Thespian Charu on Reservations!

My reply to thespian Charu Hasan’s article on a Caferati thread:
"Once untouchability was practiced as a matter of hygiene. Even to day the practice is relevant in the Intensive care units of hospitals. The people who consider themselves a cut above the depressed communities must realize that cleanliness relates to bath and not birth."Charu, the above statement had me rolling in my seat with laughter.Hahahaha!Incisive, very incisive comment, Charu. It requires a wit as you to drive home these truths about the deceptions we live with and accept as a fact.As far as hygiene is concerned I would consider not touching a Brahmin if he is not hygienic. How can anyone consider himself touchable because he is born in a certain family though he may be personally very unhygienic?The government has polarized society by their policy of appeasing certain sections. This is class distinction in a new avatar. We have not solved any problems with this policy. The number of the poor is increasing. A day will come when 100% of the population will be covered (on paper, that is) by reservations. It will go like this:Backward classes: 10%OBC: 10 %BT: 10 %NT : 10 %Backward Christians: 10 %Backward Buddists: 10 %Backward Muslims: 10 %Backward Jains : 10 %Backward Sikhs: 10 %Backward Parsis: 10 %Total 100%But what about those who don't fall into any of these categories? Pray to God they may be born into one of these Brahminical castes in their next birth.Initially reservation for weaker sections was meant for ten years. Then they were extended ad infinitum to get votes. Now the follies have been compounded by the government's myopic policies for the benefit of a privileged few. That too to garner votes.For more about me visit http://www.johnwriter.com    

Esquire on outsourcing...

I used to love reading the Esquire. It fell somewhere in the penumbral region between Playboy and Time. I still love reading it, if I can get hold of a copy, that is. But this terse article by one of Esquire’s pontificating editors methinks is too tongue-in-cheek and critical of the work I do as an outsourcing papi-pet-ka-sawal-walla in a BPO unit. So go here and read what A. J. Jacobs has to say about the growing Indian outsourcing boom.

http://www.smartmoney.com/esquire/index.cfm?Story=20050909-outsource

Excerpt:

Quote:
“The next day I email Brickwork, one of the companies Friedman mentions in his book. Brickwork — based in Bangalore, India — offers "remote executive assistants," mostly to financial firms and health-care companies that want data processed. I explain that I'd like to hire someone to help with Esquire-related tasks — doing research, formatting memos, like that. The company's CEO, Vivek Kulkarni, responds: "It would be a great pleasure to be talking to a person of your stature." Already I'm liking this. I've never had stature before. In America, I barely command respect from a Bennigan's maître d', so it's nice to know that in India I have stature.
“A couple of days later, I get an email from my new "remote executive assistant."
“Dear Jacobs, My name is Honey K. Balani. I would be assisting you in your editorial and personal job. . . . I would try to adapt myself as per your requirements that would lead to desired satisfaction.
“Desired satisfaction. This is great. Back when I worked at an office, I had assistants, but there was never any talk of desired satisfaction. In fact, if anyone ever used the phrase "desired satisfaction," we'd all end up in a solemn meeting with HR. And I won't even comment on the name Honey except to say that, real or not, it sure carries Anaïs Nin undertones.”

Unquote

For more about me visit http://www.johnwriter.com    

The Aspiration Disease!

The Aspiration Disease!

A dangerous disease is sweeping Indian mass media. I won’t call it greed but it is something all advertisers use – aspiration.

Have you lately watched how many shows there is on television that just dangle money in front of people and make them do crazy things, yes, even eat worms? Yesterday I saw a show where a movie star brandished a check for Rs five hundred thousand and the crowd went wild.

Bachhan does the same in Kaun Bangega Crorepati – the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The check is prominently displayed with the figures on it and the crowd goes, “Oh, if only I was there to get it.” This in advertising parlance is called “aspiration.” Because if people aspire to become something, say, fairer, or, beautiful, or sexier, they will go and buy the products advertised.

I think the advertising industry – if I can call it one – and the online media is taking this aspiration thing a bit far. So imagine all those people who have never in their life held a check for Rs three hundred thousand in their hands drooling, “Oh, if it only was me. I want to be the one.”

I saw another serial in which the compere gives away cash, yes, you heard right, CASH, to people who answer questions such as, “Which finger do you wear your wedding ring?” Confession, there was a time when I wanted to be on the show till I saw one in which everyone in the audience was dressed in their wedding finery.

But why wedding finery? Seem the show organizers wanted to bring some color and asked the audience to wear wedding clothes. So there were paunchy, aged men and women awkwardly dressed in shining sherwanis and elaborate turbans and from the looks on their faces the air-conditioning wasn’t working and, they were sweating to glory.

People would do anything to bring them closer to their aspirations. The media company and the producers know that. Right now they are after television rating points.

But isn’t this aspiration bit going too far? I know, everybody likes to have a lot of money but to flaunt it so shamelessly before the deprived masses in public? For all I know most of them may be below the poverty level gazing at a small television inside a cramped hovel. Why torture them?

To see so many garishly dressed men and women winning so much money to answer stupid questions as, “What color is Bachhan’s beard?” would send the wrong impression wouldn’t it? I mean, isn’t there something like the US Federal Communication Commission to take up such issues?

Can I complain to the Press Council? I guess, with the problems they are facing, I would rather not. As for the Advertising Standards Council, well, I headed it for some time so I know What Lies Beneath.

Muskan

Muskan

When she smiles she sends happiness
A million pleasant thrills of the heart
To parched souls thirsting for love
In the vast desert of human affairs.

Oh, is there in this world such a heart?
So pure in its expression of joy, smiles
I know not how to thank you dear God
For this wonderful creation of yours.

What makes Muskan’s smile so beautiful?
Is it the deep pain and hurt she is hiding?
Wringing the joys from the sadness of life
Throwing away the bland fiber and rinds.

Good English Anyone?

Good English Anyone?

Yesterday’s TOI carried this report:

“So, while an examinee will be penalized for spelling errors in essays, letters or specific English language tests, if he writes horror as “horor” (note: even my word processor rejected this and corrected this word automatically without my knowing) in a literature exam (hear, hear!) or his comprehension passage has a couple of crooked spelling, marks will not be slashed. The same applies to science subjects and other social sciences.”

“Pavnesh Kumar, CBSE’s controller of examinations, told TOI, “This year, we’ve devised a scientific marking pattern. A history exam shouldn’t be treated on par with a spelling test.” Kumar says today’s children are “extremely weak” in spelling and blames the “change in the mode of teaching at schools” for this. Spelling and dictation classes are passé, and the focus is on developing communication skills. “It is therefore wrong to penalize kids for spelling goof-ups if they have the right answers,” he says. “Too much usage of computers is also causing this.””

Joking right? This in the land in which Gandhiji said good spelling and good writing was to be inculcated from childhood, a land where Nehru’s letters to his daughter are cherished as literary works.

I was told to recruit some writers for a writing project that I was working on. I tried and tried and tried, without success. Can you believe it? There aren’t many writers who can write Basic English left in this wide country. None. Reports like the above confirm it. Technology companies are searching desperately and compromising with writers who can at best write, “Me good, you bad,” kind of writing.

Oh, Mr. Pavnesh Kumar, do you realize what you have gone and done? You have pushed us brave writers sermonizing about good English, grammar, and punctuation in literary forums into the very nadir of despondency. Oh, why have I lived to see this day?

On the writers’ network that I am part of there was (there still is) a big debate about this and the English purists say English has to be written the way the Englishmen write it. I – being a moderate, and a fence sitter – said we should evolve an English of our own with our colloquialisms and our own sense of humor rather than imitate Englishmen. But, honestly, I absolutely didn’t support Internet Chat lingo and SMSese. I would rather imitate Englishmen than the herewith mentioned.

Now Pavnesh Kumar makes me assume that the Internet chat and SMSese genres are okay. Then we can go ahead and have our place in history as the country that voted – knowingly – for bad language.

But to give up all pretensions of writing good English and to admit openly that, “No, you need not write good English, spell correctly, punctuate,” is like giving the house keys for safekeeping to the robber before going on a holiday.

Is that right Mr. Pavenesh Kumar-ji?”

The Jean Story...

The Jean Story….

Come to think of it, this generation — Johnwriter means the young generation of his time — would be remembered for the way they wear their jeans, i.e., well below the waist. Johnwriter doesn’t know where this fad comes from, but he just doesn’t like it.

Every girl or boy is wearing jeans below their waist. Some of them can be seen desperately pulling their tee shirts that stop just above their navels down to cover that small strip of exposed flesh.

Then why on earth wear those jeans and tee shirts if you aren’t comfortable with it? Why undergo this torture for some godforsaken trend set by some idiot designer? Or, has this generation plain lost it?

Johnwriter means no offense but can’t see the point in wearing jeans if it has to be worn well below the intended place it is to be worn. Might as well not wear it. Nowadays, the fad seems to be to wear jeans so that the dirty underwear is exposed. Sort of, dirty laundry in pubic, ummm, sorry, public.

There was a time when we used to laugh at dirty underwear. “Shame” “shame” we used to holler as children. The wearers were mocked even if the elastic thong of the underwear was visible. Nowadays showing of the underwear is called “attitude”. Yes “attitude” it is, but the wrong “attitude”.

In Kerala, the native land Johnwriter yearns for, the “cheela” was the underwear of the older generation, the “langot” of the north. If a small bit of the “cheela” would jut out of men’s mundus and we children would laugh. “Appoopante cheela kande!”

But now with the change in couture preferences grandpas and grandmas can proudly display their “cheela” and their “attitude,” and not be the butt of jokes.

Funny thing happened the other day in a restaurant. A pretty young thing at the nearby table dropped her keys. She bent down to pick it up. And horror or horrors, Johnwriter glanced, Johnwriter has to do such stupid things.

The jeans had slid well below the waistline into forbidden territory. Disgusting to say, she was not wearing underwear, and Johnwriter – tortured soul that he is – could see well beyond the limits that decency would allow.

Though I admire the female derriere in its clothed form, which comes in various attractive shapes and sizes, this was too offensive, unattractive, and made me feel like throwing up!

Please, please, if you are wearing low-waist jeans, wear clean underwear for decency sake.

If it was sexual attraction that the pretty young thing was looking for, she clearly missed the bus!

The Auto Ride

An American once remarked seeing our autorickshaw.

“How do you sit in one of this things? It is so small.”

“Why, we are a small-built people.” I didn’t explain to him how big a convenience it is to driving-challenged, small-built people like me.

“I mean, what if you have an accident, do you bury the person with the rickshaw?”

I got his point.

Today I rode an autorickshaw to work. It was no ordinary ride. I was seething with fear and fidgety all the time.

The driver, a minor, hardly, about 12 years of age, had me, and another man with him on the narrow driver’s seat. I didn’t have a place to hold so I was hanging on to his steering rod with one foot on his brake. The road had disintegrated in the rain and there were huge craters in which an auto could sink without a trace.

Four people were already sitting on the back. So that made us seven people.

“Hey, Chotu,” he called out cheerfully to a friend.

“Hey, Motu,” the friend acknowledged and jumped into the auto beside me.

Now we were eight people in the narrow confines of the auto, which for my American friend was too small to seat one person. I couldn’t squirm; I couldn’t breath. Not that I wanted to, because coming up ahead of me was the open public toilet.

Everyday when I pass this area I hold my breath. When I have passed it I shake my head and say thanks to the Lord. It was that dirty, stinking, and what made it more repulsive was the squatting people. The stench was unbearable.

I held my breath and averted my eyes.

Too late!

The auto’s front wheel sank into a hole big enough to accommodate two such autos and with it I lurched to one side. The man beside me, the “Motu” said something like “@#$%^&*” and jumped out just in time so that the auto didn’t keel over.

The boy-driver hung there working on the accelerator. The man on the other side also jumped out and with some help from the “Motu” pushed the auto to safety.

Catastrophe averted! Talk of Indian ingenuity.

Then there were more such holes ahead of us. I hung on to the steering rod and prayed hard. Lord, reach me safely; what have I done to deserve this?

“Why do you seat so many people? There could be an accident.” I asked out of curiosity.

“Saab, nahi tho kamayi kaise hoga? Aap log panch rupayese jyada deneke liye mana karthe hai, na?”

“How will I earn money otherwise? You refuse to give more than Rupees five.”

This is some curious fundamental of Indian economics that had evaded me earlier. I don’t know the basics of economics, so I wouldn’t dare postulate here. At this point let the economists take over. Or, let me give it a try.

By seating eight people in his auto he earned Rupees forty. That is Rupees twenty-five more than he would earn otherwise. By sitting with eight other people I saved myself Rupees ten. Whoa, anyone see the budding economist in me, or the Chotu, auto-driver?

The auto dropped me right in front of my office. This is where we offer economies of scale to western corporations by taking over their routine customer interaction and marketing functions.

As the auto sped away on the deserted road I saw written on the back of it the usual, “HORN OK PLEASE, TATA.”

Then below it was scrawled something that caught my eye, “Shubh, Labh.” “Auspicious, Profit.”

That sure was an eye-opener.

J

Hurricane Rita....

Hurricane Katrina, Rita…

Saw some pictures of the devastation in the US after hurricanes Katrina and Rita. God, what devastation! Just imagine the most prosperous country in the world going through such humiliation. They have the best resources, the best government machinery, the best executive and legal system, the best business corporations. But to be humbled by a hurricane? Seems impossible doesn’t it?

But Politicians will never learn. While people throughout the world cluck their tongues in genuine sympathy, Johnwriter — the confirmed rebel that he is — thinks otherwise, as is his wont.

Johnwriter is not tired of saying “Kyoto Protocol”, “Kyoto Protocol”, “Kyoto Protocol”, “Kyoto Protocol”, “Kyoto Protocol”, “Kyoto Protocol”, “Kyoto Protocol”, “Kyoto Protocol”, “Kyoto Protocol”, a hundred times if need be to drill into readers’ minds.

Senator Al Gore had vouched for the Kyoto Protocol and if elected President of the US he would have implemented the terms of the protocol that would have cut the dreadful greenhouse gases emission. The protocol intended to reverse the emission of greenhouse gases, say, by five per cent every year. Senator Gore recently vented his ire after the recent hurricanes, I presume, to no avail. Now American should ask George Bush the same question Al Gore has been asking, “Why didn’t you sign the Kyoto Protocol?”

That way Bush will go down in world history as the president who blew it for Americans as well as the world. Or, Bush didn’t push the Kyoto Protocol. To put it simply, blame Bush for Katrina and Rita and the endless Sophias, Valeries, Janes, and Charlottes to follow.

Imagine what would happen if the world heats up as it has been doing. The icecap in the Arctic and Antartic would melt (it has already melted 20 per cent) and with the climatic changes heralded by them many cities would be submerged. Bombay is just one of them. Johnwriter lives in Bombay and has gone through hell the past few weeks, no, months. The wetness and dampness has got his goat.

The enemy isn’t nature. The enemy is our total insensitivity to nature. We have ignored it in our quest for progress out of “greed” and “laziness.” In the past few years the number of American millionaires have doubled. Now, this is serious matter. The number of American millionaires has doubled because a lot of people living in the margins of poverty have been pushed below the poverty level. It is this same poor people who have been affected most by the hurricanes – Rita, Katrina – that have such alluring feminine names.

Now nature has a way of hitting randomly and the pictures are for all of us to see. That is, torn housetops, flooded streets, people waiting in line for food, sick people being rescued, people paddling a boat, etc.

Johnwriter has been accused by many of meandering. Now let him get to the point after all the meandering and waffling. Write this in your hearts and foreheads, “The world is not going to get any better place to live if we keep throwing tons of carbon dioxide and chlorofluoro carbons into the atmosphere every day. The world is heating up and dying.”

So give up living in air-conditioned splendor and stop emitting a lot of hot air and come out and campaign against greenhouse gas emission. Better still, ask George Bush to push the Kyoto Protocol. If you don’t, there wouldn’t be a world worth living in for you, our children, and me.

Of course, this is a rant, and Johnwriter is not afraid of ranting, notwithstanding the raised eyebrows of his critics! More later….

The Dance Bar Saga...

The Dance Bar Saga Continues…

My Friend CP Surendran on the Maharashtra government’s banning of dance bars. He has a very lucid and effortless way of expressing his thoughts and feelings. Quoted below is what he has to say published in the Times of India.

“Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil clearly believes that India, in general and Maharashtra in particular need to be saved from bar girls. It was Jews in Germany a while ago. In Maharashtra now, it’s neither Jew nor Gentile, but bar girls.”
It seems the Maharashtra state government has more than a simple ban on its mind. It has offered a commission of 20 per cent for those reporting such bar girls who – like Tarannum who has been arrested living a lavish life and betting on cricket matches – live a decadent life.

CP, as johnwriter calls him, argues that if the youth goes to these bars and become corrupt, it’s the youth that needs to be banned from going to the bars not the bar girls from earning a living.

For those curious enough, yes, johnwriter has been to a dance bar, when his former NRI bosses took him and the staff on a night out to a nightspot in Andheri. Pucca Yankees, they were used to the nightlife of Miami, New York, Amsterdam, Bangkok and the like. So for them it was the usual thing – a night out with the boys.

What johnwriter saw there defies the imagination, at least, to him. The music was too loud and the strobe lights, too flashy. The majority present weren’t young people as Patil alleges. The majority were old lechers on the wrong side of fifty. There was this multi-millionaire from Bangla Desh who had stripped to his churidars and vest and was dancing and throwing money in the air. Some of them got stuck on the ceiling and some landed in johnwriter’s lap. He sheepishly gave these products of some poor third-world exploited man’s sweat and blood – I mean, exploited by those millionaires dancing on the floor with the bar girls - back to the deserving dancers, who were, the exploited ones.

First of all, the music was so loud that even the mafia don with his screechy underworld lingo would have great difficulty in being understood. Therefore “bhai usko taapka do,” would sound something like, “Bhai, usko duspethi do,” which would mean the opposite. The first phrase means, “Don, kill him,” and the second phrase means, “Don give him ten lakh rupees.” See the difference?

So RR-ji you are misguided when you say the youth is being spoilt, and you have sacrificed the wrong goat. You have even cut off a revenue generating income from your already deficit budget.

The prevailing mood in the government seems to be, “Call somebody a dog and hang him or her.” So it is the turn of bar girls now. Who next?

For more about me visit http://www.johnwriter.com    

Cultural dictatorship...

Cultural dictatorship… freedom concert… and other matters!

Pritish Nandy in a recent article blasted the Maharashtra State government for not allowing the conducting of the “Freedom Concert” at the Gateway of India, Bombay, India. This concert is a regular feature held previously at the age-old Rang Bhavan.

Now, a law prohibits the playing of loud speakers near colleges and hospitals, and, Rang Bhavan happens to be close to Xaviers College and some hospitals, I don’t know which. Yes, the Cama Abless Hospital, it is. So the venue had to be changed. The obedient organizers changed the venue like errant schoolboys asked to take their music act elsewhere.

The organizer of the concert got the relevant permissions to hold the concert at the Gateway of India. But not all of it. The license or the right to sell tickets according to press reports is given at the nth moment before the event. This they didn’t get, poor chaps.

Now picture this. They went ahead and sold tickets, invited bands to play and did all the, urm, needful. The bands landed in Bombay with tons of equipment. Thousand of rock fans came from all over the country to find that the police had denied the license to sell tickets.

Can you beat that? The excuse being that the Gateway cannot be used for a commercial purpose i.e., selling of tickets. But didn’t they launch a book there? Was it not a commercial event? Or is it to be condoned because the nephew of the political lord of Bombay was the author of the book? Or was it because the “Freedom Concert” didn’t invite some pot-bellied, pan-chewing politician to grace the dais and say a few thousand words? Johnwriter is sure John Lennon wouldn’t approve.

Nandy rightly alleged that this was moral politicking of an extreme nature. Methinksotoo. Aren’t we a free country to enjoy rock music and prefer the type of entertainment we like? If anything needs to be banned ban 24-hour music channels and 24-hour movie channels. (Johnwriter is a big fan of these but confesses they are a big glutton of his time!)

Oh, the intransigence of those in power!

The Maharashtra government seems to have a penchant banning things. Take the dance bar issue. The dance bar ban affected only ‘dance bars’ and did not touch pubs, discos and performances at star hotels, according R. R. Patil, the puny home minister behind these decisions. “Dens of crime,” he says. Why this discrimination? Can the honorable minister vouch that the things happening in dance bars don’t happen in five star discos and star hotels? Can he?

But Johnwriter can read between the lines. Allegations were made that money was in play and that the politicians were allegedly seeking a big pay-off from the bar owners who were allegedly rolling in the stuff. Something is black in the lentils here, for sure (an old Indian saying!).
     
Now another pet peeve of Johnwriter, the innocent plastic bags. Johnwriter knows they are a nuisance. It litters every street; renders railway lines unsightly and are an eyesore. Myself is pleased to be knowing, kindly sir. But plastic bags were banned not because of environmental concerns. It was banned because they clogged the drains and caused the recent floods in Bombay! Holy ****! That’s news to me. Then why didn’t the mayor of New Orleans, or the Governor of Louisiana ban plastic bags?

Got to go. More later. Watch this space!