capital punishment

thats the bugbear thats been raised recently, with all the usual suspects clamouring for their voices to be aired on a public forum. the issue at hand is the shortly to be executed logistics guy for the terrorists who were too incompetent to blow up the indian parliament a few years ago. talk about the sins of your bosses falling on your shoulders. i suddenly like my job a lot better.

i was never convinced either ways about the justification for capital punishment nor the arguments made against it. lately i've been thinking that its probably a more severe form of punishment to give the guy a life term. not the 14 year version we have here in india, i'd rather have the life term actually mean, being sentenced to jail for the rest of his natural life without any hope for parole or reduced sentences for good behaviour.

reading 'shantaram' was an insight into life for an ordinary guy in the jail system in this country. if you aren't rich / powerful enough to get yourself a cushy life behind bars then you've pretty much had it. if the guy is really so poor that he can't get himself a decent lawyer, as the anti-capital punishment brigade would have us believe, then we can rest assured that he won't be enjoying the comforts of cell-phones, television, air conditioning, home-made food, gyms and personal trainers within the confines of the hell hole that is tihar.

another faction tells us that if the guy is executed by the state there is a serious possibility of him being raked up as a martyr to some cause or the other. its a crazy enough country for this to actually happen. i say why take a chance, keep everyone happy; short of releasing the guy and let the fellow rot in the relative obscurity of the state dungeons.

ganapati bappa morya

thats the chant you'd be hearing a lot of if you happened to be in the streets of bombay for the next 10 days. its the annual deity immersion festival that passes for the local version of the rio carnival.

for the duration of the festival the unemployed find useful work as general noise makers. not a job description that requires much of skilled labour.

the bedeceked stages, motifs, themes and grand statues that are put up are rumoured to be financed by some shady underworld criminal or the other. i suppose it makes immense sense to a fugitive from justice and society. you're suddenly a sponsor with a divine celebrity endorsement. if you can't buy your way out of eternal damnation with this, then what gives?

the culmination of the festival is a practice that will find favour with atheists too. theres some irony and a sense of divine justice in the custom of celebrating a god for 10 days every year at the end of which you drag him to the sea, singing and dancing every step of the way, walk him into the water and then watch him drown.

independence weekend

15th august is when this country takes a day off to celebrate the fact that 59 years ago we replaced the british bureaucrats and civil servants with indians. well, it gives me a day off and thats always welcome.

i took monday off too and had an extended weekend break. four of us had decided to do a rustic trip and so we went to a village and stayed in a hut for 2 days.

the trip began with a train journey to karjat junction, famous for its wada-pav, 2 hours away from bombay. then a half hour rickshaw ride and we were at the village. the rickshaw driver introduced us to a chap who agreed to let us rent one of his huts, just mud walls and thatch roofs, for a couple of days.

it was as rustic an experience as most of us city-slickers are wont to get in a lifetime. but for a village the place was quite up-market. they had satellite television and regular electricity. water though had to be carried in buckets and brought in to the house manually. and the toilets were in an outhouse, which proved to be quite daunting in the dark.

we indulged in some trekking but mostly we just lazed, ate authentic maharashtrian food and watched a couple of b-grade hindi movies. finally, in true city-slicker style we cut the rustic vacation short so that we could get back to the city with a day left in the holiday.

rainmaker

its monsoon season in bombay and i'm commuting on my trusted motorcycle. to protect myself from the elements i got myself water-proof riding gear.

but it never rains when i'm all dressed up in it. and these plastic things are too stuffy to be wearing if it isnt raining.

every morning when i'm leaving home i diligently put on the water-proof gear over my clothes and then proceed to ride to work, but then it never rains. the one day i had a tear in my rain gear it poured and i got drenched through that perforation.

so i got myself a new set of rain gear, the ironic bit is that i haven't had the need for it yet. it rains before and after i'm on the road.

in another era, i could have made a career out of this 'talent' of avoiding the rain. i'd get villagers to pay me to ride around their fields without any water-proof covers, i'd get thoroughly drenched and they would have irrigation. they could even pay me to ride around their rivals fields wearing rain gear and it would never rain there, ensuring his bankruptcy.

darn city life! i have no enemies who depend on rain water.

censorship - a fallout of terrorism

a delayed negative for those of us in this city who were not killed, injured or personally affected by the 7/11 bombings, at least for the ones who post/read blog pages.

the indian bureaucracy in its infinite wisdom has ordered the internet service providers to disallow access to blog pages. the reason being that apparently blog posts are the new communication medium of choice for terrorists planning large scale bombings.

the inherent idiocy of their actions are obviously not apparent to them, which makes it pretty evident that it will be impossible to make them see the futility of the same. it's akin to shutting down cellular networks because gangsters also use them, or banning all seafaring ships since thats how smugglers move their loot, or even better, prohibiting air travel since airplanes are what terrorists hijack the most.

how is it possible to indulge in a conversation based on logic with bureaucracy? i'm not even going to get into a tirade against state sponsored censorship, though i must admit i find the prospect quite tempting.

i do think that the governments action is going to make blogging even more popular, as is always the case with any prohibited product/service/idea. when will they ever learn that telling someone "you can't!" is the easiest way to get them motivated to do exactly the opposite.

what's wonderful is that technology allows you practically infinite options. the link below will get you access to the pages that the department of telecommunications would not like to see.

http://www.pkblogs.com/icemanscove

a city under attack

some unidentified chaps managed to blow up the first class compartments of 7 local trains here yesterday. as of now the body count is at 183, with another 714 injured.

and panic struck the city. the television channels outdid each other in trying to repeat cliches about 'the lifeline of bombay', 'the spirit of the city', 'resilience of the citzens' and more such blah-blah.

interviewing angry and afraid commuters seemed to be passing off as reporting. watching the entire sordid affair was akin to entertainment. ok, one can sympathise with the commuters who were stuck there but realistically what can any government do in a situation like this. shouting yourself hoarse about injustice, inadequate security, ill-fortune or demanding an attack on pakistan will get you airtime on national television but will achieve little more.

lets face it, bombay is a soft target. the way i see it there's absolutely no way that its possible to protect this city from a terrorist attack. there are just too many options on offer, such as various forms of public transport, public spaces, utilities, etc. the same crowd thats clamouring for security today will badmouth security guards frisking them tomorrow when they are getting late to get on a train. detectors are practically no good anymore since most devices are plastics.

so what does bombay do, other than get back on to those very same trains and get to work the very next day itself. this is supposed to be the much talked about resilience of the citizenry. but the truth you'd know if you asked them is very different. there's not much else they can do. for them no options exist. for a majority of this city the trains are the only way to get to work. and taking a day off is a luxury many cannot afford.

not rude, just brutal

results of an internationally conducted survey on politeness were recently published by the reader's digest, and they've generated much brouhaha. the cause for concern seems to be that the citizenry of bombay happen to come across as quite an unruly, rude bunch of barbarians according to its parameters.

nothing wrong with that perception, many a newcomer to the city would vouch for the genuineness of the study's claims. if only the publication had kept its scoring model secret, then the denizens of this city could accept its decision, grumbling all the while, and move on. but no, in the interests of fairness the magazine tells us in great detail that a random sample of our city's inhabitants failed to hold doors open for others, help a stranger, or say thank you, hence we now find ourselves near the bottom of the international politeness pecking-order.

my contention is that bombay is just very brutal. survival here is almost a darwinian experiment. and this takes a little getting used to. if you have lived here for more than a couple of years or so then its a lot easier to understand. very few people like bombay instantly but give them a few years of a daily commute on the local trains and they'll never leave the city voluntarily.

it is a little puzzling. there's very little by way of quality of life and maintaining whatever little living standards you do have is expensive, all in comparison to the rest of the country. but the city exerts a huge emotional pull that no bombayite/mumbaikar can clearly explain. the city exhibits a certain "je ne sais quoi", as the french would put it.

out-of-towners who grow to love the city possess the zealotry of converts. one of the best descriptions i've heard about this city was made by one of my friends, a recent bombayite, asked to explain the city's sub-culture by her parents back home, and all she had to say was, "it's another country".

jugo bonita

yes. the football world cup is on. and i'm watching every game this time around. 3 games a day, the last one ending well into the night. roughly 6 hours of watching football leaves me too groggy in the morning to be posting. i guess matters will continue this way till the 9th of july when the cup is won and the rest of the teams have gone home.

its an amazing thing to be able to watch one of the biggest sporting festivals of our times without being subject to any partisan feelings. a neutral supporter is able to truly appreciate the game and if he must, then he can choose a team to cheer for. while watching Argentina hand out a 6-nil thrashing to a lower ranked team i came to believe that its a good thing that India doesn't qualify for these tournaments, because then one would have to face the ignominy and embarassment of such results.

marketers must love us as an audience, no matter which team gets knocked out at which stage, a 140 million strong television audience in India is going to follow the matches all the way to the final. unlike cricket, which is our national religion, once the home team is out of a tournament then the bottom falls out of the television ad revenue market.

this has a telling effect on my social life. it would be non-existent if it weren't for amazing friends who couldn't care less about the game but put up with my enthusiasm for the duration of the match.

and most importantly, i'm training the wife to appreciate the game. she's turning out to be quite a raucous supporter of teams she chooses to cheer for, and god help the teams whose style of play she dislikes, example Australia. she practically willed Brazil to beat the aussies.

everyone wants to be a traffic policeman

if you've ever watched a procession snaking its way through the crowded streets of bombay, you'll know what i mean. such processions always manage to throw up a fair number of guys who divert/direct traffic while selflessly giving up their participation in the event.

these chaps just wave their arms at cars and buses, shout at pedestrains and cyclists, feeling pompous and important all throughout. i guess everyone needs a power trip.

its probably some kind of throwback to their childhood. remember how kids in pre-school classes always want to grow up to be a locomotive driver, a fireman or a doctor? (can't recall anyone i know wanting to be an investment banker) maybe these guys wanted to be traffic cops.

perhaps from a certain perspective a traffic policeman is the epitome of cool. he stands there commanding a multitude of vehicles. every once in a while he gets to pull over a random car and boss over the driver. reality is very different but what the heck, the truth never stopped anyone.

slow taxicabs

i have yet to travel in a cab that has its speedometer working. i guess since they're always the slowest things on the road they don't need to figure how fast they're cruising.

it can get real frustrating to sit in the back of one while every other vehicle on the road overtakes you. if you complain about the lack of speed then the guy driving the contraption is likely to give you the evil eye.

other traits common to the practitioners of this profession include dangling one arm outside the window and steering with the other. this no doubt makes for a cool self-image but the limp arm looks definitely ridiculous to passersby.

and i suppose that keeping spare change to be returned to paying customers is a big no-no in their user manual.

evolving public transport

god bless the guys who came up with the idea of introducing air-conditioned buses as a part of the local municipal corporation's fleet of road transport.

this gives me a viable choice when i'm considering commuting to work rather than take my motorcycle. if you've seen the local trains in bombay during peak hours you will agree that it's only a mode of transport for those who have to mind their monthly expenditure. it doesnt matter if you travel first class or second, the economic status of the crowd pushing against you is all thats different.

same problem if you take the regular buses too, also you have to put up with the heat, dust and noise that goes with the tour. notwithstanding the extended travel time. but the airconditioned bus takes care of three of the above mentioned problems, and yes its mostly empty.

i usually knock off to sleep for the duration of the commute and have to be shaken awake by the driver at the last stop which is a short walk from the office. its a wonderfully refreshing way to begin the work day.

differential service and pricing should exist for all goods and services, public transport is a fine example. there's always a fringe of consumers out there ready to pay more than a little extra for better service.

it surprises me that the local suburban railway hasnt come up with a similar plan yet. i'm pretty sure there are commuters in far flung suburbs ready to pay for the comfort of not getting smothered in human flesh twice every day. it beats me that you could pay four times the price of a second class train ticket in order to buy a first class one and still have just as bad a journey as the poorer sections of society.

damn it, when i pay more i demand comfort. and thats exactly what these buses give me.

the holiday that never was

a five day work-week takes a little getting used to. thats my learning as of last weekend. last saturday was a public holiday thanks to the 2,500th birthday of the buddha. a welcome break for those of us who put in six days at the office each week.

naps on saturday resulted in confusing wake-up states. i kept thinking it was sunday. a marathon movie watching session that lasted till the wee hours on sunday morning didn't do much for clarity. moreover, i substituted all my coffee intake with wine, which didn't help matters either.

thankfully, i didn't leave the house. the extent of my commuting being restricted between rooms. end result being an extremely slow monday morning at work. i havent managed to get past first gear, so to speak. everything's moving ultra slow and a caffeine intake is regularly needed.

if this is how it's going to be every time one gets a proper weekend off then i'm glad that i have a six day week. the one day off is just enough to recharge the cliched batteries. whereas a 2 day weekend causes a brutal shock to the body when you trudge into work the following monday. you're subconciously beginning to think that you're on vacation when you're pulled, kicking and screaming, into everyday life the very next day.

i havent often gotten a hangover from imbibing copious quantities of alcohol but i'm beginning to think i'm seriously suffering a hangover from the weekend.

crossing the road to take a dump

thats what i saw a couple of guys doing this morning. they were at a traffic light carrying a bucket of water each and waiting patiently for a break in the flow of traffic so that they could get to the other side of the road and join a mass of humanity performing their morning ablutions.

65% of this great city either lives in shanties or is homeless. with roughly 20 million inhabitants that leaves 13 million people without access to toilets. the local government and some citizens groups have constructed public toilets but these can service only a small percentage of the demand.

the net result is that no matter where you stay on this fine island city, there is someone shitting in the open and within walking distance of you. this is true regardless of whether you stay in bourgeois or proletarian neighbourhoods.

a commute by the local suburban railway is an assault, both visual and olfactory. the railway lines are bordered by slums and tenements all along the grid. this in effect makes it the longest continuous open air toilet in this part of the world.

a visitor could be forgiven for thinking that this is more a city of shitters than the proverbial city of dreams or the financial capital of the country that it is made out to be.

just horses here, but you can take a hike

its been quite a while since the last post. once the strike got called off i took off to matheran for a two day break. its a quaint little hill-station near bombay. the most interesting aspect of this place is the lack of motorised transport. surprisingly, here was a municipal corporation that was wise enough to see the benefit of selling the idea of a pollution free environment to bombayites poisoned by traffic fumes and smog seeking a weekend getaway.

and its not like theres loads of horse-shit lying around the place either. the municipality has people employed to clean up after the cavalry, quite literally. the horses i saw there were not the typical ones that are seen pressed into public ferry services in bombay. these were healthy and looked well-fed. the owners apparently understood the importance of keeping the horse well groomed.

if you dont fancy a ride on horseback, then you get to trek extensively. unless you want to exercise the option of getting into a carriage pulled/pushed along by some locals. we were obviously trying really hard to play the role of poor college kids on a budget trip and hence walked all over the place. the exertion caused by this resulted in me having a sound sleep for the next two nights.

unfortunately, the narrow gauge train connecting the hill station to the plains wasn't functional since the tracks were swept away in last years floods. its popularly referred to as the toy train and is one of the prime attractions of matheran and i was looking forward to a ride in it. we had to take a cab to the outskirts and then undertook a 4 km uphill walk to the town centre.

while checking out hotels to stay in i chanced upon my company's guest house. luckily enough they had room for us and we had to pay a grand total of 1 buck per person per day for the luxury of the accomodation. yet another moment of being a proud sbi employee. we ran up a bill of thrice that value just drinking tea while we stayed there.

of course, all the money i saved in the accomodation budget was promptly spent by the wife on her now increased shoe shopping budget. all i bought was a measly hat to prevent myself from passing out in the sun outside one of the various shoe stores. now even that one souvenir of my trip has been appropriated by the wife.

quite a good trip nonetheless, good company, good food (lots of it), a little vodka, some bad beer, too much walking, a couple of good views, clean air and a cold night in the middle of summer (we actually needed blankets while bombay was sweltering).

back to pushing files once again

hallelujah! the strike has ended. the public sector monolith has its employees back. and they're happy. the problem is they aren't used to feeling happy at work. add this happiness to all the backlog and it will be a few weeks before things get back to normal. at least, from an operational point of view.

one can't help feel that there is a certain pattern to all of this. these guys went on strike just after a few holidays and they come back to work for a day before the next bunch of holidays. maybe this was just a ploy to get an extended vacation for everyone here, the pension granted might just be the bonus.

here's the contest question for the week: what are the odds that the dependably rude employees will now be a little polite to customers?

indefinite strike - day one

nothing interesting happened. no shouting, no sloganeering, no manhandling of employees who were attending. now i'm even feeling like an idiot for having parked my motorcycle quite a distance away from the corporate office, rather than in the building compound as i usually do.

considering the belligerence with which these guys were protesting i was sure that they'd burn vehicles on the days of the strike. no such luck. that would definitely get them some air time on the news channels.

the negotiations between the unions and the management/ministry of finance are still on. three rounds of talks have produced no result so far. looks like there's going to be a day two to this strike. which is really fine with me, theres peace and quiet in the office, and much less pressure but it does have its downsides. a lack of availability of coffee is one of them.

i never thought it would come to this but i'm experiencing caffeine withdrawal pangs. if this strike goes on for a few more days i might just get over the need for coffee, and thats not necessarily a good thing.

happy financial new year

and if you happen to be a client of the biggest behemoth in the indian banking industry then you better be marking this momentous occasion by drawing up an action plan to survive the next few days in the absence of essential banking services.

yes, i know its the 21st century and also that the soviet union has collapsed. and how can i ignore red china creating its own brand of state sponsored capitalism. but try telling that to the 200,000 banking comrades angling for a little more pension.

little matter if you retire as the chairman or the clerk, you still receive the same pension post-retirement. how much more egalitarian can a capitalist institution (a bank is most certainly one) become? marx and lenin couldn't find fault with this either, but yet again, don't tell the comrades for they will not listen.

an initial cost-benefit analysis clearly shows that, at a loss of 120 billion for each day that the banking industry stays shut, the government must incur the 6 billion expense to meet the demands of the protesting employees. but that would be tantamount to succumbing to blackmail.

as strikes in the public sector banking industry go, this one is bound to be different. for starters its indefinite, which usually means nothing so we won't put too much emphasis on that. but more importantly, the top brass are going to be supporting the strike too. logically, they have more of an incentive since they are the ones facing imminent retirement.

the impending strike has created a lot of brouhaha in the workplace. everyone's too busy to be doing any work. but to those of you on the outside, that would seem to be the normal scheme of things here, no?

my experiment with truth

no! i'm not reviewing gandhi's writing. i had an accident in traffic this morning on the way to work.

something absolutely trivial. i stopped at a traffic light and the guy in the car behind me didn't stop fast enough. resulting in a broken helmet lock which was attached to the rear of my motorcycle.

going with the trend of traffic accidents on the roads in bombay, i guess the guy in the car was expecting an abusive altercation. he seemed very surprised, since i wasn't in the mood for one. i quietly parked the bike on the side of the road, walked up to his window and told him, "it's early in the morning and i'm getting late for work, and i'm sure you are too (considering the hurry you're in), so i don't want to get into a screaming match or a physical confrontation. and to top it all it's a monday morning and a fight would be the completely wrong way to start the week. the broken part costs 150 bucks, pay up and we'll be on our way."

well, he looked like he was having a bad day. he was in such a hurry that he left home without a wallet. the fellow looked truly upset and worked up. he asked me to exchange cellphone numbers, but i refused to call him for the money. i didn't have too much time to waste so i gave him my business card and told him to have the money sent over.

lets see if trust in human nature pays off. if it doesn't, i'll feel very upset that i didn't take the nice tie in his shirt pocket.

great train robbery

it does sound like something that happened in the last century on a more or less regular basis, so its a little baffling that this would be in the current affairs section of all major newspapers today.

apparently, a bunch of naxalites have taken over a train that was travelling through some of our eastern states.

i don't want to get into the sociological, environmental and cultural reasons that justify the existence of the naxal movement. not in the least the economics of it all.

but from a logical perspective, it seems a little idiotic to highjack a locomotive driven medium of mass-transportation. i can't fathom the reasons for this act, not to mention the exit stratgeies.

it isn't an airplane, so you can't have it flown across the borders to some banana republic. it's a train, so its got to stay on the tracks, which doesn't give you too much leeway. and hence, its ridiculously easy for the establishment to keep track of you.

you better not be counting on recovering expenses by robbing the hapless passengers or your revenue generation plan could go for a toss. with all the low-cost airlines flying people all over the country the ones who actually travel by train are going to be the sorts who can't really be paying you much by way of ransom. needless to say, you won't get too much by picking their pockets either.

its not even very media savvy to hijack a train. even our headline hungry, news starved, 24 hour television channels wouldn't be too excited at the prospect of chasing a runaway locomotive in the eastern states for a soundbite. so if the intention was to call some attention to your woebegone plight in the hinterland, this is not going to be working in a big way.

the worst thing is that with the safety record of the indian railways these hijackers have a good possibility of colliding with some other train, jumping off the rails, getting blown up by bombs placed by other extremists at railway stations that they might pass through, etc.

half century

it's time to raise the willow and acknowledge the polite handclaps from the pavilion and the stands. this page now has 51 profile views.

awesome! i'm impressed. there obviously is a niche crowd that likes the way i put words together.

i'd like to thank all of you who check in regularly, leave your comments and pass on the good word.