Artist Village: Then and Now!

In this blog article architect Luke (he is one of those guys who don’t say their surnames) mentions of the Artist Village in CBD Belapur, New Bombai, where I live:

“In some regards, this isn’t the fault of the architect, as people have advanced and want that expressed in their built environment. But, at the same time, it has put strain on those at the bottom of the ladder in this particular context. It seems as if gentrification is clearly taking place in this housing scheme, and how exactly is an architect supposed to challenge that. He did propose a plan for the houses to grow and improve, as people garnered more income, while still keeping the language of the community. But, recently, the incremental growth switched to total growth and the new homes challenge the language of the community and further increase the inequity that this proposal was supposed to limit. Should incremental housing and growth incrementally change the people that are living there as well? It is possible that the original language of the housing was too rural to be able to support the changing aspirations and dreams of the modernizing urban Indian citizen?”

Yes. I came to live in Artist Village in 1988 and in those days my house was a mere hut, built around squares imitating the Indian village. Gradually I added to it incrementally, as Charles Correa had originally intended, and after the software/capital market boom (remember, I worked in both these sunrise industries), I got enough money to remodel it to my requirements. Today there are very little traces of the original huts Correa built. It is all RCC construction and flat roofs now. How things change!

Paul Zachariah on Kerala's Sexual Health

Uh oh, I read about writer Paul Zachariah’s lament on sex starvation in Kerala and only after I closed the browser did I think of writing this post. I went back to search. I couldn’t find it. Instead I saw this. The search engines threw up a lot of blog comments instead of the original article in rediff.com. Why don't the news websites like rediff.com ever write search engine friendly copy, I wonder.

Um.

Well, then I go to the friend’s page where I had seen the post, and, lo and behold, there it was, with a picture of him as well. So here it is the writer ranting about the state of sexual prurience in Kerala. I admire him for his forthright views. May be, I don't know, I have lived outside Kerala most of my life, Malayalis need to re-look their sexual taboos. I had met him at the last Kala Ghoda festival in Bombai and hope to meet him again this year. 

J.D.Salinger, He of “Catcher in the Rye” Fame Is No More

Alas, the reclusive cult figure of J.D.Salinger is no more. He died on January 27, 2010. He was 91. His singular and seminal work that impressed me was "Catcher in the Rye" which was lauded as "an unusually brilliant first novel" by the chronicler of good writing, New York Times, and spent thirty weeks in the venerable newspaper's bestseller list. In the 1970s several teachers who assigned the book to students were sacked from their jobs in his country, while on the other end teachers were teaching the book to students in other states. (In the US individual states have the freedom to ban books in their areas.)

Asked to name his craft, he is said to have remarked to the effect, "One should get up and shout the names of authors one likes." If I am asked (if my books get published, a big IF) I would shout "J.D.Salinger" first among others such as: Hemingway, Steinbeck, Barthelme, Tolstoy, Dickens, Turgenev, Kafka, Marquez, and countless others. Name dropping am I? Hm.

But the greatness of Salinger and "Catcher in the Rye" and "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" cannot be denied. Rest in peace J.D.Salinger. The Wikipedia article on him is here.

IPad - Paeans and Groans!

No sooner Apple launched the iPad than a howl of protests erupted from the most unlikely quarters. The women took umbrage at a certain association it had with a certain period of their life when they feel bloated and uneasy, Fujitsu said iPad is the apple of their eye, not Apple's, and some are singing paeans saying that its nothing but a giant iphone.

Which brings me to those who are crooning its praises: this one says "iPad could be a powerful tool for corporate workers as well as field repairmen," this one says, "iPads could be valuable for doctors moving around the hospital," and this one says, "iPad-specific apps that might include a digital guitar or harp, or perhaps a DJ app or mixing program."

Cool. I for one will only believe it when I see and experience it. I guess, for a Microsoft junkie like me, an Apple product will be like an orange in the hands of a monkey (Monkeys can handle bananas better, you see.). Okay, wokey, till this monkey can get his greasy hands on an iPad, please hold your nuts and watch this space.

Globalisation vs Corporatisation

Here's Naomi Klein of NO LOGO on the branding of Obama in an article published in the Guardian. I tend to agree with her – having worked in outsourcing many years of my mis-spent adult life – that outsourcing is creating hollow corporations emphasizing on creating of brands (like Microsoft for instance), not products, and that "globalization" which most trenchant left-leaning intellectuals are decrying is actually "corporatization" of the world. Meaning the world is building hollow organization and un-trustworthy brands not solid products and customer loyalty. She point to the creation of the brand Obama (whose Twitter follower I am), who is carrying on with the faux pas created by George Bush in outsourcing most government work to corporations. The supply chain in Iraq for the American army is managed by outsourced corporations. It's a thoughtful article, needs careful reading.

Excerpt: "The nation found that in Obama, a man who clearly has a natural feel for branding and who has surrounded himself with a team of top-flight marketers. His social networking guru, for instance, is Chris Hughes, one of the young founders of Facebook. His social secretary is Desirée Rogers, a glamorous Harvard MBA and former marketing executive. And David Axelrod, Obama's top adviser, was formerly a partner in ASK Public Strategies, a PR firm which, according to Business Week, "has quarterbacked campaigns" for everyone from Cable vision to AT&T. Together, the team has marshalled every tool in the modem marketing arsenal to create and sustain the Obama brand: the perfectly calibrated logo (sunrise over stars and stripes); expert viral marketing (Obama ringtones); product placement (Obama ads in sports video games); a 30-minute infomercial (which could have been cheesy but was universally heralded as "authentic"); and the choice of strategic brand alliances (Oprah for maximum reach, the Kennedy family for gravitas, and no end of hip-hop stars for street cred)."

Hat tips to Albert Barton for the link.

Fashions That Pamper the Consumer

You have wondered, of course, what the world would be without fashion. I wondered today (in the loo, I might add, when I was unbuttoning my branded trouser, not that I am less fashion conscious) that today we are seeing a virtual clash of fashions. In my youth, we had the bell bottoms and high-shirt-collar as the style of the times. Today the styles differ according to the whim of its designer. How about a no collar shirt with patterns held together with Chinese buttons. Hm. I saw a guy wearing it – sitting opposite me - in the train today. Then I see a guy wearing a shoe pointed and curved enough to poke the guy or gal in the behind. Then another with a shoe, protruding in a sort of rectangular shape, a good five inches in front of him. I wonder how he climbs stairs with those shoes. Does he do a Chaplinesque amble?

Then there are short shirts, there are long shirts, tee-shirts, patterned shirts, pants with lots of straps hanging from them, jeans that are crushed and crumpled to give that ruffled grungy look, jeans that come in atrocious patterns, odd-shaped pockets that are – you won't believe this – behind the thighs (so that when you sit you are sitting on your wallet or your cell phone), etc. It is amusing to watch all these designer stuff, the manifestations of the need to sell, the maxim that "greed (pampering to the vanity of the consumer) is good."

Waiting at Lisbon Airport, Put on Your Dancing Shoes!

Got this from Harriet Baskas' travel blog, and, oh, hat tips to the always be-hatted Albert Barton:

"Imagine being at the Lisbon Airport during the Christmas rush when a voice on the public address system announces Flight 0000: a special flight on which "No sad children or adults are permitted" and where "Only happiness is allowed on board."

"And then, all of sudden, TAP Air Portugal and Aeroports de Portugal employees rush from their posts to perform a spirited flashmob-style dance routine to a medley of songs ranging from the Bee Gees' Stayin' Alive to Mariah Carey's All I want for Christmas is You."

See for yourselves!

No Full Stops in Matrimonial Ads in India, Njoi!

Reading the Sunday newspaper is an entertaining experience. Especially when my eyes rove from killing drudgery of international and national shenanigans into the matrimonial section, to read some of the usual howlers, so innocently put there by apparently well educated bachelor engineers and Indian institute graduates so proudly declaring the qualities they need in partners. The one I have reproduced below is not isolated, almost all have howlers, you can laugh the rest of your month of Sundays:

SRI 26/5’5” BE wrkng MNC B’lore father Sr Exec in central PSU settled NOIDA seek white complexioned extremely beautiful well edu family. Phone:

Gasp!

Now I know what Mark Tully means by “No Full Stops in India.”

SRI (this may be the caste, I don’t know, Srinagar or Sriperumbudur or Sriram Colony Brahmin, or something?)

26/5’5” (age and height, very important, but boy or girl we don’t know)

BE (bachelor of engineering. Though how he passed his engineering with such atrocious English, I don’t know. Pleased to be understanding BEs are alwaysu boysu, not girlsu.)

wrkng (working) MNC (multinational corporation) B’lore (It's very important to show that you aren't the desi clerk working in an Indian company, they have no value in the marriage market, you see.)

Father Sr Exec in central PSU settled NOIDA (Very important information about father, also NOIDA is upmarket.)

seek white complexioned extremely beautiful well edu family. (Oh God, why would he [assuming it is a he, being BE and all, but these days girls are also BEs] want to marry an entire “white complexioned extremely beautiful well educated family”? The fathers of brides are dead ugly. See Steve Martin’s “Father of the Bride” for proof. Assuming he would get a family in the world which is both white complexioned and extremely beautiful.

What’s the problem with this man? Ego? Too much libido? Or, is he the kind who ensnares “white complexioned extremely beautiful and well educated families” and marries them en masse with his own family? Reminds me of the railway complaint written by this gentleman.

The Sad, Sad Case of Ruchika Girotra

It's a pity. Really is. A pity that it should, or, could, happen in modern India, an independent India whose republicanism we are celebrating only three days from now. A man who is supposed to protect the honour of pubescent, pre-adult children, allegedly molested her and then terrorized her family into submission using his position as a director general of police and forced her, virtually, into committing suicide. Here he is unrepentantly and defiantly, defending his action. The gall of it all. Were it not for the gutsy parents of the girl's friend – who fought the case to it's final resolution recently – the case would never have come to light. May God bless you! This happened in twentieth century India, no, not in the dark ages. Can you believe it? This is only one tiny tip of the iceberg of the crimes that are going on unreported, behind the veils and curtains of modern India.

Sadly, here police consider it no duty of theirs to protect honour, property, or law. They only consider violating it, or submitting themselves to the manipulators of all these vital fundamental rights of an Indian citizen. Our hearts bleed for Ruchika and her family, the torturous ordeal they went through, the persecution they have suffered. (When the oppressor knew he couldn't persecute the girl, he took his perverse revenge on her family members. Her brother was allegedly targeted by the powerful opponent a director-general of those days, stripped naked in his locality, abused in the police custody, all to hide the very-important-policeman's guilt. Read about it here.)

It's common knowledge that policemen rape the ones they are supposed to protect, kill the ones who don't pay them regular protection money, are in league with criminals who run illegal rackets, protect the mighty who run big businesses. Is the home ministry napping? Why don't they act on the accumulated mountain of evidence? Aren't people who are appointed as director-generals of police in this country screened for previous offenses or such tendencies before they are appointed?

My Grandfather Karikkottu Joseph

My grandfather Karikkottu Joseph on my mother's side was a teacher and a diviner. By diviner I mean he could detect ground water anywhere in a plot of land. He was in great demand because in Kerala virtually every family has a well and he used to advise them on where to dig for a well, for free. Once he went around our property in Kidangannoor and pointing to a certain area said that there is a treasure buried underground at the exact spot. Many times I had thought of excavating that area to see if it was true. However, I never had the guts or gumption. Still it remains a mystery to me. Hm.

Unlike me (hehe) he was a tall, fair and handsome man, also rich, I might add, as you can see from the picture (hope the picture gets uploaded okay) and had a large landholding of 100 acres (big by Kerala standards) in those days. He is wearing a shirt common in those days, held with removable buttons and an angavastram, or, a shoulder wrap. Remember that was in circa 1800 or thereabouts. Fashions change, attitudes change, his grandchildren are spread across the world in countries as diverse as: Dubai, Saudi Arabia, U.S., ireland, U.K., etc. Here's a blog I have made for his grandchildren by me. Recently we grandchildren got together to celebrate our kinship in Kerala (I couldn't go as I was tied down with work.). My regret. Today, when I think of him I think of an era that has faded from memory, a time that has been stilled, a voice that is only an echo in the mind. Rest in peace Valiappachen.