Cherry Blossoms

Every spring, something grips me…makes me smile lovingly at kids, even when they are crying, wearing those squeaky shoes and making a racket…makes me call my mum more than once in a fortnight, our established arrangement of interference…makes me reach out to all my friends and enquire about their life without reminding them of the geeky school days …makes me (horror of horrors!) say hello to the neighbor’s cat without showing it the finger.

It makes me resist my urge to throw a shoe at the fish vendor, howling at the top of his voice in the morning, right before breakfast when the constitution is frail. Or using my limited vocab of the official language expletives, at the garbage truck, idling loudly right below my bedroom window. It makes me use the plant spray bottle, my version of the air gun, go a little off the mark while shushing the stray dogs below the balcony.

Telemarketers are greeted politely and even jested with a playful touch, while cab and auto rickshaw drivers get a tip and perhaps a song squeaked hoarsely and tunelessly if alcohol runs my life at that time.

I plan vacations to various places, especially Tokyo with nary a care about the bank balance. I reach out to lovers’ future past with no regard to their current emotional state. It makes me remember the pranks carried out with detailed planning, destined to fail, at the lack of basic logic with no embarrassment at all.

It makes me forget the transgressions of silly social media uproars and the voices of both Pappu and NaMo …no Kejri and the AAPtards are still not included. It doesn’t make my blood boil to see people loosely using the word ‘Rape’ or being selective over the value of human life.

Every spring, I become a monster. Every spring, I wish the monster would stay forever. Beyond spring. Beyond reality.

In our country, in Mumbai where there are only two climates - Summer & Monsoon.

“I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”- Pablo Neruda

Why Developed India is a fantasy

I keep abreast of the happenings in my country through the humble newspaper and twitter (thanks to modern technology). I have been doing these for the last 20 years. And in all this time, I have never read any article that mentions any concrete steps or ideas for development. And I believe if some techie finds some time to write an algorithm that will take into account all the news articles of the last 20 years (even from a single publication) and finds stories which have ‘development’ in it and then do a qualitative filtering process of listing the actual ideas or steps, it won’t be more than 20 such articles. Out of these 20 ideas or announcements, 5-6 would have been scrapped for lack of funds or initiative. The remaining hopefully would be WIP.

The reason that I am throwing up such wild figures is frustration…frustration of seeing the same old stories on crime, corruption, infighting within political parties, some ban or the other. But in the same publications international section, one finds stories about how China is building a solar power station in space, or how Finland is scrapping traditional school subjects in favour of topics.

Why haven’t we moved to solar energy as the main consumer energy despite being a tropical country with an abundance of sunlight?

Why haven’t we developed water sports not only for recreation, tourism but as an Olympic strategy despite having one of the largest coastlines?

Why haven’t we increased employment in all public sectors but have encouraged ‘agent culture’?

Why are continuing to give drought relief and farmer subsidies for the last 15 years to the Vidharba region, instead of figuring out a source of water?

But instead our idea of development includes building a 300 crore statue of Shivaji in the Sea, having Aadhar and UID both.

All we hear about in the 5 year plans is ‘aim to reduce poverty, increase growth rate of agriculture, industries and services by 9%, etc. But how does it plan to do that?

We have planning commission, urban & rural development officers, many ministries to support all of these ideas but looks like somebody forgot to have a chief idea officer who can not only use available resources but look at the current crisis situations and provide solutions. Who is this person?

Daily experiences faced by an Indian in India

We have read and agreed to both versions of Jane Von Rabenau (loves India) and Michaela Cross (traumatized by India). We have discussed the incidents described by both till death, defending experiences and incidents.

While Jane takes a very logical approach of not generalizing situations and incidents, Michaela does have a very personal view of things that happened to her.

But are their experiences unique only to their white skin?

Being an Indian in India is not without its pitfalls. Yes, groping in busy places happen. Yes, men do stare, uncomfortably. Yes, rapes are increasing. Yes, people are warm and open when you travel away from busy metros. Yes, Indian weddings are fun events. What do you do in such situations? You ignore most cases, and show your outrage in others. One cannot generalize, one doesn’t have a right answer, nor does one take sides.

But being brown skinned in a country obsessed with white skinned people sees me waiting for more than 20 minutes everyday for a cab. I stay in an area where a fair amount of expats have also made their home. And every cab or auto wala chooses them over me. This happens everyday.

If a ‘Gora’ presents an idea at work, it has to be way superior to what a brown skinned brain can conjure up. If a meeting is scheduled for international partners of the seriously cutthroat corporate job you have, then you have to be in time and have to dress sharp. If it’s just a meeting with regular Indian working class then the meeting get re-scheduled, sometimes cancelled.

Being brown skinned in a bustling metropolis like Mumbai means that if you want better service at top notch restaurants, arrive with a white skinned phoren and tables magically appear.

If you haven’t partied with atleast 1 foreigner then you have a lot of catching up on the way to becoming cool.

Comfortable clothes that you like are made for sizes suitable to a western body, desi food is customized to a western palate, and queues are magically cut for the poor foreigner. While this does show the hospitability of us Indians, it also adds that 2% more competition on to the plate. Didn’t I elbow out competing classmates, colleagues, cabbies to be there first, should I have to try again coz the best spot has now been offered to a ‘guest’?

Jane Von Rabenau   

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/india-and-a-blonde-tourist-an-alternate-account/1/305095.html

Michaela Cross

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1023053

Tips to Prevent Rapes: Government

 For Men

1. Don’t put drugs in women’s drinks
2. When you see a woman walking by herself, leave her alone
3. If you decide to help a woman in distress remember not to rape her
4. Never creep into a woman’s house through an unlocked door/window or sneak up behind her or rape her
5. If you are unable to stop yourself, ask a friend to always be around you and to alert the cops if needed
6. Don’t have sex with anyone who is asleep or unconscious – if it is not consensual its rape
7. If a woman looks at you, get out of her sight. It is not an invitation. You might be tempted later to rape her.
8. Drop all kinky ideas. You can’t justify rape as surprise sex.
9. Find innovative new ways to keep yourselves occupied like reading or community service.
10. Don’t ever eat Chowmein, especially before a date

For Women

1. Don’t step out of the house after dark
2. Actually don’t step out of the house at all
3. Don’t go to parties at locations further than 1 km from your house
4. If you do, then make sure that no men are present in the party or in within 1 km radius of the party destination
5. Don’t ask the cops, watchman, step father, brother, etc for help. They might just rape you instead.
6. Don’t eat Chowmein. Ever
7. Don’t show any skin, even the Burkha’s shouldn’t have eye holes
8. Get married before you attain puberty
9. Actually get married the minute you are born. We don’t acknowledge marital rape as an offense.
10. Don’t get born as a woman

(With inputs from Ayush Mishra)

Lady of Justice demands a New Sword, says it’s rusted like all Verdicts

Mumbai, 26th Nov 2010

In an interview statement, the lady of justice most commonly referred to as Insaaf ki Devi (not to be confused with Rakhi Sawant and her brand of potent insaaf), has demanded a New Sword before she can deliver more verdicts. Citing the accumulated rust on the sword as the chief reason for the delay in justice, she also claims that while the sword is being procured, we might as well get her a new pair of scales and a blindfold.

Explaining the significance of the scales, blindfold and the sword to a hyper television journalist, the lady of justice lost her cool and almost raised the sword at the hyper journalist.

Ram Mohan, who had been following up on the lady of justice’s demands for the last month or half was shocked when the lady raised the selfsame sword at him. “I was just asking how the rusted sword and verdict were co-related when she threatened me” wailed Ram Mohan, clutching his pounding heart.

Later, to clarify that she did not take the law in her own hands, the lady of justice explained the rationale behind her out of character actions in an exclusive interview, “The nerve of that journalist to ask me the co-relation between my sword and verdict?? Next he will be asking the significance of the blindfold. I did what I did to protect my integrity. If he doesn’t know the reason of such simple things that we are taught in schools, he shouldn’t be a journalist at all. Everyone knows that the blindfold is to be impartial while delivering the verdict. The scales are to weigh all the evidence thoroughly and the sword means decisiveness. Court proceedings should not take months or years.”

Explaining how the rusted sword was being a hindrance to justice, she appealed to the Instant Insaaf team to buy her a new sword as she was tired of hearing justice denied is justice delayed slogans every time some group or the other woke up.

Lamenting that the cost of a new sword just is much lower that the cost of maintain lengthy records over so many years, the lady of justice suggested that if she was given a brand new sword every year, she would be able to dispense justice much quickly and prevent repeated appeals to higher courts as a delay tactic used by many to avoid prison or death penalty.

In other unrelated news, Ajmal Kasab has asked for a brand new shirt saying that he deserves one on the anniversary of his career high.

Selfish Little

In a country like India were poverty is always on the rise it hurts to see so much of food grain rot in the rains.
You know what... read it in the papers this morning ....makes me wonder why nobody is giving any importance to it... Jessica Lall was murdered and thousands of people who were not affected by her murder directly stayed up all night and lit candles and it felt good to see so many of us mobilizing towards the greater good of the society....but it’s the same janta which is least bothered with all these food grains rotting away....something which affects us directly....will it take a murder of a beautiful lady for us to start a movement again?? Why can’t all of us FB empowered netizens start something a little more worthwhile instead of self indulgent status messages...can we??
But what can we exactly do?? Start another Candle Lit March towards the gateway? Or start a Pink Chaddi campaign?
Well, since I am like the rest of the population who likes armchair theories and couch preaching as well… and don’t have a cause in which I believe in … I can jot down few steps
Option 1:
We all can start a long discussion and hope that it generates enough buzz to come to the notice of sensible and self motivated people who will actually do something about it
Our Fyada: - we will feel good about one little thing and if this movement gains importance we can brag about it to our grandkids someday
Option 2:
We all start a long discussion and urge people to take out some time from their busy and hectic life to start a letter addressed to Ashok Gulati, Director, FCI, who says that "The total storage capacity is 28 million tonnes ... this leads to losses of 10 – 15 per cent. Translate this into value... that is 6 million tonnes of grains damaged, unfit for human consumption ... it amounts to Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000 crores annually." We mark a copy to the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, Minister of Agriculture and Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution Mr. Sharad Pawar, Minister of Home Affairs Mr. P. Chidambaram. The creative ones amongst us can put together a nice power point presentation and the hard working sincere types can research the facts and figures for it. The enterprising ones can follow up with the above mentioned people to see whether they have read said draft. The ones in media can slyly slip a draft into the editorial meeting and the ad guys can maybe take a dig or so in one their copies.
Our Fyada: Since we are using our core competencies and not leaving our armchairs, we can chat with our friends while doing this. Also, we can splurge on dal and rice and not eat spend agonizing hours wondering what to order for lunch which is healthy, tasty and doesn’t pinch the pockets also… we are after all saving up for that Jimmy Choos and that Tag Heuer. It’s still an inspiring story for the grandkids (kids will listen to anything).
So what will we choose?