Tuesday 30 December 2014

Remembering 2004 Asian Tsunami

A lot was written and many photographs and videos circulated in the social media marking the tenth anniversary (Dec 26) of the devastating Asian tsunami. It caught many countries, including India, totally unawares and for most victims their lives got snuffed away in a matter of seconds and that too when they were least expecting it.
 

Those days I used to stay in Chennai and on that fateful day a couple of hours before the tsunami, the city was rocked by tremors. I was home alone, with family gone for Christmas vacation, and happened to be having my morning cuppa.

Suddenly I felt I was going down and then coming up as if in a swing. It happened twice and I thought 'It's high time I went for a health check up'. Just then I heard a commotion outside and realised that all my flat mates were rushing downstairs with some yelling 'earthquake'. I then realised the 'swing' sensation was not something personal.
 

I too locked my flat and rushed outside after taking my two prized possessions - house keys and mobile phone. Outside the parked cars were shaking faintly in the after effect of the tremors. All the people in my locality had spilled down on to the street with some senior citizens being assisted by their younger dependents to climb down stairs.
 

Our lane was an assortment of 3-4 storey apartments and two storeyed houses with structures built in close proximity, after overcoming various building laws. I was fearing if an earthquake actually occurs these structures may suffer a bicycle-stand collapse with debris falling off to narrow street.
 

Though surprise and fear was writ large on most faces, it also became a rare instance to socialise and a chance to catch a glimpse of some hitherto unseen faces. Some were wondering if it will be a Bhuj earthquake (2001) redux. A couple of them were ruing the unbridled digging of borewells and depleting ground water table in the city, which they opined had taken away the 'shock absorbers' from such tremors. Some admitted that like me they too were reminded of long overdue health check ups and the pills they forgot to take the previous night!
 

Everyone waited outside and anxiously wondering 'what next'. Many were busy making calls on their mobile phones. Uyir thaan mukhyam (saving one’s life and limb most important) I overheard an elderly gentleman telling someone on phone. An hour later someone conveyed that an earthquake had happened somewhere in Indonesia and the worst was over.
 

With a tinge of anything-can-still-happen wariness we went back to our homes. Soon the news of tremor was all there on TV with a Tamil channel even showing a hilarious footage of a news anchor fleeing the newsroom when the tremors struck!
 

Thankfully there was no social media back then, otherwise this footage would have been godsend for Twitterati and WhatsAppers. Amid all this feeling of relief and hilarity nobody had any inkling of the actual catastrophe that was going to befall on them in a couple of hours.
 

Everyone got down to their daily routine of getting ready for office, cooking breakfast and as for kids, since it was Christmas vacation, they were getting ready for gully cricket. All blissfully unaware of the dreaded 'T' word. In fact till then the word tsunami was too esoteric to be part of popular lexicon, thanks to its peculiar pronunciation and spelling, and was restricted only to crossword and spelling bee junkies.
 

I too went through my morning routine and later had breakfast at a nearby Vasantha Bhavan restaurant. A little while later a boy from neighbourhood said, "Uncle don't go near the beach today, sea water is coming inside." I thought it was one of those nuggets coming from rumour mills, which generally go full throttle after such calamities. Moreover, with Marina beach around 10 kilometres away from my house, I had no such plans either.
 

A while later I happened to watch TV and saw the catastrophe unfold with cars parked on Marina beach bobbing like tennis balls in sea and huge swathes of coastal areas adjoining Bay of Bengal being deluged by tsunami. 

While going to office later I was astonished to see the Cooum river, which leisurely snakes through most parts of the Chennai and spreads its trademark obnoxious odour uniformly across the city, was in full flow, but in opposite direction. Almost on every bridge there were curious onlookers.

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About a fortnight later, around Pongal time, I decided to visit Pondicherry. As we hit the East Coast road and passed the dolphin city, the sight left me astonished with the enormity of tragedy. One side of the highway was dotted with tents, ranging from hep looking ones with Union Jack and stars and stripes markings to makeshift huts put up using discarded plastic cement bags. It was the same depressing scene for long stretch of my drive and induced guilt trips within me.
 

At Pondicherry the hotel was near empty with the hotel cashier lamenting they have been deprived of Pongal bonanza due to tsunami. While I was talking to him another person came to check-in and I thought 'thank God at least one tourist', but he turned out to be a tsunami relief worker! Later when I ventured out I found that the entire town wore a sullen look with restaurants, parks and beaches sparsely attended.
 

When I went to Chunnambar boat house the boatman told me he was venturing into waters for the first time after the tsunami. Boating had been suspended all these days. As the boat moved from the backwaters to the mouth of sea it gave us a feeling of eeriness as these seemingly placid waters had wreaked havoc barely a fortnight ago.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Monday 22 December 2014

Lament of 'Achche Din'

I was mostly used by people in their day-to-day conversations in past tense, often laced with strong dose of nostalgia to lament about the loss of good old days - be it college life, first crush or pre-nuptial courtship. Hence when BJP, sometime in the beginning of this year, chose to use me to refer in future tense, it came as a pleasant surprise.
 

I was all over radio and TV as part of its campaign to woo voters and as they say the rest is history (read hysteria) - the dope worked well on voters and turned them delirious. And for me it was a heady feeling and brushed off warnings by my ageing uncle 'garibi hatao' (thought he was being plain jealous) that soon I might get reduced to a joke and be used in pejorative sense.
 

For a couple of days it was celebration time with money bags of Dalal Street fuelling Sensex rallies. Soon the  government rolled out more slogans such as 'swachch Bharat', 'Make in India' and other less catchy cousins and I was never short of company.

But gradually like the wearing off of anesthesia after surgery, reality began to dawn. After a 'ho hum' Rail and Union Budgets, which only resulted in rise in train ticket fares and prices of essential commodities, sceptics began thinking aloud "when will achche din begin", but the besotted bhakts tried to silence them with angry trolls.
 

Then came the somersault over Aadhaar card for which countless Indians (even some Bangladeshis) had queued up to get photographed and finger printed. It was initially dismissed as UPA's folly and put in cold storage. But now it's on the way of being an instrument for getting LPG subsidy (as was planned by UPA). Moreover it has now become even more kosher - the finger prints taken during Aadhaar enrolment may be used to help start bank accounts as per Jan Dhan yojana. Sounds like 'puraney din' remarked a wag.
 

Of late many columnists who had vociferously believed that NDA would usher achchey din are having second thoughts about the government's performance with one of them lamenting that somebody has done black magic on Prime Minister.

About current ministry's performance another admirer and former minister cryptically remarked 'When all is said and done, more is said than done'. Then he regrets that 'The reduction of oil prices has put blinkers on people’s eyes and has delayed a reality check'. Another well known financial columnist observed that NDA was riding more on achchey sitrey (good luck) than achchey din, but wondered for how long.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Wednesday 10 December 2014

Rohtak Sisters: Bravehearts or Hunterwalis

The twists and turns of the Rohtak attack saga makes one realise the limitations of cameras in depicting reality and the whole story would make late Japanese film legend Akira Kurosawa proud. His Rashomon effect - a term which refers to real-world situations where multiple eye-witness come out with conflicting information about the same event, had come to full play in this nondescript town in Haryana.

It all started in a bus, where two skinny college girls took on three youths, one of them attacked the guys with a belt, and someone shot a video. It went viral on social media and for TRP driven TV stations it was godsend as this audacious act happened in Khap heartland and girls had survived to tell the tale. So the gutsy duo had to face the media flash bulbs and field questions ranging from valid to inane. Terms like 'braveheart', which were first coined during the infamous 16/12 Delhi rape were dusted up and made regular fixture on tickers.
 

Talking heads (all usual suspects) were brought in and the people who got branded as the ultimate villains were the passengers for not coming to the girls' rescue. The girls were put on a pedestal and showered with never ending accolades.

The state stepped in and announced recommendation for bravery award (the easiest thing to do) and patted on its own back for doing enough. The fact that  girls and women find even mundane tasks such as stepping out of their house, boarding a bus or going to college a life threatening risk, and the government hasn't done anything much in this regard was totally forgotten.

But a day later another video surfaced with the same girls thrashing another man, making many of their new found fans wonder whether they were the cornered victims or serial thrashers of men with camera in tow.
 

Around two days later the boot was in the other foot. A third video surfaced with journalist Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj interviewing some of the passengers and women from villages to which the boys and girls belonged. The overwhelming tone of the interviewees was that the boys were being framed and the case was set up. One of the speakers, an aged women passenger, mentioned how her seat was usurped by the girls and the men had only asked them to vacate it, thereby leading to a fight.

Deepika by the way is a documentary film maker and currently working on 'Martyrs of Marriage', which depict the misuse of section 498A of IPC on dowry harassment by women to frame husbands and in-laws. A not so politically correct cause to follow for a woman.


The government then decided to put its plans to award the girls on hold and ordered an inquiry. Till then the guessing game continues, whether the girls were genuinely fighting eve teasers or the boys were being framed.


Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Monday 24 November 2014

The Timeless Appeal of Shawshank Redemption

This Facebook image of full-salt-no-pepper Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman together and the realisation that the cult movie they starred - Shawshank Redemption - was going to celebrate 20th anniversary left me astonished. Let me admit I was one of those who watched the movie only a couple of years ago using a USB, though the movie was released in an era when terms like internet were known only to the geeky class.
 

The film had a low profile release, at least in India, as it got overshadowed by the fading hype of Jurassic Park and at the Oscars Shawshank Redemption got eclipsed by the likes of Pulp Fiction and Forrest Gump, which ensured that this movie drew a blank, despite seven nominations. I vaguely remember it being screened in some theatres and it soon faded away without much ado. The title itself sounded very intriguing and with words like 'redemption' thrown in it sounded more like a morality play.
 

Moreover the main actor Tim Robbins was quite an unknown commodity and so was Frank Darabont, who was making his debut as director. Though Morgan Freeman did ring a bell, having acted in successful movies such as Robinhood The Prince of Thieves and Unforgiven, he was not a household name like say Eddie Murphy.
 

So for me the movie got lost somewhere in the back of my mind until a couple of years ago when I came across a friend who had downloaded the movie in his computer. Using a USB I copied it to my system and began watching it. Within 15-20 minutes I realised that I was not watching some run of the mill stuff but a classic.

Tim Robbins plays a high street banker who lands in prison due to quirk of fate and learns to cope with life behind bars. While Freeman plays the long time jailbird, who keeps getting denied parole. The two develop a rare bond of friendship and later Robbins carries out a riveting escape from the prison. After a slow start the movie grows upon you. It does not have any science fiction special effects or slickly edited fight sequences or any gizmos - just plain straight forward story telling, often with voice over by Freeman in his  deep baritone, with a good eye for detail.  
 

By the time I had finished watching the riveting 142-minute long movie I realised it was one of the best films I had seen in my life and rued why I didn't see it on a 70 mm screen earlier. 

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Monday 10 November 2014

Charge of The Selfie Brigade



Narcissism used to be a private affair (very mirror centric) or had a very limited reach until the troika of internet, smartphone and social media came along. Now if you go to a restaurant, pizza joint or take a stroll in a park, a beach you will come across someone taking selfies or a video on his or her longish smartphone or tab, all vital fodder for social networking sites, who in turn seem to rule our lives. Meanwhile 'selfie' has mutated to terms like 'groupfie' and 'belfie', but the strong underpinnings of narcissism remain.

The tyranny of film rolls had restricted photography for special occasions like marriage or a visit to a tourist spot. But memory chips changed the rules of the game as it eliminated the frequent need to shop for film rolls. So all you need is flip the view on your phone, put the best smile forward, position your thumb over the button and click. Whether it is a new dress, a tattoo, shoes or newly-acquired six pack ... everything is kosher for camera and it follows you like a shadow. It has also caught the fancy of our netas.

Even those who are sick or had met with accidents post their pictures in full medical regalia of fracture cast and bandages to evoke a flurry of 'likes' and 'get well soon' messages. In short it has now supplanted diary, minus  its privacy, in recording one's life in kilo, mega and terra bytes with tools like Photoshop to create a picture perfect world. The more intrepid ones even go for cosmetic surgery to enhance their looks.

One notable fallout is that it has become cool to attend school/college alumni meeting and it no longer evokes thin attendance it used to. Earlier only 'teachers' pets' and those living close to the institution cared to attend and it used to happen only in upscale public schools or high profile colleges. But now it has trickled down even to schools and colleges with pedestrian pedigree.

During their student days they may have loathed attending classes and writing copious notes, but now they try to squeeze in their portly frames on those ancient school benches to be 'framed' for posterity. Some even make peace with teachers with whom they never saw eye to eye during student days - all for the sake of Facebook or Instagram.

For many the obsession with online life has now eclipsed the offline ones. Even the day-to-day mood swings depend upon comments their posts and selfies draw on Facebook or Instagram. Cyber bullying has become more potent as online reputations have become more important than the offline ones. And so is flattery with the most common remark being, "Oh you look the same, not changed a wee bit", which make lie detectors gasp in disbelief.

Picture courtesy: Reddit (George Harrison selfie)
Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Friday 24 October 2014

Canada Terror: Memories of Another Day


Canada was recently described by a wag as "Hamid Ansari of countries: always needing to remind everyone of its presence". It has always been content living under the shadows of its big brother neighbour United States. However the recent adventurism by a gunman inside the parliament house in Ottawa, has invited the blinding flash bulbs and view finders of 24/7 global media, which the reclusive country may be finding quite unwelcome.

However for Canada it is not its first brush with terrorism, as many would like us to believe. Many have called it Canada's 'loss of innocence', but the country had its ample share of terror incidents in the past. Probably the earliest terror attack that originated from Canadian soil was on June 23, 1985 and in pre-9/11 days it was considered the biggest one in terms of casualties.

An Air-India Boeing 747-237B originating from Toronto and bound for Mumbai was destroyed mid-air near Ireland killing 329 people. The bomb was allegedly planted in a suitcase by Sikh militant outfit Babbar Khalsa to avenge the raid on Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984. Another bomb laden baggage was sent on a Canadian Pacific flight, later meant to be transhipped to Air-India flight from Tokyo to Bangkok. The bomb, however, went off prematurely killing two baggage handlers at Narita airport near Tokyo.

Among those killed in Mumbai bound flight 268 were Canadian citizens, 27 Britons and 24 Indians. Quite predictably among the dead Canadians most happened to be of Indian origin. Hence the Canadian establishment was more eager to perceive it as an Indian tragedy than admit it as their national tragedy.

While after the current Parliament attack the Canadian government made a brave proclamation that they will not be intimidated by terror strikes, back in 1985 Canada's conduct while dealing with the tragedy left a lot to be desired, as was later revealed in a docudrama Air India 182 produced in 2008 by filmmaker Sturla Gunnarsson. After that tragedy the then prime minister, Brian Murloney, got busy sending condolence to the Indian Government rather than get in touch with the Canadian families who lost their loved ones. The Canadian Parliament also did not observe any mourning or issue condolence, thereby hinting that the lives of Canadians of Indian origin did not matter.

Those were pre-9/11 days and terrorism like tuberculosis was perceived as a third world disease, which countries such as Lebanon, Sri Lanka and India had to contend with. The western world they thought was immune to it, with sole exception of United Kingdom, but even they had to contend with gora terrorists - the IRA.

So Canada just could not come to terms with the fact that a terror attack originated from its soil and did its level best to live in denial. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) which was entrusted with the probe filed its chargesheet 15 years after the tragedy. The retired Canadian Supreme Court judge, John Major, who carried out a long drawn investigation made it amply clear that Canada's intelligence and police services had enough hints to suspect that Khalistan groups were planning a major operation targeting Air India, but they did not do enough to prevent it.  

The explosives that blew up Air India were allegedly planted by extremists in luggage that was loaded in Vancouver, but only one person has ever been convicted in relation to the tragedy.

Inderjit Singh Reyat, who assembled the explosives, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2003 and received a five-year sentence. The suspected ringleader, Talwinder Singh Parmar, died in India in 1992 allegedly after a police encounter and the RCMP's two main surviving suspects were both acquitted in March 2005 after a 19-month trial.

Thus for the next of kin of those who died in that tragedy all this provides little consolation.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Sunday 12 October 2014

Nobel Prize: Surprises Galore

Obscurity is the flavour of this Nobel prize season. Everyone waited with bated breath as to who will win Nobel prize for literature. In the run up to be prize announcement Japanese writer Haruki Murakami emerged as hot favourite, followed by Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Murukami's name has  been doing rounds for the past few Nobels and it was expected that the widely translated bestselling author will finally pocket the coveted prize this year.

However when the results came on October 9 we had people tut-tutting in shock and disbelief. Patrick Modiano a French author hardly known outside his country's shores, emerged as the proverbial dark horse. This Jewish author has Nazi occupation, Jewishness and loss of identity as recurrent themes in his novels. He is, however, well known in France and is often clubbed with Marcel Proust. For Modiano it was 'weird' to have won the prize, though he was elated.

But for the next day the Nobel authorities had even bigger surprise up their sleeves. For peace prize it announced an Indian and a Pakistani as winners, thus quite literally dropping a peace bomb among two countries which are currently having a confrontation along the border.

While the Pakistani winner Malala Yousafzai is quite well known, for braving Taliban bullets to promote education among girl children in Swat valley, the Indian winner, Kailash Satyarthi, was as anonymous as children working in hazardous factories and restaurants, on whose behalf he has been fighting for the last three decades.

Now the question arises as to how Nobel prize committee spotted and nominated him. It is quite well known that the list of Nobel nominees is often a long one and the selection process is rigorous and not immune to lobbying pressures. However, a Wikipedia search reveals that Satyarthi is not exactly an unknown identity and had won a slew of human rights awards abroad, regrettably none within our shores. In fact in his own country he had to battle stiff opposition from strong industrial and business lobbies in his crusade against child labour.  

After the Nobel announcement it has become quite clear that his was a classic case of blackout by the Indian media. Some guilt-ridden journalists have now come out with confessions of how they chose to ignore his press conferences and instead chose to pursue far more 'happening' upmarket and cool topics than rescue of children from bonded labour. One journalist admitted he had some 30-odd emails sent by Satyarthi's organisation Bachpan Bachao Andolan over past three years, which he did not even bother to open, let alone read.

Another journalist also lamented that newspapers these days can't do without party pictures and Page 3 personalities and often nudge other news to inside pages. But he later puts the onus on readers for not demanding 'meaningful' news and wallowing in trivia and non-serious stuff!

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Monday 22 September 2014

Closing of Indian Mind

Though Mary Kom the Bollywood biopic on the boxing sensation from Manipur may be raking the moolah at box office, with one Facebook meme even claiming that Priyanka Chopra, who plays Mary Kom, earned more money in this film than Mary Kom in her lifetime, it has no way made even a minor jab on the well entrenched prejudice 'mainland' Indians harbour towards their Northeast cousins.

A Facebook post by one Sreemoyee Piu Kundu about a scene in a Delhi multiplex screening the movie and later at a nearby restaurant was quite an eye-opener and succinctly sums up our fetish for symbolic gestures and quite literally 'skin deep' sense of national integration and inclusiveness.

At the end of the movie the national anthem is played and one couple refuses to stand up and all hell breaks loose. They are grabbed by the collar to stand up and reminded how Mary Kom has done India proud and how dare they sit and 'watch the fun', with choices Hindi expletives (ranging from Kuttey to MC, BC kind) thrown in. The fight snowballs to a mini riot with bottles flying and the security had to be called in to help people get out of the movie hall.

At the restaurant she describes how a group of Manipuri women, whom she had seen at the movie hall, get a taste of well entrenched prejudices and misogyny among a group of purebred Delhi youths of Punjabi kind. They sing cheesiest songs and even harass the waiter serving the Manipuri women. When one of the women stands up, they whistle and one of them remarks, 'oye yeh toh saali Mary wali aankhen dikha rahin hain...'

One among the waiters, all hailing from Northeast, pleads with  them to be quiet but gets pushed by one of the youths, who remarks, 'yeh dekh Mary ka ek aur aashiq!' The girls quietly pay and leave whatever they had ordered untouched. The guys then sing 'Hindi chini bhai bhai...'

Symbolic gestures like standing up for national anthem comes easy to us, but inculcating a far more complex sentiment like seeing a person from other community or state as equal is something we could not accomplish even 60 plus years after independence.

Though one of the cornerstones of our freedom struggle was national unity, quite ironically brought about by English education, and our stalwarts of freedom struggle had tried their level best to break down linguistic, communal and caste barriers of our vast and diverse land, but they were not fully successful, resulting in division of the country. After 1947 Jawaharlal Nehru and other leaders had made conscious efforts to promote national integration, but somewhere down the line their successors lost the zest and we lost the plot. Moreover the Northeast for some mysterious reason always remained in the fringes and little did we learn about those regions in our school, barring maybe Naga dance.

The country ended up being a conglomeration of various linguistic and religious enclaves.Slogan like 'unity in diversity' remained just that - slogans. For most of us the very idea of encountering people who are different is unsettling. Hence we always harbour a desire for homogeneity. The parameters for homogeneity may vary from person to person, but broadly they look for same language, religion, caste, region and food habits.

Delhi, of course, tops in such churlish behaviour as their tolerance bandwidth is very narrow - it spans from Gurgaon to Noida. Other cities may be a shade better, but are not free from it.


Image Courtesy: Facebook  
Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Monday 1 September 2014

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, A Watered Down View



I first came to know about it through one of my school mates, now based in US, with whom the only interaction I had in past three decades was to accept his Facebook friend's request. He had posted a video of him on Facebook undergoing this bizarre ritual of getting drenched in cold water. That was my first brush with 'ALS ice bucket challenge' and it did take some time for me to bother what ALS stood for. Initially I mistook it for some reality show, going by the fun, frolic and narcissism the participants were exuding and the way it was going viral with every celeb, Page 3 wannabe and 'like'-starved Facebookers willingly getting splashed with ice cold water and flaunting how hot they looked.

After Googling I came to know that ALS was a grim affair - it stood for Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as motor neurone disease - a crippling ailment that affects the neurological system, with no known cause or cure leading to paralysis and a very miserable end. Those afflicted with the disease rarely live beyond five years, one notable exception being famous British scientist Stephen Hawking, who was diagnosed with ALS when he was 21 and has now crossed 70. The other ALS afflicted notable figure that comes to my mind is former chief of army staff General Krishnaswami Sundarji, but he could survive only a couple of years after being diagnosed with the disease.

I had a rather nodding acquaintance with a person who was quite literally 'felled' by this ailment. I first met him at a hospital. He had come to visit my father, who was convalescing after a heart attack. He seemed happy and boisterous type and tried to assure me that my father will be fine and not to hesitate to call him if there was any need. Later I came to know he was the latest tenant in the house close to mine.

His name was Thomas, a middle aged man with two teenage sons and like most Malayalees had spent best part of his working years in Gulf. He was quite energetic and was always seen going around in his red TVS Suzuki bike. On seeing me he often used to stop by and enquire about my father's condition. Through neighbourhood grapevine I came to know that he was a small time financier.

Later on during those brief encounters on the road I noticed that his manner of speaking had changed and he had difficulty pronouncing certain sounds, especially vowels. Quite often I had to make a guess about what he was talking about. I thought something had gone wrong with his vocal cords, though never bothered to check out what his ailment was.

A couple of months later he and his bike were not to be seen and it took me some time to realise that he was not stepping out of his house altogether. Instead his house began witnessing a steady stream of visitors.

Out of concern I too went to his house and the sight left me shell shocked. Thomas was now confined to wheel chair and though he could recognise me, he could barely speak and tried to make hand gestures, again with little success as he could barely move them. It was then I first heard about motor neurone disease. As his wife explained to me about the seriousness of the disease, it left me too numbed to say anything. It also made me realise how much of nervous coordination and energy is needed even to do mindless gestures like scratching ones hair or nose. 

Some months later they shifted to a new place and I lost touch with them. But one day one of my neighbours told me that Thomas had passed away. I guess for him it must have been a welcome end to a long drawn suffering.

Coming back to ALS challenge, the current hoopla on social media is showing no sign of cooling off with bucket full of controversies. Matt Damon decided to use toilet water for the purpose (to highlight about scarcity of clean drinking water across the globe) and Obama ducked the bucket challenge, though he agreed to donate for ALS research. The fact that Corey Griffin, one of the pioneers of ALS challenge died in a road accident added a sympathy angle to the event.

Though some reports claim the drive has raised $100 million, many participants in Britain admitted that did not donate to an ALS charity after taking part in an ice bucket challenge. Many participants were not even aware what the event was all about. For them it was just another souvenir to be posted on their Facebook wall.

In India it has mutated to 'rice bucket challenge' with participants handing over a bowl of rice to a needy persons and posting pictures on Facebook. Looks like in this era of social media epidemic even the good old anna daanam has to be clothed in vanity.

Pic courtesy: Wikipedia

Also Read: Bangalore Beat