Unreserved Chaos

The other day I had to rough it out in the ‘cattle class’ (general compartment) of a superfast train for a three-and-half-hour long journey, for want of an alternative. As it was around 6.30 pm and the train was nearly criss-crossing the country from Ernakulam to Delhi, I did not even take a chance to try my luck in a sleeper class compartment.

Earlier while buying the ticket at Koyilandi (a mofussil station near Kozhikode) for Mangalore I had enquired if it was any way possible to upgrade it. The woman at the ticket counter replied in the negative and warned that as it was already dusk I might risk getting fined if I travelled sleeper class with an ordinary ticket!

Having travelled many times in the reserved sleeper class for long trips (lasting 2-3 days) I was all too familiar with the inconvenience caused by those without reservation. Hence I decided not to be a cause of their misery and braced myself for the din, bustle and stench of the general compartment.

They are generally the first or last compartment of the rake and are the most unkempt ones. The train arrived about 20 minutes late and I made a dash to the last compartment, which looked already full with little foot space left. 

I did make it to the passage of the train and moved further into the aisles aiming to get a seat. A couple of years of commuting 'sardine class' in Mumbai’s suburban trains have taught me that getting into the aisle was the best way to ease suffocation, prevent achy shoulders and even get a seat in the bargain. 

About two stations later lady luck smiled, though the seat I got was hardly comfortable. Nearly six passengers were squeezed into a row seat, which was actually meant for 3-4 people.

The passengers were a mix of locals who were going on short haul journeys lasting a couple of hours and the migrant workers, who were in for a long haul to their home towns in the country’s cow belt. This under-class also happens to be the mainstay in general compartments of almost all the trains that chug along the Indian Railway’s expansive network. 

As for Kerala these migrant labourers provide the much-needed brawn to its acute shortage of manual labour, thanks to the upward mobility of its natives, who prefer white collar jobs or migrate to Gulf countries. After months of back breaking work at construction sites and other places that require hard labour, they were on their way to meet their near and dear ones. 

From the snatches of conversations I overheard I could gather that some were going to attend marriages, some to fix the roof or flooring of their houses and some even to reclaim their dues from recalcitrant and shifty borrowers.

In Loop With Wireless World

Though the way they live or travel may not have changed from their predecessors (could see the same old padlocked antique looking trunk boxes and cloth bags stocked under the seats), there was one tangible difference.

The new generation migrant workers have definitely got a toe hold into the wireless digital world, all thanks to low call rates and the entry of cheap mobile phones in the market. The presence of large number of smartphones (mostly of the Chinese and Indian make) in the compartment came as quite a revelation to me.

These labourers may be light years away from following the Mahesh Murthy-Mark Zukerberg free basics vs net neutrality debate and the ad blitzkrieg by Facebook, but they appeared quite savvy and nimble fingered while handling the devices they had in hand. Almost everybody was busy playing games, listening to music and watching downloaded movies to sustain them for the long journey. Some were even WhatsApping.

A couple of them were on the lookout for sockets to plug in their phone chargers. I am sure some of those ancient trunk boxes may even have power banks stocked in them!

A couple of years ago there was a news item stating that India has more mobile phones than toilets, a finding that was not so flattering and pointed to the skewed priorities of our countrymen. Now the day is not far when we may hear that the country has more smartphones than toilets!!

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Sink-ara Chennai

The second spell of heavy rains have made floods in Chennai reach frightening proportions, with aerial photos and videos of arterial roads turning into rivulets with flyovers acting as markers, stranded people being herded out of their homes by whatever means possible. Things had reached the tipping point during the first wet spell, which lasted nearly two weeks, but the current one brought the city face to face with catastrophe, with even the airport being shut down.

Ironically the city was once synonymous with perennially hot climate, scanty rains, water shortages with long queues and high decibel quarrels before hand-pumps dotting street corners in the older parts of the city. Weathermen used to rationalize the city's aridity by claiming that Chennai happened to be in a rain shadow area.

Even when it rained it used to be more like dew drops and those driving cars had to first switch on wind shield washers to make it wet enough for the wipers to clear the blurry wind shield. Heavy showers were very rare and those carrying umbrellas were dismissed as being sissy. 

A perceptible change occurred after the region was rocked by Asian tsunami in 2004. As the north east monsoon hit Chennai in 2005 the raindrops were far bigger and lethal, the showers were of much longer duration. That was the year hurricane Katrina struck US and Chennai too had its own 'cyclone season', some of which brought heavy rains that crippled the city.

I happened to be there in 2005 floods and it used to be quite an eerie feeling while crossing the Chintadripet bridge on my bike with a swollen Cooum in full flow. The water levels were just 2-3 feet shy of overflowing the bridge and the river's current was quite intimidating.

Another factor that puts Chennai at a disadvantage vis-a-vis floods is its soil composition. It has a heavy clay content and the absorption of water is poor. Hence inundated areas remain waterlogged for long, due to low percolation. They soon turn into a haunt for cattle, mosquitoes and flies, thereby posing a health hazard to nearby residents.

Like all Indian cities Chennai too has its own share of encroachments on the banks of waterways, lakes and tanks, all thanks to the usual suspects - corrupt political class and bureaucracy, unscrupulous real estate barons and a huge demand for housing.

Moreover, whatever was left of these water bodies was allowed to accumulate silt and indiscriminate dumping of waste, both by factories and households. Hence apart from pollution and stench, the carrying capacity major waterways of the city such as Adyar, Buckingham Canal, Cooum got severely depleted, leaving excess waters to flood low lying areas.

Many trot out the argument that if any city gets a month's rain in a day, it won't be able to cope, however well planned it may be. But this no way absolves the authorities, rapacious builders and factory owners from their guilt in bringing Chennai to such a pass. If the waterways were free from silt, garbage and encroachments then the magnitude of floods would have been much less and the excess water would have drained off to the sea at much faster rate.

After the first wet spell when a cab aggregator came up with the service to supply boats to the distressed people, it invited incredulous smirks and many dismissed it as nothing more than a publicity stunt. But with the second spell the reality, quite literally, sank in. Boats and dinghies became a lifeline to rescue the marooned.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

James Bond In His Sanskari Avatar

The spectacular success of Spectre in the country has whetted the appetite of James Bond franchise and they want to go beyond the multiplex crowds of the Indian metros to tap the huge market that is Bharat - the country's small towns and hinterlands.

If it were only for the language barrier they would have overcome it by dubbing it in Hindi or any other Indian language, but their extensive research revealed that these audiences somehow cannot relate to the blond Daniel Craig's exploits and craved for shuddh desi characters and plot.

Hence it was decided that to get access to this untapped market they will have to align with local players, mainly the Bollywood filmmakers. The research also revealed that these filmmakers were also very eager to remake Bond flicks with Indian sanskari characteristics. They held an IPL type auction and some of the top Bond hits of yesteryears were lapped up by top Bollywood filmmakers for astronomical sums.

Leading the pack was Sooraj Barjatiya, who managed to snap up two films. The first one was The World is Not Enough, which would be renamed as The World is not Sanskari Enough.

Though the plot of the film is still at conception stage, discreet enquiries with chai walas and spot boys of Rajshri studios revealed the broad storyline is somewhat like this. The desi Bond is on a mission to prevent the sanskar deficit the world currently faces and some are even trying to annihilate it. In this mission he is ably assisted by another agent Sheikh bin Sultan al Zayed, who hails from another sanskar rich country - Saudi Arabia. Together they try to provide vital nourishment and other forms of sustenance to the sanskar starved West.

The other one from Rajshri stable would be For Your Eyes Only, which would be known as For Your Saatvic Eyes Only. The movie will be set in the pilgrim centres located to the north of Rishikesh and my sources were unable to get any more details.

Another yesteryear Bond flick Moonraker was notched up by Karan Johar after a protracted negotiations regarding the improvisation of the title. As it is well known Karan Johar always makes a film whose title begins with the letter ‘k’, hence it was decided that Moonraker in its desi avatar will be known as Karva Chauth Moon Dekhkar.

The movie will be set in Manhattan and revolves around a saatvik love story. Desi Bond falls in love with a girl after ensuring that she belongs to the same caste, but different gotra and is not a manglik. It is also about the valiant efforts of our NRIs in upholding our culture, despite living saat samundar paar.

News regarding the cast is totally under wraps but as in other Karan Johar movies this one will also have many making cameo appearances, which would include Baba Ramdev and Radhe Maa.

Ashutosh Gowarikar was able to snap up the remake of cold war flick Live and Let Die. It would be known as Live and Let Dal Fry. Set in Indian hinterland this movie the desi Bond tries to unravel the recent mystery behind the disappearance of this vital and saatvic source of protein from Indian plates.

It is also rumoured the Ram Gopal Varma is angling for the Timothy Dalton starrer Licence to Kill, but Bond franchise people are wary considering his recent box office track record. It has been more than a decade since he had delivered a hit. Sources close to Ram Gopal varma say if he clinches the deal the movie will be named Licence to kill: Ab Tak Chhappan.

(A work of fully faltoo imagination)

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Lessons From Bihar Election

Cows may be worshipped in the country, but there is a limit to milking it for votes, especially when prices of various dals (an inherent part of our staple diet) refuse to scale below three digits!!

A wise man once said there are three kinds of lies - lies, damned lies and statistics. Numbers buttressed by algorithms can be quite beguiling and some of our poll pundits fell for it and singed their hard earned credibility, built over the years, in minutes. If jumped the gun. Then be ready to have some crow on your menu!

Dog may be man’s best friend and probably the first animal to be domesticated. But our loyal follower always got the raw deal. It was used as an invective to shame and abuse the rivals. Familiarity they say breeds contempt.

To win elections all parties try to field ‘winnable’ candidates – those with money and muscle power, with few criminal cases thrown in at various police stations. This may cause heartburn among the sincere and dedicated party workers, but this unfortunately is part of realpolitik. Just grin and bear it.

Pakistan, our twin brother, is also seen as a place to dump those with a perceived low patriotism quotient (read non-conformism to majoritarian agenda). Thankfully it is confined to jingoistic sloganeering. The fact of the matter is that almost everybody in our country day dreams of green card!!

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Beef: The New Four Letter Word

Beef just refuses to go away from the country’s political menu. It is the new four letter word that has divided the society as if it were scythed through by a super sharp cleaver.

A few decades ago in the late 1960s and early 70s a bunch of Union Ministers were derided for being part of ‘kitchen cabinet’. Those were the Indian polity’s early days of unabashed sycophancy and that too around a woman leader. In this day and age such a remark would have been considered downright sexist.

Now forget kitchen cabinet, it looks like the whole Indian politics just does not want to get out of the kitchen. It has become a place where patriotism is stirred up and cooked for public consumption. And woe betides anyone not using the ‘right’ ingredients!

The reason for this huddle in kitchen happens to be the humble cow, the inheritor of kamadhenu legacy, which is blissfully ignorant of all this hullabaloo. For this animal is more worried about the next meal as rising urbanization and dwindling grasslands have dealt a body blow to its food sources. Nowadays the daily grind consists of foraging waste bins and garbage yards for anything edible, amid plastic bags and paper packets, which it accidentally chomps in, leading to health disasters.

While it struggles to keep its emaciated body and soul together, its human masters are at each other’s throats to decide how it should die!

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Pinned Down By Passwords: Netizens' Agony

'Your password is old and needs to be reset', for any netizen this message is as hurtful and disruptive as biting the tongue while savouring a mint-laden chewing gum. The immediate reaction is 'oh no not again' or somewhat more combative 'WTF, got it changed other day only'.

In this wired and increasingly wireless world passwords and pin numbers are the digital equivalent of what keys and padlocks were to the brick and mortar world. Losing is just not an option and in case of passwords one cannot even seek others help to carry out a search!

In the ever increasing list of passwords and pin numbers (now even some credit cards need them) it becomes a challenge to remember and update them on a frequent basis.

'Password strength not enough' is the prompt we get when we go for some simple and easy to remember words during those updates. Many sites have further raised the bar by asking users to have alphanumeric passwords, which take a heavy toll on the bytes in brain’s grey matter. Names of spouse, kids, girlfriend/boyfriend, exes, movies, movie stars, cricket stars, books, authors... date of birth, marriage anniversary ... all these usual suspect permutations and many more get used up for alphanumeric passwords, but alas like sea waves the reset prompts keep coming. 

And sadly however strong be the password, it makes you no way immune to a hack attack, because they strike at the servers itself, which the site administrators need to take measures to prevent such attacks. 

Remembering passwords is just half the battle. In many sites, as an additional security measure, they have introduced Captcha. A Google search will reveal that Captcha is a type of 'challenge-response test' to determine whether the user is human or not. However, they often make me wonder whether the people who programme those Captchas are anyway human! They contort English alphabets and numerals to such an extent that they resemble a cross between Chinese alphabets and Hieroglyphics. If you clear it in the first attempt, then be rest assured that you may be human, but not normal!!

Banks have an uncanny knack of sending prompts for resetting passwords when you are frantically trying to book a flight or train ticket online. The delay caused due to resetting often costs dear - either you fail to get reservation, get relegated to RAC or fares shoot up.

As for remembering passwords the best way would be to rely on good old pen and paper and store them at a safe place. I shudder when I see people checking their phone screens while typing pin numbers at ATMs. Wonder what they would do if their phone conks off, gets lost or stolen.

If you fail to note down passwords and your memory plays hooky, then you get locked out of emails, bank accounts and host of other services and messages such as 'invalid password' or 'your account has been locked' mock at you. Getting disenfranchised from virtual world can be equally tough as in real one!

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Dadri Syndrome: Lynch Mob At The Gates

The solemn and heartfelt manner with which the Indian Air Force corporal Mohammad Sartaj conducted himself at a TV programme despite undergoing a grave tragedy of losing his father Mohammad Akhlaq to a lynch mob, left many misty eyed. Probably that was the only take away from the infamous killing in Dadri in Uttar Pradesh, where a man was killed based on beef eating rumours, to assure us that all is not lost even in this bleak moment. The India our founding fathers had visualised still lives on in some pockets.

The fact that a lynch mob can enter the kitchen of a house and attack a family for the type of food they were having provides a chilling reminder of the rising tide of hatred and communal polarisation in the society. 

The political class, the chief architects who brought things to such a pass, have once again showed that whatever be the tragedy they cannot see anything beyond electoral arithmetic and political mileage. In a way Union Minister Mahesh Sharma's statement that the incident happened due to 'misunderstanding' was unwittingly true. 

The cow vigilantes picked up a wrong household - one with hardly any blemish. None of the family members faced any criminal charges and one of them had even donned the Air Force uniform to serve the country - hence very high on deshbhakti quotient.

Moreover it later came to be known that the meat in the refrigerator was not beef as alleged. But the supporters of the lynch mob would have none of it, because for them rumour is the fuel and the medium of communication ranges from good old loudspeakers and word of mouth to new age WhatsApp. They are working overtime posting photoshopped pictures of cow remnants and other rabid campaigns in social media, which would make late Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels rest assured that at least in India his credo would last another millennium! 

Just imagine if the meat in the refrigerator was actually beef, then it would have been 'advantage' lynch mob (to use a tennis analogy). They would have gone to town saying 'justice' has been done as the killers of our 'mother' have been avenged and some favourably disposed newspaper columnists would have marshalled extreme forms of sophistry to rationalise the killing as 'spontaneous reaction' to 'hurt sentiments'. The fact that possession of beef or its consumption is not prohibited in Uttar Pradesh and Akhlaq had not broken any law would have been relegated to a footnote for the academia, edit pages or TV studios to chew on.

Or think of an even grimmer scenario of beef being found in a house where some family members have a criminal past, a la Sohrabuddin Sheikh. That would have been godsend and the lynch mob would have easily got away with their savagery. Anyone criticising the legality of the lynching would have been branded as supporters of cow killers and desh drohis fit to be exported to Pakistan. "He was anyway a criminal, then why are you speaking on his behalf" would have been the taunt, and the average IPL-fixated Indian Pappu would have nodded in agreement.

The fact that Sartaj had an air force uniform on his back, helped the family land on the positive side of 'good Muslim, bad Muslim' binary, but others may not be that lucky and hence need to be very afraid.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Will Netaji Enigma Come To An End?

The mystery surrounding Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, who disappeared from the thick of Indian freedom struggle in mid-1940s, is now tantalizingly close to its unravelling. West Bengal government declassified 64 files related to Netaji. However, apart from revealing some unsavoury details such as police surveillance of Netaji's family, it no way answered the million dollar question that has rankled Indians for nearly 70 years. Where did Netaji spend his last days? and how did he actually die?

The answers to the above questions probably lie in the classified files being held by the various arms of Central Government - External Affairs Ministry, Prime Minister's office and Intelligence bureau. With the West Bengal government having declassified files in their possession, the Centre is now feeling the heat to unwrap the contents of the documents in its possession.

It is now open season for leaks in cyber space with documents of dubious authenticity, often airburshed with Photoshop, making rounds in social media and being widely being ‘liked’ and shared. 

While studying History in school Netaji and other action heroes of freedom struggle like Chandrashekar Azad and Bhagat Singh always held great fascination for us, unlike moderates such as Mahatma Gandhi and his ilk. The picture of Bose in his military uniform, Azad perpetually twirling his moustache and Bhagat Singh, both with turban and clean shaven, had a pride of place in our text books. Though they mentioned how Azad and Bhagat Singh met their ends, the mystery of Bose lived on. And it goes without saying that all these years strong vested interests have been at work to keep the lid over the mystery tightly shut.

It was first believed that Netaji died on August 18 in 1945, after his plane crashed in Japanese-occupied Formosa (Taiwan). This theory was endorsed first by Shah Nawaz Committee in 1956 and later by G D Khosla Commission in 1970. But later in 2006, Justice Mukherjee Commission report suggested that Netaji had not died in the plane crash and that "the ashes at Renkoji temple are not his". After studying these reports for seven months, the Government rejected it. In fact the Mukherjee Commission had a rough ride and was forced to submit its unfinished work to the then Home Minister Shivraj Patil. The main reason for this is the non-cooperation shown by the home ministry.

The Mukherjee Commission had suggested that Netaji was in Soviet Russia and had spent time in a Siberian gulag. Though the commission went to Russia, but failed to secure any clinching papers to substantiate it. This theory acquired maximum currency with many Bose supporters believing that Congress leaders colluded with the British to keep Netaji out of the country. Since Netaji had reportedly met Hitler and Japanese leaders and sought their help to overthrow British rule, Stalin was more than willing to play ball.

There is also one theory of Gumnami baba, a sadhu who lived in Faizabad and died on September 16, 1985, was actually Netaji. It was floated by a Hindi daily Naye Log and that too after the death of the godman. It had its moments of fame and some takers, until it was categorically dismissed by the Justice Mukherjee Commission.

Now all eyes are on the Centre, whether it would help in closure of the Bose death mystery. So far it has more or less toed the line adopted by the previous Congress-led UPA government and rejected an RTI petition seeking records from the Prime Minister's office related to Netaji. But it remains to be seen how far it is going to hold on to this position.

Moreover it remains to be seen if the classified papers that is in possession of Centre have answers to the above crucial questions. Or is it in the secret archives in some foreign country. 

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Indrani Mukherjea Saga: Reality TV Trumps Soap

Real life has trumped reel, or fact has outwitted fiction in its own game. The Sheena Bora murder mystery is turning out to be far racier than the wildest imagination of Bollywood script writers and TV news channel owners are already feeling giddy and wet dreaming about record-breaking spikes in TRP. 

The fact that the prime characters happen to be a high profile family and the arch villain Indrani Mukherjea, with no wealth or lineage, had reached this social upper crust by using her social climbing skills has added a dash of pizzazz to the tale.
 
However had some Bollywood film maker made a film based on a similar story line before this infamous incident unfolded on our TV screens, it would have been riddled with hurdles. First of all not many producers would have been intrepid enough to finance such a macabre script, with no heroes and easily more than fifty shades of villainy. In the next stage it would have run into trouble with censors, who would have advocated many cuts to make it Bharatiya sanskriti compliant.
 
After release the critics would have made a mincemeat out of it. Probably this is how Rajeev Masand would have reviewed the movie:

It would be gross understatement to say that the movie plot is too convoluted: A second wife of her third husband is charged along with her second husband of killing her daughter from her first husband who was having affair with her third husband's son from his first wife.
 
The plot is riddled with holes and leaves many things unexplained. The third husband has no idea whether the murdered girl is his wife's sister or her daughter. The girl goes missing for two years and everybody in the extended family has readily believed that she had gone to US.
 
The police also come across as bumbling idiots who do not pursue the case after stumbling across a body cut to pieces and packed in a suitcase. Surely the script writer has not done his homework and was way too lazy to tie up such loose ends.
 
A boring feast of gore and deceit. Watch it only at your peril. I would go with half out of five for this tedious mind numbing crime mystery marred by a brain dead script!!
 
But the recent events have proved that truth can be far spicier than fiction! And the harried middle class has found a new 'fix' to escape from their daily drudgery by gawking and tut-tutting at the permissiveness of the amoral rich on their 56-inch LCD screens.

To cash on this sentiment Bollywood scriptwriters may be busy pounding on their laptops, over numerous cups of 'cutting chai' or 'chhotta pegs', to churn out a blockbuster based on this 'true story'. Hopefully critics would take a more considerate view towards the bizarre twists and turns in the plot once these films are released.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Close Call: Use of Cell Phones While Driving

Recently a stationary plane on Chennai airport got hit by an aerobridge. The collision took place because the aerobridge operator was allegedly talking on the mobile phone while the aircraft was trying to align itself. Few years back a train accident happened in the US and the driver was allegedly busy sending text messages and missed out on a red signal.

The grip mobile phones currently have over our lives is quite bewildering, thanks to their usefulness and portability. Probably no other gadget in the entire human history had such an intrusive influence. And people multitask to any extent to stay 'connected', often with disastrous consequences.

Indian roads are a stark reminder of this obsession. To begin with they were anyway not meant for the faint hearted, as potholes, glaring violation of traffic rules and jaywalkers (both of human and cattle kind) heaped misery on motorists and pedestrians alike. The advent of cell phones have further endangered the lives of those venturing into these roads.

Motorists use them with impunity, with least care for others safety or laws of the land. Though occasional reports of police fining such erring drivers do appear in newspapers, this has little effect on the situation on the ground as conviction rates are too low to act as a deterrent.

It's a worrying sight to see those behind the wheels of cars and other four-wheelers using cell phones in one hand and steering on the other. Cab drivers indulge in this perilous exercise while trying to locate the customer's houses, often in narrow by-lanes.

But when it comes to flirting with danger, it is the bikers who take the cake. With handsets held between tilted helmet-less heads and lifted shoulders, they chat and negotiate the traffic putting their own and others lives at risk. It has nothing to do with lack of awareness. All this is done with a willing suspension of all common sense and smug belief that they won't be penalised. Even if that happens they will be let off lightly.

For the police catching these 'in your face' offenders is easy, but it is quite challenging to nab those who have placed their phones inside the helmets close to their ears, using hands-free devices or blue tooths as they cannot be easily detected. Bluetooth devices attached with speakers are also frequently used for talking while driving. Though these devices may free your hand to operate the steering wheel or gear stick, but the risk of getting mentally distracted remains.

There are enough studies to indicate that use of cell phone while driving impairs concentration and reflexes. Some even go to the extent to state that it is as dangerous as drunk driving. Stricter laws and more intense surveillance could deter motorists, but there is no substitute to restraining oneself at least while driving, both for the safety of oneself and others.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Emergency Conundrum: Some Faultlines Remain

With Emergency completing its fortieth anniversary, newspapers, blogosphere and social media were riddled with stories recalling those dark days when the country teetered close to becoming a permanent banana republic. The recent statement by BJP patriarch and Emergency survivor L K Advani that it could happen again spiced up the issue.

During those infamous nineteen months, the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's son, Sanjay Gandhi, was running the country as extra-constitutional authority and all forms of dissent were ruthlessly suppressed. All governmental institutions such as police, judiciary began to act to his bidding and press too, barring few honourable exceptions, got into kowtow mode.

My memories of that period is quite vague as back then I was not even in high school and my newspaper reading had not graduated beyond comic strips and cricket scores. Moreover I never came across anyone personally who went to jail or even had to undergo the infamous forced sterilisation. My awareness of Emergency was mainly retrospective, something I gained through conversations with elders and by reading Decline and Fall of Indira Gandhi a book by D R Mankekar and Kamala Mankekar.

The only thing I remember of that era is that during our visits to cinema halls, we had to sit through those tedious news reels, produced by Films Division, which prominently featured Sanjay Gandhi, V.C. Shukla and Ambika Soni. Those news reels would make us believe that the country should be grateful for this fantastic trio, who are working tirelessly to make India a developed nation. I seriously think that those documentaries played a stellar role in eroding Congress party's goodwill and subsequent rout in 1977 elections.

Another instance was when the Jaiprakash Narayan's movement had started gathering steam, somebody broached about the newly formed Janata party in our Maths class. Our usually gentle Maths teacher (who used to patiently correct our glaring trespasses in Algebra and Geometry) got a little worked up. She was sceptical about the movement and said it would bode ill for the country. She observed that Congress was such an old party and has done so much for the country, whereas these people cannot be trusted. She cited the example of long standing ruler of China Mao Zedong, who died around that time, and how that country had entered into a period of turmoil.

However history did not pan out the way our Maths teacher would have liked. After the fall of Congress government a rash of reports on Emergency excesses such as illegal detention, police torture and deaths and forced strerilisations started coming out of woodwork. Our newspapers and magazines, which got unshackled from censors, began reporting them assiduously. To cut the long story short, in the intervening 40 years the country had some close calls with its unity and integrity, but the dreaded 'E' word was never evoked. Probably the shock defeat in 1977 acted as a deterrent; still any future adventurism cannot be ruled out. 

Veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar, who valiantly took on the might of the government high-handedness through those dark days, recently said that Emergency cannot be imposed now as the Constitution was changed after 1977 and it is almost impossible to impose it. Though the Constitution may have been made Emergency-proof, other fault lines remain more or less untouched.

The police, bureaucracy, judiciary and the press remain as malleable (if not more) as they were during the Emergency and inspire little confidence. Post-Emergency, the numerous scams all these departments got embroiled in reveal that the rot has only become more deep and the erosion of credibility has been phenomenal.

Hence for a future ruler with dictatorial aspirations, it is a case of glass half-full. He or she only needs to work around by whipping up sentiments such as majoritarianism or militarism to bring about Emergency like situation, without its Constitutional trappings. The rest of the institutions will fall in line without much ado as they did in 1975. Hence the people of the country cannot afford to forget Emergency and let their guard down.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat 

Tattoos, Goatees and Male Vanity

The other day I happened to visit a well known college in the city to finish formalities regarding my daughter’s admission. There was a half an hour session to brief both the children and parents about the rules and regulations to be followed. 

The lecturer was making a Power Point presentation with a large Educomp screen in the background. When it came to dos and don’ts regarding dresses, girls were instructed to avoid wearing tight fitting and short sleeved dresses; jeans and coloured hair too fell in the list of don’ts. "Remember this is a co-ed college and hence everyone has to stay within one’s limits," was the cautionary observation by the lecturer.

However what surprised and amused me was the next slide regarding the dress code for boys. The forbidden list was much longer than that of girls, reflecting the long strides accomplished by the male grooming industry since my college days in 1980s.

Like girls, boys too were prohibited from wearing jeans and cargos. But the forbidden list also included tattoos, piercings on the body, gel on hair, sporting a goatee ...

Probably if such a list of don’ts was created during my college days, it may have just included wearing jeans and long hair. Those were early days of TV and Bollywood was the ultimate style guru. And having hair long enough to cover the ears was in vogue, thanks to Amitabh Bachchan. As the superstar’s stranglehold over box office tightened, so did the popularity of this hairstyle.

Calendars with pictures of Big B adorned friendly neighbourhood barber shops and almost everyone wanted barbers to shape their hair accordingly.

Shampooed and blow dried hair was the norm. Hence even traces of coconut oil or any other hair oil was considered a major fashion infraction. Gel was totally unheard of. Though Brylcreem ad used to appear in some newspapers and magazines (TV commercials were in their infancy), it had positioned itself as a product that gives an ‘orderly’ look to scruffy hair, without being oily. Spiky hair was almost unheard of, sometimes sported by b-grade comedians to show their ‘dehati-ness’.
 
Goatee those days was sported by mullahs and orthodox Muslims and hence enjoyed a very low cool quotient. Apart from full beard, the only option those days was the French beard, popularized by some yesteryear cricketers.
 
Tattoos were again considered very downmarket and confined to religious symbols, and tattoo artists were holed up in small stalls housed in busy markets with instruments of dubious sterility. In movies it was used as prop, but never as a fashion statement.
 
In Deewar we had Amitabh Bachchan getting branded with infamous tattoo ‘mera baap chor hai’ in his childhood. In lost-and-found Bollywood potboilers of Manmohan Desai kind, tattoos and birthmarks played a vital role in reuniting estranged brothers in the final reel. Tattoos of snakes, mainly cobras, were sported by the villains such as Amrish Puri and Bob Christo on their brawny arms to look more menacing.
 
Piercings were totally unheard of in the 80s. In the 90s it did catch the fancy, but even then those who were intrepid enough to come within earshot of piercing gun, risked being branded as gays.
 
The interim decades witnessed tectonic shifts in fashion, thanks to satellite television, MTV and internet, which gave rise to concepts such as metrosexual men. Even Bollywood was forced to fall in line with Aamir Khan sporting a soul patch in Dil Chahta Hai and Salman Khan’s middle parting in Tere Naam.

One of the early casualties of this trend was the friendly neighbourhood tailor, as customer preference shifted towards readymade and branded clothes. He either had to shut shop or get subsumed as supplier to garment units.
 
The other casualty was the barber as he had to either diversify into a new age salon or shut shop as men’s grooming was now no longer confined to haircuts, shave and tel maalish. It quite literally deals with matters from head to toe - hair cuts to pedicures.

In fact male grooming has now become so elaborate that it has almost caught up with their female counterparts in terms of vanity, which since time immemorial had been a female preserve.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Naseeruddin Shah Unplugged

Finished reading And Then One Day A Memoir, by Naseeruddin Shah. Like his incisive performances on screen and stage the book too has been written with uncanny frankness. It is a no holds barred take on his life and also on the film industry. He takes nothing seriously, including himself.

Probably the first film of Naseeruddin Shah I saw was Manthan and I was in high school. While watching the movie I totally missed Naseer and didn’t realise he was in it. The movie was one of those early offering from what came to be later known as ‘arthouse’ cinema.

I could make out Girish Karnad (having seen him Swami earlier and he was one of those few men wearing shirt and trousers in the film) and Smita Patil, as I had seen her photo in some film magazine, the rest of the cast I totally missed out. I thought they were real cowherds from Rajasthan or Gujarat and realized many days later through some film magazine that Naseer was one among them!

In his memoirs he mentions that during the shooting of Manthan he used to stay in cowherd’s costume for the whole day, sleep on the floor and learned to bathe and milk a buffalo!

As I was brought up on a regular diet of formulaic Hindi ‘masala’ films with larger than life heroes with drop dead looks and heroines with distinct hour glass figure and aadarsh Bharatiya naari character, to me Manthan looked staid, weirdly disturbing, incomprehensible and somewhat amusing. How could someone make a film on lowly cowherds? Their pronunciation of ‘society’ as sissotti evoked lots of classroom banter, especially during Civics classes, when this particular word used to frequently crop up.
 
It is not that mainstream cinema did not have working class heroes. In fact Bollywood has always celebrated the triumph of the underdog, but in case of actors assaying those roles their starry mannerisms often came in the way. An Amitabh Bachchan may be a dock worker in Deewar or coal miner in Kaala Patthar, but the swagger and halo of superstar remained. On the other hand guys like Naseer or Om Puri quite literally got into the skins of characters such as cowherds and rickshaw pullers, as if they have been living it all their lives.

……

Although Shah’s father was not prosperous, he was a dyed in wool brown sahib who never left home without his hat “even in a one-tractor town like Sardhana”. In order to ensure that his three sons got the best public school education, he sent all of them to St Joseph’s School in Nainital. Naseer later went there to shoot for the movie Masoom.

Though he was not a good student and hated school, he was lucky enough to get early exposure to best of Hollywood movies. He got to see the likes of Orson Welles and Spencer Tracy, at a time when his contemporaries elsewhere in India were getting hooked to the brain dead ‘two hanky family and social drama’ of Hindi films.

……
 
Naseer's own life reads like a script of Anurag Kashyap or Sudhir Mishra movie. He lost virginity at 15, got married at 19 to Purveen Morad, a Pakistanin woman nearly 15 years his senior. He met her while doing his graduation at Aligarh Muslim University. He smoked grass and was quite hooked on to it, wonder when he came out of it. He even survived a knife attack from his friend turned foe Jaspal. Shyam Benegal and his wife took care of him while he was in hospital.

His first marriage has some parallels to his role in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. He was busy building up his acting career and family life took a hit. Anyway at nineteen he was no way ready to start a family. The couple drifted apart and they had a daughter from that marriage.

More than a decade later in 1982 he got married to Ratna Pathak Shah. Before getting married the couple had to surmount lots of family obstacles as they happened to be from different faiths. Moreover Ratna's family was strict vegetarian. Thankfully terms like love jihad had not come into existence back then.

Ratna was a steadying influence in his life and after marriage managed his house and finances very well. Probably in the book she is the only person whom he treats with some reverence!

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Holding One's Head High

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion - Steven Weinberg
 
The above irreverent quote rings true in times like these when literalists rule the roost in every religion and every conceivable form of atrocity ranging from banning books, killing non-conformist bloggers, ethnic cleansing, car bomb explosions and beheadings gets done under the banner of religion.
 
But what this New Zealand based Sikh guy did came as a breath of fresh air. Have no idea as to how religious Harman Singh was, but from appearance he looked like a practising Sikh. And what he did left the social media awash with praise for his humanitarian gesture, though he self effacingly claimed anybody would have done that. He happened to see an injured child lying on the road after being hit by a car. He rushed to his rescue, took off his turban and wrapped it around the boy's head to stem the blood loss. This gesture saved the boy's life.
 
Newspapers in New Zealand and Australia were guarded while describing his gesture – in their online editions some said he 'set aside' religious protocol while helping a child, while Sydney Morning Herald even said 'Sikh man Harman Singh acts against religion, removing turban to help injured child'. As if saving a life is against religion! Probably they were expecting the poor chap may attract the Sikh equivalent of fatwa for this unusual act.
 
However the kind of praise Singh attracted from Indians in general and Sikh community in particular made them realise that though the turban is very dear to Sikhs (they may even fight long legal battles to uphold their right to wear it), it does not come in the way while carrying out humanitarian gestures. There is much more to Sikh religion than dress codes.
 
Because of their beard and turban, Sikhs often get mistaken for Muslims in most parts of the First World. Right from 9/11 to the most recent terror attack at Lindt cafe in Sydney many Sikhs became victims of hate crime out of mistaken identity. Hope the above gesture would go some way in enhancing their reputation in these countries, even after discounting the fact that public memory is woefully  short on such positive news.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Under Holy Cow's Shadow: A Buffalo's Lament

I am told even in United States, where colour of one's skin is a polarising factor, there are towns, military regiments (courtesy Bob Marley popular number Buffalo soldier...) football teams and even universities named after me. But in India every student studying Hindi in his or her tenth class has to mug up the popular proverb - kala akshar bhains barabar (loosely translated it means an illiterate person). Other Indian languages also don't treat me kindly and I figure in phrases used to convey, ugliness, sloth and sloppiness. My jet black skin is something this acutely pigment obsessed country could never come to terms with, though they never had any problem in devouring what comes out of my udder!
 
So thanks to this deeply ingrained prejudice I have to live in the shadows of my fair skinned cousin the cow - which is worshipped as the earthly embodiment of the Kamadhenu - a mythical animal believed to be the source of all prosperity. For bulls in most Shiva temples there is the statue of Nandi, which is also worshipped with great reverence.
 
As for me the only reference in Hindu mythology is as a vehicle of Yama, the god of death. If there were social media those days forget getting 'like' or 'followers', I would have been trolled and reported for abuse by cow lovers.
 
Whether it is newspaper ad of some dairy major or on a tin of ghee or butter it is always the cow that enjoys pride of place. I never figure in any of them.
 
However, what baffles me most is that despite this big time belittling the dairy farmers in the so called cow belt rely heavily on my milk. The reasons vary from milk quality and output to their very survival in the business. Firstly milk flowing out of my udder has higher amount of fat and the overall output better than what my privileged cousin offers. Moreover compared with cows we are not very finicky regarding food and hence rearing us is much more cost effective. No wonder we command a high price in the market, and some of our high milk yielding Murrah cousins get sold for prices on par with some luxury car brands.
 
Then of course there is the ticklish issue of ban on cow slaughter. Even at the risk of sounding naive, I often wonder why no such ban for me? Ultimately the burden of providing meat, leather and even milk falls squarely on my shoulders. Quite ironically once the ban is imposed, the demand for cow tapers off. The dairy farmers, though not as cutthroat as the wily banias, are practical people and definitely factor in the costs cows may incur once they stop producing milk. Hence they gradually switch to rearing buffaloes. On the other hand states where cow slaughter is allowed dairy farmers continue to prefer cows.
 
The issue of cow slaughter is again being flogged with some more states issuing a ban. It would only mean more dairy farmers relying on me (India is already home to half the number of buffaloes in the world) for milk; beef exporters and tanneries for my flesh. In short I am the de facto Kamadhenu in most parts of the country.

Another intriguing factor is that there is ban on sale of beef only in domestic market, but not on exports, which of course is a cash cow no government, even with purest of shakahari DNA, can afford to renounce. Last year beef exports stood at $4.3 billion and is expected to increase this year, notwithstanding the current government's aversion to 'pink revolution'. Hence, the long arm of law is only meant for those who do the lowly task of transporting cattle in trucks and trying to sell it in the dusty, flea infested local markets, while well heeled exporters are left untouched.

In addition to tanneries, the beef industry also sustains other lesser known businesses such as bone crushing and powder industry, horn processing industry, blood processing, animal fat and soap industry, which employ large number of people.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat