Encounters of the Indian kind.

No more gripe.
No more points of view.
No more -isms.

I am just going to sit back and laugh.

Announcing...
My top 3 road stories.
Cymbals and flashing cherubim.

Riding in a rick to work today.
Ahead, spot a parked Scorpio.
Spot a green and yellow govt. plate on it.
Rick stops next to it.
Get a chance to observe it at 3 feet.
It says 'Street of Karnataka'.
Legal? Yes.
Street smart? Yes.
Gowda? Yes.
Ingenuous? Yes.

We had a Bihari carpenter do up our office.
(Do down, rather.)
He has a moped.
I ask him if he has a licence.
He shakes his head.
Verbatim:
Self - "Toh aapko police nahi pakadta?"
Carpenter: 'Pakadne hi nahi deta hoon!"
Self: "Woh kaise?"
Carpenter: "Woh sir police yeh (left) side pe rukta hai. Hum doosre side pe chalata hoon."
Croak: "Hamesha?"
Carpenter: "Haan sir."
When in Bihar, drive on the right.

In Ahmedabad.
Am riding down the street on a Kinetic.
After a Sunday 'buying bazaar'.
I see a black Zen reversing out onto the road.
I wait for the driver to use his rear-view mirror.
Then, I honk.
Then, I stand on the hooter.
Then, he hits me.
I pick myself up.
Next to the black-tinted driver's window.
Assume my most menacing pose.
(Kinetic between legs, arms across chest.)
45 seconds go by.
Power windows roll down.
Blasts of Daler reveal 45ish Surd.
Wearing still darker glares.
Silence and glares.
Self: "Can't you see?"
Surd: "AC on, window closed."
Self: "Toh horn sunai nahi diya?"
Surd: "Music system on, can't hear."
I get out of his way.
Somewhere out there is a Daler fan.
Driving down the highway, blind, deaf and turbanned.

Am sure you guys have more.
Put them down.
I shall compile, edit, publish, make my moolah and retire.

Tomorrow, Top 3 Advertising stories.

A few statistics.

Gen. J.J. Singh, in a press briefing unrelated to J&K, mentioned last week's toll.
78 Indian soldiers declared dead.

In Assam, official reports place the number of migrant labourers killed by the ULFA at 61.
But then, who counts migrant labourers?

The Nithari serial killings - media claim 40 disappearances from the area.

5 people died on the streets of Bangalore yesterday, inseparate accidents.
Last week, a little girl was eaten up by stray dogs in Bangalore.
Bangalore envy?

Few weeks back, over 70 Vidharba farmers commit suicide over the weekend.
Pawar's backyard.

I might have missed out on a few here and there.
Never had a head for numbers.

I just got back from a holiday.
Happy New Year everybody!

P.S. Not that no one cares.
When Saddam was hanged, Kerala observed a flash hartal in protest.

It was the ship, not the captain.

These past few days,
le poor business has had it bad.

The van Winkles running advertising all this while,
suddenly decided to wake up.
And have the bad taste in the mouth all figured out.
The business sucks. The people suck. The pay sucks.
The new recruits suck. Clients suck. Everything sucks.

We are 'experts without expertise'.
(Words not mine.)

Wait a moment!

But weren't you guys on top all this while?
Weren't you calling the shots?
Weren't you charting paths?
Weren't you evolving agency culture?
Weren't you involved in negotiation?
Weren't you there when the agency got a raw deal?
Weren't you sitting in on pay and scales?

If you were not, what were you doing at the top?

And if everything suddenly sucks,
who should be taking the blame?
The poor AE who's joined you at 15k because Usha Boiler Repair House didn't take him?

It might not be what it should, ideally.
But just because a few at the top are tired and defeated,
doesn't mean the business sucks.

But the business will suck tomorrow.
And that will be thanks to the people who run the business today.
Because the greed for higher and higher profits ensured
that entry level salaries are lower than the afore mentioned UBRH.
(Your trainee client earns the same as your average AD.)

You charted the effing course.
Now the ship's taking in water.
And you take the only lifeboat,
look back at the ship and
suddenly figure that the hull's rotting.
You, you master of deduction, you.

Sloth

Live Life Kingsize

“The neelakurinji’s bloomed after 12 years.
Let’s go check it out”, I told the wife,
from within the newspaper.

“Hey, let’s go stay in Hampi awhile”,
I said, 23 minutes later.

“We should watch the World Cup in the West Indies.”
I agreed wholeheartedly with the guy.
And we chugged a few more.

“It would be nice to just do nothing but read for a week.”
Statement made when she asks me to draft application.
To the local electricity office.

“When can we stop having to work for a living?”
With a friend during a morally high weekend.

“I think I’ll walk to Gokarn via Sirsi” – self.
“Isn’t that a few hundred miles?” – wife.
“But I want to do it, my heart tells me to!” – self
“Shut the door when you leave.” – wife.

I stepped out, backpack and all.
I shut the door.
Decided to check the mailbox on my way out.
The phone bill, the electricity bill, credit card bills,
the net bill, the newspaper bill, the milkman’s bill,
the car EMI reminder, the insurance reminders,
the home loan insurance, the mechanic’s long overdue bill….

I picked them all up and walked back in.
And she was making lunch for both of us.

Elections in Kerala

I was home recently, in Kerala.
Proud home of the first democratically elected communist government in the world.
And after many years, I was there around election time.

Every five years, the Malayalee hitches up his lungi (with it his ideological beliefs), knots it high on his waist and sets off to do battle.
Brother against brother. Neighbour against neighbour.
In multi-coloured lungis, shouting slogans political, bawdy, inflammatory and ludicrous, regiments march up and down the green paths of Kerala.

Every Malayalee takes a side.
It’s not very taxing.
You are either for the left.
Or against.
There is no third alternative.
If anybody claims there is, many pardons to your hitched saffron lungi brother, there isn’t.

In the evening, as you walk down to the toddy shop for a glug, the quiet is suddenly pierced with the pungent odour of a hundred men sweating toddy.
And there, past the palm-lined river bank, march a hundred toddy happy men.
Together, happy, committed, confident.
You let them pass, silhouettes waving red flags at the gathering dusk, bunched fists punching the hot, humid air and an imagined opponent.
And as you proceed, a few stragglers bring up the vociferous rear.
These are the ones who paused longer at the toddy shop for the one for the road.
This happy lot, somewhere between bottle 2 and 3 have forgotten their responsibility to the land at large, their duty to the nation, and pass by singing the latest film songs, fists proudly in the air.

At the toddy shop though, there still are a few stragglers, fighting ideological battles from the relative comfort of a bench, gathering confidence, faith and comfort from the spirit of life.
Here slogans therefore, are a little more colourful.
You question my ideology and I question your sister’s ways.
Till two ideologically separated men menacingly rise from behind their tables, and promptly fall into the fish curry.

On verandahs across the state, men deliberate with great interest chances, scams, scandals, policies and manifestos.
With every sip, your candidate’s chances increase and his opponent bites the dust, percentage after percentage, sip after sip.

At seminaries and temple grounds across the state, crusty theologians debate the policies of the opposing sides and its impact on the sheep.
Under banyan trees after dusk, men from the most educated and literate state discuss the effects of global events on their local elections.
Women cadres go door to door promising goats, cows and chicken in lieu for support.

In the towns, rallies compete with each other.
For numbers, decibels and for innovative sloganeering.
Till all assemble in the centre of the town and from loudspeakers facing each other, shout the other party down.
It has not been unknown, for over-enthusiastic speakers to hurl abuse at each other across the square.
Over the microphone.

Every morning during election time, the Malayalee reads more than one newspaper.
So that he can imbibe different points of view, to then abuse everyone who doesn’t agree with his.
In the ubiquitous tea-shop, impromptu debates rage all day till in the evening it shifts to the toddy shop.
And this goes on till election day.

Election day in Kerala is when you witness the power of democracy, the power of the common man.
Demand a car to go to the polling booth and a car will come.
Demand lunch and lunch will come.
Demand a drink and spirits flow.
Just for that one day, you matter.

You matter, you insignificant speck among a billion Indians.
Your mandate decides the fate of millions.

And then, there is peace and quiet.
In the toddy shop, the centre of our action, bonhomie resumes.
Till counting day.

In Bangalore, I don’t even realize when elections come and elections go.
I miss the fervour.
I miss the debates.
I miss the involvement in the political processes.
I miss the opportunity to influence the fortunes of our vast, functioning anarchy.
And above all else, by this constitution and everything else that I hold sacred, I miss the toddy.

A time for Zorro.

I don’t know Jessica Lall.
In any case, a few hundreds are murdered in this country everyday.
Why then, should Jessica Lall make me feel so helpless?

Preity Zinta made a point on TV.
You can get a year, she said, for blackbuck.
But you can kill a person and get way with it.

It’s true.

A few notable examples.
Manu Sharma.
Admiral Nanda’s grandson.
Kunhalikutty.
Ameeta Modi and Sanjay Singh.
Amar Mani Tripathi.
Natwar Singh and son.

Clout circumventing the judicial process is old hat.
The issue today, is not that.

The issue is that all the above, are still welcome in our society.
They continue to hold offices.
They are still part of the social circuit.

This, their brazenness and our acceptance, spells doom.
It means that today’s Indian society, you and me included, are willing to condone murder.
Willing to condone the castration of justice.
Willing to turn a blind eye to anything that doesn’t directly involve us.
Willing to tolerate injustice.
Too ready, to forgive and forget.

We as a society have degenerated.
The letter of the law is strictly the letter of the law.
No longer does it hold a moral value for us.

It’s getting caught therefore, that makes crime a crime.
Not so much the act.

We don’t have a collective conscience as a nation any more.
We don’t have a sense of justice any more.
We don’t, as a nation, believe in the law any more.

Many, many years back, there was a crime of passion.
A naval officer called Nanavati shot his wife and her paramour.
Russi Karanjia of Blitz kept India focused on the case.
And the whole nation developed an opinion.
Including the then PM, Pt. Nehru.
(Driving opinion has its own dangers but the advantage was that everyone knew that the world was watching.)

If today, the bench knew that India was watching, would it acquit Manu Sharma so easily?
Would witnesses so easily turn hostile?

The Nanavati case awoke the collective conscience of a nation.
And Jessica Lall proved us that our consciences have gone to bed.

This is the time for Zorro.
A time for vigilantes.
This is the time for Biblical, barbarian justice.
An eye for an eye, ear for an ear.

Drag Manu Sharma to India Gate and hang him there.
For the murder of Jessica Lall.
And his father.
For the twin crimes of procreation and for believing that justice is there to be manipulated.

Will this happen?

Last year, Malayalam cinema had a rare box-office hit.
Directed by Jayaraj.
It had unknown faces and was pretty shoddily, frugally produced.

It featured 4 students who take the law into their own hands.
Who kill, maim and generally play Zorro.
It was a superhit.

It tells me a few things.
That audiences empathized with it.
And therefore, that there are millions out there who feel castrated.
That our society is full of impotent, angry, helpless youth.

And that, at a national level, always spells bloodshed.