gobbledygook and you find a hit?

God and the Gregorian calendar

I was listening to a charlatan on a popular Kannada TV Channel this morning. He was telling his audience that the dates of 8, 17 and 28 of the months, whose digits add up to 8 are inauspicious.


What Bunkum, I thought, when he claimed that “all natural disaster or calamities” occur on those days. He even said that the break up of the Reliance Industries was because it was incorporated on the 26th of some month. He also said that unhappy marriages, divorces are the results of weddings that took place on those days.


I did a small test. I looked for a list of natural disasters on Google. I opened the first one that came up and found that out of the ten listed, the numbers of only one added up to 8 – the Chernobyl disaster. The REMANING NINE DID NOT. Of course, this was a listing based on some yardstick chosen by the compiler of the list. But still it should have at least had more than one, don’t you think?


I looked for other lists and MOST of them did not meet this specification.


I wondered:


Why does god/fate follow the Gregorian calendar? Why not any of the innumerable other calendars available and followed for religious purposes? For example: the lunar calendar of some Hindus, the solar calendars of other Hindus, or the Islamic or Jewish or Chinese calendars? Does it mean that the Judeo-Christian god is the true god, perhaps?


Which was a bad day in the days before the Gregorian calendar came to be accepted as the universal calendar? The number of days was changed sometime in the calendars history. What happened to in those days. If disasters then too occurred on such days, did god /fate change to the new calendar along with humans?

When it is 26th here, elsewhere on the globe, it is still 25th or it is already 27th in some other places. Which is the correct date then?


India became a republic on 26, January. Does it qualify as a natural disaster or a political disaster or what?


India lost the Boxing Day test (starting on 26 Dec, 2007). National disaster? But Australia won. What?

Gut Feeling

Some researchers used an unusual (and controversial) method of predicting the impact of human activities on the environment. What he did was to interview scores of scientists in the concerned field, and out of it, for their predictions. The overwhelming opinion was that the impact is visible and unless contained will be disastrous in future.
However, one scientist gave a very guarded answer based on what he already knew and refused to go any further. The interviewer asked him what his ‘gut feeling’ (Bauchgefühl) was.
The scientist’s answer must be carved in stone and displayed in a prominent place, in all academic institutions.
His answer was:
All my life, I have trained myself to think with my head, based on facts. I refuse to start thinking with my guts now.
I have to admit that this is a free translation of what I read in German and that my German is not all that great. Still the message was unmistakable in its clarity and definiteness.
Kudos!

Drink, Don’t drive?

"Make love, not war” was the slogan of the flower power generation.

Now Bangalore seems to have a similar slogan. Drink, Don’t drive. At least that is what many hoardings in Kannada seem to do. They exhort you, “Madya pAna mADi, vAhana chalAyisabeDi”

Or, is my punctuation all wrong?

The Eigth Note

There was an article in The Hindu based on an interview with Ustad Amjad Ali Khan. It has a reference to a discussion on science, technology and music. The Ustad goes on to say that “It [science] simply lacks the human touch. Despite the innovations and mechanisation, science has not been able to push the envelope and discover new musical note,” Very true, did you say? Big deal, nor has Philosophy for instance. Nor has Sociology.

For that matter, even music itself has not created a new note!!!

Let alone a new note, compared to the already existing ragas, hardly any new ragas have been created. You talk about that to a musician and he is likely to say, “A life time is not enough to explore the possibilities of a handful of Ragas. Where is the need for new ones?” Ditto notes. See the Ustad’s own opinion on the subject.

The point is that some people feel threatened by science or technology. They want to take pot shots at science and/or technology without any provocation. This seems to be such a case. Those taken unawares, do believe the Ustad’s statement, I am sure, without asking further questions. This is akin to a hunter shooting a sleeping tiger. Even in that despicable so-called-sport there is are traditions and conventions that govern what is honourable!

Make no mistake. I am a great lover of music – all music. If it makes any difference, I have even played the Tambura (Tanpura) for the Ustad, for his concert in the Mysore Palace a couple of decades ago.

Timeless India?

Two pictures: One dated 1908 and the other, 2007. The latter, of course, is by an artist, inter alia, friend of mine - Jayanth Lakshman. He bemoans that things do not change in India even after a 100 years. I know a few souls who would be happy that it does not. I leave it to you.

Feral animals

A dear friend of mine, wrote this as a part of his mail. I told him that he should blog this. In this matter, at least, he is lazier than I. So here I am, putting it on my blog.

***************

Feral animals

Domesticated dogs have few functions to perform in their lives. Done well, they are appreciated and well taken care of by their masters. They obey and have this irresistible urge to please the master. They do it well until they grow in unmanageable number and turn feral. In Indian cities we find feral horses, donkeys and dogs in packs. Their pack behavior is different. Once removed from the need to be obedient and good they turn their attention to the basic need like existence, power in the pack and procreation.

For example once dogs form feral packs they behave differently to the Tommy, Caesar and Rocky we know of and turn to beings we no longer recognize as man’s best friend.

The pack usually consists of one Alpha Male, breeding females, few young and juvenile males and some older ones. They usually pick a territory and stick within. The pack members behave with each other with guarded respect until the season arrives. This is the time the Alpha wants to retain dominance fearing being usurped by a new comer. All of them vie for status of high order in the pack. They bicker, whine, bark and bite each other creating havoc. This is followed by constant urination to mark the territory and this activity is concentrated on the main land mark of the territory. It is very interesting to note the power shown by barking, fang exposure, rising of the tail and hair on the neck and back. Sometimes when the Alpha is busy showing off his power in the pack one unsuspecting juvenile finds a chance for him to copulate with the female. Hell gets loose. The males of the pack just go berserk and they all try to teach the smart young one a lesson. Barking, biting and utter terror become the order of the hour and suddenly one finds new blood being introduced by an unsuspecting juvenile when the Alpha and the rest bickered.

Do I hear someone say that this is kinda akin to what was happening inside and out of Vidhana Soudha in Bangalore since a few weeks?

Come on, I was only kidding.

****************

Is he really?

Super Power

I received a clever SMS. It read, “Kalam’s dream of our country becoming a superpower in 2020 has come true. We are the superpower in Twenty20”.

Clever, very clever.

I watched and enjoyed the tense end too. It was fun. When the last Pak wicket fell I whooped too. I drove out at 10:30 towards MG road to watch the celebrations. Got stuck (struck or ‘stuck up’ as most of us say!) in a traffic jam. The euphoria on display was and is unbelievable.

It is the fashion of the (political) day to demand the resignation of a minister, if not the whole ministry, in case of a misdemeanour – real or imaginary. So, I decided to join the bandwagon too when I saw the reports on the ‘victory’ parade of our ‘conquering heroes’ in which tens of thousands of people in Mumbai participated .

I hereby demand (ahem!) the resignation of the minister in charge of human resources. The fact that there are tens of thousands of people, in our most business-like city, have no better business is proof enough of his and his ministries failure?

BBC vs CNN

You might as well take note. This is one of the rare occasions when I admit something in favour of CNN vis a vis BBC.

Protests in our neighbouring country against the cruel, cynical military junta are in the news. CNN refers to the country as Myanmar and BBC insists on calling it Burma!!

(Post?) Colonial hangover?

‘Life’ Is What We Do Between Mobile Conversations?

One of my favourite (and perhaps a dangerous one at that) pastimes while on the road is to observe drivers and riders use their mobile phones. It invariably reminds me of the cartoon showing a tourist guide pointing to a statue of a ten handed god or goddess to a ‘phoren’ tourist and saying, “multitasking - it was invented in India”.

My favourite memory in this genre is that of a scooterist, with a young boy standing between his legs, a slightly older (taller) daughter between him and his corpulent wife on the pillion, she herself carrying a 3 year old child in her arms, driving through the busy St. Mark’s Road (Bangalore) at ‘peak hour’. A daunting exercise in itself, until you add carrying on a conversation on his mobile phone stuck between his tilted head and an awkwardly raised shoulder. Wow! Some courage!!

The line between courage and foolhardiness is a thin one indeed.

But the inspiration for this mini-post is what I saw today. A man toying with middle age, playing street cricket on one of the side streets near my house – with a mobile stuck between his head and left shoulder, waiting for a circa ten year old to deliver the ball. Alas I did not have a camera and my sketching is not good enough to present you a visual.

Good god!

I got the following pictures through e-mail. I was requested by the sender to forward the mail to everyone in my address book. Amazingly, it did not threaten me with dire consequences if I did not. That was a pleasant change from the norm - for such mails.

When I had read through the mail and seen the distressing pictures, I decided to do something better. I decided to post them on my blog, with this introduction. I am sure the original photographer would not mind. I thank him!

‘Better’ if only many more people see it than would read my mails. More importantly, none on my mailing list is likely to be one of the organisers of a Ganesha pandal. Hopefully, one of the visitors to my blog will actually read (“see the pictures”) the blog and influence the organisers into installing a smaller Ganesha and an unpainted one!

Unfortunately, I do not have pictures of the identical consequences of the Bangali Pooja. I am sure the Bangalis will draw the right parallels.

God in his own image

The picture above is the welcome arch for this years celebrations.

The first line has the name of the goddess chapalamma dEvi

and the second one plEgamma dEvi

Come summer many small temples prepare for special celebrations.

Many of these temples are of minor gods and goddesses or bhootas or devvas or daivas. Many of them represent local deities and are said to have specific powers. Whereas gods do not harm you even if you do not offer prayers to them or propitiate them in any manner, many of these minor gods are said to harm you if you do not treat them ”properly” periodically.

Many of these minor goddesses are said to unleash an epidemic of some dreaded disease if not propitiated. That is why perhaps, these local festivals always take place around summer when these epidemics are rampant. Perhaps, they were more so in the past than now.

In any case, there are deities that carry the names of the diseases they have in their power to unleash. These goddesses are referred to as ammas – mothers. At the same time, some of these diseases themselves are called amma. Measles and chickenpox are two examples. Smallpox, which is a ‘more virulent – “bigger” – version’ (I do not know if the pathogens that cause these are in any way related or even similar, but the symptoms definitely are. With smallpox, it could even be fatal whereas chickenpox rarely is) of chicken pox is called doDDa amma, doDDa being “bigger”.

These Ammas, which are said to have power over a particular disease, are known by those names too. daDaara (rashes/measles) Amma, doDDa amma (smallpox) and so on.

But now, we have Plague Amma (Kannadised as plEgu ammanavaru) too. Many do not believe this when I tell them that there is a plEgu amma’s temple. I being an atheist, all that I say about gods is suspect. However, there is in fact a temple of the plague amma in NR Colony in Bangalore. This summer I found one, hardly a kilometre from where I live – in Jayanagar 1st block, Bangalore. This post was triggered by the elaborate arrangements being made this year for the celebrations.

Does the fact that the word plague itself is used in plEgu amma mean that plague is a disease that is new to India? (relatively speaking, that is. 400 years ago, in this context is new. We apparently do not have a kannada name for plague and hence the usage of the ‘English’ word before amma?)

If it is so, what was this amma doing before Plague came to India and where? No idea.

Even though some religions claim that god created man in his own image, perhaps Ludwig Feuerbach was right when he said that man created god in his own image. If you are a theist, you may say that man gave his own image to god, so that he is more comprehensible. Why are most of these minor deities in charge of epidemics feminine Gods? As far as I know there are no appas (fathers) for any diseases.

Any ideas?

Lost Forever . . . .

People are happy that roads are getting better – wider, smoother and well laid out. We can’t resist the temptation of flaunting our new office complexes and tech parks to anyone who is interested. I myself work in a posh office but am ill at ease in it.

Look at the pictures above. Lovely place, is it not? To get to this place, travel towards Tumkur, from Bangalore, NH4. At Nelamangala, another road intersects the highway. Turn left here. This road goes to Taavarekere, I think. This road is pretty bad right now. If you travel about ten kilometres along this road, you will see this beautiful place to your left.

Get off your vehicle and explore the hillock. Climb the rocks. Explore the small cave.

Do all this as soon as you can or before the hillock disappears, forever.

Pictures never lie they used to say. That was before trick photography and computers. Now most photographs may be lying.

My photographs do not lie. They conceal. They conceal the harsh, bitter reality that to the left of the picture, outside the frame, is a quarry. Like a cancer it has already eaten into this lovely hillock. It will continue its inexorable gnawing and soon this hillock will be no more.

Many cancers are no longer as dreaded as they used to be. There is hope.

But for this hillock, there is no hope. This cancer called population explosion, greed, glitz and glamour, . . . . .

Sentinels from a Bygone Era

Have you seen such structures around your city? Of course, not if you are living in Bangalore, a city that seems to be running away from its yesterday towards an uncertain and unknowable tomorrow.

You see them near towns and villages all over Karnataka. They may be found elsewhere too, but I have not seen any.

Guess what they are?

They are stands on which, a weary villager carrying a head load of his wares to sell could unload it for a while - without assistance.

With hardly anyone to use them, these simple public conveniences are waiting to be pushed to the dustbin of history by the next road-widening project?

Whither Feminism? or Wither Feminism?

The Indian cricket team lost a game to Bangladesh. Then it went on to lose a game to Sri Lanka. In between they won a game against another team from another country - Bermuda? Bahamas? Barbados? So the Indian cricket team did not earn the right to participate in the next round of the cricket world cup -a “World Cup” consisting of teams from a dozen (or is it two?) or so countries where cricket is played at all. (A football world cup is a real World Cup since football is played in practically every country!)

Not a tragedy. I minor piece of news. But one newspaper called the first loss, “Disaster Strikes India”. Oh, get real!

Then there were protests or incidents across India. Protests against what? Whom? That was a bit of a tragedy. It only shows the immaturity of some people, apparently jobless or at least senseless – hopefully temporary. What is worse is that some newspapers and some TV channels made it the “main course” in what they dished out whereas what they “dished out” hardly deserved to be even hors d'oeuvre.

One of the newspapers showed a picture of some women (girls?) protesters from (Lucknow or was it Kanpur, really does not matter confirmed later to be Patna) ‘heaping insults’ on an extremely talented and apparently committed Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, definitely past his youth and perhaps prime too. The form of protest? A poster of his, blackened in places and the girls are (posing for the benefit of the press photographers, obviously) making the Sachin in that poster wear bangles – a classic, abominable Indian method of insulting a man.

That is a tragedy.

Does it mean that those who wear bangles – women – are … what? Useless? Incapable? Weak? Unskilled? Unable to win? Or what? Why do these women have such a negative opinion of themselves?

Where is Feminism in India going? Whither Feminism? Or is it Feminism withered?

Self respecting women should protest against those women and also against the paper that published it, I think.

Shortcuts

Listen to any cricket talk and you hear the same phrases again and again. Whether it is the commentator or the winning captain or the man of the match.

It feels good to be “among the runs”. The pitch was “doing a bit”. “The boys”, it is always the boys. We needed “a partnership”. We have to “stick to the basics”. Go out and play my (his) natural game. I “concentrate on line and length”. The ball was “coming on to the bat” nicely. He was going through “a bad patch”. All he needs is one good innings. No footwork. Head not steady.

The list is quite long.

This gives me an idea. The ICC should publish a numbered list of such phrases. The post match interviewer would then ask his questions in numbers. The interviewee would reply in numbers too.

The players, tired after a hard struggle, would surely welcome this shortcut.

The newspapers will translate these numbers into words since you can’t expect all of us to have a copy of the ICC handbook.

We can even envisage a day when the newspapers will claim that so-and-so said such-and-such and that so-and-so will claim that he was misquoted or quoted out of context. He actually said fifteen and the journalist mistook it to be fifty. Or that a particularly inefficient journalist was in fact referring to an earlier edition of the handbook where as the interviewee was referring to the later edition.

Howzzat?

Not Quite Cricket

The cricket world cup is on and things connected with it look more and more bizarre. The cricket itself is normal but what happens off it is surreal. Yes, “Minnows” Bangladesh and Ireland defeating India and Pakistan is normal. Remember? “The glorious uncertainties of the game?”

India loses to Bangladesh and the effigies of the players are burnt and their houses attacked, even if it is ‘under construction’ like Dhoni’s.

Shift the scene. Anand wins a tournament and will be rated number one when the world standings are announced on the first of April. “Anand who?” did I hear?

If you heard that too, you have proved my point.

Can we find a reason or reasons or the public frenzy about India’s loss to Bangladesh and the violence that followed it? Part of the blame, perhaps the greater part of the blame goes to the media - both print and electronic. “Disaster strikes India”, proclaims one headline. Oh! Really?

The interminable and innumerable panel discussions on TV keep repeating themselves with inanities like “We are sports crazy nation”. Is that so? How many world champions have you produced? One. Exactly. And he answers to the name of Vishwanathan Anand. If he goes shopping in Bangalore, perhaps he will not be recognised. (Madras, ayyo, I mean Chennai, may be a different story. Being a ‘local’ international hero he is sure to be mobbed.)

The other point is about the word crazy. If we are, indeed, “crazy” about sports we should at least tone it down and not repeat it endlessly and reinforce it. Shouldn’t we?

There was this advertisement for matrimonial agency on the TV. It starts with Sports = Cricket. Do you agree? Hope not. But that is how ‘India’ acts. When I jog in the morning, I do not know the results of the previous night’s cricket match in which India had featured. I start my jog before the day’s newspapers are delivered. But I get the news as I jog because all the other walkers, joggers and the park bench occupants are talking of this. Age and sex no bar. The last time around I heard an old lady tell her fellow walker, “We should not have played thaaat badly”. I knew that “India had lost”. I mean the Indian cricket team had lost!

(I appreciate the old lady’s commitment to her morning walk though. She had apparently watched the match late into the night and had the conviction or will, not to miss her daily walk. Great!)

Now the latest thing on one channel is a tarot card reader! The Media is now strengthening pure superstition apart from whipping up frenzy about cricket. The tarot card reader is a master (or mistress) of obfuscation. She proclaimed earlier on that India might have a difficult day against Bangladesh. She of course did not say how difficult. Difficult enough to lose? She would not commit herself, would she? And the gullible (and incidentally pretty) hostess tells the tarot card reader that she was in fact right! Gimme a break!

Now you can understand the frenzy. Passion without reason.

Now before the match against another ‘minnow’ (who might make mincemeat of the Indian cricket team on the cricket field) the tarot card reader says that it is time for India to stop brooding over the last loss and concentrate on the next match. You do not need tarot cards say that, do you. The tarot card reader seems to know more about cricket than Mandira Bedi.

So my crystal ball says that (;--) ) for the next series Mandira would be dropped and this card reader would be on the panel!

JoGaLoNg

I jog in Lal Bagh – in Bangalore. I live a kilometre away from one of its gates. Perfect distance for a warm up walk and as soon as I enter the gate I start jogging. Perfect.

I run on the trail that goes around park, most of the distance next to the wall, inside the park, that goes around it. I think it is about 3.3 kms. It is a great trail. Within that distance, there are different 'climates'. Some parts are far more humid than the rest. One stretch skirts the lake and is more open. A part of the humid stretch is perfumed with eucalyptus. I feel elated when I enter that stretch. Any serious jogger who jogs for enjoyment must do this at least once.

Even if you are not lucky enough to live close by, you should put in the extra effort to run on this trail. You will not regret it.

Last week, I had been to Mysore and I walked (I walk and jog on alternate days. It was my 'walk day' when I was there. Next time, I will make sure that it is my 'jog day') on the trail around the Kukkarahalli lake. It is a different experience altogether! I recommend this very highly. Even if you live in Bangalore (and enjoy jogging in a 'good' place), Thou shalt not miss this one!

The great thing about this track is that it is almost perfectly flat! The bund runs in a straight line and then you descend a few meters to go on the track that goes around the lake. Waterfowl and many different species of small birds provide you music. If you are the kind who runs with headphones, be kind to yourself and dispense with them just this once. You will not regret it.

Some who know me as a "chronic Mysorean" (almost terminal) may think that they have to take my words, on this matter, with a pinch of salt. This once, you have no need for the pinch of salt.

When I lived in Mysore – (for 40 years or so) – this track was not ‘developed’. Most of the time, I am wary of 'development'. I happily make an exception this time.

Happy joGgIn'!

PS (I added the map of my run courtesy Google Map! My guesses about distances turned out to be pretty good 'guesstimates'. The tail of the mouse is 1.1 km and the body of the mouse is 3.3 km. So, my walk is 5.5 km. My run, during which I repeat a part of the mouse, is 2 km more than that, i.e. 7.5 kms. [Click on the image to get a bigger view])

Please

"Movies" below is my first attempt at fiction - a short story.

So, please do say something good about it.

Bernard Shaw was given some stories to read. The young author asked Shaw for his opinion with, "Should I put more fire into my stories, Mr. Shaw?"

"No, my dear man, vice sersa", said Shaw.

If you are like Shaw, don't tell me that! ;--)

F-1 and Indians

I had a flash of insight!

Now I know why Indians don’t make F-1 drivers.

No Indian can ever drive a car without a horn!