Jabbering Jaggernaut

This day, that year

2010-11-10T22:41:00.003+05:30

This day, last year, veriCAR was called off. We handed out our last salaries and shut the office one last time with a heavy heart and a strange mix of a number emotions.

We've been over it so many times. Over dinners and drives and drinks. So much we could have done differently. So much we couldn't.

It was an experience that taught us a lot. And I have often considered writing all of it down, lest I make the same mistakes all over again some day in the future.

However, I've never been able to get myself to do it. It might be because I am lazy. Or perhaps because, by God's grace, I have a lot of good friends and wonderful parents to speak to, so I don't feel the need to vent using this medium. But most of all, I think because it is an intensely private experience, and one that I am not yet ready to share.

Someday, perhaps. Never say never.

Love thy machine..

2010-01-17T21:24:00.002+05:30

I just watched a movie called 'Love The Beast'. More details here.

'25 years of love can't be wrong.' I know what he's talking about. I know a love like that. A relationship with a machine. One that most people don't understand. Because they have never felt it.

A strange kind of bond. Irrational affection maybe, because the rational mind knows that the car is nothing but metal, wires and rubber. But the ones who know otherwise, know that it's a lot more than that. It's got a heart and a soul.

I know she didn't like anyone else turning her engine over. I know she refused to start. On campus, I'd give away my key to anyone who asked for it. I knew she'd not start with the people I didn't like. And she didn't.

I rarely had enough money to pamper her with. Rarely enough to even take care of her. She rarely asked for anything more. She was selfless, and her love was pure. Occasionally, she complained by bursting her tyres past midnight, but only after I'd made it to the safety of our campus.

I know how he feels in the movie after he's crashed his beast. I know why he chokes up and finds it hard to string his words together. Because I feel the same way now.

I left her back in Kerala. Because I couldn't afford to keep her here. It was hard on me, but it must have been worse on her - she didn't deserve to be treated like that.

I don't know where she is now, but I wish I could get her back. I wouldn't drive her everyday, and she'd probably be ignored all over again. But at least she'd be there.

Or am I being selfish all over again? Maybe she has found someone who takes good care of her, who needs her enough to not ignore her. Maybe she's getting started with her new life, and does not deserve to be shaken out of it.

She's only a car. Or is she?

Letting go..

2010-01-11T08:30:00.002+05:30

The trick to floating on water is to let go. To trust nature completely (and blindly). Unfortunately, letting go doesn't come that easy to most of us.

Two other things come close - learning to ride the bicycle, and learning to use the trackpoint. The thrill of having accomplished something that is, at immediate thought, quite inexplicable, is beyond words. It's a high that keeps you going for a couple of days.

When a friend first taught me to float on water about two years back at a desolate hippie beach in Gokarna, I had a tough time. I couldn't loosen up and I couldn't let go. Consequently, I would sink. I finally managed to float when I did let go entirely, when I 'trusted' without any questions.

The first time was a mind-altering experience. It was magical, and I couldn't stop thinking about it for a few days. I was fresh out of an insipid MBA, and attempted to valiantly mix pseudo-philosophy with half-baked management concepts.

I did it again a couple of days back - this time at a choppier beach in Kashid, and the feeling was just as beautiful. Lying down, letting go, floating away. Looking up at the sky, bobbing up and down with the waves, ears shut out by the water.

Is there a better way to go blank? Forgive and forget?

Run Like Hell..

2009-10-24T20:15:00.002+05:30

My attempts to incorporate some (any) form of physical activity in my life have ranged from the strangely optimistic (I once bought a gym membership for an entire year) to the vaguely absurd (I once signed up for a sport that involved catching hen).

I've finally found something I like doing. Running.

I can barely believe this myself, but I really do enjoy it. The reasons are many.

I chanced upon a great site, Lifemojo, that had a series of articles on how to run, how not to run and how to look good while doing it.

Two things got me started. One, I learnt that I didn't have to run fast. Apparently, it was most appropriate to run at a speed that could allow conversation. I liked that thumbrule. Two, I realised that I didn't have to run a lot, at a stretch. Small bursts of activity (at least to start off with) were recommended. I liked that even more.

Incidentally, I also found my schedule become less arbitrary, and that lent itself well to a 30-min slot being free almost every day. Better still, this slot was in the evening. That meant no early morning wake up struggles. More importantly, there was the cloak of darkness to hide that flab bouncing around, a garden that is practically free of humanity after sundown and a cool, gentle breeze for company almost unfailingly.

What I like most about running, though, is that my mind practically goes blank. I find myself unable to hold on to any train of thought, mostly because I am trying to concentrate on doing what I am doing right. As a beginner runner (not even that actually), I try and ensure that I am breathing right, running at the right pace, stepping in the right place and that my track pants are not falling off. I am like a newbie driver who has to look out for a hundred things while driving, and hence finds himself/herself unable to let the mind drift around.

I have been reading up a little bit on Vipassana, and I found what I experience to be somewhat in line with what they say one must experience when one is meditating. I find myself concentrating on my breathing, and I find emotions come and go without reacting (or being able to react) to them. That can't be such a bad thing.

The 30-minutes of blankness, then, are like a different form of meditation, and that goes well with a life that is unpredictable at best, and absurd at worst.

Welcome, Back.

2009-10-20T20:21:00.002+05:30

Greetings.

My last post about anything was on May 29, 2009. I believe my last serious 'thought' about anything was around the same date.

Without further ado, being the abominable narcissist that I am, I welcome myself back to regular writing about randomness. I don't know about the three of you reading this blog, but I missed myself.

As always, there are no guarantees on how long this will last (for all you know, this might be the last post for another six months, but what the hell), but let me try and make the most of it while it does.

In the interim, I have found Twitter to be exceptionally useful in allowing me to express my thoughts (mostly rants to the tune of 'WTF is going on here?') in one sentence. No thinking, no editing - just type and hit 'post'.

It's good to be back to good old, old-fashioned writing.

Giddy up, folks! (Yes, the three of you.)

Entrepreneur magazine

2009-10-11T22:53:00.001+05:30

veriCAR

2009-06-16T19:51:00.002+05:30

Carpool - Down the Drain

2009-05-29T07:41:00.002+05:30

I've noticed a spate of carpooling sites mushroom around here. It's fashionable to say that it's a great idea. I think it's crap.

There are too many things that must match for a carpool to become successful. Timings, workload, office location, home location, etc. It's difficult to match all that for a country like India, where the work culture is not like that in other developed countries - come in at 9, bugger off at 6. Being the back office of the universe, we tend to work our butts off all the time.

Getting all that to match for two people is a challenge, getting it to match for three is a difficult challenge, and instead of trying to get it to match for four, one would be better off trying to teach a zebra what a zebra-crossing means.

Carpooling has to be tackled on an organization level. Chaps working in the same company/same IT park/same SEZ would be better advised to share their ride to work and back. Which they do anyway. So where really is the need to have a fancy website?

What carpooling in India demands, is flexibility and spontaneity. Flexibility - you're not stuck with the same group of chaps everyday. Spontaneity - car pools get formed and dissolved on a per-journey basis. There's a bulletin board that poolers and poolees use. At 1400 hrs, pooler types in to the board, "I am leaving for home at 1730 hrs - from Mindspace, Malad to S.V.Road, Khar. Anyone want to share a ride, call 98XXXXXXXX by 1530 hrs." Poolees, on the lookout for a ride home, are checking the board, and get in touch with pooler if the ride is of any use to them.

Bahrista. Woohoodupi.

2009-01-19T23:32:00.003+05:30

I hate Barista, and I hate Cafe Coffee Day even more.

There, that's out of the bloody way.

I think they're expensive, noisy and filthy.

The coffee is terrible. The hot coffees are insipid, the cold ones are full of snow and the iced ones are a magnificent explosion of ice cubes.

The food is stale. All fancy names, and no go.

And the service is appalling. I have always detested being served coffee in a plastic takeaway glass by a 15-year old doofus who wouldn't be able to tell the difference between coffee and bird pee even if he drank a gallon-odd of each.

We've dumped Baristas and CCDs.

Enter Vrindavan, Krishna Vihar, Ratna, Vishwa Bharti, Sairaj and Sadanand. In no particular order.

Udupis are the new meeting joints. Power lunches, quick bites, and everything in between.

Cheap, fast, reliable. Great food, fast service, Oracle-sque waiters. And that filter coffee.

Bahrista, I'll tell you what, take an effin' walk.

Imbeciles. Honest ones.

2008-12-16T09:16:00.003+05:30

It is patriotism season, but I am shamed by my nationality. It has happened far too often in the recent past for my comfort.

There was anger at first, then there was disgust. And now there is shame. Fueled by the sheer ignominy of watching our khadi-clad men resigning, then falling over each other to get to the chair and finally sulking over not getting the chair.

Then there are the wise men sitting further north, who have been out with their diplomatic begging bowls, looking for Big Brother America to tell us what to do next. Or what not to. They have also been issuing threats emptier than their collective craniums - stuff that, I am certain, is a source of many laughs for the bastards sitting safe across the fence.

And now there are the greenie-weenie humanitarians. Who want a lawyer to represent Kasab.

They are out in the mainstream media with their senseless suggestions and foolish ideas. The Chief Justice of India, no less, wants a lawyer to represent Kasab. HT Mint wants a debate on the topic. Both go on to suggest that 'a constitutional democracy such as ours ensures that every person standing trial in court even for the most heinous crime should be represented by a lawyer.'

I say WTF.

Why do we need a trial? And why do we need a lawyer? Why can't we just make full use of whatever Kasab has to give us, and then order a public execution. With the world's media in full attendance. Will that make us any less civil? Or any less democratic?

What constitutional right to a trial are these chaps talking about? Kasab is not an Indian. Why should he be given these 'constitutional rights'?

We are just using the cloak of a 'civilized, democratic society' to postpone doing what we should have done many, many years ago. We are handing out threats that have ceased to have any meaning at all, we are not doing anything to impose any punitive action against terrorists and camps not in our custody. Worse, we are letting someone who is in our custody have the right to a trial and a lawyer.

What are we, if not the biggest collective impotency ever?

Sure, we are a democracy, and every single person has a right to their opinion. But the way so many of us are exercising that right, the choices we are making compels me to believe that most of us don't deserve that right.

It convinces me that democracy's time is up.

Dasvidaniya? Oh well...

2008-11-20T00:44:00.003+05:30

Now that it's over and done with, it feels strange.

Once the dust has settled, there will be the big question. 'Now what?'. Oh and there's that credit card bill to pay.

A curious mix of feelings this is. There's the overwhelming sense of freedom, of being unrestrained, of having broken shackles. There's a sense of disgust at the way things turned out. There's some sadness about all the hope and faith that more or less came to naught, and about plans that stand radically altered. There is a fizzy, dizzy sense of excitement about the future. This way or that, these are going to be very interesting times. There's a feeling of gratitude, for the fact that I could actually afford to something as stupid as this, for great friends and a wonderfully brave family. There's a hint of discomfort, an uneasy apprehension, of the future. And of that credit card bill that has to be paid. But it will be fine in the end. Jugaad ho jaayega.

Then there's the pride. Fierce, overpowering. I feel good about myself.

And there's the sense of determination. To do well, to succeed. To prove, over everyone else, to that one skeptical part of my own brain, that it was the right thing to do. There's a sense of ownership that a job, however entrepreneurial it might claim to be, can't rival.

It feels strange that so much is just the same, and yet so much has changed. Overnight.

I don't know yet, how I am supposed to react when I'm being congratulated for quitting my job. Strange times these are.

But it feels good.

Axe Chocolate. Ugh.

2008-11-13T19:12:00.004+05:30

First, the very thought of a chocolate-scented deodorant is repelling. There are things that taste good, and there is stuff that smells good. And one surely doesn't imply the other. Or we'd be eating jasmine-flavoured ice-cream.

And then look at this. Ugh.

That thing is hideous, abominable, hateful, even cringe-worthy. What were they thinking? Can some soul from HUL please spray some light on this?

(Unlikely, because only chaps with exemplary taste read this blog, surely not people who are capable of coming up with that.)

Update

The hideousness of it all :)

Bye, Bye Dada!

2008-11-10T20:28:00.002+05:30

I am not a big fan of cricket. (Any sport that can not be enjoyed without commentary is not worthy of time).

And I am an even lesser fan of Dada. Yes, we had the Bengali chaps on campus who once wrote a Bhajan for Dada and composed it as a rock song. But that's all.

And yet, my heart reaches out to him.

Because I know that sick feeling, that hollowness in the tummy that comes from getting out on the first ball. After waiting it out patiently, fielding in the deep, chatting with grasshoppers, far away from where the action is. Dropping the lone catch that comes around once in three innings, being accused of being talentless by 'friends'. Worse, being called lazy and lethargic. Worse still, being called an Azharuddin-who-can't-even-field ('Azhar' was a pretty potent expletive only a few years back).

After all that misery, sitting by the gutter, watching more talented chaps crack fours and sixes, willing my own team members to get out so I could bat and justify my very existence. Silently cheering every time a wicket fell, sitting around with a sullen expression, distraught at coming one wicket closer to defeat. But overjoyed at coming one wicket closer to bat.

After all that endless, bottomless misery, finally holding the bat in my hands. Feeling revitalized, strong, powerful, determined. Determined to pulverise every bowling attack to dust. Dreaming about hitting the winning runs (tail-enders in weak batting line-ups occasionally get that privilege), and being carried off the field by overjoyed 15-year olds. Wondering how does a reverie fit into a crucial moment like this, shaking myself out of it, realizing it is probably slightly late, swinging that bat nevertheless. And hearing something shatter a few inches behind me.

That disgusting, sinking feeling.

It is cruel enough, hard enough on someone to get out on the first ball. And it is miserable, deathly to get out on the first ball in your last innings in Test cricket.

I think everyone who gets out for less than 15 in their last test innings should be given 'double batting'.

High and Dry

2008-11-10T19:06:00.002+05:30

"Sir, today is a dry day."

"What?? Why?"

"Some Kartik Ekadashi, Sir."

"Crap!"

(glances at watch)

"It's past 12. Kartik Ekadashi is over. Can't we work something out?"

I can't believe I had that conversation yesterday.

A year back, I was the waiter, not the Sir.

Wedding Bells. Yeah, right.

2008-11-05T00:42:00.003+05:30

It is wedding season once again, and I have a bold claim to make.

I think I have made my peace with 'Please consider this as a personal invitation'. And just as well. People just stopped writing it in their emotionless mass e-mails.

There's a new demon that has, meanwhile, raised its rather abominable head. It is called 'Please let us know of your travel plans in advance, so we can make suitable arrangements.'

This baffles me. Mostly because typically, this is the concluding line of a meaningless mass e-mail sent out to a thousand and twenty seven 'undisclosed recepients'.

I wish someone with a huge amount of time on his/her hands and a wicked brain would take up every single one of these people on their fake, thoughtless promise. I wish someone would begin replying to all these mails with a curt: 'Congratulations! I'll be there for your wedding. I'll inform you of my travel plans shortly, please make accommodation arrangements for my family and me. Thanks.'

'And you would be?'

'I am your seven years junior from IIM Kozhikode. Remember the invitation you sent on the Alumni group. Congratulations once again :)'

'Oh. ah, yes of course. (gulp) What's your name again?'

(I think I know someone with a huge amount of time and a slightly wicked bent of mind. Please post a comment in case you do too. And please do consider this as a personal request. Thanks!)

Season's Greetings

2008-10-28T22:09:00.004+05:30

Lord Rama, hopefully watching things unfold from his perch somewhere in the Super-Cosmos, would most definitely be baffled by the way his return is being celebrated all over the country. He would be shocked by the 'Big Dick Mentality'. "My bomb is bigger than yours, my rocket zooms higher than yours, I am burning more money than you in two hours."

(There is a school of thought that believes in the 'Big Dick Paradox'. "The smaller the dick, the more a person is likely to indulge in the Big Dick Mentality." Intuitively, that makes sense. Deep-seated insecurities, perhaps. Or more fundamentally, the ones with the BDs have better things to do in life.)

What must baffle Lord Rama the most, though, is not the noise or the pollution, or even the most bizarre homecoming anniversary celebration that any deity, past or present, receives on an annual basis. It is the mass SMSes.

I vaguely remember having blogged about this a few years back. And encouragingly, my hate for them remains unchanged.

Imagine the predicament of the Lord, watching from his perch in the Super-Cosmos, looking at these emotionless, thoughtless beings sending three corny lines of faintly-veiled fake meaninglessness to their friends, colleagues, relatives and well-wishers. At one go.

"Darling, why are these people celebrating the anniversary of our homecoming in this manner?", the Lord asks his Wife. "Brother, Hanuman, can anyone tell me what (in the name of God) is going on here?", thunders he, fast losing patience with the wonders and conveniences of modern technology.

I always thought festivals were a good time to let the few special people in one's life know how special they were. Isn't it slightly ironic, that festivals are precisely the time when so many of us choose to bucket everyone in their life in one huge mailing list.

"My SMS list is bigger than yours."

Oh, and to the two of you reading this, Happy Diwali.

Kicked about something...

2008-08-30T21:21:00.003+05:30

Somewhere along the way, I started believing that it was uncool to work hard, to study and to struggle. It was cool to take it easy, sit back and let things come to you. Working hard was for people who had more determination than brains. I thought I was so smart I didn't need to work hard at all.

I started believing so, because I kept getting away with it. Each time I got away with it, my belief strengthened, reinforced by my latest success.

The last time I struggled with anything that threatened with significantly dire consequences was in Engineering college. At Hexaware, I didn't work. At the magazines, it does not classify as work.

And the two years at IIMK were almost ludicrously laughable. I'd get away with the craziest things. I'd get away with not studying for tests and exams, and talking my way through them. I'd get away with going into presentations unprepared, and sleepwalking through them with some smooth talking and some common sense.

Coming from a decent management institute where students choose companies rather than the other way round, I had started to believe that I was the centre of the world, and that everything happening around me was happening for me.

Somewhere along the way, I began taking success for granted, and not welcoming it with any kind of respect when it actually did come around. "Could there be any other way?"

And somewhere along the way, I forgot how to handle failure. My sense of determination went for a hike. My ability to struggle went into eternal dormancy. My work ethic went to dust. And I turned into a lofty, complacent airhead with a thoroughly skewed idea about myself and the world around me.

It's good to be getting back on terrafirma. Slowly, but surely.

Drive, Driver, Drivest

2008-08-24T17:07:00.007+05:30

Most people have a list of their best, most memorable drives. I have no such list.

I have always hit it off with most drivers I have come across. More often than not, drivers are drivers because they like driving and they like cars. That gives us a common interest, a shared passion about most things that move. It is not a surprise then, that I like drivers.

(One must hand it to them for choosing their profession, and choosing to make money from what they enjoy most. Most of us ordinary people do not have such privileges. Or if we do, we don’t have the balls to exercise them. Drivers, then, are an entirely different breed.)

It is only fair then, that I compile a list of the most memorable drivers I have come across. What is not fair is ranking them this way. Telling them, “Hey, you’ve been memorable, but that chap there, he’s been more memorable”. Then again, life’s not fair either. So such it will be.

However, just to make it slightly less unfair, we won’t go 5-4-3-2-1. We’ll go in any random order, and end with So Mot (Number One).

Number 3

Bombay - Pune | April 2006 | Bhai from Mughal Sarai | Tata Indica

I was travelling from Bombay to Pune and I was in a spectacular rush. I had to make it to my destination in two hours. And that included a stop for some chores at Belapu r. It was my rotten luck that I landed up in a taxi whose driver had just landed up in Bombay on a train from Mughal Sarai. He had since been taught driving in Bombay’s mean streets. For fifteen minutes. Then a set of keys had been thrown at him, he had been shown the taxi he was to drive, and asked to get a customer to be driven to Pune. We found each other.

His driving ability was suspect. Bombay traffic, merciless as it is, trampled all over him. Autorikshaws walked all over him, and motorcycles refused to acknowledge his presence on the road. On one occasion, a cycle overtook him. In a country where might is right, this was a mighty slap on his face. The most shameful performance any driver could subject himself to.

By Belapur I was fed up with the slow progress, and requested that I take over driving duties. He was shocked. The Seth-naukar relationship came into the picture. I told him I was younger than him, and hence not a Seth (I tried the age-platform of unsuperiority). I told him we were equals, because in a way, I was a driver too (I was working for the magazines then, and the statement wasn’t wayyy off the mark). He gave in, like a frightened hedgehog, unsure of what he was doing. I could have been a Bombay thug who’d drug him on the way, throw him on the highway and run away with his taxi. He took the risk…

…and I took the wheel. It was a battered Indica that had lived past its prime. On the expressway, it took some prodding before it got to 100. It wasn’t used to being driven that fast. Bhai (I don’t know his name, and Bhaiyya seems politically incorrect) told me that Seth had told him to not drive faster than 80; “Average kharaab hota hai..”

I took the liberty of explaining to him, how the faster we went, the less time the engine was on, and hence fuel efficiency actually improved. Soon we were doing 120.

After the ma-baap-bhai-behen bit, conversation steered on to serious topics. How much do you make, who do you work for, why do you work, why don’t you buy your own taxi, the likes. Some rapid calculation later, Bhai figured that Seth was making Rs 25,000 a month from one taxi. Bhai was being paid Rs 2,500. That was downright ridiculous, I told him.

We did some more calculation. One acre of land in the village could be used as collateral for a loan in the city. He could use it to buy a used taxi. Then he’d run the taxi on the Bombay-Pune highway, ferrying people this way and that. He’d recover the money, pay off the loan. Use the existing taxi as collateral, and get another loan. Buy another used taxi, hire a driver and do runs on the Bombay-Pune highway.

Soon he’d have a fleet of taxis. He’d be the Seth, someone else would be the Bhai.

We had reached. There was no time to think of the thorns. There would be, had I driven at 80.

The roses had been smelled, the thorns not tested yet.

Bhai left. He jumped the clutch, the car protested and shut itself off. He tried again, more gentle with the pedal, and this time he was on his way. I don't know what became of him.

Unsurprisingly, I never heard from him again.

A few weeks later, I joined business school. Smelling roses and not being stung was to become a way of life.

Problem. Big Problem.

2008-08-13T13:06:00.004+05:30

It is easy to enjoy Dilbert when one thinks one is Dilbert. Or Wally or Alice. Asok even.

It was, till a few months back.

I was reading Dilbert today, and I didn't enjoy it. Because I wasn't Dilbert anymore. I was trying to stifle a laugh at Pointy-Haired Boss's unimaginable stupidity when a little voice somewhere deep inside said, 'Dude, that's you!'.

It's scary. Someone, somewhere is reading Dilbert right now thinking of me as Pointy-Haired Boss. And having a good laugh.

And that's the problem with being a manager. One tends to (very rapidly) transform into someone one has always hated.

The bigger problem is that people all around the world are having a good laugh. At your expense.

The times, they are a changin'...

2008-08-02T21:07:00.003+05:30

There was a time not many long years back, when a boy and a girl could not be friends. They could be strangers. Or they had to be seeing each other and preparing for marital bliss. There was nothing in between.

You spoke to a girl, people around you would whisper. You went for a walk with her, eyebrows would start rising not-so-subtly. You went for coffee, you'd be starting a small forest fire of speculation.

"So, heard you went for coffee with her." (wink wink)

"Eh? There's nothing between us. We're just friends. Really."

"Of course, who said otherwise?" (wink wink)

The times, though, they're a changin'. The tables have turned.

A guy and a guy can not be friends any more. It is just not possible. They're either strangers, competitors or a gay couple making man-love 14 times a week. At least.

You go off for a roadtrip with a guy. And you're hard pressed (heh heh) to explain to the world and its cousin that "we're just friends". Go out for dinner together, and you're branded gay, your parents give up all hope and girls suddenly begin to feel comfortable around you (but not in that sort of way). All that inside a few hours. It must feel terrible.

Just ensuring that one does not come close to sparking of that kind of speculation is exhausting. One must always be wary, aware of what one is saying and doing, what one's body language is communicating, what clothes one is wearing and where. One false step, one must start preparing for a hard life ahead.

The times, they are a changin'.

Aww, sissy!

2008-07-29T10:11:00.007+05:30

For all their bravado on the field, these sissies are the first chaps to start shitting bricks in their trousers whenever a firecracker goes off 10,000 miles away.

A most predictable turn of events is likely to follow. Captain Sissy Ponting (is he still in the team?) will rear his ugly head and want to protect the rest of his 14 sissies by calling press conferences and telling all and sundry how scared they all are, looking at the current situation in India. A few days later, his Monkeyness, Andrew Sissymonds will call a press conference of his own and cry monkey tears about dropping out of an important tour because he fears for his life.

Perhaps the Ausissies should realise that their lives are in danger in India in any case; they don't look like the most loved creatures in India in any case.

Why should we even be inviting these impotent imbeciles for a tour in the first place. If only the BCCI itself had a spine rather than an incurable infatuation with rustling currency notes.

One wonders (and many have wondered in the past) if they're overcome by the same sense of overpowering fear of things that explode when they land up here to earn their millions of dollars of hard cash playing in the IPL for a month.

Rate for Tat

2008-07-15T08:42:00.006+05:30

Merrill Lynch says that the National Australia Bank is a piece of trash because they're not revealing their sub-prime exposures. ("Never mind that we've lost many billion dollars giving out sub-prime loans, they're trash. Stay away from their stock.")

Fitch, meanwhile, announces that Merrill Lynch shares are rapidly turning meaningless, after they handed out cheap loans to companies who'll never be able to pay them back.

Merrill Lynch, in an attempt to garner some support in these troubled times, upgrades Wachovia. ("Never mind how doomed we are, we've all punished Wachovia enough. All the punishment is now reflected in their share price. Let's all stop hammering them now. Here, Wachovia, let me upgrade your rating.")

Wachovia will respond, Merrill Lynch is hoping perhaps, with a detailed note to the media on how sturdy Merrill Lynch is, and how its responsible management and robust practices will see it ride over these difficult times.

Everyone's rating each other. It's a game of tit-for-tat. You screw my rating, I screw your rating. Together we screw the market. The market screws the investor. The analyst makes money talking on Bloomberg TV. The market goes berserk. The investor commits suicide. Everything's right with the world.

It's like high school. The stock market is the Head Master. These banks are all unruly schoolboys complaining against each other.

Merrill Lynch: NAB, he's not telling me his secrets. He's hiding something, Sir. I think he's a bad guy, you should dismiss him at once.

Fitch: Sir, I'm telling you, Merrill Lynch has already caused his parents a lot of harm. He went to the casino last night and blew up a few billion dollars of his dad's hard-earned money. I don't know what he's doing complaining about others. He's the bad apple, Sir. I say throw him out.

Merrill Lynch: Sir, I think Wachovia's been punished enough. Look at his knuckles, they're bleeding from the beating you've given him for losing money at the same casino (where I was last night). I think you should let him go now, Sir. I think he's learnt his lesson.

Goldman Sachs: (strides in confidently) Sir, I have something to say to you in private. I am the one who has lost the least amount of money at the casino. I've been responsible with my parents' money. I am the nice guy. (whispers) Sir, Merrill needs a little shock, he's getting too big for his boots. I saw him at the casino the other day; that was the devil himself, Sir, I tell you. (some more whispering) Sir, that bully Citicorp, just look at his performance. He doesn't know what he's doing. My recommendation is that you chuck him out at once for a week, send him to rehab, he can barely count the zeroes on the amount he lost at the casino last night. Me? Heh, Sir, I'm the nice guy.

Head Master: Ok, Merrill, I've been hearing things...

Wachovia: (hastily interjects) Sir, stop! Please don't do this to Merrill. He's sobered down after the losses, can't you see. He's being more responsible and mature than ever before; last night we went out for a drink and he had just one cocktail. I'm telling you, Sir, Merrill is now...

Merrill: I think this Wachovia chap is a gem, Sir...

NAB: Oh shut up you! (speaking to Head Master) Mate, this Merrill chap has been driving everyone insane here, get him outta the school, mate.

Head Master: Umm uh, yeah! So Merrill, I was saying...

Citicorp: Sir, before you continue, I want to tell you that I might have lost many billions. But I'm still focusing on my customers sir. I'm giving them everything they want. Last week, my private banking practice handed out three hundred and twenty thousand super platinum cards to people who I think will never default on their credit cards.

Head Master: What?

Merrill: I was telling you about Citicorp, Sir. There he's gone and handed out dollar bills again.

Head Master: Huh, yeah! Hey Citi, what do you think is...

Analyst 1: Sir, I've been poring over Citi's performance numbers and I must tell you he's looking pink and healthy. Don't bother with those little black blots on his performance. We'll just all think they're beauty spots, noone will know. Of course, there's the disclaimer that I might benefit from Citi staying back in school.

Analyst 2: Sir, I think that Merrill will see some resistance at last Wednesday's levels before it plunges into the abyss of nothingness. There is no doubt in my mind, that as the supreme power that controls all our fates, your decision will have an almost inexpressible impact on where Merrill goes from here. Sir might decide to chuck Merrill out, but I'd say that there is a certain likelihood that he might not. There are a variety of factors at play here, some of which we must analyze in some...

Head Master: (asking Analyst 1) What's he saying?

Analyst 3: (to Head Master) He's the one who speaks on Bloomberg TV. He can't be less ambiguous than that.

Head Master: He can't be more ambiguous than that.

Analyst 3: Oh trust me, I've seen him perform. He can be much more ambiguous than that.

Merrill: Goldman is a bar of Gold, man. Khara sona. I've known him for many...

Goldman: Merrill is a piece of trash, he gets drunk and then he has these fights in pubs, and...

NAB: Merrill, he's just a nosy prick. What's he got to do with how much money I lost at the casino, why doesn't he tell everyone just how much he blew up at last night's sub-prime orgy...

Merrill: NAB, I'm going to destroy your career. Wachovia (wink wink), dude let's meet up at Larry's at seven tonight, what? The beer's on me... (shouting out loud) Sir, you have to listen to me...

Citicorp: A single-minded dedication to my customers, a blinding obsession with their needs, and sharp focus on their demands...

Analysts: Sir, we might be benefiting from the advice we're giving you. Or we might not. Perhaps, somewhat, maybe, however, even then, if. We're not kicking any buts yet.

Head Master: I think I'll just go into a tailspin and see whether any of these buffoons can predict what I'm going to do next. (evil laughter that signals the dawn of dementia)

Silence...

2008-07-11T19:06:00.003+05:30

The silence is deafening.

The doors have to be kept shut. The wind is blowing outside, one can see the trees sway. But not hear the leaves rustle. Cars pass by, streaks of red and white. You just can't hear them.

The silence rings in the ears. Like a high-pitched squeal. And yet, you know there's nothing.

Eerie. And disconcerting. Music has to be played. Only to cut off that squeal in the ears.

Even in the pin-droppest of silences, we're used to the whirring of the fan. It's only when there's no whirring around does one realise what a source of comfort and familiarity it had become. Isn't that how it is with a lot of things...

I am beginning to detest air-conditioned rooms.

Because they're silent. And the silence is deafening.

2008-06-30T08:09:00.003+05:30

Those days of meaningless, inane, pointless spamming seem like yesterday. And yet seem like they happened an eternity back.

Here I am, in a strange land where no one understands what I’m saying, much less even a shard of the obscure humour I tend to unleash on companions. Of all the things I miss about IIMK, I miss IP Msg the most.

(It’s not entirely unexpected, I must add, and I’d been doing my bit to wane myself off the addiction before leaving campus. Mostly by staying up into the wee hours, spamming my brains off. Saying anything that anyone would care to listen to. “Spam, spam; you’ve only got 14 days left here.”)

Looking back, everything about IP Msg and the phenomenon that spamming was, seems bizarre, inexplicable, almost from another universe.

That little blinking icon in the taskbar (I swear I willed it to blink so many times, mostly when I was stuck with a large textbook studying for an exam (rare)), the meaningless case-taking (five minutes later, in a magnanimous free for all, everyone had lost track of whose case was being taken; no ganging up, no groupism, it was every man for himself (mostly) in the merciless IP universe), smartass retorts to serious questions (“What’s for dinner tonight?”, “C-R-A-P!” (in graphic detail (thanks RG))), serious retorts to meaningless questions (“Looking for Chettaman..”, “Last seen struggling to get through a Classic Milds near Commercial Plaza.”).

It seems slightly bizarre now; 25-year old, hale and hearty young men and women of a steady constitution investing so much time into something as inane as spamming. It’s so difficult to get answers to all the (cold) logical questions that corporate life teaches one to ask.

It was an incredibly effective vent. I used it often to rid myself of my frustration by letting myself go on IP. Safe in the belief that whatever I said could be (and would be) used against me at some point of time in the future. But it didn’t seem to matter. There were 200 people with no option (mostly) but to read what you were dishing out. That kind of willing audience is difficult to get, and even more difficult to resist.

Back then, I never asked myself why I (we) spammed. It seemed like a natural, involuntary part of life. Does anyone ask why we breathe?

It is only now that I ask myself why. Corporate life is polluting me (calling knights in shining armour to undertake rescue operations), and making me ask (cold) logical questions that have no clear bullet-point answers. I don’t want to ask these questions (even beginning to answer them is akin to insulting them, their beauty, their complexity), and I need the answers even less so.

But the mind charts its own course, running along and looking for answers even when you don’t want it to.

So why did we spam?

When all is said...

Breakfast in 'Nam

2008-06-30T08:07:00.001+05:30

Who wakes up early on a Sunday morning to cook breakfast? I did!

Till last weekend, my culinary expeditions were limited to (distant) inputs of a strategic (and speculative) nature. Cooking was simple then. It’s always easy to sit in the control room and bark out orders.
Sunday I decided to get into the field and show them that I could fight the battle as well as I could shout instructions.

Scrambled eggs, toast and sausages it was to be.

The eggs (four, no less) were broken into a pan with hot oil (rationed; just a little, because of global oil prices). Breaking eggs is slightly more tricky than it looks. What seems like an innocuous tap is actually a carefully judged and precisely executed gracious maneuver that is mastered over time. This lesson was learnt after bits of shell landed up in the pan. And egg landed up on the face.

By the time the fourth egg was broken (shattered) and its contents emptied into the pan, the first two had promptly turned into glorious sunny-side-ups. There seemed no option other than planting the spatula straight into them and splattering them around in an attempt to scramble them (splatter, spatula; is that why it’s called so?). Usually I hate to disturb a nicely formed SSU (perhaps that’s why I have a huge problem beginning to eat them), but this is battle. Action must be swift and merciless.

The slices of bread were forgotten. Unfortunately, they were forgotten inside the toaster. They came out as charred remains.

Meanwhile, salt was forgotten. It was added at a stage much later than it should have. The eggs had scrambled themselves by then. And the salt and pepper that were added seemed to have some issues mixing themselves uniformly.

In other parts of the pantry, the sausages were forgotten. In the freezer. So they were hard round bricks when they were remembered. Many hours of defrosting in a microwave just about seemed to infuse some juicy life in them.

By the time this struggle was beginning to end. The eggs had burned themselves.

The toast had charred itself.

And the sausages resolutely refused to thaw.

The kitchen was in a mess. A little SSU had made itself in the place where some egg white had spilt onto the hot plate. There were breadcrumbs all around. And bits of chopped onion.
This was a disaster.

By the time the sausages were done getting thawed and cooked, the eggs had gone cold, the toast had gone charred-coaled and the orange juice had gone warm.

But it was the best breakfast I have had in recent memory. The effort put in, the filth spread around, the shattered eggs, the bruised ego. All made a wonderful meal.

It’s that feeling of satisfaction that comes from earning something. I had to earn my breakfast, I didn’t get it on a china platter. It felt good.

I might have stumbled upon a remedy without knowing it.

For those chaps sitting on benches in various organizations around the universe, cook your own meals. Twice a week. It’ll make up for the misery that comes from getting a salary every month without earning it.

Hi Lo!

2008-06-30T08:03:00.001+05:30

Bloomberg TV airs a show called Bloomberg NOW in the mornings. I like watching it over breakfast.

I don’t understand share prices, commodity prices, inflation percentages, inflation percentages, interest rates, currency exchange rates. I don’t understand any of it.

To me, they’re dull and boring. Disgusting numbers with no character, just a cold message to be given out to the punters who try and outguess the rest.

One man on Bloomberg NOW makes them come alive, though. He makes the numbers less dead, the participants on the show less boring and a business channel more palatable than anyone else I have seen yet.

The name is Bernard Lo.

Lo goes beyond shedding tears on record crude prices, nodding seriously to what guests are saying and shaking his head grimly at the latest gloomy outlook expressed on his show.

He takes the bulls and bears by their horns and makes them do a little jig so everyone can have a good time. He comes up with the most miserable puns and the most shameful analogies. He says weird bizarre things that make you wonder if he’s really hosting a business show on a premier business channel. Just when you think he can’t get away with speaking that bit of trash on international television, he’s already walked out of the situation, smugness on mug.

Lo does the “Aww, come on, don’t take all this so seriously!” and “Shit, we’re so screwed, let’s laugh about it!” cocktail to perfection. And in the process leaves viewers (some of them) smiling over their morning coffee and guests baffled about what hit them (most of them take it well, though).

It adds colour to proceedings. It makes Lo stand out. It adds perspective, that beyond the sinking fortunes and roof-crashing crude prices, there are things slightly more important. In a world obsessed with mediocrity, Lo is like a breeze, pleasant or not is your take. (You’d think he’s a disgusting, smart-assed prick if you had no sense of humour.)

But he’s still there. Which perhaps means that humour is not dead after all.

If I were to ever host a show on TV/radio (!!), I’d like to do it like Bernard Lo does.

(I’d like to believe that’s the ultimate compliment to the guy! :P)

There's crap at the top

2008-06-26T07:41:00.000+05:30

So when do you know you've made it in your organization? Left the also rans behind?

When they give you a BlackBerry? Or a big car? Chauffeur? Big house? Servants?

Annual paid vacation to the Solomon Islands? Private Jet?

Big increment? Big cabin? Big job title? Big responsibilities?

No Sir.

You've really arrived when they give you your personal loo in the office. Your exclusive slice of crappy real estate.

Till then, you're one of the also rans...

Pass ya Frail

2008-05-31T10:34:00.002+05:30

Rediff reports "Antony faints during NDA ceremony".

Then in the opening paragraph, goes on to explain:

Defence Minister A K Antony fainted during the passing out parade ceremony at the National Defence Academy in Kharag Vasla, Pune on Saturday morning.

So it was the passing out ceremony after all. What's to fret over...

I hate Mumbai

2008-04-11T22:33:00.003+05:30

...I always have, in fact. Bombay, now that used to be a different story.

Can I just say that I hate Bombay. I had hoped it'd feel better after getting that out straight. Unfortunately, it doesn't.

This is why.

(I would've loved to compose heartfelt - and perhaps entertaining - prose on the reasons, but dang, these bullet points will work just as well)

I hate the fact that everything, everywhere is dug up. Every time. I can't believe that arterial roads have their guts ripped out, with traffic moving through one lane instead of three.
I don't mind suffering the pain of traveling by road, if I am convinced that things are going to get better. They don't get better. Because of the sheer number of agencies staking their claim on prime real estate under the tarmac.
I hate it when men are made to pour hot tar on a perfectly smooth road and surface it with their hands. Wearing miserable gloves. Using a sad excuse for a wooden plank.
I hate the fact that we don't think about the environment when we build our roads and our buildings and our malls.
I hate it when we litter shamelessly, spit around endlessly and generally spread filth as if that was the only thing we were born to do.
I hate it that our road dividers change every few meters. Because every Corporator and every MLA wants to make money putting them up, ripping them up, putting them up again, adding a few plants here and there, ripping them apart...
I hate the frustration that hangs in the air. That weird mix of helplessness and callousness that turns the city into a simmering pot of rage that is waiting to explode. I hate it when we can't be courteous to people around us. I hate it that pushing, shoving, shouting and abusing have become innate parts of our existence.
I hate the noise. And I hate it when I have to honk incessantly to get my vehicle home without any major damage.
I hate the fact that a measly 500 sq foot apartment in the filthiest, noisiest and shittiest part of the city will cost me upwards of Rs 50 lac. And that the parking slot will cost me more than the car itself.
I hate the fact that when I want to eat out, I can't think of a single decent place that will serve good, affordable food cheerfully.
I hate the fact that all that money will still not buy me a standard of living that will let me live a safe, healthy and peaceful life. I will still be traveling 4 hours a day, battling other road users every minute for every inch of the road, breathing smoke every living minute and wondering if there's a bomb under my seat in the train.
I hate it that our infrastructure is so overloaded that even if we want to, we cannot devise any way of combating a potential terrorist threat and making this place safe.
I hate it when I feel like going out for a drive at 12 in the night. And I can't.
I hate it when (some) people say that the city has got character. And energy. And a never-say-die spirit. I think that's a lot of ball talk. There's no electricity, no water, no sense of courtesy; the character, energy and spirit can take a hike.

Most of those things are petty. Things that can be put in place. There are some things that go deeper than that, things that can't be fixed easily, if at all.

The way I feel about Bombay is like the way one would feel about an estranged relative, or a broken relationship. Agitating and hurtful.

For all my attachment and blind fanaticism for Bombay, I feel cheated.

And with nowhere to belong to, I feel a little lost. And a little homeless.

Hello World

2008-03-28T23:05:00.003+05:30

This is the real world. That was an insulated microcosm of reality.

These are real people. Not members of some inconsequential committee on campus.

These are real lives they're living. Not artificial lives, cushioned by a two-year stay in an insulated environment; not more, not less.

This is real business, that makes real money and gives real people real livelihood. Not some 12-page, 7-exhibit Harvard Business School case that can be fooled around with using models, frameworks and strategies.

And these are real decisions that impact real people. Not arbitrary decisions chosen from a hundred scenarios.

This is a movie with real actors, real heroes and real villains. And there is only one take. That was a rehearsal with people pretending to be actors, those wanting to be heroes, and others who couldn't be anything but villains.

That was a circus that was forgiving and accommodating; one that offered the reassurance of a safety net.

This is a circus that is merciless, heartless and unforgiving. No nets, no safety margins. This, fortunately or otherwise, is the real deal.

This is the real world, then. And I don't like it one bit...

Paradise Lost

2008-03-25T08:16:00.004+05:30

Caught bang in the middle of a self-scripted soppy saga of last goodbyes is the Big Mama of them all.

Last night was the last drive with 2262. And by last, I really mean last, because I am not seeing her again.

2262 will continue life with someone else.

We've had her for 18 years now, and yet, almost strangely, we never named her. Choosing instead, to call her just 2262 (it's got a poetic rhyme to it).

Irrational emotional attachment with inanimate objects does not have a better example. Then again, anyone who has called her an inanimate object has suffered her wrath in the form of smoke from the engine bay, or exploding tyres in the middle of the night (in the middle of nowhere).

I have her to blame for my obsession with cars; I learnt to drive (and enjoy driving) with her. In steps. It began with dad sitting on the driver's seat, me standing outside and turning the key. It gave me an incredible high, feeling the engine come to life. It ended (somewhat) with me requesting my folks to let me drive her on the main road. On my twelfth birthday. Let's face it, it had been four years since I'd been driving her within the compound walls, that can get frustrating.

It's been a strange love-hate relationship. I've loved her so much that I've hated myself for being silly. And at times I've hated her so much that it's made me realise how much I love her (!).

The years are full of incredible memories.

Of drives back from Goa (non-stop), of ramming into a Mahindra Armada from behind (and leaving that despicable giant with no more than a scratch on the footstep), and of countless other memorable outings.

Of the 1200 km drive from Bombay to Kozhikode. A scarcely believable two-night, three-day saga of exploding tyres, busted oil caps, overheating engines ("Look Ma, smoke!"), leaking petrol and malfunctioning wipers. Of thunderstorms, sunshine, poor roads, spectacular roads. Of the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats. Of every single futile attempt at overtaking 15 tonne trailors on winding mountain roads. Of every single autorickshaw that passed me by, waving a sarcastic goodbye.

It's been a long time. And we've come a long, long way from the time when I'd get to her ten minutes before the rest of my family so that I could use the windscreen washers and clean the glass (to the time when I have depended on the rain Gods to give her a wash in the past year).

It's been a long time indeed. And it refuses to sink in...

...that 2262 is the unlikely hero of this soppy saga of last goodbyes.

PS - For car owners, please change your vehicles every three years to avoid this sort of attachment.

PPS - For you, you've been the best, and it's a pity I've had to give you away. Thank you, and keep walking!

Stamped

2008-03-24T19:40:00.002+05:30

Most of us came here for the stamp (and the job).

Some of us got more than what we bargained for.

People, places, memories and lessons. Every single day that defines who I am, how I think, what I do and where I go.

I am not stamped. And I am not etched.

I have these two years firmly chiseled all over my existence. This defines my identity like nothing else can...

It's a late goodbye...

2008-03-23T23:20:00.002+05:30

This time last year, Sheeba and Suma wrote what they felt.

I could see it coming then, and yet, now that it's upon me, I scarcely know how to deal with it.

The story is the same, as is the plot. Only the actors have changed...

A Promise is a Promise

2008-01-11T11:35:00.000+05:30

Was watching the unveiling live on television. Murphy was watching too, apparently. Because when the cars had been driven on to stage. And Mr Tata had told M/s Pachauri and Narain what he thought of their concerns. And when talk gently veered towards the most important bit - whether the car would live up to its name...

...the power went off. I don't recollect feeling so listless in the recent past.

Then Murphy went to sleep. And the television roared back to life again.

"A promise is a promise..." he was saying. And that, for some bizarre reason, gave me goosebumps.

A first year, half-wit finance major will tell you that Rs 1-lac five years ago are worth much more today. Time value of money and all that jazz. Inflation has its impact, as does risk. In this case, surging raw material prices have had their share of the fun.

But, well, a promise is a promise. Rs 1-lac dealer price, plus VAT and transportation.

For everyone who said it wasn't possible, balls to you.

(And go start figuring out how to make your $3,000 cars now - it's never too late!)

Tata Nano and the New Ratan Tata

2008-01-11T10:08:00.000+05:30

It was his day yesterday. Global biggies moved their launches around so they could keep out of the way of the Nano juggernaut. For one day on the tenth of January, Ratan Tata and the Nano were to the automobile industry what Shah Rukh Khan in Diwali is to Bollywood.

Ratan Tata had transformed himself. I can not claim to be exceptionally well-read on the man. All I knew was that he is dignified, soft-spoken and somewhat shy.

All that had changed yesterday. He seemed visibly propelled by the scale of his achievement. And that seemed to have changed a little something within him. He was still sophisticated and dignified, yes, but he was also sharp and aggressive.

Sitting on this side of the TV screen, that barb at Osama Suzuki felt good; it must've felt really good from that side of the camera. No one was spared. Pachauri was mocked, and Sunita Narain was asked to take a hike in her woods.

Honestly, I could've kissed his hand for slapping the skeptics across their faces.

You, Sir, have made me proud.

Tata Nano - Lost for Words

2008-01-11T09:55:00.000+05:30

While reams have been churned out about the Tata Nano across the Indian and electronic media, I have been lost for words for most part of yesterday.

Spell-bound, tongue-tied, fascinated and proud to the point of feeling goosebumps when I first saw it.

Will try and articulate myself better over the next couple of posts - don't know if I'll have anything new to say, but nevertheless.

It is a victory.

Tata One

2008-01-04T13:57:00.000+05:30

Have been thinking about the One-lakh rupee car for a while now. For starters, let's just call it 'Tata One'. There's a huge amount of buzz around the launch at the Auto Expo, but I'm saying nothing new. Yet.

Back at the magazines, there was talk about a new distribution paradigm that Tata Motors was trying to achieve with the One. I wasn't an MBA then, and my knowledge about these things was extremely limited. Right, now that I almost am one, let me spew some jargon.

Traditionally, in the Indian automotive industry, the role of the channel has been fairly limited. Two primary functions: one, geographical reach; and two, inventory holding. Essentially, what dealerships do is allow the manufacturer to 'reach' a bigger geographic region cost effectively; and buy, store and sell cars bought from the manufacturer to share risk. There are secondary functions, but well, they're secondary.

There are two very obvious pitfalls. One, the manufacturer is now at least one level away from its customers. That impacts customer experience - positively or otherwise, distorts customer feedback, and shaves off manufacturer margins. Two, the very real problem of a channel conflict. In the automotive industry, channel conflicts seem to be fairly straightforward in nature - two or more dealers vying for the same set of customers. Sorting out channel conflicts, however, is anything but straightforward.

So the benefit(s) are in one paragraph, and the cost(s) are in the next. Clearly, the objective is to maximize benefits while reducing costs to an absolute minimum.

Here's what I think about how distribution strategies can be played around with.

1. The manufacturer enters into a strategic alliance with a limited number of channel partners. Say 12 on an all-India basis.

2. These 12 channel partners invest a significant amount of resources (land, labour, capital) into the venture. What comes out of the investment is a sophisticated mini manufacturing facility - 12 in total, across the country.

3. The manufacturer has a main manufacturing facility (say Singur for the Tata One) from where it ships standardized, 'base version' vehicles to each of the 12 'satellite' manufacturing locations.

4. Each of the 12 locations has the capability (at its 'mini manufacturing facility') to build on the standardized version shipped to it, and create part-customized models as per its own business strategy and objectives.

5. Effectively, what we have done is that we've split the monolithic manufacturer into one main manufacturer and 12 satellite companies, each with its own capabilities. Each of those 12 are now proper 'companies' - they have business objectives, strategies to meet those objectives, a marketing department to study the market and make recommendations on how to serve the most lucrative segment profitably and an operations department to implement those recommendations efficiently.

The advantages I see:

1. Channel conflict is minimized. Each of the 12 'companies' is free to segment the market as per its capabilities, evaluate segments and single out group(s) of customers that it is going to 'target'. The company that does this in the most innovative manner is likely to avoid channel conflict by carving out its place in the market. From the manufacturer's perspective, the 12 companies constantly strive to push the innovation frontier; irrespective of who amongst those wins, the manufacturer wins.

2. Risk sharing is now significantly deeper. In a way, the manufacturer has got quite a few things off its back. One, it does not have to study the entire market in great detail (or understand varying nuances in varied parts of the country) - someone else does it for the manufacturer. Two, in terms of manufacturing, the manufacturer is now churning out a standardized version of the car from its facility, the channel partners share a part of the manufacturing workload. Three, the understanding of local sub-markets is richer and deeper, and the capability of serving the variations profitably is significantly enhanced. Four, the distribution strategy seems inherently conducive to mass customizations.

The biggest disadvantage I can see is that all this is a huge investment. For a car like the Tata One, where volumes are more or less assured, the investment might be justified. But for a more risky model, where success probabilities are lower, I'm not sure one can justify the hassle. The knee-jerk workaround is that one scale this up for multiple models from the same manufacturer, and hence share risks across models. But that's easier said than done.

Secondly, I am not sure manufacturers want to let go of the control - especially on the marketing and distribution front. It's a toss-up between looking at these aspects as 'overheads' or as 'crucial cogs of the business'. The workaround I can see is that the manufacturer picks up an equity stake in each of the 12 channel partners. That way, the manufacturer retains control - perhaps indirectly - and yet ensures that its own overheads are pared. Again, easier said than done.

Rediff says this in a story on the Tata One.

...it [Tata One] will be produced differently, using dealers as a part of a distributive manufacturing network.

All this is a little like a father adopting 12 young sons, teaching them the business, setting up 12 factories, and then letting them compete with each other fair and square. Irrespective of whether number 1 wins or number 12, the father wins in any case.

Miserable analogies are known to destroy a fat lot. Nevertheless.

Faceless Communication

2008-01-03T03:08:00.001+05:30

Can I just say I hate mass-manufactured communication.

I detest SMSes that I know have been sent to fifty seven other people. I refuse to reply to them.

I can not stand Orkut scraps that wish me a prosperous new year as if I am just another number in the 'friend' list. I refuse to reply to them either. And when it's some smart-ass two-bit program that adds a 'Hi Jayesh' in the beginning to mask the fact that it is a faceless, thoughtless mass-manufactured scrap that was sent to a xrillion other people, I feel no mercy in deleting the crap at once. That's not a spelling mistake.

I fail to comprehend marriage invitations sent by e-mail to a thousand other recipients. I especially hate the obnoxiously added sign-off line - "Please consider this as a personal invitation." I usually don't go to such marriages. Unless the food is likely to be really, really (really) good.

Mass-manufactured communication, like mass-manufactured anything else has no feeling, no emotion, and most certainly, no character. It is heartless, thoughtless and meaningless. It is created with a singularly disgusting intent - one of keeping in touch for the sake of it. It reeks of "I'm so busy, I don't have time to communicate with each one of you individually. But hey, I know you exist somewhere. So here, take this, be happy." It is symbolic of the shameful, miserable, time-bound lives we live. Where friendships are as deep as the breadth of one's LinkedIn network. And where we have no time for cherishing beautiful relationships.

Proponents of the art will talk about convenience. And will balk at the importance I am according to emotion and feelings. Gah to all of you. If you think your convenience comes before what I mean to you, I think I'll take a roll of toilet paper for a friend instead.

Dogs!

2007-12-28T15:46:00.000+05:30

Rumours flying thick and fast on the Internet say that Cerberus is looking to sue Daimler for misleading them into believing that Chrysler has a future. Strange indeed, if there's any semblance of credibility to these rumours.

Number one, Chrysler still has a future (bleak as it may be). If Cerberus can't turn it around with its deep pockets and 'commitment' to restoring profitability, something is not in place. Giving up so soon doesn't seem to make too much sense at all.

Number two, even if Chrysler has no future, it is unlikely Daimler will earn any raps. Caveat Emptor is what business law courses teach in the very first session. As a private equity firm, Cerberus has most probably undertaken a huge number of due diligences and valuations. In spite of their capability and resources, if they've screwed up, then their investors should be very worried.

On the other hand, if Daimler has indeed forged financial statements to add roses to Chrysler's sheets, things are going to get rough for them as well. On the back of recent corruption stories coming to light in Germany, that doesn't seem to be such an unlikely possibility then. (Successful journalists and irresponsible generalizations go hand in hand).

Read, Reader, Readest

2007-12-23T14:08:00.000+05:30

Google seems to have this uncanny ability to come up with something innovative just when:

1. You're mildly starting to get used to what they've already offered, and

2. You think, "There's no way they can add a new feature to that..."

I have been using Google Reader to track my RSS feeds for a few months now. And while broadly I've been an extremely satisfied user, interest sometimes wanes.

Rahul Gaitonde first came up with this post pointing out how I could share my Google Reader reading list and make it appear on my blog. I have gone ahead accepted his suggestion - so that 'Read List' you see in the right pane is a list of items that I've shared on my Google Reader.

Post this (promise, not intended) however, Google seems to have done something to rejuvenate the 'Share' functionality on Reader. Reams have been written about Google's masterstroke, in bringing Reader and social networking together so seamlessly.

I see posts that my friends (from my Gtalk list) have shared, and vice versa. It is akin to suddenly being exposed to a variety of very interesting pages/blogs on a host of interesting topics that I would otherwise have not stumbled upon. Stealth social networking or otherwise, as long as the feature's making me wiser, I'll live with it.

Now that that's out of the way, let's look at a few suggestions I (with my limited technology background) have:

1. I'd like an option to append a short comment with items that I am sharing with my friends.

I have started to realise that I am thinking about the stories that I am sharing - that's perhaps the reason I am sharing them in the first place. So when I am thinking, I'd like to express myself as well. What about a nice 'Append' window (not unlike the 'Reply' window on Gmail) that lets me add a limited number of characters (say 1024) to every story that I am sharing. Just a small take, maybe a quick opinion.

2. I'd like to see an option which lets me comment on items from within the Reader interface, without having to navigate to the site from which the item originates.

I'd like this for my reading list, as well as items that my friends are sharing - essentially, all items that are showing up on my Reader. The first impression is that sites that rely on impressions, hits or page visits will take a hit (!!) - wonder if there's a workaround though.

Lastly, let's see if we can integrate the two together - perhaps allow me to share my comment on a particular item along with the item itself.

All noo!

2007-12-22T08:06:00.000+05:30

Annnddd...

This is the new blog. Certain fundamental changes have been made. Certain fundamental changes will be made over a longer term horizon. Some are immediately apparent, some will become apparent when you spend more time loitering around here. Why you'd want to do that, though, stumps me.

Anyway, here's the heads up:

1. The layout is significantly cleaner than the previous cluttered page that you were welcomed to.

2. Gone are the incredibly colourful pages. The purity, innocence and professionalism of white (!) is in. Peace, and all that jazz. (Sheeba thinks that's a lot of marketing BS, but she stares at white reports all day, so I can see where her intense hatred for anything white - and professional - comes from).

3. On a broad level, the design, fonts and colours are representative of the changes that have occurred in me over the last three years. I will skip a detailed explanation as it will delve into pseudopsychological metaphysics, and will most definitely be painfully long...

4. ...posts here this point onward will be shorter, crisper and more frequent. We will talk about many things that don't matter too much to a lot of people. We'll also not go through 21 drafts and 32 version changes (after running it through 64 friends) before posting here. It's going to be singularly straight from the heart.

5. The links in the right panel have now been updated. There are a few IIMK related websites, as well as a whole host of bloggers from IIMK - it was wonderful discovering that in addition to the legendary Shrikanths and RGs who are mild celebrities in the Indian blogosphere, there's also a Hitesh Sharma who posts his inimitable stories for us lesser mortals.

6. There's also a new RSS subscription link that you can use to add the blog feed URL to an RSS reader (I recommend Google Reader, but more on that later). Considering that there's going to be a lot more activity here than this URL has seen for a while, it pays (me) to be up to speed at all times.

7. The biggest change is in the name, though. Jumbling Jaggernaut is now Jabbering Jaggernaut. I didn't have enough convincing reasons when I named it that way three years back. And I don't have enough convincing reasons now. So we'll let it rest. Though I think it comes from an intense desire to create an intelligent alliteration - and 'J' is severely constrained for appropriate adjectives.

Before we violate point 4 (if we haven't already, that is), zooga zooka.

PS - That's 'See you around!' (in some African language)

PPS - Suggestions on anything are welcome. New features, new bots, widgets, anything. I'm just spewing jargon - I don't know what these things mean. No, really.

PPPS - Not used to writing short posts, hence the flurry of Post Scripts.

Down time!

2007-12-21T09:27:00.000+05:30

This blog has been in an abject state of misery for so long that it's not funny. It must feel like an abandoned child. Well, if I were it, I'd feel like an abandoned child alright.

So very soon we're going to try and take it through a comprehensive makeover. We'll get some jazzy new templates, brighten up the colours a little bit, make the fonts nicer and more attractive, and most importantly, update those links in the right panel (look at that, one of the links is pointing to an event from last year - that's more outdated than my Internet Marketing professor).

Recent divorces and break-ups mean that the 'About Me' section will change a little bit too.

High on the agenda, high on motivation, low on time.

Change is Good. Eh?

2007-09-29T11:08:00.000+05:30

Can I just say that I find Vodafone despicable, detestful, abominable and thoroughly, thoroughly hateful. I wish it would just go away as swiftly as it has descended – almost stooped – into our lives.

Glad I could get that out so well.

I have been ruing the loss of Hutch. I should know a thing or two about brands. And how people get attached to them. Mostly for no explicable, scientific reason. But I don’t. I don’t understand why I lament Hutch being turned into Vodafone. Really, what does three pink stylized petals changing to one red quotation mark do to my life. Pink, for heaven’s sake. They almost made it fashionable again.

I’m trying to find explanations. The best I’ve been able to manage yet is ‘I just liked Hutch’. Come to think of it a little more, the brand had character. And that’s hard to find in a world obsessed with numbers, volumes, marketshares and bottom lines. Hutch had life, energy, vivacity, enthusiasm. It was mischievous and eccentric, youthful, cocky and yet so adorable. And it had balls. With that kind of pink, it sure had balls.

Hutch seemingly never bothered with the volumes. They just happened to get them. People just happened to buy Hutch. They never – and not just ‘never’, but ‘never’ – pestered me with twenty three messages a day, reminding me that if I referred a friend at the Mavoor Road Hutch Shop, I could win a Reebok bag. They just never bothered to stoop to these despicable antics. They were unconcerned in a cool, chill sort of manner. And I loved that about them. Leading the relaxed life. And letting things come to them instead of running furiously behind them.

Let me now take the liberty of painting Vodafone’s picture. Brand map, is that called? Screw the jargon.

If Hutch was the ultra-cool college icon dressed in jeans, t-shirt and with a stud in one ear, Vodafone is the investment banker dressed in a depressing grey suit and a lifeless blue tie – works twenty two hours a day. And thinks he likes it. Vodafone is a stuffed up, disgusting epitome of capitalistic nonchalance. Vodafone is a lifeless, characterless, colourless, money-minded, maniacal entity that will suffer a brain hemorrhage if it loses 0.001% of its marketshare in a month. Vodafone is the materialistic brand that will stoop to any level to rid you of a few hundred rupees more. Vodafone is the hound that will send you twenty three messages every hour to remind you that if you would be kind enough to get one of your friends trapped in their trap, they’d give you a holy chance in hell to win a Reebok bag that’ll be big enough to swallow your handkerchief without a burp.

Not only is Hutch now Vodafone, that pug is now a hound baying for the last penny in your wallet.

Change is good. Yeah right, I’d like to see some change again.

Bribe Barb

2007-09-21T23:40:00.000+05:30

Dear Mr Honest Traffic Cop,

I am the one who broke a relatively obscure (I think) traffic light at 10 pm. I am the one in front of whose car you dangerously danced so that you could get me to stop. I am the one who stopped and rolled down the window as you walked up to my car.

You spoke very politely, with an almost queer cheer in your voice. You greeted me, and you smiled. It wasn’t the devious, devilish smile that I am used to receiving from your ilk. It was honest and sincere. And that is commendable. For that time of the night. You must have been standing there in the noise, smoke, dust and filth for many hours. And after all that, if you can conjure up that smile, you deserve some respect…

…or at the very least, you deserve to be treated (and spoken to) respectably. Unfortunately for me, I did neither. I was harsh and rude to you. I spoke to you with a generous dose of contempt. I looked down upon you. And insulted you with the tone and words that I used.

But there was more. I didn’t stop at that. I offered you a bribe. Shamelessly, thoughtlessly, nonchalantly and remorselessly. You were visibly upset. I’ve offered bribes before, and I think I’ve learnt enough to pull them off with some degree of success. Most times, it just needs the right degrees of cheer, bonhomie, understanding, respect and surreptitiousness. This time, unfortunately, I bungled up. I just stuck a fifty-rupee note in your face. That must’ve felt really insulting.

You gave me some of the contempt back. And deservedly so. But in your own polite, civilized way. You just smiled a smile dripping with sarcasm and contempt. And asked me to leave. I thanked you and left in a huff. Perhaps because I knew I was in the wrong. And couldn’t get myself to face it.

You are an honest traffic cop. Unlike most others. You don’t even have a pot-belly. You were courteous and cultured. And you were not staring at my wallet. I hope I haven’t pushed you in the other direction through what I did today. I almost feel as if I have killed a good cop, but that’s pushing it too far really.

I respect you for the way you conducted yourself. And I hope that you set an example for your brethren. Unfortunately, the path ahead is rough. And people like me add a few more potholes.

I am usually not so uncultured an uncouth. Maybe it was the fact that I was clearly, doubtlessly in the wrong – one tends to get defensive. Maybe it was collective hate against your race manifesting itself upon you. I don’t know, really. Whatever it was, it does not count as an excuse.

I am sorry for the way I behaved, and for the way things panned out tonight. If you’re reading this (unlikely), or if we meet again (unlikelier still), I would like to buy you a beer. And that would not be as a bribe.

Hope someone up there makes more of you, and less of me.

Regards,

Signal-Breaker

IP is Dead. Long Live IP.

2007-06-20T00:18:00.000+05:30

I am characteristically irritable today. And I choose to vent it out. I ranted at a friend so much, she asked if I had PMS. It really doesn't get worse.

It's been a day since I've reached campus. And it feels strangely dead. Somehow devoid of energy. It's still pretty, all right. But in a dumb, Claudia Schiffer kind of way. Not the blisteringly intelligent turn-on beauty of a...umm, never mind. There's very little buzzing activity around. Everyone is just going through the routine. Attending lectures, eating, sleeping (mostly in class), listening to music.

And yet something important is very unlike itself.

IP Messenger was always (always) buzzing with activity. It was characteristic of the irrepressible energy on campus. It was always there, in that little corner of the screen, blinking away, demanding attention, seducing one to give up the project report due the next day and indulge in some mindless inanity.

IP had character. It had a culture. Written rules. And unwritten ones. IP could locate people, songs, movies and TV serial episodes. Rare songs, bizarre movies, and never-before-seen footage from various events were all there on IP. Waiting to be discovered, shared, and savoured.

IP had a sense of humour. It was witty. It could pun. Sarcastic, bitchy, nasty. Naughty, innocent and juvenile at times. Entertaining always.

There was competition on IP. The site of some famous spam wars, IP saw many a monumental battle fought between PGP08 and PGP09. All of it somewhat dwindled when PGP09 and PGP10 were together on campus, but we still had a historic battle in which PGP09 was RIP-ped apart mercilessly.

All of it seems to be falling apart rather quickly, though. I've been looking for a song, an album, a movie, and one episode (any one) of a famous TV series since morning today. I've found nothing.

We are the seniors now. I am feeling a little lost, to be honest. Somewhat rudderless. I don't know about the batch. Most people wouldn't accept it, really. But we're still finding our feet, coming to terms with the fact that a lot of people are soon going to be looking up to us for a lot of answers…

…and songs. And movies. And TV series. I'm not disappointed because I've not found what I was looking for. Just sad that I found nothing at all. No smart-alecy retorts. No sarcasm. Not a single snide remark. No character. No humour. No life. Just a stupid icon in the corner of my screen. That refuses to blink.

We're still just about finding our feet. We've not discovered our Deb Bhai yet, who'd bring out any Hindi song from any part of the universe - you just had to ask. Or our Arkaprabha Ray, who'd do the same with any English song. Or our Senti, who had the most bizarre collection of sports clips (talk of micro-segmentation). Or Brajesh, who was looking for his 'half-white, half-sleeved, full kurtha'. Or Bond, who'd have documentaries on every topic under the sun. And then some.

PGP09 had character. And they lent it to IP. We've not discovered character yet. Maybe we will. Maybe we won't. Maybe things will get better. Maybe they're meant to get worse batch after batch.

I'm sitting here trying hard to get IP to work. Pumping in what I can. I feel like a helpless doctor with shock pads (!) who is trying hard to revive a dead man. It's not working. At least not yet.

Word flies around that the new batch is all black and white and grey. Wonder if we're going from bad to worse. And whether darker, gloomier times lie up ahead. Time will tell, of course. The days in between are painful, meanwhile. And some times depressing. Enough to drive a perfectly normal guy to PMS :)

The Dream - Collaborative Short Story

2007-03-24T18:30:00.000+05:30

My collaborator on this effort is Prof Lionel Aranha. Prof Aranha taught us Business Law in the third term at IIMK. He also teaches at TAPMI and IIMI. In his words, he is an 'Academic Nomad'. Enough said! :)

I awoke with a start. The damn electricity department was at it again - unscheduled power cut at a godforsaken hour. It was dark around me and it was humid. Sweat puddles were forming on my stomach waiting to trickle down on to the bed. Flashes of lightning at a distance seemed to play with the shadows in the room. I reached for the torch by my bedside. The beam of the torch fell on the still ceiling fan before I directed it to the alarm clock on the bedside table. It was five minutes past two. I reached for the bottle of water. It was empty. I cursed the electricity department as I heaved myself off the bed, and on bare feet wandered into the kitchen for a drink of water.

The distant roll of thunder accompanied by a sudden waft of cool breeze assured me that the long awaited monsoon was arriving. It was the 6th of June or was it the 7th... who cared? The rain was overdue. I opened the door of the refrigerator and groped for the bottle of water. It was then that the phone rang. It startled me. It was quite an eerie sound at such a very early part of what would be a wet dawn.

Clutching the water bottle I stumbled into the living room. The flashes of lighting were becoming brighter as they guided me to the phone, which was sitting on the desk by the window. I stumbled to the phone and picked it up in the midst of the fourth ring. "Hello". My voice seemed stuck. I cleared my throat. The voice on the other end was muffled. It was that familiar voice that I hated. “Did you do my work you bastard?” he said. Just then there was a discharge of lightning and the phone went dead. I must have muttered something as I dropped the phone on the cradle. The clap of thunder that followed startled me.

I was annoyed; he has the gall to call me at two in the morning and call me a bastard. I wasn’t upset with the name; I have been called worse names in the past. I wondered if he was drunk. The voice was menacing, as it usually was. Not that I was scared, but it annoyed me. Why at two in the morning? He could have called me at a convenient time.

I opened the door of the balcony and stepped out. A mixture of warm air followed by a waft of cool breeze hit me. The first drops of rain fell to the ground. The earth welcomed the first rain with a warm scent of mud. I paused and took a deep breath. Another discharge of lightning streaked in the sky. For an instant it lit up the earth beneath. The clap of thunder that followed was loud and long. I pondered a while longer then stepped in and closed the door of the balcony. The rain was coming at a steady pace bringing a coolness that was much needed.

I took a long swig from the bottle of water and sat down on the bed. I felt a chill or was it my imagination. Lying on the bed I tried to sleep but I couldn’t. The combined effect of the dream and the phone call prevented me from falling into deep slumber. It must have taken a while for me to fall a sleep. The reassuring rhythm of the rain and the coolness that it had imported must have helped. I slept like a log. No dreams, nothing.

The whirr of the ceiling fan woke me up. I shivered in the cool breeze. My eyes fell on the clock. It was ten minutes past seven. I heaved myself from the bed and switched off the fan. The bed looked inviting but the toilet beckoned my swollen bladder…

There were only two calls that had to be heeded at all times. This was one of them. The other was one was the one that had rudely shaken me up last night. That word still rung in my ear. And stung me hard. What business did the rascal have talking to me like that at that unearthly hour.

Someone up there, meanwhile, seemed to have a swollen bladder too. It was really pouring now - strange for this time of the year. Just as well, though. Yesterday's job hadn't gone off as easily as I had imagined.

My thoughts went back to yesterday's day at work. I had always thought that the fat pig would be nothing more than a cake-walk. It had turned very messy rather too soon. Some fight the pig had put up. The cool breeze brought me back. Bombay being Bombay - nothing had changed from 2005 to 2015 - the almost-instantaneous flooding at Bandra would only help matters. The rain would wash it all away. It would wash away the blood and the fingerprints. Fear would wash away the eyewitnesses. Time would wash away the memory. What would wash away the sin, though…

It was a lazy Sunday morning, and I was sitting in the balcony. My thoughts were drifting, just like those black clouds in the distance…

It had been three years in this profession now. The depression of 2011 still brought back painful memories. It was possibly the most inappropriate time to be doing an MBA. I was, and I couldn't help it. The fact that I was studying at India's best business school didn't help. Multi-crore salaries - the norm only a few years before - had all but evaporated into nothingness. The jobs had dried up, and desperation had set in. Everyone, after all, was doing an MBA only for the money.

Bhai had recruited from campus for the first time that year. When 'Bombay Supari' approached the Career Advancement Cell with the intention of participating in Final Placements, there was shock all around. The desperation drowned out every other feeling pretty soon, however. Bhai picked up seven 'Assignment Officers' that year. I was one of them. It was always going to be a tough life, a dangerous existence - Bhai had warned us. But then, those were desperate times. And desperate times call for desperate measures.

Three of my batchmates were killed in a police encounter within months of joining the 'Company'. With them, one part of me had also died. I stopped fearing death that day.

Bhai's behaviour had stunned me. Everyone could be replaced here, I realised that day. At most times, within minutes. Bhai didn't care about lives. Bhai didn't bother his conscience with the potential that these young men held - the potential that was being clinically destroyed. We were just soldiers in Bhai's pointless war. Nameless, faceless soldiers. Bricks in the wall.

From then on, my relationship with Bhai went downhill. Things had finally come to a stand the day before - just before the last bit of 'work' that Bhai had wanted me to execute in Bandra. Bhai remained obstinate - perhaps it was old age catching up with him. I had no option, but to go with his plan of action. Few people ever had an option when Bhai spoke. Some fight the pig had put up. Wouldn't have, had Bhai heard me out for a few minutes.

Bhai would have to be taken care of, were the Company to flourish. Survive, even.

It was still raining. And pretty heavily too now. The rain would have washed away last night's killing. And it would wash away tonight's too. I checked the holster. The Smith & Wesson 0.44 was there all right. It always was. One-two-three-four-five-six. Wouldn't need all of them - but in the three years in the profession, if there was one thing that I had learnt, it was that one can never be too sure.

Bhai was alone in his room, as I had expected. He turned around at the sound of my footsteps. I pulled out the 0.44, took aim, and…

…awoke with a start. The electricity department was at it again - unscheduled power cut at a Godforsaken hour. It was dark around me and it was humid. Sweat puddles were forming on my stomach waiting to trickle down on to the bed.

Tip Tick Toe

2007-01-22T19:14:00.000+05:30

Tip tip tip tip…

"I had told him to get the tap repaired a week back. Bloody good for nothing lump of fat and bones."

Tick tick tick tick…

"I had told her to remove the clock from that wall a week back. She's just sitting in one place and accumulating fat by the day."

Tip tip tip tip…

"Aargh! Bombay has turned into such a trash can now. So different from the Bombay Rustom and I landed in, thirty years ago…after they blew up our house in Afghanistan with a deadly time bomb."

Tick tick tick tick…

"This ticking reminds me of impending death, of the sheer ruthlessness with which time marches on, ticking off my life, one second at a time…with the cold brutality of a gang of contract murderers. Much like those men who blew up our house in Kabul…"

Tip tip tip tip…

"'It's just water', I keep telling myself. As I did on that fateful night. It was only when Ma happened to scald her fingers did we realise that it was acid. Each drop taking our home a step closer to doom…"

Tick tick tick tick…

"It was only when Ma shrieked after scalding her fingers did we realise that something was not in place. Pa happened to notice an eerie sound from behind the almirah. 'Tick tick tick', it went…"

Tip tip tip tip…

"It didn't take us long to figure that there had been a security lapse at the Prime Minister's residence - the most fiercely guarded building in the country. Or the fact that we had only a few minutes…"

Tick tick tick tick…

"Ma and Pa made us run out into the lawn outside. 'Keep running as hard as you can', was the last I heard before…"

Tip tip tip tip…

"The sound was deafening. 'So this is how the death knell sounded', I had thought to myself then…"

Tick tick tick tick…

"Bombay is still the way it was so many years back when we landed. Still waiting with open arms for anyone with half a dream and a big heart."

Tip tip tip tip…

"Bombay is still the ruthless bitch it was so many years back when we landed. Still ready to snuff out anyone who wants to lead a clean life of honour. Where else are citizens more afraid of the Police, than they are of the Underworld?!"

Tick tick tick tick…

"Bombay has allowed me to build this multi-billion dollar empire single-handedly. I wonder if it would have been possible anywhere else in the world…"

Tip tip tip tip…

"Yes, Bombay has allowed Rustom to build a multi-billion dollar empire single-handedly. But at what cost. One can not live a clean existence here. To be fair to him, Rustom has tried his best. In the process though, he has made more enemies than he thinks he has…"

Tick tick tick tick…

"It has been a good life, I'd say. I've made a lot of money, earned a lot of fame, and generally been on good terms with most people. Most except two. Roshan thinks they're out to kill us. But you know how paranoid women can get for no rea…"

Tip tip tip tip…

Tick tick tick tick…

Tip tip tip tip…

Tick tick tick tick…

People are strange...

2006-10-24T21:28:00.000+05:30

It's a strange world we live in. Full of paradoxes.

Distances are shrinking, chasms are widening.

We are so close to each other, ten digits away, a click away. And yet we are so far from each other.

So reachable. And yet not so.

We understand each other so well. And we don't know each other at all.

We want to be with each other. And we want to be alone.

Everything's the same. And so much has changed.

Everything's so new. But I have been here and done that before.

I am learning a lot. But am I turning wiser? :)

Two days...

2006-07-11T20:28:00.000+05:30

It will all be forgotten in two days. The city will ‘bounce back’, ‘show its resilience’ and ‘give ample proof of its never-say-die spirit’. It doesn’t matter that a few hundred people are no more. A few hundred lives mercilessly cut short, a few hundred dreams cruelly snapped. A few hundred numbers, a few hundred statistics. A few hundred funerals, and then life will be the same again. Because it’ll all be forgotten in two days.

The same old bickering between political parties. The Shiv Sena blaming the NCP for ruining the state. The BJP slinging mud at the Congress for letting the law-and-order situation crumble. Fiery speeches, bloated egos, ulterior motives, heartless politicians, and a mindless public.

But it’ll all be forgotten. Empty abuses, helplessness, anger and rage. There is nothing anyone can do about it. Other than try fighting the system, and giving up one’s own life in the process. Not in one swift stroke of a chopper, or a momentary bang from a pistol. Worse, much worse! Giving up the life slowly, gradually. Day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. Worrying. About oneself, the family. Worrying about whether one will get to witness the next hour.

So one abuses – empty, vacuous expletives that mean nothing, and can do no harm. And then one forgets. ‘Terror strikes Bombay…Again’. The same headlines, the same pictures. We’ve been there before, and done that. And consoled ourselves – ‘It can’t happen to me’. It always happens to someone else, until one day we’re the ‘someone else’ for someone else.

And terror will strike Bombay again. Because we do nothing about it. Perhaps because we can’t do anything about it. Because we’re strong. And brave. And resilient. And we can ‘bounce back’. We are Indians too; we forgive. And forget. A little too soon. Two days is all it takes…

Grim and Beer it!

2006-06-18T19:18:00.000+05:30

Humankind's unexplicable obsession with twenty-two machine-fit young men running around on some grass, trying to kick a leathery sphere into a netted space between two posts is rivalled only by one other thing: humankind's useless, pointless, and in most cases, terribly humiliating obsession with alcohol.

From the gutters of Guatemala to the ditches of Denmark, man's obsession with alcohol is thoroughly universal, absolutely consistent and completely, completely unfounded. You could be in the darkest alleyway of New York, or the brightest, most cheerful beach in Hawaii, but across the world, the way a drunkard's eyes light up at the very sight of anything remotely resembling alcohol is the common rope that binds nationalities; the only hope that some day man will not destroy himself in mushroom-clouds of nuclear explosions. Common sense and basic decision-making capabilities follow the irrationally enlarged irises, and are the next casualties in man's quest for the ultimate 'high'. The muscles fail next, as the heart deems them unworthy of supplying blood to. And then the brain gradually stops receiving (or accepting, I do not know), its normal ration of nutrition - if the brain exists, that is. The final nail is hammered in when the drinking man drinks, drinks, drinks some more, loses his senses, and collapses in a heap of fat, bones, hair and vomit.

So much so that the other marginally less zonked out mortals have to pick him up and put him in bed. The vomit, in case you're wondering, is still right there. On the floor, in the clothes, heck, its hanging in the very atmosphere after a while. You are in a situation where you are neither conscious, nor unconscious. Not subconsious, even. You think you can stand, but you can't - walking is in a different chapter of the book. You think you are talking sense, but you are not. And you have to be carried from your self-created filth on four shoulders, all of them drunk and swaying. What could be more humiliating, more demeaning? How could it be 'fun'. Or 'addictive'. How could people want to do it again and again? Every morning? Every evening? And every night? Hell, honestly, it doesn't even taste good. Why would anyone want to drink something that doesn't taste good; something that guarantees a splitting headache the next day; something that leaves you messing up your room, clothes and bed; something that - after you've made a holy fool of yourself dancing like Dharmendra to Comfortably Numb - leaves your reputation in tatters?

These are the people who have never driven a car from the heart. They have never approached a corner thinking: "Damn, if I don't take this one at the right speed, I am doomed. My career will lie in shambles". They have never (ever) thought about the ideal speed at which to hit the apex, and the precise moment to start accelerating again. These are the men who don't know the joys of driving, or the joys of anything other than opening a dark-tinted bottle of foul-smelling, bad-tasting alcohol and an hour later, being carried on four drunk and swaying shoulders. These are the men who think that alcohol is a pre-requisite to enjoying Pink Floyd. Obviously, they'd think so. They have never heard Pink Floyd without the senseless haze of booze.

I will not be preachy. Buy all means, and by all means, drink, drink, drink till you zonk off. Wake up next morning with a headache so severe that you barely remember your name. Or how you got the headache. Lose your senses, dance like Dharmendra to Comfortably Numb. Make us laugh. Just don't make us clean up the filth. Or make your drinks! Baah.

And always remember. You are not alone. See those twenty-two guys running behind that spherical thing. And see those few billions who are watching them, jumping up, collapsing, laughing and crying as if their lives depended on whether the little spherical thing goes between the posts into the nets, or over them? They're all with you. Peace be with the world. Never mind that it's alcohol-induced, senseless, hazy peace.

Wetting, Setting and Other Adventures

2006-06-13T20:09:00.000+05:30

So I wet my pants twice in a single day today. That normally does not happen in the city. It's happened here, though. Twice. In one day.

I hadn't played table-tennis in a long, long while. In addition to forgetting how a TT bat (or is that a racquet) feels in the hand, I had also forgotten how dormant muscles react under sudden stress. Mine, apparently, react with a lingering pain that accompanies every single movement of my left and right eyelids. And then there's the sweat. Coming from the air-conditioned confines of the city, I did not know that sweating could feel so good. After about thirty minutes of running around (ending up playing lawn tennis instead of the 'table' variety - few shots landed on the table anyway) I was drenched, soaked and - for the young men who like their words big - bedraggled. It felt good. Very good, indeed. When I wringed out the sweat from my shirt, I felt like I had climbed Mount Everest, got down, and climbed it again. On foot. And I wet my pants. With the sweat. So there!

The only time I have seen so much grass in the concrete jungle is in immaculately maintained lawns. Everytime I have seen it, it is accompanied by a rather courteous notice - 'Please do not walk on grass'. And I have never walked on grass. So I don't know what dew feels like. I have seen it in pictures. So I don't know how much of it really exists on a grass carpet. I had to find out. And I did. By walking on the lawns, which had no notice board. I was wondering whether I should go ask the security if we were permitted to walk on the grass. I thought they'd laugh at a question as silly as that, that idea was promptly dropped.

About three steps into the plush thick green carpet, and my feet were drenched, soaked, and - once again, for those who love their language jargonised - thoroughly bedraggled. Then I decided to wet my pants. By sitting in the grass. Three minutes into the bliss, an unlikely villain reared his ugly head. The grass poked in a variety of places not used to being poked. Insects hovered around menacingly, some, doubtless, poisonous. Playing with life was not the idea here, and I had to make a run back to the safe air-conditioned insectless confines of the computer centre.

Makes me think about how sadly out of touch we are with nature - the plants, trees, grass, wind, earth and stars. How little we know of them. How little we care. I am not - and I repeat, not - environmentally conscious. I don't think I am environmentally destructive either. I am just plain apathetic. It shames me to say that I really don't care if a thousand trees are being felled for that new stylish mall. I feel a momentary tinge of sadness, but nothing compelling enough to make me sit up and do something about it.

Something, of course, should be done. Otherwise the kids - when they come, that is - won't know how the stars in the night sky shimmer. Or how grass loaded with dew feels when you sit on it. Or how sweat dripping from your shirt feels when you wring it with all your remaining might. They won't have the chance to wet their pants the way I did today. For all you know, they might just go down the conventional road of 'trouser-wetting'. And how bad a thing will that be? Think about it. And plant a tree.

Virginity Lost...Again and again!

2006-06-12T23:39:00.000+05:30

It is a sight I only know too well. After suffering four years in Bombay University's BE program, it's a sight most engineers know only too well. Heads dropping down, surrendering to the seduction of sleep. That familiar drone, that goes on somewhere in the background. That drone you hear, but never listen to. Expressions. Of boredom, disgust, and in this particular case, plain astonishment. This, after all, is an IIM.

The astonishment is not entirely unjustified. People get here by sheer dint of their hard work. There are no quotas to gobble down the seat share without as much as a thankful burp. There are no backdoor entries. So only the really intelligent people make it through. But even they're not intelligent enough to figure that expectation only gives rise to disappointment. They came into the lecture hall for the first lecture expecting a dynamic dude to walk in on time, clip on the mic and go into a rhapsody about numbers, number systems and their ilk. Well, they were bound to be disappointed, really.

Humble apologies go out to Mr Professor Sir, who, undoubtedly, is a master of his art. He just can't teach very well. He couldn't communicate with the class, and something tells me he won't, for the next few months that we will be under his tutelage. Oh damn the expectations, I say.

A non-communicative professor who speaks in a slow, lazy drone can only translate into bobbing heads. The ones that droop slowly, giving into the beauty of dreamland, and then shake up into attention rather abruptly, sporting dazed pupils adjusting to the sight of a stranger droning away to eternity. After four years of tolerating the worst teachers in the country, I only know that look too well.

And then there are the 'enterprising' students. Some tapping away ferociously on their mobile phones, exhorting their mates to selflessly share the agony of the unending lecture. Some looking at the professor without a single blink, lost in deep thought, nodding - perhaps coincidentally - at all the right points in time; a time that seems to have stretched itself like a rugged rubber band. The ones nodding away rather eagerly; needless to say, at all the wrong instances, a nod that says: "No I don't understand what you're saying, even though I pretend I do." The consequence: "So Mr Bhatia, you are a doomed failure at maths." Mr Bhatia, nodding hard, and nodding eagerly: "Yes Sir". And then there are the last-bench dudes, the smart alecs, the young men for whom the world was created, the handsome blokes for whom womankind came into existence. Looking bored, sounding bored - like Calvin says: "Everything bores you when you are cool!" So there. And the faithful-to-our-notes buddies who will be the single-point source for notes on a wide variety of subjects - ranging from "the effects of inter-stellar hot gas diffusion on the ozone layer" to the "consequences of India's ambiguous stand on Iran on the rural animal husbandry industry". Professor's kiddos, the only ones who can redeem his pride for his profession. The only ones who will make him feel like he's accomplishing something substantial in life. Ironically, the only ones who will fool him into that illusory belief.

The air heavy with sleep. The atmosphere pregnant with tired exhaustion. The faces. The expressions that say nothing at all, and in the process, end up saying so much. The bobbing heads. The ill-disguised sighs. Of relief, of disgust, of disappointment. It is a sight I only know too well. A four-year BE was not for nothing :)

Virginity Lost! Again...

2006-06-12T09:19:00.000+05:30

It is a feeling I only know too well. Second week of June. Lots of new faces. Apprehension, shyness. Some over-smartness. It's the same every single time, every single place. I could be in the pre-primary section of a municipal school, or in the hallowed precincts of an IIM, some fundamental human reactions are...er, fundamental. So there!

And it happened to me again. As I strolled into our first meeting at 10pm in the 'night canteen'. Interesting venue, that. But nothing else had changed. There still was a sea of new faces, some smiling, some laughing (presumably out of nervousness), some plain nervous, and some pretending to be nervous while soaking in the atmosphere around them. There were glances all around. Some were apprehensive, a few (from the 'dudes' in the batch) were the 'checking out' kinds, directed towards the 'babes' in the batch. So much goes on in those first few minutes, that it's almost surreal. So many first impressions being formed, so many delusions being created - some courtesy the eclectic mix of European, American and Aussie accents being thrown around.

And yet, some day soon, it will all melt away into familiarity, camaraderie, bonding and relationships. Relationships that will each be different from the other. Some will be acrimonious, some mutual, and some, special. Some purely for achieving a purpose, objective and an aim. Some selfless, stupid and driven by the heart. Some that will fade away at the end of two years. Some that will refuse to, even at the end of twenty.

In that room full of young boys and girls - boisterous, calm, collected and nervous, all at once - there exists a world full of possibilities. What can be accomplished, what can be wasted. Who you can befriend, and who you can destroy with your arsenal of stinging sarcasm. Whether you can turn the MBA into a life-altering experience, or make it a waste of two years of your prime life. It is all upto you. Upto each one of us in that room. Peering into each other's eyes, listening, using all the world's experience to separate lies from the truth, to distinguish braggadocio from plain humble brilliance. Judging each other, forming opinions. And then one day it'll all melt away.

Till then, it is all the same. Everytime. From the pre-primary of a municipal school to the lush green campus of an IIM. All the same, and I only know it too well now :)

Ant it is the end of the world!

2006-04-25T18:16:00.000+05:30

Just fifteen days to go before I return to the pacifying embrace of motherhood, home-cooked food (I cannot believe I am saying this) and flushes that have a sense of responsibility towards mankind. Just fifteen days to go, and I was allowing myself to get carried away by the helium clouds of complacency that shouted: “You have learned everything that you needed to, oh enlightened one!” Little did I know that they would strike overnight.

Scams, politicians and the general shameless corruption make one puke from the wrong end. So, I generally sit on the pot with a copy of ‘Outlook’. This is going to test my ‘euphemism’ skills somewhat, but sitting with a copy of Outlook somehow makes bowel movement relatively ‘smooth’. It was no different that fateful day. But as I read an intricate account of the in-depth details and insightful analysis of how Sonia Gandhi admonished Manmohan Singh for saying something that he didn’t say, I felt a tingling sensation on my foot. Then on the other foot. The ‘tingling’ was on a gradual, but relentless path up my leg. Let me, at this point, digress from the issue that has not yet been laid out clearly, and let you in on the fact that I am at that age where my idea of a ‘turn on’ is not exactly a 50-year old Italian-Indian hybrid politician. I couldn’t possibly have a sub-conscious crush on this lady. No, it had to be something else.

I had no lenses on, which implies that I was as blind as the Dhritarashtra of bats. Looking closely, I spotted tiny black specs on my leg. They were moving up. Relentlessly marching towards their goal (whatever that would have been). Ant it struck me. ANTS!!!

I’ve lived in a clean house all my life. Ants to me have never meant more than tiny inconsequential many-legged losers. I have never felt scared, afraid or paranoid of ants. Ants, I have grown up to believe, are always meant to be squashed with slippers, shoes, hands, legs, newspapers…even toilet-paper. Unless they are black ants. In which case, they should be allowed to play around you, tickle you, and generally prove their playful innocuousness. After which, however, they must be squashed with slippers, shoes, hands, legs, newspapers…even toilet-paper.

On the fateful day, however, the tale unfolded differently. It is traditionally believed that sitting on the loo unlocks the brain’s hidden potential; it unearths the key to creative thinking in a jiffy. Rumour goes that Sir Alexander Graham Bell discovered that he needed a television, when he was sitting on the pot. How he went about trying to invent it, and ended up with a telephone is a story we shall keep for another day. Anyway, the creative neurons had fired up, and they were making my imagination run wild.

Horizons opened up and swallowed any semblance of sanity (pun unintended) that had been spared in this house. The destruction that these ants could cause was endless. They could burn up the building, eat up the furniture, swallow the clothes; the possibilities were infinite. Wide open now, and not bothering with Sonia and Manmohan, I gave the leg-climbers one final close look. “Well, they’re black ants. They’ll just play around for a while, run helter-skelter like insane buffoons, and disappear as mysteriously as they appeared”, I thought to myself. The thought, needless to say, was very comforting. And the tingling tickle (that had now reached the lower part of the thigh) wasn’t so bad either. One fatherly smile at the playful ants, and I decided to let them be. Not before thanking my lucky stars for not sending down red ants, though.

Only after I wore my lenses did harsh reality deliver the knock-out punch (and reality is getting exceptionally good at this). As the world blurred into focus, I figured that the house had been taken over by them. They had conquered the loo and the four walls and floor of a bedroom. A resolute army of their species was laying siege to another bedroom, ready to attack as soon as the stench from the unwashed-since-three-weeks clothes went away. Worst of all, however, they were all red. If all of them were red, so would the two I had so lovingly allowed to run around on the vast expanse of my thigh. Uh oh, Houston, Mayday, 911! Come on, any emergency term that you can think of!

Since the fateful day, the ants have taken over the bed (they’re bedridden, in a slightly different way), the clothes have been chewed off, the expired-six-months-ago food in the droning-refrigerator-that-is-more-like-an-oven has been digested (by the ants). It’s a sea of red everywhere I look around. And what about those two ants who were running themselves wild with ecstatic joy on my legs? Well, let’s not even go off on that tangent. Suffice to say that ‘Itch Guard’ does not work for ant-bite itching.

Just fifteen days to go…fifteen days to a clean house, scheduled meals, functioning flushes, and a refrigerator that’s cool. Fifteen days to an antless-cockroachless-lizardless existence.

Exceptionally Deceiving B-School Oscars 2006

2006-04-08T12:26:00.000+05:30

“Hello and welcome ladies, gentlemen and inconsequential scum-beings from the outer fringes of the galaxy”. If I were to have my way, those would be the opening lines of the ‘Exceptionally Deceiving B-School Oscars 2006’. Honestly, if I were to have my way at all, there would actually be a ‘Deceiving B-School Oscars’ every year – “Commemorating the merciless, heartless conduct of top B-schools in the country” – that, of course, would be the awards’ tag-line. And did you ask why do we have a tag-line at all? Well, that is primarily because it is fashionable to have a tag-line for everything today. So I wake up in the morning and start my day sitting on the pot – ‘Classic, Stinky, and nothing else’. I move on to brush my teeth in the wash-basin – ‘Dirty, perennially choked piece of pointless ceramic’. So the story goes about tag-lines, but we digress.

And we come back on track again. Without further ado about stinky toilets – ‘Functioning flushes form fabulous fantasies’, let us get straight to the point and kick off the awards…err, the awards ceremony.

Multiple Fraudulent Revenue Stream Award

Symbiosis Group of a xrilliofentiwillion Institutes, All over the Milky Way
This year’s top honours are bagged by Symbiosis – an education giant that has so many business schools on its list that on the latest (and super-prestigious) ‘Maharashtra’s Top 1000 Business Schools’, more than half are Symbi (as it is ‘fondly’ called) institutes. So much for Symbi’s undying commitment towards making an MBA out of every engineer, doctor, lawyer and street-side mongrel!
Symbi snatches the Oscar from its nearest rivals (and quite a few of them, too) by sheer dint of its innovative use of size. While unsuspecting wannabe MBAs dig deep within their cash reservoirs to stitch together five hundred whole rupees to register for the Symbiosis National Aptitude Test (SNAP), Symbi mercilessly snaps all their necks and on the very next registration page asks them to select the institutes they would want to apply to. The catch? You are required to pay in excess of Rs 1,200 for every institute you are interested in. Neat, eh? You bet it is. The money, needless to say, is pumped right back into the system. Symbi builds more institutes to reap more cash which then builds more institutes…it’s a vicious circle, don’t you think? In effect, over the years, Symbi’s repertoire has now expanded to generously include the ‘Symbiosis Institute of Business Technology for Engineers’ and the ‘Symbiosis School of Management for Deranged Monkeys’.

Award for Maximum Opaque Black Holes

S P Jain Institute of Management Research, Mumbai
Transparency is not a basic (or even expected) B-School selection procedure parameter, but the boffins at SPJIMR have this year tasted the inimitable high of success, after years of a relentless pursuit of making their admission process as unfathomable and opaque as possible. Group Interviews, questions on ‘character, morals, values and ethics’ were some of the most crucial elements that made the goal achievable. Young men and women applying next year to SPJIMR: the interview questions are some of the simplest you will ever answer – “In case you are offered a bribe to blah blah, will you accept it?” Try answering, “Of course I will. What kind of silly question is that?” At the time of answering, roll your eyes, stick your tongue out and generally act as if the panel has lost its bearings. It will surely ease the pressure for your peers accompanying you at the GIs.

Award for Most Innovative Revenue Generation Strategies

Management Development Institute, Gurgaon
When it comes to developing hitherto unheard of strategies for maximizing revenue generated from the sale of admission forms, MDI is in a stratospheric league of its own. None of the institutes, even with their Rs 1,000+ admission form pricing, come close to MDI’s fool-proof methodologies. MDI requires applicants to fill ‘bubbles’ in the admission form in pen. Yes, you read that right. Mistakes, you must have guessed by now, entail our desperate wannabe MBA to purchase a second form. Then a third. And then a fourth. So the trick lies in maximizing the probability of form-filling errors. The answer, just change the ordering of the ‘bubbles’ to start with a ‘1’ instead of a ‘0’. For next year, pilot projects being beta-tested currently include ordering the ‘bubbles’ using a random number generator. So the bubbles will now be randomly ordered instead of 0-9. Ah, I think MDI should be pre-awarded this award for the next three and a half decades.

Lifetime Achievement Award for Achieving Nothing At All

Indian Institute of Planning and Management, Swimming Pool equipped Branches across India
Mr Pony-Tail is a mastermind strategist. He has been reading ‘The Art of War’ since he was a little kid. The downer? He hasn’t been reading anything else. He reckoned that by adding a ‘Planning’ somewhere in ‘IIM’, he would convince the youth to ‘dare to dream beyond the IIMs’. Alas, somewhere the planning failed, and Pony uncle just ended up planning his downfall. Lately, Pony uncle’s cheerful visage graces full-page ads in national dailies, encouraging the common man to bet on IIPM’s placement statistics for this year. What better way to create a larger-than-life compelling brand, I say? Master stroke, indeed!
Speculation is rife that next year Pony uncle will take on Harvard, Stanford, Yale and other such pitiful foreign business schools in a fight to the end…the end of management education in the world, that is. His eventful chronicles will form part of a movie titled ‘Tum Toh Thehre Pardesi – A Planman Consulting Mega-success Venture’.

This is, by no means, an exhaustive list of upcoming B-Schools with more than a few tricks up their sleeve to dupe young men and women who want to do an MBA in times when MBAs are paid no less than a crore for a year’s work.

Anyway, we shall be returning to the saga in a while – the view from the other side: ten IE windows open at once, each on a different thread at pagalguy.com; the anxious wait for results; the begging and pleading (on your knees, boy) in front of the higher authorities and the Highest Force; the list is endless. To use a clichéd term – watch this space.

Bunny....we're a hit!!

2006-03-30T12:15:00.000+05:30

Yesterday was a rainy Sunday evening. I was stepping into a new profession, a new home, and a new life. New friends had laid out a spread of the most delectable…liquor to welcome me into the new friend-circle. Noble thought indeed, but bottles of Kingfisher jostling for space with pints of Romanov was not exactly my idea of a ‘welcome’ party. Couple that with the detestable smoke from an assortment of cigarettes, and this was looking like it would to be a very, very tough journey ahead.

I was wrong. The ‘Booze Binges’ evaporated into nothingness as mysteriously as the first one had appeared – Next Gen never paid enough, I figured. A week into the new life, I also figured it was not likely to be a difficult journey at all; rather this was going to be one helluva roller-coaster ride with the whackiest characters ever seen and the weirdest situations ever experienced.

I was right. It did not take me too much time to blend in with my new colleagues and, rather surprisingly, join the heavy-duty bitching sessions at a level of competency and proficiency that my colleagues had acquired only after ‘working’ hard for a few months before I came. Also surprising was the fact that I – a documented, proven snob – had no trouble in opening up to the threesome.

It is surprising how people can make such a massive impact in such a short period of time. Of course, certain things helped. We were bound by a common thread of interest that was so strong it was almost like a massive iron rope. We were in a small-ish office that was home (and rather literally too) to just about ten people. Weekday evenings, Saturday nights and whole weekends were spent sitting like losers in the eerie glow of CRT monitors (cheap ones). Needless to say, in a setting like this, peppered by the catalyst of having so few people doing generally nothing, relationships and bonds solidified swiftly.

Bonding leads to changes, and it was no different in our case. As we gingerly sampled the others’ choice of music, food and girls (the last one, only figuratively – pun unintended), it was turning out to be a thoroughly enjoyable learning curve, almost like the curves that chic-in-white-with-the-wet-hair-who-got-a-lift-on-one-young-man’s-bike sported. Anyway, Bunny gave up his repeat-till-kingdom-come bouts of listening to ‘Aur kya’…and nothing else. His new Winamp playlist had just one song: ‘Coming Back to Life’ – repeat-till-kingdom-come, of course. Amit was building a reputation (or a notoriety) for demolishing lunch boxes with disdain. Especially when Kartik’s came full of ‘Dhansak’. Kartik, meanwhile, was turning out to be a big ‘hothead across over there’, taking pangas with the rest as if he would be the first to kick the job and ‘b-b-b-b-buzz off’. What an ensemble cast, I say!

It is also astonishing how years of a dead existence often end up as blank pages in the book of life, and but a few weeks of a colourful being can effortlessly fill up innumerable chapters with accounts of thoroughly enjoyable episodes. In many ways, this is what happened to me. While the years from Standard X to Standard XII have been effectively whitewashed out of my memory, it is these last few months that have added a generous dash of eastmancolour to what was a dull, dreary, nerdy life experience. The stories are too many to recount…most of them will now be tinged...

...tinged by a feeling of emptiness, of having to see one of us go off in pursuit of greener pastures (and better babes, though how that will be effected in the absence of broadband, beats me). Life will never be the same again. And though it sounds too filmy to be penned down, it is true. We will go through the motions of everyday office. Once in a while the vacant seat will hit with the hard ferociousness born out of longing. The booze will not stop – it will reduce to a trickle. The bitching will not stop – it will abate just a little. The chuckles will not stop – there will just be one laugh less. Life will not stop – it will trundle along, on three wheels instead of four. You know what the sad part is? Soon, it will have to wheelie along on two wheels instead of three. Will miss you guys!

I have realised that this is increasingly looking like the prayer meeting readout to pray for the soul of the departed to rest in peace. It is not! Broadband lives on, and budget airlines thrive. The Golden Quadrilateral is 95.483% complete. Ab Dilli durr nahin. India is growing at 8%+. Our salaries will grow at 80. Soon we will have all the money in the world to fly down (or ride, or drive) to a common location once every month, eat good food, drink sophisticated wine and bitch about life and wife. We’ll have the resources to meet up once every six months, have a pyjama party, relive the haunted house with the dysfunctional flushes and bitch some more about life and Bunny’s latest flings.

Till then gentlemen...

PS: Mein rehta toh…;)

Un-Comfortably Numb

2006-03-23T11:54:00.000+05:30

It is the kind of moment people wait a lifetime for. As I sit in the driver’s seat and stare over the hood right into the eye of the famed three-pointed star, I wonder where the sense of heightened excitement is. Why are my sweat glands hibernating when they should be working overtime to create beads of sweat on my forehead? Why are my adrenaline producers shaming me by putting up this public display of their depressing impotency? Where is the customary lump in the throat? The mandatory quickening pulse?

It is a white Mercedes-Benz E-class that costs in excess of Rs 40 lakh. Note that I eschew quoting an exact price. In the segment we are talking about, it is unfashionable – even insulting – to speak in terms of ‘rupees’. The ‘Least Count’ that buyers in this segment can identify with is ‘Ten lakhs’. On the same lines, whether the car produces 280bhp or 300, whether it does 0-100 in the elevty-fourth xrillionth of a second or three-twelveteenth fraction of a moment is a matter of scarce consequence. Honestly, even trying to find out whether this super-luxury barge is an E240 or an E280 would prove futile, because apart from a tiny difference in badges on the boot, you would not be able to make out. I wasn’t. Well, for the record, this one is an E280. Petrol or diesel, then? And with a Mercedes-Benz, does even that matter? Anyway, a petrol it is.

I am trying to squeeze myself rather clumsily into the elegant leather-crafted driver’s seat. Some debut this is starting off to be. I realise – in good time, of course – that the seat has a few zillion adjustments that can allow every crest and trough of the body to fit snugly into the seat. All of the settings, mind you, are electric, lest you waste your million-dollar-a-minute time trying to figure out which lever on the seat will adjust what. Thirty seconds into the activity, though, and I figure (with much chagrin) that I can’t seem to make up my mind with respect to the precise seat height I want, to go with the exact degree of under-thigh support, to match with just the right amount of lumbar cushion. Confusing already? I haven’t even spoken about how the addition of three more parameters can increase the number of possibilities exponentially. Anyway, after playing around with the switches for a while (and pretending that I can really differentiate between the levels of comfort different settings offer), I reckon it has been quite a while. I cannot allow my debut to sink in never-ending permutations of what the Merc’s magic seat can do. There surely is much more to the car. Or is there?

Time to lift off. Snick the characterless auto-stick into ‘D’, and floor the accelerator pedal. Good night, then. I am almost lapsing into an afternoon siesta; this car is b****y driving itself. On a ramrod straight section of the expressway, I stare at the needles rather desolately. 140-160-180-200 ticks the speedometer with barely a care in the world for the laws of physics or aerodynamics. The tacho needle swings to 6500, swings back rapidly to 3000, and begins its cold, clinical climb back to its peak – 6500. Inside, it is all so insanely insulated, it is like travelling in a time machine. Wind noise, tyre noise and other noises are reduced to mere concepts in textbooks; the sad part is that you can’t even hear the engine note. It’s a different world inside – eerily quiet, queerly disconnected; much like a video game being played in an airtight room at the top of the Himalayas. Not a single vibe transmits through any body part that is in contact with the car, and that only heightens the feeling of numbness that is only just starting to take over my entire body. Suddenly I am not dejected with the abject unresponsiveness of any of my senses. Come to think of it, this is so undeserving in any case.

Two hundred kilometres an hour, then, is reduced to a mere statistic. One of those things you can brag about at the all-guy pyjama parties. So while the entire gang looks up to you with almost-idolising admiration, your conscience nibbles away at the very heart of your er…heart. Because deep inside, you know that even a novice 18-year old – even George W Bush – can go faster than 200km/h on a straight road in a powerful, self-propelling Merc.

My twenty-minute ‘intimate’ interaction with the E280 is coming to an end. There is no drum roll crescendo to mark the culmination of an especially significant event. Well, by now, I am not expecting any at all. If one were to ever try making love to a pillow, it would be quite a lot like driving the E280. In many ways, then, I am somewhat glad that precious adrenaline was not wasted over a pointless drive, which will forever remain a mere milestone in my automotive life; a milestone devoid of all emotion whatsoever.

As the Merc coasts to an eventless stop, my colleagues rush towards me, expecting to find a three-pointed-starry eyed Jayesh staring dreamily into emptiness. Instead they find a Jayesh with a weird expression on his face. Significantly, he has nothing to say. And that does not happen very often. Well Sirs, it took me a while to collect my thoughts; but now that I have, I am having a tough time controlling the flow of words. So what really is new?

‘Two hundred kilometres an hour’ is new, and it has the potential to radically alter one’s subconscious perception of speed. That speed, even if travelled at, for a meagre ten minutes skews one’s perspectives beyond recognition. I step out of the ‘hallowed’ Merc into a diesel-engined Innova, and trust me, it takes me more than a few minutes to get my bearings in place. In the ten minutes that I travelled at 200km/h, my mind had already made changes to what I perceived as ‘speed’. Without my knowledge. Consequently, driving the Innova flat out in fifth gear turns into a restless experience. I keep trying to figure out what is wrong with the car. Why won’t it go ‘fast’? One glance at the speedo – with the needle refusing to budge beyond the 150 mark – and it strikes me that this is just about as fast as the Innova will go. Outside, the entire world seems to be moving in an extended, all-pervasive, real-life slowmo. Words can never express how thoroughly numbing the entire experience feels. With the sensation of speed metamorphosed so rapidly, I wouldn’t have the faintest idea of how fast I am going just by looking at the scenery whizzing past backwards. After a couple of significantly scary misjudgements with the speed – cornering at close to 120km/h in the Innova – I resolve to keep a close watch on the speedo to re-tune my mind to come back to its senses.

My mind drifts to my sixteen-year old Maruti 800. All of thirty-seven horses, and yet the most thrilling, the most scintillating, the most memorable and the most enjoyable drives. When you have only 796cc and thirty-seven horses at your disposal, every cubic centimetre and every horse counts. Each one plays a role equally significant; as opposed to an army of a few hundred steeds fighting with each other so bitterly that it has to be kept under wraps of expensive insulation.

It is not about a hundred horses, or even about a thousand. It is about the experience, the joy of communicating with a car that wants to get you familiar with her innards, rather than ruthlessly insulate everything. It is not about how quick you can accelerate, or even about how fast you can go. It is about how wide your grin is at the end of the drive. It is that feeling for the car. It is that raw emotion between man and machine; the emotion that logic is so thoroughly incapable of describing. Suddenly, I miss my 800 a lot; much, much more than I have in a very long time.

It is a white Maruti 800 that is, sadly, worth a few thousand rupees. But deep inside, I know exactly what I would choose, given a choice between a white Maruti 800 and a white Mercedes-Benz E280. Every. Single. Time.

Picture courtesy Kunal Khadse

Happy Birthday, Daahling!!!

2005-12-21T00:10:00.000+05:30

And then life takes its own path...

2005-12-18T21:08:00.000+05:30

Whoever knows where the winds of change take us.

Clockwise from top left

Prashant: Director, Evolving Technology Projects, ISRO

Roshan: Managing Director, Capital Market Investments, Credit Suisse First Boston

Shripati: Chief Technical Officer, Infineon Future Techik Ltd

Bhupesh: Sr. VP, Asset Management, JP Morgan

Jayesh: Err!!

Born with it!

2005-12-18T10:51:00.000+05:30

You could say I was born with the obsession. Not for the balloons...notice that thing on wheels in the back!

What's cooking? Donuts, eh?

2005-12-11T21:09:00.000+05:30

Finally!

So what if it was a Tata and not a Koenigsegg (yep Primus, one day it shall happen; optimism lives on...in the unlikeliest of places)

It is that feeling that I've only slightly known, courtesy the hand-brake on a Hyundai Santro; that queerly addictive vacuum in the belly, as everything from the intestines to the stomach to the pancreas gets thrown around with merciless g-forces. Ok, in a Santro, they weren't too merciless. Which is exactly why I say I've only "slightly known" the feeling.

It is just the feeling I came just a little closer to experiencing. Never mind it was in a massive Tata mini-truck powered by a wheezing, pitiful 2.0l indirect injection (old Safari) diesel engine. Ugh! Nevertheless, the fuel, tyres, brakes and car were all someone else's. And they were actually exhorting me to go all out for quite a while. Quite in contrast to my dad's (and on another occassion mamma's and sister's) expression when I asked if we could have fun with the Santro's hand-brake.

It is just the feeling I want to know intimately. The smell of burning rubber, the thrill of applying rapid opposite lock as the tail threatens to menacingly overtake the front, the hollow feeling, the delirous joy, the infectious enthusiasm, the satisfied grin. Someday. In a Koenigsegg, possibly. (Pessimism, Primus? Perhaps you'd want to change a few definitions :) )

And then again, there's something about petrol being cheaper on the other side. Always!

Alone? So?

2005-12-09T17:11:00.000+05:30

1986, Jerez, Spain. The April sun beats down mercilessly on the track. Not as merciless though, as the battle between positions one and two on the racetrack. Ayrton Senna and Nigel Mansell are involved in a closely fought battle for race lead and eventual victory. Mansell’s Williams-Honda is even match for Senna’s Lotus-Renault. It is a battle of man against man, machine against machine. At the end of 72 laps, it takes mind-boggling advancements in timing technology to put Senna on the top-step of the podium, with Mansell perched one step lower. The difference in height between the two drivers on the podium is a few feet – in no way representative of the margin by which Senna has beaten Mansell: fourteen thousandths of a second. The ‘0.014 sec’ figure will undoubtedly remain the magically hair-thinnest time interval separating two Formula 1 projectiles, for many, many years to come.
A Renault has crossed the finish line first at Jerez, but the name was as unfamiliar to young Fernando Alonso as ‘Williams’ or ‘McLaren’.

Or ‘bullock cart’, for that matter. Born on July 29, 1981, in Oviedo and all of five years old, Little Fernando didn’t have a clue as to what ‘R-E-N-A-U-L-T’ would have to do with his life. But then fate always has a trick or two up its sleeve; and that’s a long, long sleeve. Destiny, meanwhile, seemed to be the last thing on Little Fernando’s mind, as he went about thrashing his opposition in the junior kart leagues all around Spain. He travelled from circuit to circuit on weekends, racing in the kart that his father had built him two years before. Little Fernando’s merciless domination of every competition that he took part in, coupled with a fiery aggression and instincts and maturity far beyond his years led his family to believe that their kid was born to inherit bigger things. Another six years passed, during which Little Fernando decimated every championship that was thrown at him. His racing career started assuming serious proportions, and his family had to accept, with some amount of chagrin, that they could not longer afford to send him to races too far away from home; or even pay for his getting-faster-every-year karts. Calls for support were sent out. Little Fernando conjured up a breathtaking display of mercilessly fast racing as well as mature, intelligent driving, in the Catalan Championship, drawing the attention of IAME – a famous name in the world of karting.

‘Little Fernando’ had matured into ‘Young Fernando’, graduating to more serious racing as IAME took charge of his career. The Junior Spanish Championship was promptly captured in 1994, and the time was ripe to unleash Fernando on some of the most competitive European Karting Leagues. IAME was doing all in its might to help Young Fernando realise the true potential of his abundant talent, and yet it required that little bit extra from Fernando’s side. Ever the fighter, Young Fernando helped make ends meet by working for cash as a mechanic for kart drivers even younger than himself. 1996 saw Young Fernando being crowned World Junior Karting Champion, no doubt a momentous milestone in a nascent journey.

The ‘Fernando Fireworks’ in the junior series all across Europe made former F1 driver Adrian Campos sit up and take notice of the little champ who was setting racetracks on fire with his pace. In 1998, at the age of seventeen, while most mortals his age were still grappling with the nuances of a three-point parking manoeuvre, Fernando got busy learning the finer aspects of handling racing cars with gearshifts. Amazingly (not-so-amazingly for people who knew him well), he took to it like he’d learnt it when in his momma’s womb. A year later, he was crushing opponents in the Formula Nissan series. A debut season championship victory compelled his managers to instantly promote him to the next logical rung in the auto-racing sphere. At the turn of the millennium, Fernando was driving for the Astromega team in Formula 3000, considered by most to be the breeding ground for F1 talent.

Formula 1 talent Fernando sure was; and in no small measure. One test for F1 minnows, Minardi; and team principal, Paul Stoddart, a man reputed for being an exceptional talent-spotter, was convinced he had found his man for the 2001 season. Alonso made his F1 debut in 2001, at nineteen years of age, the third-youngest driver to start a Formula 1 race. Minardi were no Ferrari though, and in almost all races, tottered at the back of the grid. Frustrating? For a lesser man, perhaps. Alonso bid his time patiently, and did whatever he could with an inferior machine. By sheer dint of his talent, however, he impressed the powers that be, coming up with brilliant flashes of magical talent to outpace opponents in far superior cars.

Flavio Braitore, a man second to none in discerning ability to spot a diamond when he sees one, signed on Alonso as a test driver in 2002 for the Renault F1 team. Renault itself was going through an arduous team-building phase, and Alonso’s young talent seemed to fit right in with the team’s long-term goals. He was moulded and groomed to be Renault’s top driver for the following season. Statisticians and record-keepers were readying their erasers and sharpening their pencils. They had a feeling 2003 was going to be a busy year.

They could not possibly have faltered. Alonso rewarded them by becoming the youngest F1 driver on pole at Sepang, Malaysia that year. Surely, ‘Youngest Formula 1 GP Winner’ could not have been very far away. It was but a few months away, coming with much pomp and celebration at the Hungaroring. Alonso made the podium a total of four times through the 2003 season, finishing at an impressive sixth overall. 2004 saw the Ferraris dominate ruthlessly, keeping Alonso away from the podium top-step. However, Alonso stood a creditable fourth overall, pointing to Renault growing consistently stronger by the season.

In 2005, Renault were determined to reap the benefits of their consolidation and rebuilding efforts. Who better to lead them than the fiery Spaniard, who took to the challenge effortlessly! Three straight victories in the first four races, and Alonso had stamped his authority on the 2005 season. While closest rivals, McLaren, struggled to hit the sweet spot with their set up, Renault – driven by Alonso’s fiery show – galloped away with the championship. Three more victories followed before the Silver Arrows got their act together. Alonso was still a regular feature on the podium, his initial burst and consequent consistency rewarding him with the precious cushion to the Flying Finn at bay. Fernando’s crowning seemed inevitable, and yet Kimi kept the pressure gauges working overtime. As Kimi ensured that Alonso would have shorter fingernails than he would have preferred, the Formula 1 World Championship moved to Interlagos for the sixteenth round. Alonso needed six points to seal the championship; he had everything to win, Kimi had nothing to lose.

2005, Interlagos, Sau Paulo, Brazil. The rain beats down relentlessly on the track. But it has abated, just in time for Fernando Alonso to make one more attempt to snatch the 2005 Formula 1 World Champion’s crown from long-time incumbent – the formidable Michael Schumacher. Two rows and twenty-five points behind, in a McLaren, is another suitor to the crown. It has been an excruciatingly close battle through the season, and the Finn yet refuses to give up. Alonso needs six points to make the record-book keepers go back to their erasers and pencils. Close to half a decade after Ferrari’s ruthless domination, this is as close as it gets for most F1 fans. Kimi’s Silver Arrow zips past the finish line twenty-two seconds ahead of Alonso. But nothing matters more to Alonso than ‘6’. Alonso crosses in third, seven points and the World Championship in the bag. It’s all a haze of blue and yellow as, at twenty-four, the youngest ever Formula 1 champion returns to parc fermé. As he takes off his crash helmet, he looks poised and calm. It has not sunk in as yet. As the magnitude of his achievement hits him with a ferocious punch, Fernando Alonso announces his arrival to the world with a heartfelt scream of joy, of victory, of triumph.
A Renault has not crossed the finish line at Interlagos in first place. And yet, ‘Fernando Alonso’ is a name as familiar as ‘Ma’ or ‘Pa’ to every little kid around the world. The new king has been crowned. Bow to the new champion!

Safari? So Far - from a real car!

2005-10-29T18:45:00.000+05:30

Zooming down the Bombay-Pune Expressway at speeds in excess of 150km/h is the stuff fairy tales are made of. If someone else is paying for the fuel, it transforms itself rather effortlessly into quite a cost-effective fairy tale too. No fairy tale – from Mr India to Cinderella and the thirteen dwarves to Aladin and the eleventy terrorists – can be complete without a villain. There is a villain in this case too; the New Tata Safari DICOR. Explanations are due. Here goes…

The Safari advert: the car going all sideways, muck flying all around in generous measure, and that soulful voice asking you to ‘reclaim your life’, rather than sit in front of the idiot box and watch the ad. I don’t know about you – leave a comment and I’d find out – I found that ad compelling. It made me think about buying a Tata Safari if I had the kind of money. In today’s day and age, to make the consumer consider one’s product is half the battle won. So the Safari had won half the battle. And it had a battery of loyal fans from the late 1990’s – the time when the Safari was launched in the country as India’s first SUV. Add that to the equation and the Safari had won much more than half the battle. What about the rest?

It had to give in to that all-sweeping common rail revolution that’s sweeping across the diesel world, in the process sweeping people off their feet with some fantastically enjoyable diesel cars. In case you’re starting to jump up and down in your seat (or/and salivating) at the prospect of a heady common rail diesel in the Safari that will propel you to mind-numbing speeds on tarmac, err…settle down there. Sit down please, at the back there. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a no-show.

I want to start with the most annoying parts. Why? Well, this happens to be my blog. So shut up and listen. The door handles and brakes are suspiciously related in many ways. Yes, you read that right. Neither works. Neither works, that is, till you lose patience and give up. And then they kick in with a deadly vengeance. In case of the door handles, the matter is rather trivial. It is ok if they don’t work. You keep pulling the door handle, it refuses to open. You pull it some more, it doesn’t give way. And then one last yank with a generous splash of expletives, and clack opens the door. In case of the brakes, the matter assumes serious proportions. Pesky cyclist on the highway veers suddenly 100m ahead of you. You jab at the brakes. Nothing sir, this is a Tata. Cyclist is now 50m away, some panic is setting in. You kick the brakes harder than before. They’re still sleeping. Cyclist is now 20m away – and you can smell the eucalyptus oil in his hair – oblivious of the two tonne plus mass that is hurtling at him at an unmentionable speed. Last attempt then, palms have gone sweaty, forehead has gone beady, heart is supplying blood from within the mouth. You muster up as much strength as there is in those sedentary thighs and calves and give it one hard boot. They wake up, yawn, wonder why you’re being so nastily rude with them, and then decide to bring the car to a stop. Yes, they disturb ABS too, who was yet involved in a thrilling game of silicone chess with the traction control system and the airbag deployment system.

While the brakes and door handles are involved in a generous display of sibling affection on one side, on the other – inside the hood, it’s a different game of one-upmanship that is starting to gather force. The air-conditioning system on the Safari reckons that the winter sun is getting a bit too harsh for its comfort. It promptly shuts down. It has every right to, it’s a Tata. Starter bits are not one bit pleased. They think that they’re being dealt an unfair deal, what with having to deal with a crazy bunch of motoring journos who make it expend considerable effort to get the monumental (?) 2956cc motor to life. Every ten minutes, mind you. Starter bits think that if the AC can decide to go on a strike, they can flit in and out of automotive coma as and when they please. Which they do. Who is to stop them? Me? No, well I tried peering under the gigantic hood – trust me, it’s so massive, it’s got hydraulic arms to lift up the bonnet – all I saw was a few plastic compartments in varying shades of white, all covered in plastic caps of wonderfully youthful hues. There was also a massive cover-plate that screamed ‘DICOR’. All that marketing acronym wizardry on paper makes me go a little weak in the knees. Inside the car, in flesh and blood, it made my pupils dilate at 3600rpm; which coincidentally happens to be the redline of this massive, lazy pushrod engine. That is not the point though. Suddenly, life was a haze, and in the haze, I thought it was best to let the engine compartment be at peace with itself.

Those things are quite bad. And in a fourteen lakh rupee car, they’re unforgivable. I mean, think of it. What can you do with fourteen lakh rupees? You can buy a Honda Accord after throwing in a lakh or so more (if you’re spending that kind of money, a lakh or two here and there scarcely makes a difference). You can buy a Sonata Embera, which, in spite of being an Accord clone, is a rather nice-looking, nice-feeling and nice-driving car. You can get yourself a Skoda Octavia RS. It’s a petrolheads dream, and it’s turbocharged. It’ll hit 212km/h in a jaw-dropping blur of trees, rocks and tar all around. Plus, it will average close to fourteen kilometres to a litre in the city. Impressive eh? But if you insist on an SUV, for whatever reason you do, go buy yourself – and I hate to say this – a Ford Endeavour (kill me, Lord). The less said the better.

The Safari has a couple of strengths. But I won’t bother listing them down here. Because I don’t need to. This is my blog and not a magazine (haha, cheap thrills), and I can afford to be downright mean. Anyway, I so do want to love the Safari. I want to love it for the respect I have for Tata Motors. C’mon it’s been less than a decade since the Tata’s got serious about graduating to passenger cars from trucks and tempos. To their credit, they’ve come up with some swashbuckling cars (ok, not really, the Indica is not a casanova car, the Indigo, even less so), and they’re now the second largest auto manufacturer in India. No mean feat this, considering that in automotive timelines, ‘less than a decade’ is equivalent to a few minutes.

There, then. I want to go off-roading in the Safari. I want to go sideways. I want to love it. I want to spend fourteen lakh rupees and convince myself that it’s good value for money. Like that – “Calm down young man. The fourteen lakh that you donate to Tata Motors this day of 2005 will all flow into their R&D wing. In many ways, it’ll help Tata Motors traverse the steep learning curve quickly and smoothly. When your son buys a Tata twelvety seven years from now, he won’t have to worry about eccentric door handles or slumbering brakes. Peace, young man. Peace!”

But I can’t. Because it’s a bloody bad car. Period.

Mile-nahin-hum Millennium

2005-10-19T21:01:00.000+05:30

I miss Bombay.

Less than two weeks back, everything was at peace with the world here in Pune. The thought of bird flu scarcely passed my gourmetically-inclined brain as I dug into a plate (big) full of sumptuous chicken biryani. How I was thanking my stars for my vertebral column did not have to bear the brunt of the municipal corporation’s apathy travelling to and from office. But the constellations have changed their alignment just that little bit. And I miss Bombay now.

The paradigm shift is indeed driven to a very large extent by the stars, which – hold your breath – are very much visible in Pune skies. Deeper analysis, and I have come to understand that this momentary bout of homesickness has been triggered off by a paucity of Misal Pav in Pune. I have been craving for Misal Pav for the last ten days now – for the first three of which, I did not eat anything at all. I have lost weight, and that is the only piece of supposed good news in this seemingly depressing post. So much for Puneri Misal, restaurant waiters, young and old, look at you with a queer curiosity which makes you think whether you asked for moondust masala dosas with a sprinkling of red Martian earth and blue coconut chutney, with coconuts from Jupiter’s third moon. You really just asked if they served something adequately famous, something my Maharashtrian buddies call a Misal Pav. You repeat the question, and their face contorts as if you asked for – prepare for this – low sulphur unleaded makkhanwala with carbon fibre rumaali rotis. No, don’t get wild at the analogies. I shall spare you; beyond this point, you don’t ask for more. You just have a normal, conventional, boring vada sambhar and walk off. Into the shining sun.

So then, Pune is starting to act pretty dull and dreary. I miss Bombay. And just as my home-town-sickness starts to plunge to the bottommost abysses of despondency, Times of India, Pune has pulled it off and carried a phenomenal news report about Bombay. One look at the insides of the ‘Millennium Rake’ and I was instantly teleported – emotionally of course – amongst a thousand men of varying sizes and hues. I could almost smell the sweat intermingled in just the right quantity with a whiff of cheap eucalyptus oil and cheaper ‘saint’, if you know what I mean. I could almost feel one old chap’s grey hair being thrust into my nose, and another’s facial hair poking my left ear like a thousand needles. I could almost feel muscles in my body that I never knew existed contort to compress my bulk to fit into a pigeon-hole. Remember, we’re talking 6ft x 4ft x 100kg here, just to put things in perspective. Ah wait, I could feel none of those, really. I think I’m taking the ‘homesickness’ theme too deliriously far.

The Millennium Rake, err…in true Railways tradition, is five years late. Five freaking years; not minutes, not hours; not even days or months; years, can you believe that? The Millennium has come and gone. Millennium children are close to five years old now, and can walk, talk, read, write and abuse. All that, in addition to watching (and understanding) porn. So there’s nothing new there, honestly. You can trust the Railways – and no one, absolutely no one – to pull of a stunt as temporally molest-ive as that one. But ‘Rake’?? What where they thinking. Why not call it just a ‘train’? Or better still, a ‘local’? Or if they were determined to be suave and sophisticated, why not call it a ‘multiple-coach, electrically powered vehicle that runs on many wheels and two tracks’? Do they think Mr Paradkar – all 80-pan-chewing kilograms of him – will understand what a ‘rake’ means? And what about that new immigrant from England, Mr Smith? I am sure he wouldn’t make too much sense of it either, what with the Oxford dictionary enlisting merely two meanings for ‘rake’ – ‘collect’ and ‘search’. Picture Mr Smith sweating like a starved pig, 1830hrs, Dadar station and a pleasant female – I am tempted to use ‘effeminate’ – voice booms over the few functioning loudspeakers, “Local expected on platform number two is Millennium Rake for Karjat. This rake will not halt at any station.” Mr Smith, now ferociously sweating like an angry and starved pig, digs deep into the recesses of his knowledge of the Queen’s language. But he’s flummoxed; because there is nothing remotely Millennium-ish about platform number two on Dadar station at 1830hrs on a normal working day. And uh ‘Rake’ – he’s likely to register himself at the nearest loony bin at the earliest opportunity. Mr Paradkar, meanwhile, is hanging on by the skin of his teeth – his left leg snugly fit between the thighs of two unsuspecting, and unmindful commuters; his right leg firmly entrenched in the miniscule millimetres between two other unsuspecting and unmindful commuters’ feet; and his eucalyptus-oiled hair filling up the nose of yet another commuter, who, I must add, is amorously enjoying his daily ogling at page three in Mid-Day – yes Sir, it’s the irrepressible (ahem) Mid-Day Mate.

That, ladies and gentlemen is the saga that unfolds on every rake, day in and day out; be it the Millennium Rake or the Zillennium Quake.

And that is what the Railways is upto nowadays. Surprisingly (and agonisingly for young Indian patriots), the Indian Railways is the world’s largest employer. Larger than General Motors, General Electric or General Pathetic (General Pathetic treats the American masses’ pathological disorders in a pathetic manner)! Capacity addition? The Railways is least bothered. More trains? That features a pitiful second-last on the Railways’ priority list. Cleaner stations? ‘Clean’ doesn’t feature in the Railways’ limited vocabulary. Commuter comfort? “Why does a commuter need comfort? Are sheep herded in air-conditioned caravans?” Commuter safety? “We can distribute free safety pins in trains. That should help! Ae chal Pawar, gheoon taak!”

So what have we got? Dirty stations, toilets that stink so much they could classify as Nazi concentration camps, trains that never run on time, ‘rakes’ that are bursting at the seams with young (and old men) who’s determination to ogle over Mid-Day Mate is legendary. Dirt, grime, sweat and eucalyptus-oiled hair in the mouth.

Sigh, how I miss Bombay.

The petrol is cheaper on the otherside - Part I

2005-10-18T22:56:00.000+05:30

Statutory Warnings:

1. Post may seem disastrously out of context. But there's a sequel coming. If you miss that after reading this, well, what can I say really. I can say 'sex without orgasm', but that would be a little crass, wouldn't it?

2. Post may seem awfully long. Don't bear with me. Honestly. If you can't stand this one, err... there's a sequel coming. Go, hide!

3. Post may seem repetitive. I am reading Catch-22, and I don't bother to mask that fact. The literary style seems to have rubbed off a bit.

4. Post may seem to have a long-ish introduction. It is just to test your patience. If you think you can endure beyond this, think again! Good luck!

Young man J is fresh out of the rigour of what Bombay University calls a Bachelor of Engineering program. He is now an IT professional – big words, those – especially after coming perilously close to them KT monsters. ‘IT Professional’ has a nice zingy tone to it, and it’s bound to get better too, because young man J is going to be joining a fast-growing super-happening IT company. And young man J is pretty happy too, mostly because he’ll finally be able to put the ghosts of engineering college to rest. He won’t be the shy young man brooding in the corner saying nothing, talking to nothing and doing nothing. He’ll go out and meet new people, make new friends, learn new things. Most importantly, he’ll pay for his own fuel. Out of his own pocket. From his hard-earned money. There’ll be no pangs of guilt after driving a few kilometers more than he should have.

Somewhere in the background, David Gilmour is singing ‘Coming Back to Life’.

Corporate life beckons; young man J now prefers to call himself ‘Big J’ – weird names with ‘Big’, ‘Snoopy’, ‘Puff’ are the in-thing these days. P Diddy Combs has changed from that silly name to the decidedly sillier sounding ‘Puff Daddy’, and then back to ‘Puff Diddy’ and then suddenly to ‘Sean Combs’, or something to that effect. The good thing is that JLo seems rather impressed with his inclination to change names he responds to as frequently as the Big J bathes. And he bathes everyday, mind you. But that is besides the point. The Big J is ready for corporate life – with all the snazzy new half-sleeved t-shirts and crisp, wrinkle-free cotton trousers. The future beckons with a shiny, shimmering glass-and-aluminium building. The Big J is dazed. It’s not easy dazing the Big J remember, because, err…well because he’s so big. But the building is bigger, shinier and more awe-inspiring than anything that the Big J has seen before. It holds his future in its resplendent glass façade.

Two months have passed at the shiny building. The Big J has been soul-searching with 89 other similarly-aged, similarly-ambitioned things. After weeks of looking inward, the Big J thinks he knows what he wants in life. He thinks most others do too. But two-months of ‘talking to oneself’ is really pushing the envelope a wee bit too far. Most of his batch-ies are itching to get working on real technology. The Big J, meanwhile, is shuddering at the thought. He is content drawing sketchy sketches of weird concept cars that he someday hopes to build. And sell. And make some money.

A tryst with technology is inevitable in a software company. Unless one is in HR, in which case, one gets to bring fresh new ‘talent’ onto the deck of a rapidly sinking ship. Or one is a vice-president, in which case one gets to go to the beach with the freshly-recruited young ‘talent’. Or one is a team-leader or project-leader, in which case one gets to bark orders at the freshly-recruited young ‘talent’. Or one is a Project Manager, the biggest and most important pillars on which the performance of the company does not depend. In case one is a PM, one gets to develop incisive managerial skills managing project accounts on Microsoft Excel, and do nothing else significant. Except pester freshly-recruited ‘talent’ of the female variety. Tch tch, quite a shame. Actually, if one is anything but a freshly-recruited ‘talent’ – isn’t that starting to sound like a ‘freshly-plopped heap of cow dung’?? – one can avoid technology. There’s not much effort or brain-power needed. Probably the equivalent of about 32.548% of Bush’s total grey-cell count, and you’re through. Put that percentage of your brain to work, and the very next day, you could be sitting in Bush-land, with nothing to do. Except drive Yank muscle cars on eight-laned superhighways, eat the fattiest chicken burgers dripping with mayonnaise and sleep in five-star comfort. Err, strip club once a week, if company finances permit. Eh, none of that applies to fresh cow dung, because that is what makes the company go around. No, it doesn’t work on gobar-gas fuel, rather, these young energetic recruits are the only ones who know a little bit of techie jazz. Most of them so good, they can’t write a program to print all prime numbers from 1 to 99. The Big J, as you must have guessed by now, falls in that category too. In fact, the Big J can just about manage to write a program to list all odd numbers between 1 and terrimetabuxillion.

A few months’ worth water flows under the bridge, and the big J has just about satisfactorily managed to pass his time earning enough money to fuel his car by creating pointless reports to be used by a haggled manager somewhere in the US – undoubtedly himself worried about how his teenage son, now addicted to coke and Mary Jane will get through high school. Soon, the project comes to an end, and the Big J, much like a (big) volleyball is tossed around from project to project, bay to bay in search of his next destination. There’re too many projects, he is told quite enthusiastically. He thinks he can detect a hint of affected optimism in their demeanour. The Big J is despondent. He knows he should be playing around with car engines instead of tuning Application Engines. But the future seems bleak.

Three more months have passed with nothing to do. Nothing except boring breakfasts, dreary lunches and endless coffee breaks. The Big J has developed a liking for sadistic songs of the Pink Floyd genre. The Big J hums his favourite line very often nowadays – “And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but its sinking. Pacing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older. Shorter of breath, one day closer to death.” Everyone looks at the Big J as if he has lost his bearings. The Big J, meanwhile, smiles a knowing smile.

A few more months go by. The Big J sees people all around filling time-sheets with fictitious working hours to fool the client into paying the company more money. And people who don’t fill time-sheets for the client, fleeing before office hours, getting their attendance cards swiped by a cooperative partner in crime; all of it in an attempt to wring out that last paisa from the company for the work that they never did. Or never had. Who’s bothered, really. Finally, the Big J is on a real live project; needless to say, he’s really happy. Day one sees him looking at two thousand lines of sickening code that must be cleaned, optimized and rewritten. At the end of day one, the Big J wants to return to the comfortable confines of his cabin with nothing to do all day. There’s something about ‘green grass’ that strikes him with the ferocity of a cricket ball that only a silly point fielder knows. Day seven sees the Big J smiling a benevolent smile. What is the matter? While the rest of the project team runs frantically in all directions to meet unimaginable deadlines, the Big J is as serene as a Himalayan sage. Frustrations have given way to jokes so bad, they make everyone laugh. A jeer and a sneer have made way for two dimples on the fat face. On the fatface, rather.

The Big J is basking in warmth of the knowledge that soon, he shall be out of this dastardly place. Soon, there’ll be no Application Engines to optimize, only real car engines to test. Soon, there’ll be no Structured Query Reports to code; the only structures he’ll think of will be the monocoque structures of rugged SUVs, the only queries would be the ones the masses would ask the Big J about their next car; and the only reports would be road-test reports.

Somewhere in the background, David Gilmour is singing ‘Coming Back to Life’.

The Great Loo Leveller

2005-09-16T16:34:00.000+05:30

"I think I MAY NEED A BATHroom break? Is this possible? Wh..."

Trust the man to effortlessly propel Bush-isms to hitherto untreaded peaks of stupidity. Yes Sir, the President of the United States - the one man who single-handedly controls the most powerful nation on earth with a pitiful paucity of brain cells - falls pray to the Loo Leveller.

Err, happens to all of us once in a while. But one wonders why he's waiting for the green signal from Condoleezza Rice. Note the handwriting too, and the eclectic mix of capital and small letters. Was it the pee, waiting to burst out? Your guess, my guess - all the same!

Condo, Condo, Condo...strikes a familiar note. Ah, yes of course, Condom. Bush Sr should've used a condom. Then again...it's the hereditary Bush genes. There's only so much one must expect!

Boulevard of Broken Dreams!

2005-08-29T16:08:00.000+05:30

Am I getting a Bentley? No?

A BMW then? Umm?

Am I getting that thing there?? Oh shit!! Bull shit! :|

Coming Soon!!
(Right, as if the whole world is waiting in astounded suspense. As if George W. Bush's (few) brain cell's are hanging by the skin of their teeth, waiting for me to unveil the latest razzmatazz in my life)

Amby...Hum Bhi!

2005-08-24T21:13:00.000+05:30

There is something about a ‘first’. People don’t remember the second man who chimed “hello” over the telephone, or the twelfth person who fiddled with the controls on that newly invented television set, or the three hundred and twenty sixth lucky mortal to feast on the thirty eighth cake that came out of the microwave. I must confess, I do not remember the one thousand and seventeenth time I got stuck in the rains with my beloved M-800; but the first misadventure, now that’s a legendary tale in our family, all baked up and ready to be handed down through the generations.

In an auto journo’s life, generally devoid of significant milestones to brag about at those pyjama parties, the first test drive assumes unparalleled significance. It is to him what the first kiss is to a diehard romantic; what the first puff is to that familiar human chimney which spews out Marlboro smoke at regular intervals.
As I waited with for my first test drive with bated breath, I couldn’t stop my hyperactive imagination from conjuring up images of me sitting in the cockpit of a 600bhp Ferrari, lighting up the tarmac, laying down dollops of expensive Pirelli rubber onto the road. Mr Editor Sir walked into office on bright sunny morning, cheerful as ever, with a piece of good news for me. It was to be my first test drive in a few days time. Where is the Ferrari? Eh, Ferrari? In India, we have the Ambassador.

Fake smiles don't get better than this!!

The optimistic recesses of my intellect were trying hard to overcome the dark, cynical lobes of my mind, which were now threatening to drown me into the depths of despondency. “It is a rear-wheel drive”, Mr Optimistic shouted above the din, “Isn’t that a sure-fire recipe to tail-stepping-out turns and unadulterated fun at the wheel?” Mr. Cheerful was ready with his two-pence, “It’s been selling in India for decades now. There surely has to be something about it”. I could already hear the turbocharger wheezing away to glory as the tyres squealed, struggling to keep up with the prodigious amounts of power that the engine was generating. The optimists’ victory saw me waiting outside the dealer’s with a spring in my step and a broad grin on my face. Out she came, in pristine white, with the majestic air of an old lady who has aged gracefully, Botox shots notwithstanding.

This is the Ambassador Grand ’05. In keeping with Hindustan Motors’ recent strategy of launching a new Ambassador every year, we have an all-new machine for the new year, ‘all-new’ being the keyword there. For starters, the Grand ’05 gets some much-needed grunt under the hood. In come a turbocharger and an intercooler, boosting total power output of the 1995cc Isuzu engine to 75PS. All the new gadgetry makes it less harsh to the plants and trees, this one being Bharat Stage III compliant. It gets new clear-lens headlamps, integrated body coloured bumpers, and full wheel caps. On the inside, it gets beige colouring all through – beige dashboard and steering wheel, light brown fabric upholstery for the seats, and jarring black seatbelts. Power windows, power steering, day-night rear view mirror, central locking and even a rear seat armrest can not compensate for the poor fit and finish and the depressingly substandard quality of materials that make up the interior. Attention to detail is abysmal; the car sports different ‘HM’ logos at different places. So while the steering gets the new stylised insignia, the wheel covers, with the old logo, are still time travelling from the nineteenth century. The instrument cluster tries to create a retro-chic aura inside the cabin, a la the Mini Cooper. Alas, failure is imminent.

I turn the key – perhaps the spirited powerplant will make up for the disappointment thus far. More disappointment! The engine lets out a mighty roar. It does not take me long to figure out that it is roaring about poor NVH levels and not eager horses under the bonnet. The car is sluggish, with such a noticeable turbo lag that it’ll take some cajoling before it manages to overtake the pesky cyclist who is defiantly riding in the middle of the road. The disenchantment is magnified many times over owing to the fact that I had started out with as much expectation as is evident in a stadium full of Bangladesh cricket team supporters.

The engineers at Hindustan Motors have made little change to the underlying setup of the Ambassador. I am talking about changes over the last few decades, mind you. So, even though you surely will not get earth-shattering performance, pinpoint handling, or futuristic looks (err…you won’t even get nineteenth century looks, we’re sorry), you will be blessed with the Amby’s inherent strengths. Not a difficult job listing them down, because there aren’t too many. In fact, only two come to mind – an almost surreal ability to gobble up massive potholes without as much as a burp, and technology so outdated that it can be repaired at any roadside workshop.
It is time the wise men at HM shook themselves out of the colossal time warp that seems to have enveloped them. It’s time to stop selling the same old car under a different garb every year. It is time to wake up to a world where ‘new’ means much more than a redesigned headlamp.

Perhaps it is time to knock ‘first’ off its pre-eminent position of significance in history. Perhaps HM can pull of a memorable ‘second’ that will be remembered much more fondly than the ‘first’ ever was. Perhaps...just perhaps.

Suited, Booted & To-Be-Booted...Already?

2005-07-14T02:12:00.000+05:30

Ladies, Gentlemen and Aliens,

Today onwards, this blog belongs to a real, live, in-the-flesh journalist. I am tempted to sticker up my car with garish P-R-E-S-S sticker, but it will cause the resale value to plumet significantly. I am also tempted to scan my press card and put it up here for show-off's sake. But I really haven't been able to figure out yet how to host pictures on Blogger. No wonder they kicked me out from the software industry. :)

"Do you want to sell sweet water all your life, or do you want to make a difference?"

"Do you want to write characterless programs all your life, or do you want to make a difference?"

I do not know what difference I will make over here. But at the end of the day, knowing the fact that each day I make a significant contribution to a product that people actually enjoy reading gives an unmistakable high. Its a far cry from the days of being an inconsequential resource in a homogenous resource pool - one where everyone is the same, irrespective of height, weight (I had certain advantages there) or intellectual ability. The organisation doesn't care a damn about whether you write the piece of shitty code that has been assigned to you, or your dog's brother does it (it's a dog's life, really :D). Quite a scary thought!

Once again, I am not sure of the difference I am going to be making here. But at least I have an opinion about what I do. And it happens to be a strong and informed opinion. I revel in the fact that I am capable of making a difference. When the time comes, we shall see. No, the journalism world isn't going into a tizzy about my earth-shattering exploits. Err, not yet anyway.

The pen is mightier than the sword. The pen, now being relegated to the obscure environs of the Prince of Wales Museum, has been very conviniently replaced by a white keyboard with keys that make sophisticated click sounds. I really don't know why I am talking about keyboard ergonomics here. But being a journalist, it's all forgiven :) Creative liberty they call it. Ah, the keyboard being mightier than the sword can influence some pretty crucial decisions. For instance, I could make a Getz look like a Porsche and a Swift look like a bullock cart. Lets say it influences 10 potential buyers to switch from a Swift to a Getz. Assuming Maruti makes Rs.20,000 on every Swift that is sold, that's a hole in Maruti's coffers which will allow roughly Rs.2,00,000 to flow through as swiftly as iodised salt out of those thingees on the dining table. Impressive self-ego boosting mechanism I have, what say!!

Which brings me to a brief (oh yes, the briefs haven't been washed in a few days now) description of daily happenings. Work (vacation) hours are insane - 12 noon to 3am. First, the food. Lunches are some nice affordable tiffin victuals that fill up the stomach rather well. Just right actually, not straining the muscles to burst out of the jeans, and yet satisfying in a sublime sort of way. Dinner usually causes a few chicken to lose their lives (In spite of how depressingly disgusting that sounds, the chicken in Pune is fabulous). Dinner consists of a 7 course meal, soup, main course, biryani, raita, desert, et al. Almost, its generally biryani - mark my words, the food in Pune is mind-blowing. As is the weather. It doesn't rain much. So that's good bye to gloomy grey skies which are nothing but harbingers of imbalance and discord. Yet, its cold, sunnily cloudy, and I don't know how, but there's sufficient water to drink, bathe and wash utensils and clothes amongst other things. Miraculous! Utopian! A bachelor lifestyle rocks, with all the unkempt clothes, the unwashed undies (alliterative coup), and smelly socks (one more alliterative coup). With all the inconsistencies about where one could be sleeping every night (in whose bed, basically), it gives one a freedom much akin to emotion one feels when one has got out of the fashionably tight pair of jeans before getting into those airy boxer shorts (err, airy?).

It is the consequence of such a lifestyle (in addition to having absolutely no similar-aged female company) that this post might start to be classified as a trifle more explicit than the previous ones. What with all the undie alliterations, I can already see a few of you ready to puke :D

Many firsts come with this post. Apart from the fact that it boasts of some of the most disgustingly "male" language I have ever used on a publicly viewable forum, it happens to be the first time I have posted after turning into a journalist. It happens to be the first post where I discuss my life in such great detail. It seems that a journo's life is infinitely more interesting than a software professionals. So, till now I had only other people's lives to bitch about, now I have my own.

I do not know what course we follow from here on. I do not know if the story-type-strongly-opinionated posts of yore will stop forever. I do not know if I will be discussing my life this way, in a conventional blog-type of way, again. Rather, I do not know if my life will continue to carry the incredibly instable inertia (third alliterative coup, I am an awesome alliterator, ain't I? I cheated, its unstable, not instable. Creative liberty) carries forward to the coming months.

Life is unstable, the future's unknown. But its so thoroughly intoxicating.

POP! (That was the champagne)

Monday, the Thirteenth...of June

2005-06-22T23:22:00.000+05:30

It must be some inter-galactic conspiracy that the Thirteenth of June always turns out to be Monday. Almost always, that is.

It also happened to be the first day at school of a new academic year. I was not like most other kids. No, not just by way of my physical dimensions, (and intellectual capabilities, haha) but in a few other ways too. For one, I hated Monday, the Thirteenth of June.

It was a rather gloomy day to begin with. One was required to wake up at unearthly hours – 6:00 am to be precise – to the shrill sound of an archaic alarm clock that had been passed down through the generations in my family. A cold bath later, one was expected to dress up in shiny new school uniforms for the new academic year. I distinctly remember that feeling of freshly starched cotton chafing against my delicate soft skin. Gosh did they make those clothes for pterodactyls? I wasn’t one for sure. Though I looked elephant-ine dimensionally, my skin was far from being as hard as theirs. I am tempted to make a mention of those unsightly, rubbery, deplorable little brown sandals that our school (Smt. Sulochanadevi Singhania School, my alma mater. I miss you) required all students to wear. I’d really not like to waste words here. They were disgusting. Period.

Not being used to these torturous routines of slavery, quite unsurprisingly, I’d be running late on the first day of every year, unfailingly. To expedite proceedings then, my mother would generously (and judiciously) equip me with a couple of tight slaps where they mattered the most. What a delectably enjoyable start to the year I say!

So then, it was a rather gloomy day to begin with. And the Gods concurred. They let loose mighty thunderstorms, unmitigated rains; and the BMC dutifully complied with dug up roads, choked drains and tsunami-floods. The Rain Gods sure didn’t like young kids being pulled out of their cozy beds at unethical (unethical?) hours. They showed it. And how!

Then one day, it was Monday, the Thirteenth of June. I was going into Standard Ten. The morning had nothing new to offer from the past nine Thirteenth of June’s that I had successfully endured. “This is the last time”; I kept telling myself. Bang! It landed right in the middle of the sweet spot of my well-endowed cheek. I had to hurry up. But it was the last time. I was trying hard to get into those goddamn trousers. After five minutes of breathless wrestling with my own tummy, (of the caliber that would earn me a place in “Ripley’s Believe it or Not”) I heaved a sigh of relief…that, unfortunately, brought about my undoing…and the undoing of my trouser button. Zwang Twang it let loose from the shackles of its thread with ferocious velocity – enough to help it break the shackles of the earth’s gravity as well. (Last I heard, it was on its twenty seven thousand five hundred and thirty first trip around the sun.) It was the last time in any case, so it ought to have been the worst of the ten. It was!

Since Standard Ten in school, the ghosts of Monday, the Thirteenth of June had been exorcised to oblivion till…

Till err…Monday, the Thirteenth of June. I get out of a swank car, push my Ray Ban into my hair and hand over the keys to the valet to park the car at my reserved parking slot in the huge parking lot. (Wow, rhyming. I am making poetry!) The sun, shining resplendently, has banished all those gloomy clouds to another day in July. The past few years have seen me struggle past an Engineering degree, and fight my way into a fast-growing software company. I am being paid well (uhh, creative liberty, ok). But I am being paid, so I have to pay the Government of India. Do I hear a voice at the back there saying “For what?” Let me elaborate, young man. I have to pay the Government to dig the roads, to choke the gutters, to create floods and famines, to increase unemployment, to worsen traffic conditions, to fight a pointless war, to pay for those dastardly politicians’ needless foreign jaunts, to finance their…hey, don’t get me emotional ok. There’s only so much I can fit into one column. The bottomline being, that I have to pay the Government. “How much?” Good question, young lady. That brings me to the frightful, chill-down-the-spine activities of this day, Monday, the Thirteenth of June.

“How much?” is what everyone I know is trying to figure out. Without much success, I must add. At last count, I was told I should be expecting Rs.11,892 to be credited to my bank account. That amount has successively gone down from Rs.14,542 to the current number; rather depressingly, needless to say. Out come the huge MS-EXCEL tax calculators, with their garish disclaimers and endless set of rules; and an unbelievably complex concept of Fringe Benefits, which is intended to help me save tax – 10% to 6.732% (Wow, I can buy a Maybach with that kind of money!)

Mr.P.Chidambaram is a wise, intelligent and supremely sensitive young man. In a magnanimous display of unprecedented philanthropy, he has allowed the Indian masses to invest up to a maximum of Rs.1,00,000 this financial year and claim gigantic tax benefits; gigantic being the ironically sarcastic keyword there. In effect, that opens up a world of possibilities with respect to what one wants to with one’s hard earned money. As an aside, did you know that the buyer of a Maybach gets to choose from a few thousand leather seat options, a few thousand dashboard wood colour options, a few million seating configuration options – if one applied simple permutation and combination formulae, that would translate into three million plus total combinations. No wonder when a prominently infamous Gutkha baron’s dumb lass went shopping for a Maybach, she had to hire McKinsey and Company as “Automobile Option Selection Consultants.” My point being that the number of possibilities of saving tax that Budget 2005 throws up is mind-numbing to the senses, to say the least. May be it’s because it’s my first year as BreadWinner. And my first year as a TaxWhiner.

I am learning the tricks of the trade though. Much like I learnt those silly history lessons on the first day of every academic year. I wondered then – why was history made in the first place. I wonder now – why do they pay me at all?

The mystical figure has gone despondently down to a pitiful Rs.9,734 for the month of June 2005. Hardly an amount that justifies driving to work in a swank little car. As visions of me wading through waist-deep water (fortified with bits of shit, and garnished with dollops of sewage) to get into the company bus flash before my eyes, I can see dark clouds appear on the horizon. The sun’s gone. It’s going to rain. It’s Monday, the Thirteenth…of June.

Sleeping With the Enemy

2005-05-19T08:48:00.000+05:30

I am reading India Today. No, I don’t love Prabhu Chawla. I am reading India Today to…well get to know what “India” is doing “Today”. On a more sincere note, I have figured (with absolute sorrow) that my knowledge about current affairs is at an embarrassingly disgusting level. For starters, I do not know the name of the Third-level General Secretary of the Cabinet-level Minister in the Ministry of Urban Legends. Heck, I don’t even know if a post like that exists.

That’s the background then, and they tell me I am supposed to “have a clear understanding of national current affairs; an in-depth knowledge about international issues; and an exemplarily perspicuous opinion about everything under the sun” in order to be in a position to make sensible contributions to Group Discussions. Group Discussions, unfortunately, happen to make a scarily significant contribution to any B-School’s admission procedure. And incidentally, a good B-School is where I want to see myself in the immediate future.

Towards that objective, I am smashing my skull against problems of a rather bizarre nature. Classified under “Logical Reasoning”, these pearls of gibberish have to do with “Family Trees”. An almost frighteningly long passage talks in considerable length about Sita, Sunita, Suparna, Aparna, (notice the literary rhymes, these paper-setters, I tell you!) their husbands, fathers, uncles, daughters, aunts, in-laws, and dogs. No, no cars in there. What one is expected to do is come up with an ingenious little tree structure – the catch being that the structure is seldom “little”. What follows is a set of questions that would have flabbergasted Albert Einstein in his absolute prime. As the entire family is dissected, trisected and multisected to a level of depressingly miniscule granularity, one can’t help but scratch one’s head in disbelief. But hey, there’s no time to scratch heads during the examination, 40 seconds a question is all you get. No no, there isn’t enough time to scratch anything else either.

Kinda reminds me of the script of “The Bold and The Beautiful”…now in its quintozilliotriplionic episode. A path-breaking television series that ushered in an entire generation of laterally interconnected family trees; that placed absolutely no restrictions on who could sleep with whom (they don’t get married there you see, its not fashionable enough); that single-handedly motivated the powers that be to introduce a hitherto unknown category of questions into the CAT, “Family Trees”!

Then again, why look across the seven seas at a fictional television series, when we have a live display of partners flitting across beds faster than famine-tormented butterflies let loose on a blooming orchid. All of it, here, in India. On national television, across the few thousand news channels, its all being broadcast 24 X 7 (pun unintended) – straight into your homes. It’s the real story of the “The Boldly Shameless and The Disgustingly Ugly”. It’s the story of dirty Indian politics that unravels itself every minute on the telly. It’s the shameful story of a few thousand prostitute-esque political parties that is so disgusting, it needs a “Grandparental Guidance” certificate.

It is really quite difficult to choose the worst of the lot. But the Congress being in power (with able support from its motley bunch of idiots) will have to tentatively take the honour. With the mind-numbing number of parties in the coalition at the center, it wouldn’t really come as a surprise if the Congress lost track of who is giving it support at the Centre, who it is supporting in which state, who is it against in which district, and whose dog is lost…err, almost. With coalitions in command in every other state (I refuse to provide statistics, because the thought of having to research about these buffoons is enough to put me off completely), the Indian voting masses are clearly a confused lot. (Things came to a head when the Congress fought the Bihar elections. From my limited know how, I figured that it was fighting with the RJD in certain constituencies, with the JD in certain others, and in some it was fighting itself. I also figured it was best to know little, or suffer permanent dementia). I hope the use of the word “Prostitute-esque” will not be frowned upon hereafter; rather, in light of the Congress’ conduct in recent months, will seem only adequately appropriate.

India Today then reports in its cover story of this month (forget it, I am not quoting the name of the article and the date; being politically incorrect is so bling) that the Congress has decided to drop cases against Mayawati. Don’t even move to asking “Why?” It’s purely because the Congress, in its Uttar Pradesh honeymoon in Nainital wants to feature (“sleep with”, in un-euphemistic terms) Mayawati (and others). Correspondingly, it has decided to reopen all cases against L.K.Advani, cases that were unsurprisingly dismissed when the BJP was in power…ugh. It goes on to say, and I quote – “Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav inspires even more hostility that L.K.Advani, despite the Congress’ support to his government”. Looks like he’s not performing in bed. Last heard, the Congress had set up a high-level committee to efficiently determine WHICH case against Mr.Yadav was to be reopened. (Oh c’mon, can’t you spot a joke in the trash!) And yes, lets not forget Amitabh Bachchan’s latest arm-candy, Amar Singh. A four-year-old murder case against him is likely to be reopened. Just one? Sigh.

A minute fraction of the extent of the The Great Indian Political Lunatic Family Tree

Don’t even get me started on the BJP. There’s enough in-fighting in there to ensure that any kind of criticism from outside sources is only supernumerary. Much less from a self-confessed ignoramus.

No wonder I am not reading India Today anymore. I figured Sita, Sunita and her sisters were waiting for me to help them out with who their husbands, sons, uncles and fathers are. Give me my super-complicated “Family Tree” problems any day. There’s no partner-swapping, no illegitimate children, no divorces, and no multiple-parentages. And yes, it’s all fictional. The Great Indian Political Lunatic Family Tree has all of those. It is for real. And God knows it stinks to the mighty Heavens!

Men–tal Mandir

2005-05-12T12:28:00.000+05:30

There’s MUIP – Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project. Then there’s MUTP – Mumbai Urban Transport Project. There’s also a BUTP – Bombay Urban Transport Project. There’s MUDP – Mumbai Urban Development Project. And then there’s the queen mother of them all, MMRDA – Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority. Sigh…trust the pan-chewing, Ferrari-red-spit spewing Babudom in Mantralaya’s air-conditioned chambers to come up with more innovative acronyms than those well-heeled marketing maniacs that the FMCG’s employ at heaven-kissing salaries. Sample the ingredients of Surf Excel for a start – Powerboosters, Crystalline Grease Cutting white-washers, Super Anodized Hyper Multiplying Mega Dirt Busters, and their innumerable brethren. Mantralaya’s Marathi Maanus has nonchalantly obliterated every acronym that the marketing maniac from IIM-A created by sheer force of the innovative use of English synonyms to create thousands of “Projects” – significantly, all pointing to the one (the only) thing that the Government of Maharashtra is doing, screwing the masses by looting them left, right, center and every other direction one can think of.

At this point, I decided to go to MMRDA’s website to see the status of the various “Projects” that they’ve undertaken. I could already visualize myself composing sentences like – “With the Bandra-Worli Sea link now a few decades behind schedule, and a few billion rupees over-budget, all we have a convoluted flyover that goes round and round in circles and finishes where it started off, a promenade for kissing couples and oldie-goldie uncle-aunties, and a dismal piece of incomplete road hanging over the Arabian Sea”. However, the content I stumbled across on the website flabbergasted me to the mighty heavens. As I wipe tears my eyes have produced to counter the uncontrollable laughter, as the muscles of my stomach, (stop laughing there, at the back – I do have a few stomach muscles, its not just FAT) I realize that the Mantralaya’s Marathi Maanus can write far better humourous fiction than P.G.Wodehouse himself. Helmets off to you oh famed emperors of Babudom!!

Sample these rare masterpieces; all of them verbatim from www.mmrdamumbai.org –

· The ever growing vehicular and passenger demands, coupled with constraints on capacity augmentation of the existing network, have resulted in chaotic conditions during peak hours. (Are we glad you guys finally realized!)

· The five main north-south roads in the suburbs are not fully developed to the planned width, have many bottleneck points and constraints due to large number of intersections with major and minor roads. (Looks like you got a PhD armed committee to do research for you! Bravo!)

· The major east-west links proposed in the Wilbur Smith Associate Study of 1962 have not been finalized. (1962?? Not finalized?? Should we be surprised, or is that a typographical error? If its not, should we expect this sentence to be there on the website till the generation after ours sports gray hair??)

· The World Bank funded MUTP focuses mainly on strengthening of mass transport particularly improvements in suburban railway services in terms of efficiency and capacity, with very few proposals of road improvements. (The World Bank!! They got conned into it?? Very few proposals of road improvements? Of course, our roads don’t need improvement at all)

· It has been considered necessary to take urgent steps to strengthen the road infrastructure in Mumbai. (See! They’ve used figures of speech even. This one – “Transferred Epithet” – the adjective “urgent” is transferred from “the act of making money by illegal means” to “steps”)

Half past six on Sunday mornings then is the best time to zip through the city on a set of four wheels. The roads are still dug up (A recent ad spotted on a billboard – “What is the BMC digging for? Gold, Oil or Fun), and the one’s that the set of four wheels is expected to go over resemble the moon surface in more ways than one. “Zip”, then, is not intended to conjure up images of sane road cars zooming at insane speeds of 160 kilometers per hour. 40 would be a closer guess, but what the heck, 40 in Bombay is as exhilarating as 160 in Santa Monica (wherever that is).

My Sunday mornings are therefore reserved for a good two hours with the car, and a generous dash of exhilaration thrown in for good measure. Oh yes, the subliminal drive is my way of connecting with the higher force, the God we worship. After I have connected sufficiently with the Almighty, my car and me go to the mandir, to connect in a more tangible (and conventional) way. We pray for world peace and we pray for some good sense to be bestowed upon the babudom that runs BMC and other infinite acronyms. No, we don’t pray for the Lord to give George W. Bush to grow some brains, we’re sure He is yet not capable of achieving that feat.

Of late though, these trips to the famed Siddhivinayak Temple in Bombay are turning out to be awfully similar to second-class local train journeys that the MUTP (or was it MUIP) promises to improve vastly within the next few millennia. It is difficult to fathom why people would jostle, wrestle and generally be ready to beat the daylights out of any buffoon who dares to come in the way. That too in the sanctum sanctorum of a temple. It wouldn’t take the brains of a chess champion to figure out that its something that is ingrained in the psyche of the city now. The thing is that since time immemorial, we, the citizens of this great city (ahem!) have been subject to countless sufferings, which include hanging out of local trains, shoving people while getting into BEST buses, and getting the spinal cord pulverized by the merciless jerks from the moon-surface roads. Consequently, even before a baby can start to utter “mama” or “papa”, he has been imparted sufficient training (by his bitter parents). So much so, that he has already mastered the techniques of getting into a BEST bus by wriggling under the arm of the uncle in front, or deftly jumping in and out of a local train within a few eye-blinks; all that, even before he’s potty trained.

Recognize this place, bereft of the masses??!?!

What results is a spiraling culture of creating an inhuman, inconsiderate species; members of which will stop at nothing at all to get ahead of the next man, not even in a temple. Needless to say, the best place to observe a colourful potpourri of such humans (or is it the runners in a rat race?) is Siddhivinayak Temple on Sunday mornings.

Check out India’s next Olympic medal hope. With a bouquet of flowers for the deity in an outstretched hand, he has already slithered under my armpits and is slicing through the crowd with the alacrity that would put the United States 4x100m relay team to shame. Absolute contempt for any kind of human presence characterizes the way Mr. Olympics is behaving. Utterly despicable, I say! By the time I come back to my senses, Mr. Olympics is already on his way out, grinning ear to ear, as if he’d just beaten Tim Montgomery in a 100m dash by an hour. Looks like his only objective was to sink his elbow into a few people’s bodies (I am sure he found the masses of fat around my tummy quite enjoyable. Ugh!), bulldoze by a couple of God-fearing citizens, and generally leave a bad taste in people’s mouths (and that’s only because of the stinking eucalyptus oil that his hair was dripping with, and he kept stuffing it into honourable six feet tall giants’ faces).

Don’t miss the mighty Gujju aunties (with due respect of course, to their entire clan). They come in a mighty explosion of colour, noise and err…eucalyptus-oiled hair. They enter the holy place like a pack of disgruntled bulldozers on a mission – to wipe out all traces of humanity. They turn around in the mandir like a full cavalcade of multi-axled, eighteen geared, thirty-four wheeled massive American trucks trying to do a U-turn in Juhu Gully. The moment there’s contact (which, considering their sizes, is bound to happen more often than not), check them out screaming like a bunch of deranged mutant elephants, trying (unsuccessfully) to make you feel like you were the most lecherous example of humankind on the face of the holy earth.

As I stagger out of the temple, I realize that in the mad rush, I didn’t pray; I didn’t even look at the orange idol of Ganpati Bappa, which kept smiling benevolently upon me. I was busy avoiding Mr. Olympics and his brethren, who kept trying to slide in through every inch of space that was available to them (and a few more which weren’t). I kept fighting bravely against the immense onslaught of the Gujju aunties, trying hard to keep away from their humongous anatomy at all times. I was trying hard to win the rat race that kept unfolding; that will keep unfolding before the smiling idol, day after day, year after year.

Like everyone else, I had forgotten to pray. Which is why we get no world peace. Which is why the babus running the BMC continue to be bereft of their top floors. Which is why a brainless idiot runs the most powerful country in the world.

But I’d already savoured my two seconds of bliss, with my car, as we zipped through the city. Sigh…it made me see God.

Then again, I have just two words to say to the MMRDA and its kin. The first one ends in a “K”, and the second one is “You”.
THANK YOU, MMRDA. It is you who gets me out at half past six on Sunday mornings.

H2uh – Oh

2005-03-17T21:09:00.000+05:30

One of my blessed friends (blessed to be my friend, of course) decided to splurge a few hundred grand on a big bash in the center of the city (financially blessed as well). It dawned on me that driving to Bandra, and then driving back from Bandra at 3:00 am would be pretty close to an out-of-body blissful experience. Ever willing to make compromises with my personal value system for these little opportunities to spend time with my car, zipping by sleeping beggars on the streets, I decided to go (dressed up in my newest bestest clothes). H2O seems to be the latest hotspot where every pretty, young and scantily clad – this is turning out to be an irritating cliché – thing wants to be seen now days. First time at a nightclub then. Here I come!!

As I walk in the massive door guarded by two huge Stumbo-The-Giants, I am hit hard. It’s the bloody music! Heaven-knows-how-many watts of non-sensical noise are blasting out of those blighted speakers. It was so loud, I couldn’t hear myself think (Boy, am I glad these autovalas aren’t allowed inside, we’d have a buzzillion watts of crazy noise in every auto then). And the songs, eh, I can’t understand a single word of what they’re saying. And hey, they’re saying something only once in a year, or some sort. Those precious words are interspersed with the booming ballasts of maniacal percussions. What happened to music I say!

It’s also dark, very dark. And the darkness is accentuated by psychedelic blue lights embedded in the floor. Huh! Yes, they also have that stunningly expensive laser equipment that draws funny abstract figures in garish colours on every wall. Interesting! Ah there, a number of people have cute little orange LED’s on their faces. Nice way to light up the path ahead of you, I must confess. I generate the gumption to ask the waiter (I think he’s a waiter) for one of those nice pathway-illuminating devices. A white stick has magically materialized from nothingness. Hey! It’s that surefire key to lung degeneration and subsequent oral cancer we commonly know as a cigarette. Funnily, everone’s smoking one. Now, the thing about cigarette smoke is that it stinks, unlike the smoke from a Tata Motors Direct Injection diesel engine. Now that smells like it was made in heaven. Beats me why these people prefer to smoke then. Then again, it’s not the only thing that beats me!

As the irises have deftly modified their size to let in as much light through to the retina as is humanely possible, I can make out something that resembles a dance floor. Eh, there’s a bar as well (with three foolish men throwing bottles at each other – they’re just and arm’s length away from each other no, why not just pass them over in a civilized manner. Beats me). There’re a few LED-equipped human beings acting demented on the dance floor as well, they call THAT dance? Ugh!!

There’s “Slithering Snake”, who, not more than a few moments back was innocuously sipping a Diet Coke, sitting on the seat next to mine. Looks like some senseless “50 Cent” song has galvanized her into action. There, I can see her now, dancing away like a mutant crossbreed between Britney Spears and Prabhudeva. All the suggestively-sex-simulated Britney steps, now magically (ahem) married to junglee-jerk Prabhudeva jigs. She has her date-for-the-night as company, put your hands together for “Lame Leftfeet”. Lame Leftfeet isn’t enjoying proceedings too much. Slithering Snake is slithering too close to his body for comfort – this is a public domain remember! Well, he’s not too good at dancing either. He’s got two feet that are left-er than the Communist Party of India (Marxist). He’s struggling, I am enjoying!

Not to forget, “Gender Indeterminate”, wearing a weirdo costume that does exemplarily well at veiling its…err…gender. The less said, the better. I cannot, though, resist mentioning that in the ensuing melee on the floor, I have inadvertently stamped Gender Indeterminate’s foot with size thirteen leather boots that ensconce feet that support a tenth of a tonne of pure fat. Gender Indeterminate has taken the shock surprisingly well. Makes me wonder whether it’s a human at all! The less said, the better.

In one corner towards the far left, there are a few fair mountain-like entities, sincerely trying to move tectonic plates with their boogie endeavours. “White Elephants” suits these imported female giants to a T. White Elephants are taking simultaneous swigs from two bottles of Bacardi Breezer, one in each hand. I speculate they’re trying to blend a few Breezer flavours to electric effect. God bless them!

There are various other colourful specimens of varying sizes, shapes, and err…genders. All stuffed into a cramped dance floor. Yes, we’ve built the city on an island, and space does come at a hefty premium, but it hasn’t come to THIS yet. Look beyond Chembur Sir, the government is doing a darned good job at reclaiming land hitherto occupied by mangroves and saltpans by using priceless debris. There’s so much space there. Why don’t we go and dance there, like free souls, with not a single human body to bump into every few seconds? Yet one more question beats me!

At the bar, there’s magic of a different kind in full flow (like the beer and the vodka). The aforementioned three monkeys are now disinterested with throwing bottles at each other; they’re indulging in interesting activities of a different kind. One of them has created a fire and is playing around with it, swallowing it up as if it were sumptuous chunks of succulent chicken tikka. A couple of them also sport weird nozzles which they point at glasses, press one of an assortment of buttons, and voila, the nozzle is spurting out spirits faster than a Formula One refueling rig. With all my self-confidence intact, I make my way up to one of the monkeys. “Can I have a glass of chilled water?”, I shout over the blasting ballasts of 50 Cent moaning unintelligible gibberish. One of the monkeys has fainted at my request. Looks like the last time someone asked him for a glass of water was when Mumbai was home to Tyrannosaurus Rex – quite a few millennia have passed since then. The other two monkeys kept gaping at me as though I had time-traveled from Chhatrapati Shivaji’s age. What’s wrong with asking for a glass of water at H2O I say? Isn’t it as natural as asking for a double-crust cheese pizza at Domino’s? One more question has beaten me to pulp!

At the dance floor meanwhile, Slithering Snake, Lame Leftfeet, Gender Indeterminate and all their innumerable brethren, now inebriated by limitless quantities of the choicest spirits, are dancing with each other in all permutations and combinations that the laws of mathematics permit. After watching the same girl (name withheld for security reasons) dance equally closely with three buffoons at three different times, my thoroughly exhausted gray cells have given up on determining who’s dancing with whom and who wants to dance with whom. The ghosts of “Permutations and Combinations” from Std. XI math have come back to haunt me with a vengeance, and what a vengeance! Suddenly, the decision to leave out that chapter as “option” (ugh, Maharashtra Board) does not seem too prudent. Nature has its own ways of putting its point across. I stand beaten, yet again!

After what seems like centuries; staring aimlessly into the detestable haze of cigarette smoke, psychedelic blue lights and brain-dead drunkards, with nothing but a glass of iced-tea for company, the mind starts drifting towards matters of a more spiritual nature. What is it that is respected? A swig from a bottle of Foster’s with a Marlboro in another hand?

Why is it that this chivalrous, considerate, handsome, kind, mature, non-drinking, non-smoking, sensible, sensitive, stable, young (alphabetically arranged for your convenience) man (ahem, yours faithfully) is perennially dismissed as being too old for his age? Why is it that this chivalrous, considerate, handsome, kind, mature, non-drinking, non-smoking, sensible, sensitive, stable, young (I heard cries of “Once More”. Promise!) is considered to be impeccable husband-material, but dull, dreary and boring date-material? Why is the world so unfair that immeasurable quintals of “Fair and Lovely” would not suffice to make it a little more fair, just an iota? Beats me!

Disclaimer:
This is a piece of fiction (ahem). Any resemblance to any person, place or incident that occured in the past, is occuring in the present, or will occur in the future is purely coincidental and utterly unintentional (err, somewhat!).

When Love And Hate Collide

2005-02-28T22:03:00.000+05:30

Sometimes, you are inside an autorikshaw. The auto makes its way through immensely dense traffic. Traffic that is a motley multitude of everything on wheels. The auto snakes its way through the massively crowded street. A street so packed with vehicles, it’d make the number of hair on Anil Kapoor’s body look like a mere number. The driver wields the archaic handlebar like a fairy waves her magic wand. He dismisses the tremendous traffic around him with a flourish of the said handlebar. He cuts through lanes in a manner that reminds you of a hot knife cutting through butter. Effortless! You gape at his consummate skills. Here is a man at the peak of his prowess, not unlike one Mr. Michael Schumacher. The auto wafts through the street with characteristic intrepidity, much like the heady scent radiating from the beautiful lady riding that Scooty in the next lane. Poetry in Motion! The auto lets out a throaty roar, provoked by a gentle twitch of the hand that controls the accelerator. Soon, it has left mere mortals behind, spurred on by the unending power that the mighty engine delivers. As the auto makes a clean getaway, everything else is relegated to being mere dots in the rear view mirror. Soon we (you are one with the driver and the auto now, its subliminal) are coasting along a scenic road, completely devoid of everything else with an internal combustion engine.

Sometimes you are outside an autorikshaw. Your car stands like a lone warrior, surrounded by nothing but autos; so many of them, they’d make the number of hair on Anil Kapoor’s body look like a mere number; as far as the eye can see, stretching away far into the horizon. They are all the same, trying to snake their way through the terrifying traffic. All of them in a hurry to get to the same place – nowhere. Cutting lanes as if there were no tomorrow, further complicating an already convoluted conundrum. The situation is getting worse, each auto trying to waft its way through the traffic, much like the odour that emanates from the pile of uncleaned garbage a few feet away on the same street. All the drivers are trying to wrestle with their accelerators, coercing their autos to break the shackles and leave the traffic behind. All of them are met with as much success as India found at Athens not so long back. The autos let out a collective moan accompanied by a black blast of carbon monoxide clouds; they move but a few inches. You are left honking your horn till it shouts itself hoarse, all of it to no avail. After what seems like a few millennia, the mess has cleared up a bit. And then you find yourself on a road devoid of everything else with an internal combustion engine, everything but a solitary auto. The auto is coasting along as if the road was leased out to the driver’s great grand uncle by the ever-munificent Brihanmumbai Mahanagar Palika.

As a string of the choicest exotic expletives finds its way out of your mouth, you can’t help but think – sometimes you are inside an autorikshaw.

Adult - Rated Content

2005-02-27T14:25:00.001+05:30

The Sunday Times of India is flooded with columns. Every Tom, Dick, Harry and their cousins want to adorn the pages of the Sunday Times with one of their prose masterpieces. It’s led me to believe that a columnist's profession is the easiest of them all. Yes, easier even, than the job of one Jeremy Clarkson, who has the top-of-the-line variants of Ferrari's, Porsche's and other choice supercars delivered to his doorstep, so he can thrash them around a track and then pan them in his reviews.

When I was a little kid, (stop laughing there, at the back) I remember being in awe of these columnists. "How do they find something new to write every week?", I used to wonder. I'd then seek the help of my minute gray cells (in scarce number) to answer questions of this nature for me. Alas, they always ended up in magnificent failure. With the passage of the years, and the accumulation of worldly wisdom (and massive amounts of saturated fat around the tummy), I concluded, "Hell its not so difficult anyway!!"

Talking of saturated fat, my father isn't a very happy man. I blew up ten thousand rupees of his hard-earned money on a gymnasium - yes, you heard me right, a bloody "Fitness Center". Think of the endless gallons of super premium high-octane fuel that much money can buy. Think of the limitless thrill and the infinite enjoyment that results from such a purchase. Instead, I got talked into a gym membership by a stupid forward mail that asked me my age, height and weight; pretended to do a few bizarre calculations; and screamed out in bold red (font size 48) "Your body mass index is way above safe levels, it's a miracle you are alive. Get working boy!". I wasn't even married then. The possibility of my life coming to an end without having tasted marital bliss (whatever) sent a chill down my spine (it had to make its way through dense layers of fat) and put bridal beads of sweat on the expanse of my forehead. Off I headed to the nearest gym and readily got conned out of a full ten grand. Sigh! (Interesting tidbit of information - I weighed a colossal ninety eight kilos when I started frequenting the blighted place, now I weigh a humongous hundred and three. Fancy having paid a months salary to slam a century - in the wrong department)

First day at the gym, the instructor mouthed the dreaded four alphabets - D I E T. I wasn't giving up on the sumptuous delicacies the higher Lord had created for mankind. Not for losing a measly few kilos. The body mass index can take a ride in the woods with the saturated fat for company. And marriage doesn't seem so blissful anymore, at least not at the cost of my meals. In the ensuing bitter arguments, there was only one winner, and he ended up gaining five kilos and a few inches around the waist in the bargain. Any guesses?
Long after Indian curries became the flavour of the season in the United Kingdom, the Brits have woken up to the presence of carcinogenic dies in the chilly powder that we sell them. The ensuing brouhaha has culminated in some interesting facts coming to light about the things we in India consume so wholeheartedly. And bringing it all out in the open is the fearless journalism of the Times group. Long live!

Sample the contents of the table that appeared in the Times of India a few days back. By the way, the table was replete with vivaciously vivid colours (shades of green and blue) and wonderfully entertaining graphics. The milk we consume sir, now comes fortified with oxytocin, which is likely to cause abortions and sterility. I can't start to imagine the amount of oxytocin that all of us have so heartily consumed. Everything from coffee to pickles to ladyfingers to brinjal is supposedly adulterated with myriad substances ranging from coal tar dye (ahem...coal tar die) to lead chromate (exotic) to phosphomidone (same to you) to Methyl Parathin (God in the middle). What takes the cake (made with cocoa containing benzyl super aluminate) with the cherry (enriched with Rhodamin B) is the seemingly innocuous Dhania Powder. Hold your horses friends, it is enhanced with nothing less than HORSE DUNG (pun unintended). We all knew that bullshit had certain magical properties; it always took you to the top at any MNC. But HORSE DUNG??? It shall not surprise me if a study were to come to the conclusion that the average Indian middleclass family feasts on more toxic delicacies at each meal than were let out during the infamous Pokhran nuclear tests.

I am pestering those gray cells yet again to tell me if all this is part of a massive international ploy to reduce obesity. Publish news articles like that once in a while, and there you go, half the worlds fat men immediately give up their gourmets (I gave up dhania powder for sure)
Is there nothing untouched by the human urge to make a quick buck? Nothing at all? Forget food for humans for once, even food for our cars isn't untouched. But hey, its not adulterated. Instead, its made better by adding a few exotic chemicals, things that help your car run better. Come to think of it, the car gets better food than the car's owner does. But then, in most cases, the car really is better than the owner, and deserves more. Engine Oil Rotis with Unleaded Fuel Kolhapuri anyone?

Who's having the last laugh then? It’s not the Brits for sure; they're choking over their carcinogenic chillies. It’s not the world's fat men, they're ruing those cursed forced diets. Its not even George W. Bush. Its those oppressed, malnourished horses on Chowpaty; they're beaten to pulp by their owners, mocked by every Chunnu Munnu on a Sunday outing with his family, and yet they selflessly provide those joyrides along the beach, everyday, day after day. They're the ones laughing, and laughing out loud, because we're eating their shit.

Auto-crazy Autocracy II

2005-02-24T05:56:00.000+05:30

Mumbai wanted to do a Dubai. So Vilasrao uncle and (revered) colleagues came up with the “Mumbai Shopping Festival” (and actually fooled Orange into sponsoring it)

“What is the difference between ‘Mumbai Shopping Festival’ and ‘Dubai Shopping Festival’? The difference is only ‘Mum’ and ‘Du’, everything else is the same.”, thus mused vivacious Vilasrao. “With an extra alphabet, we will end up being more successful than DSF.”, concluded bubbly Bhujbal. Now you know why these guys run the state. Nice!

Dubai organized a go-kart race in the parking lot of a popular shopping mall. (The parking lot was actually good enough to race on, using tiny go-carts with microscopic wheels – think about it) Mumbai decided to go a step further (one small step for mankind, a giant leap for Mumbaikars) “We will organize an autorikshaw race on a go-kart track”, said peppy Patangrao (wow!).

Thus, we return to the saga of the mighty autorikshaw. Yes, for all those people who’re shouting “Hey! What about peppy Patangrao’s plan??”, it did materialize. So now we had 50 maniacal dogs in urgent need of relieving themselves. Like the prize were a ticket to pee (in the Sulabh Shouchalayas, of course, constructed by one of Patangrao’s aides), and only one dog could win it, so they kept racing each other, till only one was left, recipient of the priceless pee ticket.

Which brings me to my current muse, the beautiful (ahem) auto. My first auto ride was at age three months; the jerks caused immutable damage to my chromosomes, which causes all the flab in my body to proceed to an infinite state of inertia. Yes, all the flab remains just that, FLAB. Hell, it doesn’t turn into muscle even if I work out as much as Mr. Asashoryu. Asashoryu, by the way, has won the prestigious Emperor’s Cup sixth time this year. And I am talking about Sumo Wrestling.

My Momma tells me that in 1975, there was a single auto in all of Mulund. Now there’s one for each person in Mulund (and a few for the unborn babies as well). Quite an explosive growth then, one that is ahead of the baby-making machines we call humans, by a long long way. The first autos were small, sourced their power from a 100cc scooter motor, and ran on three scooter wheels. Three so that the driver could carry over-fed, super-plump aunties (sometimes three of the kind) over the harshest terrain in the country – Mumbai roads. They had a really curious stance, with the ‘diving-down-nose’ (much like the dog sniffing the ground) and the conspicuously raised ass (like the dog didn’t care about the rest of the world). And yes, the ass came with a cute muffler that peeked out of the center, the source of all those ugly gases. So many similarities! Bajaj realized that these autos were possibly designed by a pervert, and bore too many anatomical resemblances. What followed was a notable design change. The new ones featured a wider backside (quite like a PYT’s after marriage). The ass was made to be lower, so as to show some respect to other road users. And yes, the cute muffler now peeked out of the side, to wipe out any more anatomical similarities. Impressive!

As a result of the somewhat vulgar design of the old autos, I shall indulge in an act of self-censorship, and restrict the rest of this discussion to the newer variants – the ones with the wider backsides. (Long live the wider asses!)

These autos then, are of three types. The really old ones; the not-so-old ones; and the spanking, gleaming, shimmering, (and wonderfully smelling) new ones. The really old ones and the really new ones are quite innocuous. Which brings us to the not-so-old ones (lets call them ‘uncles’), the real culprits of every transgression on the city’s roads. Uncles can be identified by two year old babies, eight year old Alsatians and any year old George W. Bush’s. They are characterized by loud music systems (replete with super tweeters for the dhinchaak beats) belting out the latest remix number at 226.86 decibels (albeit without the unclothed young ladies – I hear that advances in in-vehicle entertainment technologies will make LCD screens affordable enough to be fit inside autos, you can have the ladies then). Uncles’ owners like to dress them up quite aggressively. So they come with unimaginably massive amounts of chrome, enough to dismiss any American muscle car worth its name to the bottomless pits of mortification; a weird triple edged accessory (in shimmering, light-reflecting chrome of course) to decorate the front wheel (like jewelry for the nose); and a blaring, shouting sticker on the windscreen (that makes half the windscreen useless) that says something to the effect of “Shivneri” or “Magnificent Maratha” or “Shraddha and Saburi”…the likes. I don’t even need to mention the tinted glasses, the premium fabric upholstery and the motorized wiper, because they’re a sure-shot given. Some Uncles also sport peculiar stickers that spell “Chrysler” or “Harley Davidson”. Queer! (On his last visit to Mumbai, George W. Bush was taken aback by the sheer number of Chrysler vehicles on Mumbai roads. His well-endowed gray cells couldn’t figure out though, why they were all black and yellow, more importantly why they ran on three wheels. The CIA enlightened him – Chrysler was cutting costs in India they told him!)

Uncles’ drivers are also peculiar, and the eccentricity is uniformly evident across the entire city, from Malad to Mulund and from Bhandup to Borivli. The drivers are most likely to be middle-aged, aggressive, stupid and as intelligent as Dubya. They sport a thick gold chain, the source of which needs to be further investigated (possibly at considerable peril). It would not be unreasonable to suspect hidden sources of income. Drivers classified under this category are not driven by mere material motivations (read the jingling of coins). Consequently, they are often seen whiling away their work hours on the roadside, listening to the afore-mentioned item songs. These are the ones who stop in the middle of the road, as soon as they smell the slightest traces of a prospective customer, brakes working with the ferocity that reminds one of Mercedes’ patented ceramic braking technology.

I’ve stumbled upon a new trick that I play on the Uncle drivers to satiate my sadistic self. I stand on the edge of the road with a stupid expression on my face, an expression that screams to an Uncle driver, ‘Come pick me up from here. I am dying to go someplace far off!’. In come the dudes, they get a dirty look from me which screams ‘On your way buster. I ain’t hiring your vehicle’. The ‘Dubya’ look on their faces is worth dying for. As if the Mr. Universe title got snatched away from them. Highly recommended!!

That then, is the saga of the bizarre Uncle autorikshaw and its equally eccentric driver, forever adding colour to Mumbai’s humdrum landscape. Something that will stay for ages and ages to come, unaffected and unchanged through decades. Now how many people do we know of do THAT??

Auto-crazy Autocracy - I

2005-02-21T23:09:00.000+05:30

Indian Cinema. Two good movies in two weeks. When was the last time that happened? When Tyrannosaurus Rex beat Triceratops in a mighty bloodbath much reminiscent of Pakistan’s ignominy down under? Or was it when India last won a hockey gold? In any case, it was a long time ago.

“Black” came up first. So much to learn. Superlative movie making. Nice! Its beautiful to see people actually wake up out of their slumbers – this guy’s last slumber cost a certain Mr. Jhamu Sughand a few xilodazamibillion rupees. Some period epic called Devdas. Yes, its forgotten. Coming back to the fractured slumbers, the period of wakefulness has given us “Black”. Wonderful to see movies being made without stupid red heart balloons, suggestively gyrating PYT’s (with minimal efforts required on the costume designer’s front) and 40-year old uncles without shirts or baniyans, swollen (shaven as well) chests and ballooning biceps (much like the aforementioned red hearts, only a different shade). Well you see, when someone makes a movie like “Black” he’s not worried about the percentage opening in Chandrapur, or the box office collections in Ghaziabad. He’s just interested in making a good movie, and that’s the way a good movie is made. Three cheers! (with goblets filled with 98-octane low sulphur petrol)

Then there’s “Page 3”. This Madhur guy is on a roll. He won’t make tones of money on this movie. He won’t even make new friends. But here is realistic cinema at its absolute zenith. Wonder if he was taking realism to new heights IF (or WHEN, as the case may be) he tried to bed that starlet from Delhi. May be he wanted to “live” the movie he was making, so he could succulently convey the feel of his message to the audience. But then again, it’s a wicked world after all, may be the female was lying through her nose (imagine what exotic elements would garnish the lies then). Who knows! Give us a product like Page 3 once a year, and everything’s forgotten.

Talking of Page 3, the thing that struck me the most is the ubiquitous autorikshaw (Hey don’t brand me insane as yet – I am a little different that’s it) Think of it. Isn’t it there everywhere, everytime, be it dawn, day, dusk and night. How many times has one been failed by one’s car, friend, girlfriend or such, loitering on the streets of Mumbai, without a place to go to, or clue of what to do next. And then it comes, rattling down the street on its three puny “scooter – wheels”, the road ahead basking in the golden glory of its solitary headlight. Few things in the world demonstrate “light at the end of a dark tunnel” better. This is it!

As a little kid (yes – I was little some time in my life), I was always flabbergasted with the way these black and yellow, stupid looking animals ran on three wheels. They always reminded me of a dog in urgent need of relieving himself, one leg up, but nowhere to go, running around like a maniac, desperately hunting for a place to expel the waste liquids out of his body. Then again, they always took you from point A to point B reasonably cheaply, (if you shared one, you could obliterate BEST bus fares to obscurity) the safety however was sure to raise more than a few things (I am talking of eyebrows, perverts) at the European Union’s council for road safety. (I hear they’re going berserk – more of that some other time)

They’re as much a part of Mumbai’s landscape as those pitiful shanties hanging by the skin of their teeth from the hills near Ghatkopar (At one time, it used to be a green and brown hill. Now the only thing green is the neighbour’s envy when you can squeeze out a kholi that’s 1.2964 square millimeters bigger than his. And the only thing brown is – well, the shit. No euphemisms). Not to forget, the boundless slums lining the runway that belongs to the International Airport. Welcome to Mumbai!

Ok, after the momentary digression, (which went a long way in alleviating my frustrations about the poor state of civic affairs) we return to the magnificently moronic autorikshaws. As a young kid, I had a habit of classifying autorikshaws and their venerable drivers. What results after 10 years of protracted research in the said field is an all-encompassing guide to Mumbai autovallahs, their whims, fancies, dreams and desires (ahem). Not to mention, foolproof ways to deal with all their multifaceted varieties.

More to follow!

Paradise ^ 800

2005-02-20T12:22:00.000+05:30

The engine roars to life. As eager as a million dollar Ferrari. Who’d say that this puny 800cc machine has been lying idle, ignored and dead as a dodo for the past 10 days? (Sorry for ignoring you baby!!L)

It lets out a muted roar, all of its majestic 36 horses (wow!!) now awoken out of their extended slumber. Pulled out of their idyllic hibernation on a lazy Sunday afternoon, all of 144 feet (that’s 36 * 4, silly) want to blast the car out of the clasp of earth’s gravitational pull. Trust me, they are capable of doing it, its all in the driver’s mind.

This car is a far cry from the luxury cocoons we are used to traveling in. I, for one, had been cosseted in a Xing replete with electric windows, air conditioning, central locking and nice, nice music. The M800, on the other hand – well, in a nutshell, there’s nothing electric about it, other than the experience of course. Not even an electric starter, you have to crank it up manually. (ok – I made up the last one) There’s power steering, yes you have to apply a lot of power to steer it around. The windows – ah, what novelty. There’s a small lever that must be rotated. Rotate it one way and the windows roll down, roll it the other way, and viola, they roll up. Brilliant stuff! The doors shut with a loud thwack, not a sophisticated thump that I was so starting to get used to. Get it rolling and it explodes in a cacophony of the most vivid sounds audible to the human auricular system. Sounds from the rattling windows, clutter from the half-wrecked chassis and hitherto unheard sounds from every conceivable part of the vehicle. Talk of music; this is what real music is. Its all in the driver’s mind.

But its all not bad, if it were, I wouldn’t be writing this piece.

The seating is low, and a real enthusiast (a crazy one for sure) would feel like he’s in a brilliant sports coupe. (not a humungous truck as the “tall boys” make one feel) It makes the driver feel one with the road, and how! The suspension, tattered, battered and bruised with years of selfless service, transmits every bump and its smallest relative back to the driver. What feedback! The steering position and the seating posture transport you into the cabin of a Ferrari, within moments – I told you, its all in the mind. Steering is precise, all in the driver’s mind.

This car has heart, and a huge one at that. Floor the accelo, dump the clutch, and it races forward like a Ferrari on a race track (mind again) Front tyres squealing, rear ones dying to catch up. The smell of burnt rubber. Wind in the hair. Exhilaration. Paradise. All in the driver’s mind.

This is by far THE bestest car in the world. Forget the million dollar Ferraris and Beemers. And forget the billion dollar Maybachs and RRs. This is life - heart, soul and 18 kilometers to a litre. And its all in the driver’s mind.

Pizza Hatt!

2005-02-18T10:57:00.000+05:30

Pizza Hatt

Well then, it came down to that familiar argument again. Domino’s or Pizza Hut. Fancy the pizza icons of the hegemonistic Yank nation to be causing considerable unrest in a normal middle class family, which until not so long ago was living peacefully with its quintessentially Indian Dal-Roti.

And then this, they came, they were eaten, and we were addicted. But when the addiction leads to arguments most likely to end in a sword fight, “addiction” takes on a completely different meaning.

I really didn’t care two hoots about Domino’s until not very long back. I despised their “stores” – as they call them. There were just two tables and four chairs. Large (or small) enough for a couple of pygmies from the heart of the equatorial rain forests to rest themselves on – I am sure even they would not appreciate the feeling in the back side when the wrought iron chairs keep poking in, they just refuse to grant any semblance of comfort. Pygmies I said, and we’re a huge Sindhi family (no – we’re just four, but three of us are HUGE). The fear of watching their furniture collapse under my weight (its happened to me before, promise – albeit with plastic furniture) kept me away from those “stores” – I didn’t want to end up spending a month’s salary, running up furniture bills, on a single pizza outing you know, they’re bloody expensive anyway.

One fine day, I just bumped and bounced into a Domino’s store, utterly bored to tears of everything else in the vicinity. (Err, I eat out 14 times a week, by choice of course :D) No plates, no glasses, no water, heck no AC! They give you the pizza in a cardboard box (umm, ever thought how cardboard tastes, entirely swathed and dripping with mozzarella) The bill, oh that’s a sticker they put on to the box. Talk of cost cutting. And then the pizza, bliss! Think of an unadulterated pizza experience, this is it! No frills, just pizza.

It reminds me of that million-dollar behemoth we know as an F1 car. There’re no doors, windows, or air-conditioner. Heck, not even a cup holder! It sucks fuel (super premium unleaded very low sulphur "green" fuel, if I may add) by the gallon, and by the seconds. The seat is nowhere near to what the nerves in the backside would recognize as comfortable. The suspension is so stiff, it’d pulverize your back before you can say “spinal cord”. And yet, it’s the pinnacle of the subliminally supreme driving experience. No frills, just driving.

Think of a Maybach on the other hand. Its got power windows, power steering and power everything. Its got every creature comfort in the world you can imagine. From refrigerators to loo’s, everything’s in there. Its even got a funny name for a weird roof that does bizarre things. Sample this – “Webasto’s design gives Maybach passengers control over light intensity. It allows the sun to shine clearly through the panorama roof or with the touch of a button, diffuses the light, making the roof opaque and allowing only 76 percent daylight into the car.” Haah, why would anyone need THAT?? Bored of all of it then?

Bored of the stupid dances the Pizza Hut waiters (can I call them that, eh Yanks?) perform for the audience as the clock strikes 8:00pm? Bored of the yummy photographs on the menu card, and their mighty chalk-and-cheese difference with the actual pizza? Bored of ringing the bell, and hearing a few hundred Pizza Hut employees shout “Thank you” like a collective moan that reminds you of horror movie soundtracks? Well, head to the nearest Domino’s outlet for that ultimate, unalloyed pizza experience. Ok, you won’t get any plates, or forks, or spoons, and trust me you’ll get water if you ask for it (in a plastic glass) but rest assured, when the melting cheese drips out of the sandwiched crust and smears your fingers, you’ll feel like you’ve died and gone to heaven!

Jumble Jumble Rumble Mumble

2005-02-18T10:45:00.000+05:30

Finally, the inevitable leap into blogdom. I had been keeping away from it for a long long time now. I couldn't really get myself to go through endless pages of registration, selecting templates for the blog and other activities of a similar nature!

I am finally through, all because I wanted to post a one line message on a friend's blog. One parltry line! Nothing else. But they made me go through the hassles of a registration procedure that lasted a life time. (Some hair has turned gray, promise)

One tiny peek into how the name came about. Jaggernaut first, comes from "Juggernaut - crushing, irrepresible force" is what the dictionary says. Its suitably customized to reflect my name. With 100+ kgs of unalloyed fat to throw around, yes, it sure is quite crushing. And the irrepresibility comes from the tummy, it refuses to be repressed within the trousers, spilling out before you can say "Fat"! Jumbling Mumbling is because I am constantly fumbling ;) Don't know for what though!