Monday 30 January 2012

Parenting No Kids Stuff in Norway


I have been seeing the news channels' ticker display about an Indian couple in Norway losing the custody of their two children (a three-year-old son and one-year-old daughter). Somehow in the melee of Rushdie circus at the Jaipur literary festival and India's humiliation in Australia it did not catch my attention.

Only when I read an article The Hindu (adapted from a Norwegian weekly) I was left amused and shocked. The main reasons cited for taking the kids to custody were:
  • Unsuitable toys and clothes
  • Insufficient room for the children to play in the house
  • The three-year-old son was not having his own bed.
The other reasons were that there was no diaper-changing table at home and the child's diapers are being changed on a bed and mother slapping the elder child once.

For a moment I did feel amused and wished I were born in Norway, though would have liked to leave the country once I became a parent!

Later on I felt sorry for the Indian couple who had to face the trauma of their children being taken away to two different “ethnic” foster homes. Mind you the girl child was whisked away from her mother at the age of 5 months, when the mother was still breast feeding her. Looks like for Norwegian authorities creature comforts take precedence over emotional bonding between mother and child. Moreover I do not understand how changing diapers on a bed was hazardous.

Anyhow being a citizen of a country where cases of female infanticide, child abuse etc hardly raise any eyebrows, these standards seem too lofty. The current unfolding of sordid drama about baby Falak on TV channels makes me cringe. I shudder to think if same criterion is used to assess parents in India... even 5% of them may not pass the test (I know I am being too liberal in my estimate).

Thankfully the impasse ended with Norwegian authorities agreeing that the kids' uncle would be the “primary caregiver” till they reach the age of 18.  

But some questions do come to my mind. Reports say the father is a geo-scientist working with American firm Halliburton - and not some low-level technician. So we can safely assume that his level of general awareness was pretty good if not high. So, wasn't he aware that Norway has such crazily exacting standards of parenting? Or they thought they could get away with it?

Now there are even reports that the ‘child protection services’ is thriving racket in Scandinavian countries, with Sweden being the biggest culprit, and main beneficiaries are caregivers and other social workers, who get hefty grants from the state. They target the poor, irrespective of race, and the so called shortcomings of these parents are purely economic ones - they do not lag in love and care, but they often lose their children and get branded as having psychiatric problems by psychologists who too are part of the racket. Norway arrived at a compromise regarding the Indian couple mainly to avoid international scrutiny of this system.

Tuesday 10 January 2012

Fading of Orkut

The other day something unusual (or rather un-cool) happened in my life. A guy, not too familiar to me, sent me a friend's request through Orkut! Hearing about Orkut was like getting to hear about somebody with whom you have totally lost touch. I had almost forgotten that I still had an account in the Google-promoted social network.

While the world seems to have pressed the 'superlike' button for Facebook, Orkut seems to have faded away like a dinosaur. It is now considered quite uncool and there are even jokes surrounding it.

I don’t exactly remember when I first heard about Facebook, but I am sure it was during the high noon of Orkut’s  popularity. Orkut, back then, was the king of social networking in India and I had wondered whether FB stood any  chance. However Orkut’s popularity in the world stage was patchy with India and Brazil being its prime markets.

Lots of other social networks like Friendster, Hi Five etc could not stand the Orkut onslaught and since Orkut was free, paid social networking sites like Match and Fropper too were feeling the heat. The growing popularity of Gmail was a force multiplier for this social networking site designed by Orkut Büyükökten.

Back then, out of plain curiosity I checked out Facebook and decided to sign up as, unlike Orkut, it did not require any invites from existing members … and nearly forgot about it as I could not find anyone familiar.

The reversal of fortunes happened in a matter of few years with tectonic shift in user preferences. The 'scraps' gave way to 'status messages' and walls.

A close Bollywood parallel would be Rajesh Khanna losing his superstar mantle to Amitabh Bachchan, way back in the seventies. I remember the current Big B as the cautious novice in the movie Anand playing second fiddle to Kakaji (who then was ruling Bollywood). Soon the lanky newcomer heralded the angry young man era and Rajesh Khanna's romanticism suddenly became un-cool and he abruptly faded into oblivion. I always felt that fate was too harsh on Kakaji.

Almost the same emotion I feel towards Orkut. I remember getting an invite from one of my friends and found myself as Alice in the wonderland of social networking. Since I had finished college in the pre-internet, pre-cellphone days I could find little company and used to envy teeny boppers with friends list running into hundreds or even thousands. For nearly a year I just had the guy, who sent me the invite, as the lone member on my friend's list!

Later on the trickle began and I soon had some of my college mates on my friend's list. Still I was not much of an 'Orkutter' compared with some of my colleagues. Its growing popularity prompted some offices to block the site to avoid fall in productivity!

Meanwhile my Facebook friends' list remained blank and the trickle began much later. Soon some of my Orkut friends started adding me up in Facebook and then there was no looking back. Visits to Orkut became rarer by the day.

Looks like now even Google has given up on Orkut and is priming up Google Plus to take on Zuckerberg's Facebook.

Friday 6 January 2012

Whimper Down Under

Let me confess at the outset that I am no cricket buff. I mean, I do not sit glued to Neo Sports to watch how our Men in Blue are doing or listen to what cricket pundits have to say at the end of the day, nor have I bookmarked Cricinfo site on my computer. But since I flip around TV news channels a lot  and the way they cover cricket,  I just can't help its corrosive influence. In fact I chose the headline as a spoof on CNN-IBN's ‘Thunder Down Under’.

The hype in news channels began much before the tour began. The hoopla over the eternal wait for Sachin Tendulkar's 100th century keeps TRPs on the roll. I feel the marketing guys may be secretly wishing that “May this suspense continue - Let him reach his milestone after a drought of 50 innings!”

At the outset I did feel the Aussies were not all that formidable as they were licking their very recent wounds caused by a humiliating defeat to New Zealand in the second Test, and that too in their home soil. For most Aussie blokes the feeling was similar to what cricket fans in India may feel if the Men in Blue lost a series to Kenya at home. These Victoria Bitter guzzling folks may grudgingly accept their neighbour's supremacy in Rugby Union, but definitely not in cricket. And, of course, the records also prove that their cockiness is not out of place - the Kiwis have never tasted a Test victory on the Australian soil since 1985.

The Melbourne Test began on a promising note with youngsters like Umesh Yadav and Ravichandran Ashwin making impressive debuts, though our middle order made us painfully aware of what the expression Achilles’ heel was all about. Each day brought surprises with the Test proving to be a cricket equivalent of neck-and-neck races we witness in Formula One or MotoGPs. No team seemed to have and edge and even on the night before the fourth day I went to sleep feeling it was anybody's match as two days of play were left.

But by the time I switched on the TV next day, the Aussie speedsters had Indian batsmen on the ropes and it was only a matter of time before the Test ended up with a bloody nose for Dhoni's men. But surprisingly the usual lemon squeezing Indian media gave them a kid glove treatment - all thanks to a Bihari politician Rajniti Prasad. His hideous act of tearing the Lokpal Bill in Rajya Sabha diverted the spotlight from the humiliating Melbourne defeat. On hindsight I think it won't be a bad idea for Dhoni and his men to give 10 per cent of their match fee to this Lalu Yadav protege!

The attention later shifted to Sydney and newspapers started predicting that since Tendulkar has a good batting record there, he may have his tryst with destiny on the SCG and even some Aussies like Hussey felt so. Glenn McGrath came off with spoiler remark that the Indians are in for a 4-0 whitewash (he initially said 3-0, assuming it was a 3-Test series) and Tendulkar won't reach his milestone in this series. This set the Indian Twitterati alight with many running down on him and calling him 'pigeon-headed' an allusion to his nickname pigeon.

But as the Test began the Aussie pace legend had the last laugh. On day one itself Team India's fate was sealed. The much famed batting line up meekly capitulated and from then onwards it was one free fall. Like Melbourne this one too got decided on fourth day. Looks like this series is going to be more nightmarish than the England series. Then at least we had Rahul Dravid who did manage to put up a fight, but here he too seems to have joined the ayaram-gayaram batting line up. Same seems to be the case of VVS Laxman, who used to play well in Australia, is now struggling even to reach double figures! And guys like Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir anyway never did well beyond the pitches of Indian subcontinent. Sadly we seem to have totally run out of alternatives.