Only for their Eyes!!

I don't know why I didn't publish this post. It stayed in my 'Draft-box' from 23-Nov-2011. Even though, I don't live in Chennai anymore, the haiku there-in is timeless. So, here is that post with minor corrections ------------

I rarely miss my breakfast and when I do, my body never misses to remind me. After a healthy breakfast, I can take the Chennai Traffic heads on. You may classify the Chennai morning traffic into two categories. The maddening all-for-all traffic, where every soul on the street is going crazy and wants to get somewhere no matter what, nothing can stop them. Then there is this clue-less traffic, where everyone is super calm as if they have just woke up from their meditation and still not out of the gaze. They will cut through your way, without even meaning to be mean to you. Irrespective of the type of traffic, mornings are my favorite. I may have other vehicles crawl all over me and I may still not get frustrated or irritated.

Not today, though! I didn't take my car out and took an auto instead. I was to drop my little one Arav, on the way, at his school and head for a meeting. There was nothing wrong with the auto-driver. He was good and careful with his driving since we had a five-year old in the auto. In spite of his good driving, I was getting worked up. The chaos, noise and pollution were building up and I was losing my cool. Then all of a sudden Arav says, appa I saw a butterfly!

Jan Lokpal - What are we getting into?

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article1710046.ece

Here is a snippet from the previous link: The aim of the bill is not to prevent corruption but to punish the corrupt. In this respect, the draft does not provide an approach that is qualitatively different from that of the existing institutions of the state." 

It reminds me of an old proverb: Thievery cannot be abolished until the thieves have a change of heart!

Most of the time we talk or write as if the politicians are a different breed, race or from some distant planet. In the fight against corruption, I hear this cacophony more often than not. We forget that “we”, yes in double quoted boldend “we”, selected them as our representatives and they are most likely our friends’ or friends’ friends’ friends’ parents! They are very much like a lot of people we see in our close proximity. Unless otherwise we have a fundamental change in our attitude towards morality and decency in our interaction with the rest of the society, Lokpal or Jan Lokpal nothing can save us!

To drive home my point, here are some of our fellow citizens who will join Anna’s protest and then go about doing their business as usual….

At my residential complex: The thirteen plus year-olds that enjoy speeding in their dad's / mom's scooters are wide-eyed when they talked about "India against Corruption!" Straddled on their loaned vehicles they enthusiastically invited each other for joining the procession after school. Off they zoomed to their schools watched by their proud parents while the legal age for riding a vehicle is sixteen or eighteen (depending on cc of the vehicle). Why bother if mama (cop) catches, a few tens changing hands would solve the problem. One illegal activity will be nullified by another.

An ex-colleague of mine who was highly amused that I showed up for the driving test to get my license was equally proud to announce that he got his license from his hometown sent by post without him appearing for even the driving exam!! He's taking his day-off to join Team-Anna's procession. Hell! They demanded and got 1000 bucks from him for issuing that license - how unfair!

An Office bearer in my apartment residents' association who looked down upon me for being naive - for I applied for the ration card and has been waiting for years now, had advised me to use agents and speed-money (yeah that is the euphemism for bribe) to get things done faster. I was thrilled to see him sporting a “Fight Against Corruption!” badge on his wide chest buffed with pride!

A fifteen year old, that called for volunteers to help with the procession quipped “we got our freedom on 15th and lost it on 16^th of Aug “. This is the second Freedom Struggle! – Obviously, he was borrowing the lines from the media reporting Anna’s arrest on 16^th Aug. While I condemn the arrest, I only wish that the kid knows what “Freedom struggle” mean and does not think the “Greatest ever struggle for Freedom in the history of humanity is Avatar”!

As Mr. Gandhi said, “We must be the change we want to see in the world”. If not this mass movement spear headed by Anna will fizzle out and can only be likened to our guilt-steered support for ‘save the environment – dear pal, let us all switch off the lights on 10-10-10 at 10:10:10, and then head for our homes in our individual gas-guzzling big cars…!  We have done our part!

I will rather start with teaching my five-year old son to stand in queue with me and not use his age as a cover to by-pass the queue!

Vegetarianism!

Paul McCartney's request to Indian Prime Minister


This is Oozhi kaalam (ஊழி காலம்), Kali yuga (कलियुग), the last-stage of human life on earth?: Paul McCartney has a suggestion on Vegetarianism to India: Did anyone tell Paul that:

1. An average Indian goes to bed a vegetarian on most of the days - for want of money to buy meat?
2. Indians have hundreds of religious days in a year, when even a meat-lover remains a vegetarian?
2. Americans with a population 4 times less than that of Indians, consumes more meat than Indians?

Overheard

A couple of conversations I overheard over the weekend!

At BigBazar: A father, accompanying his two teenage daughters, speaking over mobile phone. 'Where else? Shopping! You see! All I do these days is nothing but chauffeuring and swipeing credit cards!'

A chat between my wife, my three year old son and neighbour's son of same age:

My wife: a person who flies an aircraft is a pilot! A person who sails a ship is a captain! Now, you know this one, who drives a car?

The kids in unison, 'daddy!'

It appears that it is not without a reason many men out there fear marriage!

Apeing the west!

Did you switch off the lights during the recently 'passed' Earth Day? What a farce?

The new fad in town is Global warming! The corporates have joined the kitty party ladies. If the West says, we are switching off all electrical appliances for half an hour, it makes a lot of sense. They get electricity 365 days a year 24/7. Their life style needs a numer of gadgets, must-have, need-to-have and nice-to-have types. What is the situation in India? Even in a big city, you would call yourself lucky if you get electricity 24/7 for 300 days a year! The small towns are subjected to power cut everyday, anywhere between 30 to 120 minutes. The remote villages are a sorry sight, many dont even have electricity. When the electricity department is already cutting the power proactively on your behalf, why do you even bother?

You should have seen the amount of e-mails and advertisements that were floating around to promote Earth Day. Avoiding this circus alone would have achieved more than what that half an hour could have, in terms of storage space for those mails, CPU usage, network usage, wasted human energy, etc.

Should we all clamour about global warming just because it is the most fashionable word or the in-thing now? Dont fall for the politicians and corporates. They have a responsibility to 'show' that they care for the environment.

If we are really worried about global warming, then the let us worry about Nano for a starter. At a time when world's natural resources are drying out, when the rich countries have realised their mistakes and are promoting public trappostation, demarking separate lanes for car-pools, we are attempting what is ironickly termed as common man's car. Where will these cars run? Fly?, for we dont have enough road space for the existing vehicles. It would have been a celebration, if the Tatas came up with a Rs. 1,00,000 bus, a public transportation vehicle. That's the need of the hour.

Let us sensitice the people of switching off the lights and fans when leaving a room, switching off the appliances when they are not in use, and not leaving the appliances in standby mode. Then, we will send 'the' message to the authorities. Let us get the priorities correct, let us lock the cart to bull in the right order!

Why indian trucks need two drivers?

Have you ever noticed? The indian trucks, lorries and tempos, they all
have two drivers! I'm not talking about the backup drivers. I'm
talking about the quintessentially indian side-kicks, the cleaners.
They seem to have their own rules of traffic. They permanently keep
their left hand outside the window, banging the door every now and
then; waving hand every now and then indicating they are taking left
turn, of which the actual driver has no clue. It is suprising that the
cleaners' left hands are still intact in the Indian traffic.

It is funny to watch the driver and cleaner work together. Most often
if not all, the driver plays guru and cleaner the student. The driver
will be the one who turns today's cleaner into tomorrow's driver. The
cleaner neither pays for the training nor gets money for his labor. It
is an on-the-job training. In return, the driver gets the best deal.
He gets an admirer, who treats the driver and the vehicle as the king
and chariot. For the cleaner, everyone else on the road are lesser
citizens!

Language - back to the basics!

Yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine on how much text messaging has changed and how ubiquitous it has become. Even the SMS editors have matured multi-fold, from a simple text editor to word-guess to word-complete to heuristic based word-suggestion. It is all available in that small mobile phone!

Now, it is another matter, there are many users out there to whom all these additional features are unnessorory. There are SMS experts out there! There was this girl that I had seen at a shopping mall. She was standing in the queue in front of me at the billing counter. She was talking to her friend standing next to her and at the same time she was texting at an amazing speed. Ping pong, ping pong, she was flooded with SMSes and all she needed was just her right hand thumb. She was typing so efficiently and effortlessly. I have seen that many people do not need the advanced text editing features. The have invented their own way of messaging, with short words. For example 'great' is not 'great' anymore. It is just 'gr8' and so on. You know better, I dont have to get into the details.

We continued discussing on transformation of languages and scripts. I mentioned, if this state continues then one day we will see people communicating using symbols as people had been doing thousands of years ago! For which my friend responded, yeah! you will never know. We look at the scripts as if it was written by some immaturecivilizations. May be they were so advanced that they did not need the our complicated languages. All they needed was their sign languages. At that very moment we stopped talking and got lost in our own thoughts!

Is monogamy against nature?

Most creatures on earth procreate by selection. The selection of a mate is not a chance-event but a very careful elimination of the weakest. The male sealions fight their way and bleed to attract the female. The humming birds fall with a style and fiercely fight to protect their flower-rich territory to attract the female. In all these cases, fitness, health and age of the mate plays major role. Nature is amazing! It only wants the best of species to procreate. Nature in its own simple way reduces the chances of multiplication of bad genes. But what do you think of the humans? We with the power of our brain have created a system, which tries to protect the week and the bad genes.

Shopping with the westners

It is an experience shopping with the westerners. I happened to accompany two of my clients to Spencer's Plaza recently. They were thrilled to see the crowd and the host of stuff that can be bought from a single place.

One of them was about to buy a Nokia mobile (similar to the one that he's already carrying), which I noticed and pointed out to them that it is a Nokla and not a Nokia. Well, they were not expected to notice the difference between 'l' and 'i' at where they are coming from.

They were so appreciate of everything that the Salesmen would show them. Oh! that is wonderful, amazing, very nice, wow! that's half the price, that's so cheap. After all that you would expect them to buy a load - but they would walkaway with a big smile on their faces and a big 'thank you' to the salesmen.

Skewed – won’t get queued

Why is that, we, as a nation, hate queues and the token systems. Be it Saravana Bhavan or a cinema theatre, uh-hem! we won’t queue up, unless and otherwise some ruffian stands by with a stick in his hand and foul language in his mouth! We then get disgusted and queue up immediately!

However I must agree that this is one place where caste, gender, social hierarchies, political-leanings are forgotten. We rub and elbow each other, smell and get saturated with each other's sweat. Why?

The Doctors' clinics are no different. Our paediatrician does not have a number display, like hundreds of his brethren. Whenever we are there, someone or the other will say that their kid is really ill and they must be allowed to go first as if the rest of us usually go to our paediatrician for a dancing lesson! Today, one lady was pestering the attendant to let her go first , when he mentioned that others too are waiting for long with their small babies (some of them crying non-stop), she behaved as if she’s been unfairly denied her chance.

Why do we do that? Why we are so skewed and won’t get queued?