I really like this post. And this blogger, for that matter. I've already given it some publicity on Facebook so why not do it here too?
Indianizing the Facebook "Like" button
Excerpt
In India, we do things differently. And in keeping with the rich tradition of orally imparted knowledge and MMS scandals, we rarely like to write things down, and that is why when we go to “foreign”, we spare no chances in pontificating, elucidating and prognosticating on the Great Indian Difference. In India, we have history. In India, we have ancient culture. In India, we have the world’s most unhealthy kind of vegetarian food. Etc. Of course, elderly Indian gentlemen with NRI children play it both ways, hitting forehands down the line glorifying Western infrastructure and orderliness while slicing backhand drop shots edifying the sanctity of Indian chaos when the audience is melanin-challenged.
Read the rest
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Thursday, November 04, 2010
The first swallow of summer
India never had a recession. Sure, we all called it that and all of corporate India used it as an opportunity to cut costs, but we were actually very, very lucky. It’s only now, in Dubai, that I’ve understood what recession really means.
Over that first weekend I heard stories of companies going bankrupt by the hundreds, promising entrepreneurs left stranded. Of jobs lost overnight and lives abandoned wholesale as people scrambled to get out ahead of the foreclosures. Stories we’ve heard from a distance, but now made real by the fact that these were people I knew. But there were also other stories of those who made it through, which of course never make it to the media. My friends didn’t say much about their own struggles, merely summing it up as “survival mode”.
Several chance meetings in the following weeks produced startlingly effusive greetings from people who used to be mere acquaintances. I got the uncomfortable feeling that they were seeing my return as a vindication of their decision – or compulsion – to stay.
I left two years ago at the crescendo of Dubai’s boom. The city I’ve returned to is only just starting a tentative new tune after the old one faded to silence. My very first thought was that it felt more like Muscat than Dubai, the brash confidence that was the stock-in-trade quite conspicuous by its absence. The cafes are quieter, people are kinder, the traffic is more manageable. In the place of the old giddiness, there’s a certain grimness of purpose, a cautious optimism that one wouldn’t have thought was in Dubai’s DNA. The most interesting impression I’ve got in the first three weeks of my second innings here is that Dubai is not diminished by adversity but the better for it – I think the recession will turn out to be the best thing that happened to this city.
But I have to say that walking down the Beach Road one day, noting the empty tables on a Saturday evening, I smiled with relief at a car parked outside a nondescript gate. It was a Lamborghini with vanity plates, key in the ignition, engine running extravagantly, left unchaperoned in the arrogant certainty that nobody would dare touch it. Now that’s more like it!
Over that first weekend I heard stories of companies going bankrupt by the hundreds, promising entrepreneurs left stranded. Of jobs lost overnight and lives abandoned wholesale as people scrambled to get out ahead of the foreclosures. Stories we’ve heard from a distance, but now made real by the fact that these were people I knew. But there were also other stories of those who made it through, which of course never make it to the media. My friends didn’t say much about their own struggles, merely summing it up as “survival mode”.
Several chance meetings in the following weeks produced startlingly effusive greetings from people who used to be mere acquaintances. I got the uncomfortable feeling that they were seeing my return as a vindication of their decision – or compulsion – to stay.
I left two years ago at the crescendo of Dubai’s boom. The city I’ve returned to is only just starting a tentative new tune after the old one faded to silence. My very first thought was that it felt more like Muscat than Dubai, the brash confidence that was the stock-in-trade quite conspicuous by its absence. The cafes are quieter, people are kinder, the traffic is more manageable. In the place of the old giddiness, there’s a certain grimness of purpose, a cautious optimism that one wouldn’t have thought was in Dubai’s DNA. The most interesting impression I’ve got in the first three weeks of my second innings here is that Dubai is not diminished by adversity but the better for it – I think the recession will turn out to be the best thing that happened to this city.
But I have to say that walking down the Beach Road one day, noting the empty tables on a Saturday evening, I smiled with relief at a car parked outside a nondescript gate. It was a Lamborghini with vanity plates, key in the ignition, engine running extravagantly, left unchaperoned in the arrogant certainty that nobody would dare touch it. Now that’s more like it!
Monday, September 27, 2010
Morning has broken
The best time in our house is breakfast time. We're all foraging for different kinds of food, and reading different newspapers, sharing whatever bits we think are amusing. Woman falls out of train into sea and survives. Columbian police arrest drug dealer's parrot for giving warning of their approach. Woman gets roughed up by neighbours because her dog poops in front of their house. Obama's not coming to Bangalore because he's afraid of the techies. If there's no interesting news, we amuse ourselves by checking how many exaggerations the Times of India crams into the same story the Hindu has reported with great restraint. Occasionally, arguments break out as we all have widely differing views on whatever the main headline is, but they usually end abruptly in a quest for a five-letter word for boredom or an Italian composer. This last is my mother who is deeply addicted to the Guardian Quick Crossword. My Dad will promptly make up a word that fools nobody (he often thinks I'm still eight). In between, we blame each other for the failure of the vegetables we painstakingly planted or take credit for whatever fruit the garden has recently produced. We hotly debate the merits of some new block of flats that none of us is going to buy, earnestly study the dog adoption listings for a pet we're not going to get, and, if it's a Sunday, my Dad will search the matrimonial ads for a bridegroom I'm not going to marry. We interfere with each other's plans for the day, get in the way of the maid and are generally friendly to each other. Of course, conditions deteriorate as the day progresses and dinner is usually the worst time, but that does not stop us from inflicting our company on each other. Looking back, this seems to have always been the pattern in the household, more or less. You'd think that by now we'd have taken the hint and gone in for TV dinners.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Writing for pleasure?
Some days words don't come easy. Other days they don't come at all. Now and then I feel – as everyone does – that I'd like to go back and try the road not taken. Then again, I feel like that's the road I'm on, and wish I'd taken the other, well-travelled one. Noise is alternatively comforting and oppressive. Silence does that too. Rules are hard to follow, and difficult to renounce. Fear follows hard on hope. Faith is the hardest thing to do. Some days it's half-full. On others, half-empty. Sometimes the glass isn't even there.
"Writing, particularly fiction writing, is an act of quiet terror. You are alone all at once with your genius and your ineptitude, and your errors are as public as possible," as Gene Weingarten says in "The Hardy Boys: The Final Chapter", an old article in the Washington Post (it's a great read for those of us who grew up with the Hardy Boys. Or Nancy Drew, for that matter).
Writing a book is ridiculously hard work. The reckless number of debut novels unleashed every month baffles me - who are all these people and how are they doing it?
"Writing, particularly fiction writing, is an act of quiet terror. You are alone all at once with your genius and your ineptitude, and your errors are as public as possible," as Gene Weingarten says in "The Hardy Boys: The Final Chapter", an old article in the Washington Post (it's a great read for those of us who grew up with the Hardy Boys. Or Nancy Drew, for that matter).
Writing a book is ridiculously hard work. The reckless number of debut novels unleashed every month baffles me - who are all these people and how are they doing it?
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
An Indiranagar sub-culture
It's Cafe Coffee Day on 12th Main. I'm sitting with my laptop open, typing desultorily and waiting for a friend to join me. At the table next to me three people are doing business. I know this not from their conversation, which I'm not paying attention to, but the tones of their voices. After a while, I look up and see that they're discussing the new logo of their company. I can see the screen clearly and I automatically critique the logo in my mind. It's not much longer before I feel impelled to lean across and present my credentials and opinions. The upshot of this is an offer from the guy to introduce me to publishers for my book, and a freelance project.
Over the next few weeks, at various other cafés, more freelance projects and job referrals come my way from others engaged in trying to turn early mid-life crises into pots of gold. It seems this town is full of people who work better in cafes than in cubicles. There are far more of us than I'd thought. We followed the prescribed path from birth. We got the reasonable education, no hitch, became reasonable adults at eighteen, no question, found the reasonable job, no sweat. We moved smoothly from good company to better one with scarcely a break, climbed steadily with reasonable reward. We stayed firmly on the rails for 15 or 16 years until the Great Pointsman in the Sky (or the evil one below) fell asleep or something and we found ourselves suddenly thrown off, bruised and unreasonable. The early troubles we should have had suddenly come due, we take our belated gap year and give ourselves the career angst we skipped.
Most of us are still walking beside the rails, half ready to leap on should another slow train arrive, but we're getting more unreasonable by the hour. Most of us will return anyway to some cubicle or the other, refreshed by the break. But the 0.1 per cent who don't, will, in between dodging the bouncing cheques, invent the next Mac or Google, found the new Tata or become another AR Rahman or Chetan Bhagat. I don't know yet which category I will belong to, but it's an exciting time here in the recycle bin.
Over the next few weeks, at various other cafés, more freelance projects and job referrals come my way from others engaged in trying to turn early mid-life crises into pots of gold. It seems this town is full of people who work better in cafes than in cubicles. There are far more of us than I'd thought. We followed the prescribed path from birth. We got the reasonable education, no hitch, became reasonable adults at eighteen, no question, found the reasonable job, no sweat. We moved smoothly from good company to better one with scarcely a break, climbed steadily with reasonable reward. We stayed firmly on the rails for 15 or 16 years until the Great Pointsman in the Sky (or the evil one below) fell asleep or something and we found ourselves suddenly thrown off, bruised and unreasonable. The early troubles we should have had suddenly come due, we take our belated gap year and give ourselves the career angst we skipped.
Most of us are still walking beside the rails, half ready to leap on should another slow train arrive, but we're getting more unreasonable by the hour. Most of us will return anyway to some cubicle or the other, refreshed by the break. But the 0.1 per cent who don't, will, in between dodging the bouncing cheques, invent the next Mac or Google, found the new Tata or become another AR Rahman or Chetan Bhagat. I don't know yet which category I will belong to, but it's an exciting time here in the recycle bin.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Happiness is an Iftar tent
Another Ramadan. As always, even far from the Middle East, it sparks the hope of change, similar to the irrational expectations of the New Year. But unlike New Year’s Eve, this is a non-stressful marker that brings acceptance rather than regret. (It probably helps that it doesn’t involve alcohol and other enablers of things that are good ideas at the time.)
Perhaps it's just that Ramadan is a reminder that the moon will wax and wane, in spite of us, as surely as the tides turn. Eid will come, and then Diwali. Soon it will be a fun Christmas and then, with the assurance of a recurring nightmare, will come New Year’s Eve.
But for now, there is still the small benediction whenever someone says Ramadan Kareem. There are hummous, fatoush and fatayer, tall fruit juices, small goblets of Turkish coffee to take you into the night, and friends to share it with. I can't think of anything more convival than Iftar. And I know you'll remember me when the fruity shisha smoke curls up into the warm night air, and there is chatter and someone laughing too much over nothing.
Perhaps it's just that Ramadan is a reminder that the moon will wax and wane, in spite of us, as surely as the tides turn. Eid will come, and then Diwali. Soon it will be a fun Christmas and then, with the assurance of a recurring nightmare, will come New Year’s Eve.
But for now, there is still the small benediction whenever someone says Ramadan Kareem. There are hummous, fatoush and fatayer, tall fruit juices, small goblets of Turkish coffee to take you into the night, and friends to share it with. I can't think of anything more convival than Iftar. And I know you'll remember me when the fruity shisha smoke curls up into the warm night air, and there is chatter and someone laughing too much over nothing.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
So far, so good. Played, not sung.
When you're asked to review the debut album of someone you knew when you were young, it's in danger of being even more subjective than usual. It took several bouts of listening to be sure that the feelings came from the music and not nostalgia. Since there's no way of separating myself from it, this "review" goes on my own blog rather than the independent space it was supposed to be for.
A/J's So Far So Good is, in the artist's words, a celebration of “clarity gained from chaos.” That's the sort of line that works very well in sleeve notes, but music is a personal experience so I'm not even going to attempt to match his reasons to what I hear. A distant memory of a guitar that accompanied campfire Hotel Californias died swiftly, unregretted. In its place is a clear, young sound, very now, very here, resisting classification, stirring a pleased surprise. For example, what A/J's guitar does with Vande Mataram (one of two tributes on the album) is to patriotism, what sufism is to religion – the pure soul of the thing, when it's not tethered to tenets. I don't know the technical musical terms for it, so I will use my own equivalents. The grammar and syntax of this album are flawless, the punctuation meticulous, the language learnt in good schools. The style is original, and the voice, true, though slightly hesitant as it would be in a first album. This is a musician with considerable creative energy, just discovering his music, and the excitement of his journey is infectious.
An instrumental album creates another pitfall for the amateur reviewer: the music becomes about yourself. Listening to it online, where each song is accompanied by a brief note on mood and visualization, I was surprised to learn that Jaisalmer was about snake charmers and fires burning because for me it was a Harley Davidson on a desert highway. I was equally startled to find that The Journey Begins was about trying to see waterfalls in darkness because I saw water in darkness too. The intricacies of Derailed that seem to leave a message just out of reach of the consciousness and the unplayed notes of private, domestic joys in Mady's Tune both seem to my unguarded mind to be underscored by the irrevocable rhythm of a departing train. Did the artist intend it – who knows?
For the first time in two years of surrendering incipient audiophilehood to an iPod, I wish my Linn was set up properly for this album.
A/J: So Far So Good, Ashaanti Records, Bangalore, January 2010
A/J's So Far So Good is, in the artist's words, a celebration of “clarity gained from chaos.” That's the sort of line that works very well in sleeve notes, but music is a personal experience so I'm not even going to attempt to match his reasons to what I hear. A distant memory of a guitar that accompanied campfire Hotel Californias died swiftly, unregretted. In its place is a clear, young sound, very now, very here, resisting classification, stirring a pleased surprise. For example, what A/J's guitar does with Vande Mataram (one of two tributes on the album) is to patriotism, what sufism is to religion – the pure soul of the thing, when it's not tethered to tenets. I don't know the technical musical terms for it, so I will use my own equivalents. The grammar and syntax of this album are flawless, the punctuation meticulous, the language learnt in good schools. The style is original, and the voice, true, though slightly hesitant as it would be in a first album. This is a musician with considerable creative energy, just discovering his music, and the excitement of his journey is infectious.
An instrumental album creates another pitfall for the amateur reviewer: the music becomes about yourself. Listening to it online, where each song is accompanied by a brief note on mood and visualization, I was surprised to learn that Jaisalmer was about snake charmers and fires burning because for me it was a Harley Davidson on a desert highway. I was equally startled to find that The Journey Begins was about trying to see waterfalls in darkness because I saw water in darkness too. The intricacies of Derailed that seem to leave a message just out of reach of the consciousness and the unplayed notes of private, domestic joys in Mady's Tune both seem to my unguarded mind to be underscored by the irrevocable rhythm of a departing train. Did the artist intend it – who knows?
For the first time in two years of surrendering incipient audiophilehood to an iPod, I wish my Linn was set up properly for this album.
A/J: So Far So Good, Ashaanti Records, Bangalore, January 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Note to Bangalore’s drivers
- Think one move ahead. Just one, that’s all I’m asking. If you’re going straight, don’t get in the lane turning left and then honk at the cars in front when your light turns green. And for God’s sake stop changing lanes in the middle of an intersection.
- This will also prevent you from looking more than usually stupid by honking at buses that have stopped at bus stops. That is what buses do. If you can’t work out earlier that you need to get out from behind them, you just have to wait until they’re done instead of telling the driver things about his sister.
- What is it about your upbringing that makes you speed up and squeeze moronically around a car that’s already more than half-turned into the road?
- If there’s a long line at a green light, it means that it will take a while for the cars at the back to move. And when they do, it can only be at the speed of those in front. Yes it’s frustrating when you can see the green light up ahead from your high perch in your SUV, and I don’t want to sit through another red light either, but honking at me continuously for half a kilometer of crawling is not only rude, it shows you up as having the IQ of a gnat.
- When there’s heavy traffic, vehicles going in one direction are sometimes marooned at the intersection when other lights turn green. This is not a personal insult. And trying to go around and through them only makes the snarl worse. Why is this so hard to comprehend?
- To the blue Honda on the ring road this morning: If you want to drive at 30kmph, please do it on the service road, not the fast lane. Yes there is one. It’s the one you were on this morning. I am the person who rolled her window down and abused you in Kannada.
- To the dangerous red Santro at the other end of the spectrum who cut me and several others off at the speed of light: Don’t think I haven’t noted your number and called it in.
- To the white Scorpio who sat in my boot for about five kilometers and then overtook through a crowded bus stop: Ditto.
- Also, bus stops are not lay-bys. When you park there to drink tender-coconut water, the buses have to stop in the middle of the road. And there’ll always be a motorcycle unwilling to wait 20 seconds who will ride ahead and get tangled up with alighting passengers.
- On the subject of which, here’s a question for the motorcyclist on Sarjapur Road: Do you believe you’re immortal? Is that why your helmet sits on your mirror, preventing you from seeing that there’s a car in the lane you’re weaving onto? The next time one of you tries to overtake from the left when my left indicator is on, I will swerve and sacrifice a door or two just to see you crash and burn.
- Question for the cyclist I've seen more than once at the Kundanhalli traffic light: Do you think road rules do not apply to you? You may be greener than Othello and the favourite child of the conserved Earth, but the next time you jump a red light, I will not brake. I wish the fire truck you held up today hadn’t.
- To the giant BMW with no license plate that was casually parked right across my turning: It was me that left the rude note on your windscreen. I understand that if you have the wherewithal to own a 7 Series in India, you probably own the Government, the RTO and the internal revenue as well, but if you do it again, I will say it with a tire iron.
- This will also prevent you from looking more than usually stupid by honking at buses that have stopped at bus stops. That is what buses do. If you can’t work out earlier that you need to get out from behind them, you just have to wait until they’re done instead of telling the driver things about his sister.
- What is it about your upbringing that makes you speed up and squeeze moronically around a car that’s already more than half-turned into the road?
- If there’s a long line at a green light, it means that it will take a while for the cars at the back to move. And when they do, it can only be at the speed of those in front. Yes it’s frustrating when you can see the green light up ahead from your high perch in your SUV, and I don’t want to sit through another red light either, but honking at me continuously for half a kilometer of crawling is not only rude, it shows you up as having the IQ of a gnat.
- When there’s heavy traffic, vehicles going in one direction are sometimes marooned at the intersection when other lights turn green. This is not a personal insult. And trying to go around and through them only makes the snarl worse. Why is this so hard to comprehend?
- To the blue Honda on the ring road this morning: If you want to drive at 30kmph, please do it on the service road, not the fast lane. Yes there is one. It’s the one you were on this morning. I am the person who rolled her window down and abused you in Kannada.
- To the dangerous red Santro at the other end of the spectrum who cut me and several others off at the speed of light: Don’t think I haven’t noted your number and called it in.
- To the white Scorpio who sat in my boot for about five kilometers and then overtook through a crowded bus stop: Ditto.
- Also, bus stops are not lay-bys. When you park there to drink tender-coconut water, the buses have to stop in the middle of the road. And there’ll always be a motorcycle unwilling to wait 20 seconds who will ride ahead and get tangled up with alighting passengers.
- On the subject of which, here’s a question for the motorcyclist on Sarjapur Road: Do you believe you’re immortal? Is that why your helmet sits on your mirror, preventing you from seeing that there’s a car in the lane you’re weaving onto? The next time one of you tries to overtake from the left when my left indicator is on, I will swerve and sacrifice a door or two just to see you crash and burn.
- Question for the cyclist I've seen more than once at the Kundanhalli traffic light: Do you think road rules do not apply to you? You may be greener than Othello and the favourite child of the conserved Earth, but the next time you jump a red light, I will not brake. I wish the fire truck you held up today hadn’t.
- To the giant BMW with no license plate that was casually parked right across my turning: It was me that left the rude note on your windscreen. I understand that if you have the wherewithal to own a 7 Series in India, you probably own the Government, the RTO and the internal revenue as well, but if you do it again, I will say it with a tire iron.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Deep water
We knew it as the “pond near the Eucy grove” and it was very handy for picnics, general teenage high jinks, setting for first love etc. The eucalyptus trees have long since become houses but the “pond” is flourishing like a green bay tree. It seems it is actually a lake spread over 18 acres, has a name and a place and is being restored.
I've tried to retrace old paths there in the past few months and was surprised the first time to find the lake neatly fenced in. At the time I took it as a sign that it was shortly to be filled in and built over. But I found out yesterday that the fence has been put there by an exemplary group of residents from the gated community nearby who’ve taken it upon themselves to raise a staggering sum of money and save the local water body.
On those same walks, I have noted that the gated community in question is more attractive than most, but have always regretted the flower farms and vineyards that Palm Meadows’ villas now stand on. This regret is automatic now, coupled with the weary feeling of futility that becomes a tedious addition to the emotions of those who return to this city. (An old friend who returned recently from a long stint in the US messaged me about a reunion: “Meeting up at some place called Rendezvous or maybe it was called Vous or Chez-vous… not sure exactly, I'm used to restaurants being named MTR, Koshy's, Bheema).
Now I must gladly acknowledge the sterling work that Palm Meadows residents have been doing with Sheelavanantha Kere for about three years. Click on the link to read all about it – a heartening story of real change by real people. I will do my bit to support the cause and chivvy as many others as I can to join in. It is a great thing that they’re trying to do.
But tI can't help a stray thought or two. That these bite-sized portions of picturesque land used to belong to large farms, one of which I grew up on, others that my friends did. That the lake may have never needed saving if it hadn’t been endangered by rapacious development. That if you’ve walked past fields of asters in full bloom and smelt the grapes ripening on the vines in April, the restoration of the lake seems a bit of a pyrrhic victory.
Deep Water, Jewel, Album: Spirit, 1998
I've tried to retrace old paths there in the past few months and was surprised the first time to find the lake neatly fenced in. At the time I took it as a sign that it was shortly to be filled in and built over. But I found out yesterday that the fence has been put there by an exemplary group of residents from the gated community nearby who’ve taken it upon themselves to raise a staggering sum of money and save the local water body.
On those same walks, I have noted that the gated community in question is more attractive than most, but have always regretted the flower farms and vineyards that Palm Meadows’ villas now stand on. This regret is automatic now, coupled with the weary feeling of futility that becomes a tedious addition to the emotions of those who return to this city. (An old friend who returned recently from a long stint in the US messaged me about a reunion: “Meeting up at some place called Rendezvous or maybe it was called Vous or Chez-vous… not sure exactly, I'm used to restaurants being named MTR, Koshy's, Bheema).
Now I must gladly acknowledge the sterling work that Palm Meadows residents have been doing with Sheelavanantha Kere for about three years. Click on the link to read all about it – a heartening story of real change by real people. I will do my bit to support the cause and chivvy as many others as I can to join in. It is a great thing that they’re trying to do.
But tI can't help a stray thought or two. That these bite-sized portions of picturesque land used to belong to large farms, one of which I grew up on, others that my friends did. That the lake may have never needed saving if it hadn’t been endangered by rapacious development. That if you’ve walked past fields of asters in full bloom and smelt the grapes ripening on the vines in April, the restoration of the lake seems a bit of a pyrrhic victory.
Deep Water, Jewel, Album: Spirit, 1998
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