DNA Covers Caferati Meet

Had a great time at the Caferati meet on Sunday, the day before. S. Surekha was there to cover it for the daily newspaper DNA. Here's the link. Quote:

"Caferati arose out of the need to meet, listen to each others works', be appreciated or get feedback. It was initially called the Bombay Writers Club (BWC), but renamed Caferati, about a year after its inception in 2004. John Matthew, a corporate communications person and a member of the forum for the last four years, says, "Writing is a lonely profession. There is a need to share it with like minded people. I have benefited greatly from the forum. It serves as an outlet for my creative works.""

It's Bombay Writers' Cafe not Bombay Writers' Club, Surekha. Anyway, feels nice indeed for the ego to be stoked thusly.

Sam Bahadur Is No More!

No, I didn't know Field Marshall Sam Manekshaw, but I lived in an era when he was considered a hero, a larger-than-life figure, may be, the last of the straight-talking, upright officers of the Indian armed forces. He was a gentleman of great charm as I can make out from this post by KVK Murthy moderator of Shakespeare and Company.

Sam Bahadur, goodbye, may your memory linger in our hearts and minds for ever and ever.

Man about Town

Been wandering around town and these are images I caught:




This lingerie maker is taking things a bit far, methinks! There's a light inside the mannequin!

















This is the crowd outside Andheri station which is so crowded commuters constantly look down to see what muck they are walking into.













This hoarding promises to teach English speaking for Rs 599 only! Amazing! I have been learning English all my life and still think my English is weak!















The new and spruced up Metro. I stood in queue but had to beat a hasty retreat when I saw the price of tickets. I used to watch movies for Rs 3.30 in the same theatre once! Now it cost 280 for what they call a Gold Seat. Are the seats made of Gold, or something? Even then it's unreasonable. Don't know, I couldn't even enter, the price kept me away. If movies are so expensive they would become elitist, and become what publishing has become today.













I shot this in the atrium of a building I visited in Lower Parel, central Bombay. The rings you see are the balconies of different floors. On top is the transparent roof.

Morning Musings; Morning Raga, Whatever, but I Am Feeling Grumpy!

The markets are falling. It’s all coming down. From 20,000 to 13,000 is a steep fall by any standards (53 per cent). Oil prices are rising. Panic buttons have been pressed. Companies are cutting down on a lot of things. Pandemonium is just a few steps away. No fresh recruitments, no nice bonuses and perks, no parties, no free goodies. And prices are rising, remember price rise affect you and me while market falling affects the billionaires among us. How does it affect my life? Wifey tells me that not only have vegetables and fruits become expensive they are disappearing from shelves fast. Today’s paper says there’s going to be power and water cuts.

Groan!

And the government is hanging on to its power, though the constituents of the UPA are fighting. Stubborn old fogeys, all of them are beyond their sixties, and am sure have diabetes. Look at that doddering old idiot with his mouth open, talking. The oil producers who met in Jeddah to discuss oil prices have achieved nothing. (Oh! Jeddah how I love your streets, Balad and Sharafiya and Khozham Palace, how I loved to just wander around in your malls, your wide open spaces, while Andheri, where I now work, stinks to kingdom come.) Our own Chiddu was there, don’t know for what. A few days back I spent some thirty minutes to get to my office from Andheri station, the street was so full of vehicles, all at cross purposes, honking away, polluting, as the traffic system had failed totally.

Some chick singer Duffy is singing, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I am begging you for mercy….” on television.

And Bill Gates is quitting Microsoft. Remember, I said it here. Well, almost. The guy who said his dream was to put a personal computer in all homes (by that he means a PC with Microsoft software) wants to quit, it’s getting too hot to handle. The nerd is leaving his company to the hordes. Steve Ballmer is the guy of the moment, he is a drone who eats quarterly results for breakfast.

Mumble! Grumble! Rumble!

Shobha De enjoys blogging! She says blogging is addictive.

Bill Gates Shutting His Gate at Microsoft?

"After a two-year transition," says this article in Economist, "Bill Gates prepared to step down from the day-to-day running of Microsoft, which he founded in 1975. He remains chairman and will be involved in some projects along with the company’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer. The bulk of Mr Gates’s time will now be devoted to his foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates' Foundation, the world’s richest philanthropic institution.

"To understand what that means, and the difficulties it poses Microsoft, start with the idea that computing is undergoing one of its great periodic shifts. In its early days, most computing took place on mainframes. Ever-falling costs led computing to shatter—first into minicomputers, then into personal computers (PCs) and, more recently, hand-held devices. Now communications is catching up with hardware and software and, thanks to cheap broadband and wireless access, the industry is witnessing a pull back to the middle. This is leading much computing to migrate back into huge data centres. Networks of these computing plants form “computing clouds”—vast, amorphous, delocalised nebulae of processing power and storage."

Now, now, if Bill Gates needs a holiday from work, we poor suffering humanity needs it too. This is what my friend Anthonybhai says, "What men, Bill Gates-Vill Gates, I know the bugger made lots of money, in fact, it must be rotting in in his attic, this fellow's. Now what he will do with all that money, men, he should give it to us, no? What friggin shit, men, he leaving the company when that other company, Goggle, somethin, snapping at his bloody heels, imagine. No bloody himmat this bugger has got, re!

Amitabh on Why "We" Are So Mediocre

Says the patriarch of the Indian movie industry, the one man icon whose mug appears in every newspapers, magazines and channels in this blogpost:

"Because of the announcement of the Reliance Entertainment and our tie up, there was media bombardment from all sections. The phone was filled with queries and requests for answers and talk ins and bites from the electronic community. They are all friends and i consider it common courtesy to respond to them even if I am completely unable to comply with their requests.

There were other developments too during the day. The song that was being picturised on set for ‘Aladin’ had to be finished. Dates of artists were not available and the floor was booked by some other producer and had to be given up. Then there were creative discussions for the Tour and some recordings and rehearsals that needed to be executed. There was concern on Aishwarya’s condition and on her father’s who has recently undergone surgery. There was continuous TV ‘breaking news’ on legal and police procedures being instigated against Jaya and the desire of the channels for reactions. In between all this 3 prospective producers had been given time on set to discuss future projects and they needed attention. Some friends from the print media had sent urgent email questionaires and had ‘dead lines’ to adhere to so an urgent reply was being pushed…

And the song for the film is a romantic happy moment !! With so much on your brain is it any wonder that we are mediocre performers!!"

Jerry Yang on His Way Out from Yahoo? Popstar Britney Needs Talking to from Dad!

Seems Jerry Yang founder of Yahoo is on his way out from Yahoo and his nemesis is going to be Sue Decker, president, Yahoo.

Pop star Britney Spears' father Jamie, who is her legal guardian, is charging 1,250 pound per week to talk to her and do her cooking. Where was she when papa was preaching, and that too, for free? I would do it for free. Interested?

"Playback singers always get relegated to the sidelines. They continue to be underdogs of the music industry," says Alisha Chinai.


Top Hollywood action heroes Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger are set to act in a Bollywood flick - 'Kambakht Ishq' - a Rs 90-crore production.


Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan said on Sunday that politics is not his cup of tea.

Ganga Is Alive and Well, Shankaro-sir!

Went to visit Ganga at his residence which we friends call Gangalayam. Ganga is fine and recounted his encounter with elephants. The elephants charged him twice and left him with a long gash on his back narrowly missing his Aorta and spinal column. If the horns of the wild beast had touched either Ganga wouldn’t have lived to tell his story. He is lucky to be alive. That makes it two among the people closely known to me who consider themselves lucky to be a live – Ganga and Peter – both admen, both of whom have worked in an agency called Trikaya. Sounds corny?

Met Shankaranarayanan-sir, who was responsible for initiating my love for literature and poetry. His English classes in Adarsha Vidyalaya used to be keenly looked forward to by me, and several others, fired at that time for the infectious fervour he had instilled for all things literary. He still is a “sahityakaran” – a literary person. He informs me that his play is being published in Kerala, in Malayalam. To which I reply that I too am a “cheriya sahityakaran”, a struggling man of literature, and extend my card bearing my web and blog addresses. Shankaranarayanan-sir, if you are reading this, thanks, thanks, thanks, for enthusing me with the abiding love of literature. I bow and touch your feet, sir, for this abiding passion that has become an indelible part of me.

Shows how much teachers can inspire a love of a subject and how much they can make us hate a subject. Shankaro-sir was, and still is, a very intelligent and perceptive teacher. On the contrary, my maths teacher gave us all a fright when she announced at the beginning of the term that it will become very difficult as the term progressed and many of us will have to fail, or drop out. Such fear psychosis! Predictably many of us did.

My Friend, Ganga

The snowy-bearded guy is Ganga!

This is about my friend Ganga, the irrepressible, irreverent co-owner of a six-crore advertising agency. He is fun to be around! We were friends from the time we used to roam around in half pants. In school he used to be captain of the yellow house and I used to be captain of the green house. Needless to say, the guy trounced my house in every aspect of: games, debating, performing arts, etc. Now he is a big shot adman, and that hasn’t changed his rather rambunctious conduct of life.

We, a few friends from our school in the Chembur suburb meet every few months for a freewheeling alcohol-smoothened entertainment mostly at Ganga’s beautiful bungalow in the Basant Cinema area of Chembur, near the Presidency Golf Club. When I visit the area memories of films like “Lawrence of Arabia” (I was so impressed by this film that after seeing it in the 12 p.m. show I again bought a ticket and saw it in the 3.30 p.m. show), “Dr. Zhivago”, “Red Sun”, etc. etc. jump at me. How with a few rupees in my pocket I would brave the afternoon sun, on foot, to see these films. When inside, the cool air, the stereophonic sound, the wide 70 mm screen (the only one in Bombay then), the dim lights from the theatre ceiling, the pretty girls who would flirt coquettishly with their eyes, would mesmerise me into a state of near ecstasy.

I digress. I get too sentimental about those days. I must also add that Ganga is an actor (he is a friend of Nana Patekar, er, the other way around, his latest movie was the Pankaj Kapoor-starrer, Dharma), a copywriter par excellence, and a wanderer of far off places including Leh, North-East, and stray other game reserves in India, despite suffering from a back problem that has been troubling him for long. I would call him and he would answer that he would shout his usual greetings (“Matthew P John,” which was the name I answered to in school, before the school itself put the surname first and changed it to John P Matthew.) from the nether regions of India. He has also worked for several ad commercials, one being some fairness cream or the other (there are too many to remember), in which he is a bearded sadhu explaining the benefits of herbs in treating skin blemishes. Guess ad guys have to do it for a living, and I don’t blame him. There are too many talented ad guys doing these types of dumb things. The portals of Indian advertising agencies are teeming with thousands of would-be Rushdies who write scintillating prose, but the flattery and chicanery of advertising copywriting would wash their talents down the drains, I am sure. What to do? What a shame!

Again, I digress. And Ganga went off to the south recently, Ooty, in fact, for a jungle expedition. (That way, he is a profligate risk taker.) He went deep into the jungle to take pictures of elephants. (I might mention here, though he is humble about this, that he was instrumental in the Silent Valley area in Kerala being turned into a national park during the emergency days, and he met Indira Gandhi personally to get this done.) He got shots of elephants, all right. And guess what, Ganga being Ganga, when the guide shouted, “Elephants are coming, run for your lives,” Ganga tarried just a little bit to take some pictures from close up, was hit by an elephant, and bludgeoned just where his back wasn’t hunky dory, and had to spend a few days in hospital for surgery. When I enquired this is the SMS I received in reply:

“No damage at all, Matthew. Came to the hospital for room service.”

Thank God he is well. That’s Ganga for you!

Fight in the Said Air-Conditioned Bus at Andheri (East)

Had a huge fight with the conductor of the air-condition bus mentioned in the post that appears below. It’s Andheri (East) and after the usual sweaty, hot, impatient wait, I get inside. I have bought this smart card that I pay for in advance and which says I can travel in both Bombay trains and BEST buses without paying cash, the fare being deducted from the card in the smart way. I paid for the comfort in advance, didn’t I?

I show the card to the conductor and ask him if it works on BEST and can I please make use of it. This is because the card clearly has BEST written on it.

He touches it with his thinga and says, “No, from where did you get this, it has expired and you haven’t renewed it?”

I am aghast. I had renewed it recently and the railway thinga had shown that I have Rs 185 balance on my card.

But he won’t let me go. “I will have to confiscate your card, because it is an offence to carry an expired card.”

I say, “But I only asked you if it works, and am willing to pay the full fare in cash.”

He says in his loud, bullying voice, “No, I will have to confiscate your card.”

I become very worked up at this point, you know sugar levels and all that, and start shouting that I have my contacts, “You can’t argue with a passenger. You don’t know what places I have pahunch (reach) and I will see you,” and stuff like that and take his identity number, what is the “billa number” on his badge.

He becomes all humbleness and humility after this. Good, I scared the bugger. Several passengers “sush” me down. They seem to be on the conductor’s side. Traitors, I am trying to fight for them and they are “sushing” me! I can’t believe it!

Then the paragon of humility hands me back my card. But I still have his number and I am going to complain. He was very rude and aggressive and said he didn’t have a blemish against his name for thirty years and I am going to see that he learns a lesson after thirty years of bullying his passenger.

Yes, I am going to complain, I am determined.