And then I woke up...

I was cruising down a smooth road, cool wind blowing in my face... and suddenly puffs of dust and dark smoke hit me. That's when I woke up.

I was enjoying the peace and quiet, listening to chirping birds, breathing in wafts of fresh orchids filling up the air, a feeling of content filling me up... and suddenly there were horns honking loudly. That's when I woke up. :-)

I was logged on to the net on a wireless  broadband network with a download speed of 2Gbps and then my browser just hanged. Reality  of 27kbps dawned on me and that's when I woke up. :-)

Well, my friends I wasn't expecting a cakewalk when I returned, but I was only gone for 2 years. And its not that I'm some firang who came to India as a tourist. :-)

Even after such a short time my first few days back home were filled with pleasant surprises, countless errors and multiple situations where I had to relearn to do things the old way, like driving on the wrong side of the road again. :-)

The first thing that brought a smile was to look at the hustle and bustle of the cities, people, cars, roads, goats and cows swarming the roads and the state of general disarray everywhere you look. All that was a sweet reminder for me that India will always take pride in its "Unity in Diversity" slogan in more ways than one.  :-)

The first day I was back home I saw elephants walking in the opposite direction to traffic earning livelihood for their mahouts, people not worrying about the speed of Toyotas, Hundaies and even BMWs and crossing roads at every point. A simple ride to my aunt's home took me about 1 hour, trying to negotiate turns when there were none. Back home the loudness of everything hit me hard... one whole day I had to bear the knocking of a power-drill hitting hard on the street outside to lay new underground cables. Such activities seem to continue all the time here. Its abundantly clear that India is progressing on all fronts and the pace is frantic. :-)

But as one says.. "Home is where the heart is" and my home will always be here. Jai Hind. :-)

Happy Birthday Bapu (Belated!)

I know it may appear as a blatant attempt to jump on the Shashi Tharoor Twitter tweet band wagon about Bapu's Birthday which has already kick-started the debate about the legitimacy of October 2nd being a holiday and the way we should be honouring the father of our nation while commemorating his birth anniversaries. I don't call it his birthday as I think Mahatma Gandhi would have followed the Hindu calendar to celebrate his true birthday. (I am not a Gandhi expert but I don't think people know his principles more from his autobiography taught as text books in schools than the movies like "Munnabhai MBBS and Gandhi").



Well I have been meaning to write it all of last week and this weekend, but seriously could not find enough time to take it up. The root of this post lies in the question I was asked on this October 2nd by one of my Belgian colleagues about how we celebrate October 2nd back home in India. I casually answered her, "Oh nothing much. There are official functions and sweets distribution in schools but basically its just a holiday on a day when sale of all liquor and alcoholic beverages is banned by state decree.  



To my credit this was before Mr. Tharoor tweeted about not having it as a holiday, because the man who said "work is worship" must have not liked it as a holiday himself and a day off from all work is basically tantamount to disrespecting his principles.


After answering this in such a playful almost irreverent way, I was contemplating about it myself. Is it correct to have a holiday just for the sake of it. Shouldn't there be some sort of "Egg-less Cake Cutting" on the birthday of the father of our nation? I mean like every holiday is associated with a special way of celebration shouldn't the birthday of the Saint from Sabarmati have its own too, which should be kind of standardised. I know I have been conditioned with my 4 years in the IT industry to look for standards and find them more comforting that the chaotic unease and lawlessness the absence of them pervades.  



Should we as Indians just take whatever comes our way as holidays and thank the heavens if they happen to coincide with the weekends? Dont we have a moral responsibility to Bapu's principles that led us being united in freedom and having the right to choose our own future. Well I don't know about others and I don't stand on any higher moral ground about being a fervent follower of his principles either to be all preachy about what to do and what not. But since I celebrate all religious festivals the way they are supposed to I have decided to make the rest of the October 2nds in my life about Gandhi and his principles.


May be I'd wear designer khadi jackets, or be a vegetarian for a day, but I'll do something to show my respect. I'll think of some way every year to pay my respect for the father of our nation. Jai Hind!

What's "My" Rashee

1989: It was the earliest days of television in India. Certainly in my small town the fist signals were broadcast over our black and white tubes around that time only. As a child after the evening news every day of the week used to be defined by the program that would follow on the prime time slot. Of course I was never aware of this term then. And one of the days it used to be the day of "Mr. Yogi". I dont remember which one it was, because every day back then was non-working for me. :-)

Television was such a novelty in those days. We had a wooden case, custom built for the one we had. Some people would even put blue plastic screens on their TV sets in an attempt to add a third colour!

We would have dinner while watching the NEWS. It used to be devoid of any videos and sound bites and composed entirely of the news reader in closeup reading at a uniform pace from government preapproved scripts. 

Yes! Television in the subcontinent has evolved from single channel half hour news bulletins to gigantic proportions now, but those were still "the" days. :-)

Mr. Yogi is not the cartoon series Yogi Bear as some of my friends here in Belgium would imagine. It was a television serial in which a freshly "USA returned" eligible bachelor attempts to find a wife by interviewing girls with different sun-signs one after the other.

"Hello! Y. I. Patel" in a subtle questioning tone with an awkward accent was the standard way that Mohan Gokhale would introduce himself to girls. (He played the typical NRI to the hilt. Indeed a very fine actor he was.) And all the girls would invariably answer "I don't know!!" to that. It was hilarious. And we eagerly used to anticipate that moment in every episode.

So sunsigns have been ubiquitously present in my life since the early days. In fact I ended up having an overdose of it. India is the land of the mystics in more ways than one. Everyone you meet, puts a new spin on everything. There are sun signs (based on the first letter of your birth name) and there are moon signs (based on the time and place of your birth and the position of the stars.. I think) and apart from the daily newspaper horoscope section there is Tarot, Feng-Shui, Vastushastra, Palmistry, Numerology etc. and then you have the Peer-Fakeers (mystics) that abound with their totally indigenous form of deriving at predictions without any external aids whatsoever. What's funnier is you don't even have to go looking for them. They would literally shout your future from across the street and if your unsuspecting grandma likes what he has to say and is reasonably believable about her young grandson, he'll earn a Rupee or two.

To top it off, I have been quite confused about what sign to follow while reading the horoscope sections in the newspaper, as for the first few years of my life I only used to be  "Pearl", which made me a Virgo. So I would happily read the Virgo section and try to decipher the code of the future. It was a different issue altogether that the horoscope for Virgo in the English newspaper was sometimes be in complete contrast with what "Kanya" had to offer in the Hindi one. Then I became "Feroz" in school along with staying as "Pearl" at home making me a Sagittarian. So I now had to read a set of four different predictions (2 each in Hindi and English).

I think the editors realized my plight so they tried to make a simplification and switched to the 'real' moon signs based on the date of birth. But alas! That was not to be. There are different ways of arriving at the moon signs. According to the Indian system, I ended up being a Scorpio and the English one made me an Aquarius. This added up two more. Aha... you would think that would be the end of it. No, it continues... With "Made in China" gaining significance we had Feng-Shui and then there were Tarot readings as well as the numerology ones. Some weeks I would draw "the clown" card in the Tarot reading making me impervious to any mishaps and my Aquarius prediction would be to "stay extremely cautious while driving" with my numerology prediction being out of tune with both and commenting about compatibility with people with a net sum of "4".

So to simplify it, out of all the choices present to me and all being 'statistically' proven, I would just pick a horoscope for myself for the day and then a sunsign (after having a quick glance over all of them. ;-) ) No denying they could be a great morale booster sometimes.

Never mind that all sunsign and moonsign calenders are atleast 350 years out of sync so if you think that you are a scorpio, if you were to correctly follow the lunar and stellar patterns you would end up being a libran. But we are not being scientific people while reading horoscopes, are we?

So, coming to the point now. The upcoming movie by famed Bollywood director Ashutosh Gowarikar who has given us movies like "Lagaan" and "Swades", "What's your Rashee" may end up having ridiculously oversimplified the feminine character and giving way to stereotypes in turn irking the "capricorn" feminists ;-) (They seem to be furious about how 'capricornians' are portrayed in the movie). But being based on a great TV serial it may finally end up having a good message and its heart in the right place. (No comments about the acting prowess of the guy playing Mr. Yogi)

These days my mom is worried about finding a suitable match for me and has all sorts of reservations about her name not starting with "S" or her not being born in April, (don't ask me the reasons.. I don't know either). Besides ignoring that for an Aquarian-Scorpio-Virgo-Sagittarian with a celestial number of  5.5 (yes there are different ways for calculating that too and mine come out to be 4 & 7) like me, it would be pretty hard to define the befitting criteria to finding a suitable match in the first place, she also seems to be ignoring something critical about the match-making process.


So, I may eventually use the movie in a tounge in cheek way to remind her that like Mr.Yogi finally fell for the thirteenth girl he interviewed who turned out to be an orphan whose rashi was indeterminate on account of her date of birth not being known, I too am oblivious to the stars and the signs. And most importantly its not about the name or the date of birth and the position of the stars or the looks or the money or religion or race or xyz. Its about that crazy thing called "Love". :-)

The "Workaholics" at No. 63

A workaholic: colloquially, is a person who is addicted to work (in normal parlance, a person who works for more than his/her stipulated working hours regularly).

4 Lierseestenweg: My office address in Mechelen which is a city in the province of Antwerp in Belgium.

0D, 1C, 1E: Sections within the office building where you can find people working at all sorts of odd hours.

No. 63: To be revealed later.

Well there are some nights when you just can't sleep and then there are some nights when something you experienced during the day stirs your thoughts so much that you just can't put them to rest. My father once told me that "worrying about it never solved any problem." As matter of fact as it sounds, it is quite a feat if you can put it to actual practice.

That said let me come to the source of the turmoil that has resulted in this insomnia. It was about 8 in the evening and I had come to the pantry to get a fresh cup of tea when I found that one of the call center executives who works in a rather special unit called "Customer Retention" was also there. During the wait for the kettle to boil the water we struck up a conversation. Now for my friends who are not very familiar with the European work culture and Belgian in particular, it would be prudent that I mention here that the office and especially my floor is almost completely empty by 6 in the evening and 8 is a "late hour". She mentioned that she has usually seen me still working almost every day when she is leaving after having finished her shift. I explained to her that I just stay back late finishing up pending tasks of the day.

That must have been quite strange for her as she asked how is it possible that there are pending tasks after working for 8 hours. It was quite difficult to explain all the reasons to her and there wasn't enough time either, but just as we were leaving the pantry to go back to our desk, she commented, "All of you are workaholics".

By 'all of you' she meant all people here from Infosys, as we are always the ones left behind after everybody else has gone and her impression of us being addicted to work isn't quite incorrect either. That ended just there and after duly finishing up my tasks I also headed back home.

Its usually my routine to take the long way back home from office as it gives me some peaceful extra time on my bicycle. It was around 10 and the streets were silent. I was riding my bike engrossed in some thoughts, when suddenly I was struck with some musical notes emanating from an unknown source. I slowed down to look or rather "hear" for the source. There weren't any pedestrians around neither were any cars so it couldn't have been some music system. It wasn't anyways the normal electronic beats you hear from the passing cars. As I heard more carefully I found that it was a piano playing with people singing in a choir. That's when it hit me that I was close to the church and it must be the choir group practicing. I slowed down a bit more and on the pretext of checking some stuff in the window next to house number 63 where they were reciting, I stole some more musical moments to savour.

10 PM in the night is quite late by all Belgian standards. Having taken time out from their jobs these people were practicing till so late. The reason as I would imagine must have been that in their pursuit to achieve that perfect harmony they lost the sense of time. None of them remembered how late it had gotten. "Workaholics!!" I thought.

This is the thought that has been stirring me tonight. How can I draw parallels to what some one does for charity and something which is officially one's job!! Not to say that I don't enjoy my work, but I still don't get called a workaholic just for doing something that engrosses me so much that I loose sense of time. When I think a bit more carefully I find that at the root of it is my worries! Yes. My worries about achieving too much too soon. I want to have everything twice as quickly by doing twice the amount of hard-work in half the time it actually requires. I remember now another little story. 

There was this ancient martial ats expert who was approached by a young man. The man asked the master, "How much time it will take me to be an expert in the martial arts?" The master replied "10 years". 

The man said, "But if I practice extra hard everyday putting in double the effort, how much time will it take me then?". The master replied calmly "20 years".

I never quite understood the significance of this story before today. In our relentless pursuits, we never relax and relish our achievements. We have to keep jumping from one feat to the next, discarding our own accomplishments for the sake of the next one in line. If we are just patient enough to let time take its course, everything else will follow suit.  Stop worrying and let time also play its part. I used to loathe the adage "Before time and more than your destiny, you will never get". But there is an aspect of it that you must not forget. Try as you might you can't beat the clock. No matter how many world records you break there is just no limit to where it ends. Even Usain Bolt will tell you that, but may be he's also just too young to understand that now.  If we try and rush to it, we will still only get their on time, and we will be twice as much tired.

The Superman of Malegaon

Hope and positivity, the 'can-do-attitude', the never-say-die spirit are always hard to accept for most of us during even the simplest of circumstances let alone while attempting monumental tasks. Today, we are filled with an overwhelming sense of despair with just about everything... be it countering terrorist threats, the state of our planet or such mundane things in life like not having broadband internet at home. We, especially the south Asian people are so focused on accepting everything as our fate, that we seem to give up even before starting most things.


I have been guilty of it myself many times in the past. Even today when I have the courage and the conviction that the goals I set out to achieve can one day be surpassed, I sometimes feel the negativity creeping in. During such times I keep myself kicking for building castles into thin air which are blown like a house of cards in the face of the slightest winds. And to be honest I have been in such a state recently when my sincerest attempts at harmonizing the goal seeking processes were termed as exclusive and I met with such rejection which was impossible to negate with even the strongest of all feelings... "Love".
But being the silly little kid that I have been, if I give it up so soon.. then there wouldn't be anything to write home about. Like Yogi Berra is famously quoted universally in such a context, "It ain't over till it's over".


So where does Malegaon (a tiny handloom industry oriented town in rural Maharashtra) and Superman (who needs no description like Malegaon does) fit into all this? Well I chanced upon a fascinating documentary about the filming of a movie called "Malegaon ka Superman". The movie making is so ridiculously absurd that the actor playing Superman (who's is clearly malnourished and in no way fit to play the role) is employed as the spot-boy too!!! In fact the movie is shot with just one handy-cam. At first I thought it was just another attempt at showing the undernourished Supermans of India clearly aimed at cashing in on the "Slumdog millionaire" wave. But I persisted with it and here I am writing about it.


The thing that struck me after having watched it is the positivity, the never-say-die spirit and the can-do attitude of the people making that movie, which started as an attempt of a derelict video parlour owner to inject renewed energy into his business. The sincerity with which he approached it was remarkable. He dreamed big and pulled out all stops to make it happen! He did not choose to make a movie which could be easy to make with a lone handy cam. His cameraman cum stuntman cum script writer cum dialog writer cum technician cum the list is endless... even suggests that they want to attempt scenes like the ones in "The Matrix", which sound like tall claims from anyone in the Indian film-making industry but more so with someone running on a budget of less than 700 Euros!! Not just the flimsy budget, the film maker is battling with unforeseen delays like the hero getting married two days before the final shot is to be taken (it isn't told what the reason for such hurry was).


At one point during the film making while shooting another absurdly choreographed stunt where "Superman" floats in a river on an inflated tractor tire tube to get to his home planet... (yes!!) the camera falls into the water with all the footage shot so far. At that point all hope of achieving anything is lost. But remarkably the film-maker keeps his positivity going. "Remarkable" is the word that I use because I myself have lost hope in not so dire circumstances myself lately. And at this point I should clarify that this post is not just about hoping, or dreaming or even positivity alone. One shouldn't go completely blind with hope, yet it's about the mind set that one should have and the belief that one gets in his/her abilities due to the "can do" attitude, no matter how mundane or monumental your objective be. The end of the documentary shows people climbing over the fence of the theater to watch shows of the movie and some of the clips from the movie that were shown were quite impressive given the kind of circumstances they were shot in. No wonder I could identify the real joy and satisfaction with which the film maker smiles at the camera in the end. Even when the under-weight Superman expresses his desire to one day play Amitabh Bachchan I could believe that he just might do it one day.


The movie may be titled "Superman of Malegaon" but to me every person associated with it is superhuman in his own right. To overcome such circumstances does require extraordinary strength of character. To stand up smiling after falling in an open sewer and have the strength to still carry on needs more will power than the rodeo clowns have to muster. The documentary should rather have been titled "Supermen of Malegaon". I am inspired... they say its always hardest to look at the silver lining just when you are closest to the end of the storm. But You should never loose hope. It ain't over till its over... and even if it is, there is always the "set" after the "game" and the "match" is just for statisticians. ;-)

The White Tigers and the Slumdogs of India

It was much before all the fan fare and the hoopla that surrounded it, when I watched the movie "Slumdog Millionaire". It was an accidental discovery on a sleepy Saturday afternoon. I liked it for its cinematic brilliance and the good story telling etc. The emphasis is on "story". I never paid much attention to the opposition and negative criticism it got especially in the Indian media mostly because I never regarded it anything more than what it was... "India as seen by the western world through a prism of their own liking". And frankly, in my opinion a mature culture should not be too concerned about how ignorant foreigners perceive it.
When the kids from the slums that acted in the movie were flown to the Kodak arena alongside the likes of Bollywood bigwigs like Irfan Khan (I refuse to misspell his name) and Anil Kapoor to be paraded in front of the western media it touched a chord but it never stirred it too much. I was happy for all of them to be making something good out of their nothing through decent means.


After a while I chanced on the Man-Booker prize winning novel by "Indian" author Arvind Adiga: "The White Tiger". It has been bestowed to be the best novel of the year by a literary society famed for its recommendations throughout the English readership regardless of country or culture ever since one could remember.
The novel had the bearings of a brilliant one too when I started reading it. But as I proceeded with chapter after chapter, a sense of the surreal began to grip me. For me again, the emphasis is on "story". I wont go into too much of the details of the novel simply because it would be in bad taste for people who are yet to read it (personally though I recommend "The House of Blue Mangoes" anytime over it). But while reading it I felt that I was reading a foreigner's novel about how he perceives India. The only thing Indian about the author that I could feel was his name. The novel talks about "The Darkness" in the eastern part of India, feudal lords who like to "dip their beaks" into men and the vast disconnect between the Delhis, Bangalores and Bihars of India. I am not against the artistic liberty that the author takes with his protagonist who seems to have magically learnt not only to speak good English all by himself and have mastered the use of internet to check out pictures of Kim Bassinger, how people started calling him the "White Tiger" when I know it for a fact that there is no such term used for praising and how childish it sounds when spoken in Hindi. But all this while he remains ignorant of all things Indian. Nor am I against the author for having no sense of reality about how democracy in India functions, where the Lalus and Paswans from the alleged "Darkness" fail miserably in elections.


Overall the novel is not a showcase piece of art neither from the literary perspective nor from the story telling one. It has the masala aspect in plenty... in how the main character decides to write a letter not to Bush/Obama or Brown/Blair but to the Chinese premier... how he works in Bangalore for the offshoring call center business... and how he has to treat Muslims with the same alienness that the western world treats the Taliban and Al Qaeda, by calling them "Muslim Uncle".
This got me thinking about what does this novel offer over all the other contenders of the prize this year to have won. And my feeling after a cursory analysis is that it appeases the western notion of how India is. Never mind the author was brought up in western countries and its not his fault that he has the same notions about India. Its the appraisal with the tones of "look how India speaks about itself, so it must be true" that I have issues with.


The only underlying theme of the novel is that to be successful in India you have to be either a crook or a thug, more corrupt and ruthless than others. If you are not, then "India" will make you into a unrepentant one sooner or later. It will corrupt your soul and you'll be proud to have done what you have in order to just plainly succeed. Just as the movie has the hero mercilessly tortured by the police for all but telling the truth, and how the other "successful" kid goes on to become a contract killer.


People who have read the novel may praise it for the "writing style" and may not take it to their hearts when another India bashing story is heralded as the greatest thing to come out of the land of the Tigers. But I am just appalled at how much do we take it from others and how much more we throw at ourselves. If the Oscars approve it must be good. If you have the Booker then you have to be better than others.


Perhaps we need another Mahatma to unite and stand with each other to voice our collective opinion, but until then at least we can stop owning up to the Oscars and the Bookers in return to being called progressive.

The darkest hour always passes

I once started a post on how I watched a Ukrainian taxi driver and a bunch of kids in Kabul in a documentary on BBC world flying kites, but never quite finished it.
After today, I know what exactly it would mean to be able to enjoy such a simple pleasure in a war ravaged land.

We live out our mundane lives, going through the routines and fall into the trap of cocooning ourselves in the fragile fibers of misplaced sense of security. With our plum jobs and good earnings we assume that we have a parachute ready to open if we suddenly face a nosedive and a plush cushion to land gently into.
Seldom do we realize that it is all make believe. We are as fragile as our prehistoric ancestors who did not have the courage to climb down the trees even to drink water. When we get hit by anything unexpected we are too shell-shocked to realize that we are the ones who have been setting us up for such a shock.

I would not go into the details of the events of today, but the extent to which it has shocked has left me feeling as helpless as Nero's ministers would be feeling when they reported to him that Rome was burning, and he played with his fiddle. (Well that's not an entirely true historical fact, but we are not into that business anyway)

But after all this I realize that it was never them (the Nero's around me) but only me who has set myself up for such a disappointment. Its not that I didn't try to prevent it, but it was never easy when you have a "Chopat Raja" at the helm.

The sense of despair cannot be more complete and the helplessness not more profound than I felt today. But it also suddenly reminded me of the feeling that I had then when I started writing that post on the Ukrainian taxi driver in Kabul. I could not quite understand what keeps him to stay in that barren land which is now full of only land mines and have rains of ballistic missiles.
Today I can relate to his resolve to stay on, despite the grievous threats that he and his family members face. He was never born into the country but he chose it as his home. He chose it and he stuck through it during thick and thin. Others who never made that choice could be reluctant to stay on and face the onslaught. They wouldn't believe that there would be ever an end to the turmoil in their land. But the taxi driver on the other hand, has that optimism that comes from the surety of conviction.

It may be the darkest before the dawn and it may take an eternity to pass, but at the end my dear, the darkest hour always passes.