Are we rich?

....so asked my daughter one day as soon as she came back from school. Tricky question that. She is old enough to not be fed a cock bull fairy tale but enough to not really understand economics slash money.

Fortunately she was distracted by a phone call from a friend and not even my offering of taking her out for a pizza would have separated her from the phone (she has her priorities so right! Friends before parents or anything else for that matter)
So there I was, desperately looking for an answer that would satisfy my daughter and me as well. Are we rich?

My mind harks back to an interview of Shekhar Kapoor’s many years ago in a film magazine. I am the last person to read anything related to Shekhar Kapoor. I just don’t like him, don’t like his mumblings and don’t like his preening and posing as an intellectual film maker (what’s wrong with just being a film maker?) I haven’t seen Elisabeth (or was it Victoria or Mary?) and don’t follow his Cannes outings (does anyone? We are fans of Aishwarya Rai here and her many experiments with the mercurial subject called fashion).
BUT this interview I will never forget for he actually echoed my sentiments and I remember having blurted out a heartfelt and spontaneous ‘Wah wah”. He was asked if he was rich and the answer he gave made me weep. At last here was a thought we both had in common and this was enough. He answered “I have enough money to buy books and music without a second thought” Maashallah! What a beautiful answer! It was like a Haiku, delicious in its brevity and so precise in its expression.

That evening I steered the topic around my daughter’s question and delivered my answer neatly like a batsman waiting for that perfect loose delivery and hit it resoundingly for a massive six, way outside the stadium. “I think we have enough to buy us books and CDs”. Of course that answer cost me because my daughter took it literally and trapped us quickly into taking her to a bookshop. But I did see a fleeting expression of wonder in her eyes. Probably because she expected a different answer, or expected us to talk about money or how it is a precious commodity and how we should spend it wisely. Instead I had expertly negotiated this minefield of an answer. Glad to not have to explain wealth or lack of it to my teenage daughter.

Thanks Shekhar Kapoor, see this much we have in common.
By the way, when I was in Mumbai some time back, I bought a yellowed copy of a book called Masterclass. It had the name ‘Jayant Kriplani’ inscribed on the first page. This is a terrific book in the sense it’s not like any other I have read before in style and story. It is leisurely even in the con-job that is central to the plot. More about the book later though. Got to grab a coffee….sorry no more using the word grab as far as food is concerned! So got to have a quick coffee and run over to the Metro Water Office.

See ya folks and have a great Friday!

What makes TV enjoyable?

Mindless entertainment? If that were the case then I would be hooked on to the sundry serials where women my age have quivering lips and men my husband’s age have flaring nostrils. Kaun banega Crorepati? Now that is different.
I was never a fan of Kaun Banega Crorepati. All these years from 2001 on, I was quite content to let my husband describe the show and also rhapsodise endlessly about that tall man with French beard, velvet suits and kindly eyes that reached out to contestants. I also briefly saw the this show during the last season where I thought Amitabh Bachchan appeared tired and really just wanted to get on with the show. He was unwell and the show was aborted midway.
But let me tell you, from a non-believer to fervent convert I am the naya Mullah whose each sentence is interspersed with Allah as my husband watches me with amusement. Amitabh is an actor par excellence but that alone could not guarantee the complete thrall that he holds over the contestant, spectators and the TV audience. There have been other good actors who tried their hands at this format on other channels from Anupam Kher to Govinda and of course the man who dared to put his hand in the viper’s nest and…………Shahrukh Khan. Nobody remembers his stint. It was inconsequential, pedestrian and the show actually fell from its lofty heights that Amitabh commanded to the boring plains where Sharukh held court. It was not the same. SRK was no AB. Ok I can only speak so much or gush only so forth about the man who Baron Baritone. Channel bosses at Sony are smart. Amitabh cannot ride the show endlessly into that glorious sunset. There has to be entertainment portion too that gets it hooks into the audience.
And this is the reason I watch Kaun Banega Crorepati and that I the reason I dig Amitabh Bachchan more so as an anchor than as an actor. Every contestant brings with her or him a story to the episode. It is strange that the stories come out touching us and have us rooting for the contestant despite Amitabh’s high- wattage presence. His sunshine never ever overshadows the conditions that the contestant come from. The questions are relatively easy compared to previous seasons’ but the plot is there, oh yes! It is very much there and drives each episode of KBC into another shining example of TV entertainment.

Through KBC I have learnt so much about our country and its people, how they live, what they do, how different they are than me in the sense of dress, dialect, economic status, social and cultural histories and their prevalent situation. It couldn’t have been highlighted more glaringly when I saw the episode where the contestant was from Kashmir and had killed militants when confronted by them. The contestants are all from the lower middle class to abjectly poor households. They have all faced economic breakdown and have come back stronger from it. They know the despair of hearing a jangle of coins in the pocket instead of feeling the crispness of bank notes. I hang on to their every word and worry. I can count the creases of tension on their faces and feel every drop of sweat running down their faces when the prize money appears to be slipping away and out of their desperate grasp. I come to know names of smallest town or villages or even cities in India that I haven’t hitherto heard of and scurry over to the Atlas to find it. I love the different accents that the contestants speak in and then try to identify them by their regions.
Quiz takes a backseat. It’s the byplay that is India that I enjoy the most.

Soup not Saar, Salad not Koshimbir!

The older generation is catching up with gen X at least as far as the ‘diet’ fad is concerned.
I noticed this when I went to dine at a friend’s place and noticed her mother sprinkle something that looked like sawdust into her dal. “It’s rusk, you know”. No I don’t. Then it turns out that ‘rusk’ is nothing more than apna ‘toast’ that is so delightful when you dip it in chai. I asked her “Kaku, why do you eat this rusk? Poli aahey na? Or maybe you can leave the poli on the tava for a little bit longer and make it into a crisp khakra? "No I am trying to limit my carbs”, she answered. It made me feel rather like a villager who has his honest Bhakar goggling all the while at these people were indulging in culinary masturbation.
Shappat, I am not lying. This was the gist of the conversation and the 60year old mother of my friend used carbs instead of carbohydrates. I have no idea that eating rusk limits carb intake or even that rusk is not a carb or why should she limit her carb-intake in the first place. I take it since they are well-travelled (read have been to Yoo Ess of Ae) and are health freaks (go for long walks in ill-fitting Reebok shoes) they must be talking sense, yet something didn’t seem right. For a lady who grew up in the 60s, this seems kind of strange.
Another very dear friend of my mother’s has quit drinking tea and has taken up cocoa instead. I fail to see the benefit in abstaining from one and embracing the other. Her son apparently has quit rice. So it’s been a year since he has had waran, bhaat, tup and limbu. I was shaking my head ever so slightly (I hope I didn’t look like a mad woman) at her lofty and holier than thou statement.
I see all around me that people have quit the most fundamental parts of their staple diet like poli, bhaat or waran or skipping dinner for a bowl of soup with a lightly toasted sandwich and a salad. When I say salad, it does not mean koshimbir you illiterate person, it is a diced and tossed dish made of raw vegetables like salad leaves that have no nutritional value . Sometimes I might get very sage advice like “ketaki you should eat more sprouts”. Sprouts? You mean mode aleylyaa usali? But I have them as a part of my meals and I see no reason to suddenly have 'more sprouts’. It’s like saying Yoghurt is good for health when in fact we have been having dahi or curd every day without knowing it was good for health.
The other day when I came back from work, a friend of my mother’s had come over and I joined them for tea. At the first sip, however i almost choked when she made a grand statement that she is going to replace tea with smoothie. I had vaguely heard of smoothie and I thought it was just another word of milk shake. Its shake alright but without milk. It is made with curd. YUCK! Strawberry and curds? Orange and curds? Berries and curds? What sort of combinations are these?
I rest my case and would like to believe that travel and exposure to food styles and cuisine cultures completely diverse from their own has made them go mad for a while. To translate the hindi proverb, people who have lost their way in the morning will find a way back home at night. Kakas and Kakus, please don’t bid adieu to what you ate and the way you ate it. We need you to feed us the way we were fed when we were little, we need that rich vein of gastronomy more than ever now when we have decided to patronise empty foods that feed the stomach but starve the soul!

Two Wheels, a bottle of water and I

I have been cycling of late and I now understand what its like for those who do not have the luxury of simply rolling out the unpleasantness with the help of tinted windows.
Cycling along the East Coast Road from Besant Nagar to Sholinganallur and back is approximately 32 Kms for me. As I discovered, cycling is not so much of a challenge as cycling on ‘these’ roads is. Being a cyclist, I am at the bottom-most spot of the food chain on the road. Almost everyone is bigger and faster than me except the pedestrians but then they are nimble footed and can always jump or leap or stop or make a sudden dash.
Public transport buses drool when they see me, they honk to startle me and edge me off the road into oblivion. Then come the SUVs like Scorpios and Sumos. I don’t think they even see me. Period! After that come the two wheelers who drive on the wrong side of the road as a result of which I am cycling on the stretch of the road which is occupied by pedestrians, hawkers, playing children, other cyclists (who are also driving wrong side) and truck, tempos and buses all squeezed on my side as they are driving in the opposite direction. Suddenly I am left with no space and should I even veer a bit to the right, there is always a lurking bus that honks me away like an errant cockroach being shooed back in the gutters.

Seriously, my self esteem and dignity haven’t taken such a beating as the time I started cycling. If I am cycling at a steady pace, there will always be a car or a two wheeler or other bully that will cross me even if I have right of way. I must brake and come to inertia and gain momentum only after the bully has passed by. Believe me this is the most painful thing for a cyclist to suffer-to Stop after she has gained steady speed and make her pedal all over again to reach her erstwhile speed.
The road itself is not kind- there are potholes, speed-brakers (I think the second most agonising thing for a cyclist- potholes kick you where it hurts the most), puddles, garbage that you are almost cycling in to after a speeding bus has ensured you will not ride on roads again, pedestrians that stare at you and other riders that wont consider you their equal. Forget equal, condescending will do just fine, if he lets me pass by in pass. Then there are pedestrians that are everywhere- and I mean everywhere, they are walking on the edge of the roads, they are crossing by climbing road dividers that are 4 feet high and who suddenly jump from those right in front of you and scare the shitz out of you. It’s truly terrible.

I thought to myself, maybe if I Ieave earlier, I will eschew all the unpleasant aspects but I got hit by a sea of humanity in all its glory at 5.50 am. I turned left at a tricky corner only to be assailed by the smell of garlic and potato being fried- wonderful- well all the travelers who caught buses at Thirivanmiyur bus depot had to be fed at this same time. I said to myself well things can’t get any worse. Wrong! Things not only got worse, they went all the way south of Antarctica. All the temples along ECR road were lit like electricity would be declared illegal tomorrow.
The loud speakers were blaring devotional songs (7 temples in all). And the songs that are heard at these decibel levels hardly sound devotional. It’s something else. At last after 6 kms I cycled past Neelakarai and civilisation with all its sights and sounds. I opened my mouth to get a mouthful of fresh air and loosened my muscles. I pedaled less furiously to enjoy the pace that the flat coastal roads give you. I thought it was raining because I felt something wet hit my ankle. Great, a light shower would be nice. As I lazily gazed at my tyres, they were covered in mustard coloured squish…and so were my ankles. Apparently I had cut a birthday cake a while back and was enjoying the spoils!

Tupperware Story part II

And so the story of the long, classic chase continues- that of Tupperware army running after friends who are potential buyers. Finally after two years of living in the same apartment complex and miraculously avoiding the purchase of a plastic souvenir called Tupperware, I could not avoid the purchase anymore and so bought a little tiffin box with a carrier bag (this is equivalent to death by hanging but might as well shout some rude ‘down-with-yous’ plus the mandatory finger showing upfront and clear).

The entire transaction lasted 45 minutes and it was like an elaborate Chinese opera or something that might have been mistaken for the purchase of some hi-technology gadget that the customer needs hand-holding for while operating it.
She asked me if I wanted to go through the catalogue. I said to myself “damn it, these are just plastic boxes, just show me some and give me what I am looking for and be done with it”. But you do have to realise here that this is lifestyle product. On second thoughts this name is richly deserved for something that is just a tiffin box in a bag but manages to command a premium at 670 Rupees only. By the end of it I was bleeding hard and profusely.

I examined the tiffin boxes and as is wont with all shoppers, I tried opening and shutting the containers and they wouldn’t just shut properly. If I pressed one part of the lid down , the other part would open. She gently took the container out of my hand and remarked wisely “See that’s why you need a Tupperware consultant to guide you in your usage”. Damn, If after 15 years of marriage and running a functional household (operating one being ‘functional’) with two children, I can’t shut a plastic box properly, my husband may as well divorce me. Thank you Tupperware, you opened my eyes! Thank you Tupperware for highlighting my inadequacies, I will learn from it. And ( I wink here as I would at a friend) hey I am already an expert at opening and closing the containers.

But I digress here. Since I am unemployed now she also hinted at how I may start my very own Tuperware business by becoming an agent of change (forget Anna, Tupperware it is and always will be). “Over my dead body” By now I was positively screaming (in my mind of course) like a child who has his hands thrust up and in the front and is resisting and kicking and screaming at the parent who is holding a spoon-full of crocin, “I wont, I wont, I wont”.

She asked me how I store rice. I told her (in my mind of course because this is the cradle and coffin of all witty, acerbic, smart alec-y retorts and we are a polite well-raised and well- adjusted adults to indulge in such things) what she meant because, rice ‘storage’ conjured images of warehouses with mounds of wheat and mice running in and out of paradise. I stammered that I store rice in steel boxes and she jumped at my handicap and timid defence. Well why don’t you store it in Tupperware Terminator box that keeps rice safe for up to a year (and I told her in my mind again..how dumb of you to think otherwise, that I am not preparing for Noah’s Arc kind of Ship and that I need rice that lasts me for a month or two and that I go out and buy again). She told me a little story that would correct all my defects. Her brother had got her two boxes of blueberry cake mix from YOO ESS and while she opened one and stored the balance in a Tupperware environment-proof box, she just put away the unopened, sealed box in the kitchen. After two months, the sealed box was breached by worms while T-ware box was safe, its defences intact and the denizens inside safe from plundering.

“Amazing isn’t it”, she asked me excited that what she said was from the treasure of her own experience with the T-ware avatar and not some canned sales spiel.
“it really is”. I answered lamely.

Cadbury Bournville Ad. I LOATHE it!

I am not buying Cadbury Bournville.
Whoever thought of this advertisement is an incredibly ignorant/ insensitive/ harbours colonialist, imperialist sentiments about white domination and what’s more he has managed to produce an ugly advertisement for something as delicious and popular as chocolate.
This advertisement for Cadbury’s Bournville chocolate opens with a bald, white intellectual type examining a cocoa bean under a loupe. The white man has the power to decide which bean is fit and that which is junk. He is surrounded with eager black people, maybe tribals, even neanderthals, their eyes are a study in how eyes are mirrors to the soul and mind you only eyes of simple people speak volumes since they are not adept at masking their emotions like the suave, complex, superior and socially skilled white man. He is segregating cocoa beans- there are two categories- ones that go into making the bournville and ones that are useless. They are waiting…all their eyes on the white man bent at the table. He places a bean on the table and pronounces-“ He will be a ‘Bournville’ one day. And so one till he come to a bean that he scans minutely, perhaps taking longer than normal time to assess the potential in this rough raw product.
Finally the white man pronounces the verdict- ‘He is nothing’. Right! At his disposal are the vast powers to make or break the black spirit by choosing only the best Ghana cocoa that will go into making Cadbury Bournville. Oh and this is not the end of the story. Being the eternal gentleman with a sense of fair play even if he is amongst a bunch of uncouth farmers, he asks the black people surrounding him to convey his apologies to the bean who is crying inconsolably all the while bearing an embarrassed expression on his face (you don’t show your emotions n public now, do you? This sort of behaviour is unforgivable and is demonstrated by a passionate people who are exposed to sun and who live in tropical regions. For ref. read Sherlock Holmes).
He is not really apologising. That much you can see. He just wants the bean to get on with it and stop shedding tears. Initially my reaction was disbelief at such a blatant expression that is reminiscent of colonialist history and then it turned to outrage. They have the balls to show this ad on Indian TV where Cadbury is the largest confectioner in the country enjoying Rs.2000 crore in revenues and annual sales growth of 20%. Dumb, dumb, dumb and irritating.
What? The person making this advertisement didn’t study history? I read a column echoing similar thoughts in Tehelka and the author promised that there might be somebody out there who found the cocoa bean crying a very cute thing to watch. To find out how much truth there was in it, I called up a friend of mine and casually mentioned this advertisement and she gushed how she and her son found the bean so cute when it shed tears.
I hung up quietly and decided that my next blog post had to be about the ‘Black cocoa bean from Ghana being assessed by the White Man’. To know more about how that is a euphemism for the White Man’s approval for the actions of every black, brown, and other-than-white- race, please go back to your history books and reference books. I would like to read Ramachandra Guha’s take in this one. The advertisement is dirty and insulting.
Come on folks, don’t buy the bournville until they change the advertisement and make it entertaining, funny, touching and relevant like the other Cadbury advertisements. We love those but this one goes straight into the incinerator!

The King of Goof Times!

I have been doing some heavy reading on Kingfisher and the Mallya ‘dynasty’ though much of my information comes from magazines like GQ where the chiselled-chinned Mallya junior adorns the cover this month. If investors were to read that article, I don’t think it will bring in any bread to the business, let alone confidence in people who run it. I think to myself, a guy who talks about such issues as virginity and how he lost it at 17 just cannot be serious about running a business or activities like strategizing unless it is about yachts or throwing a party or who to be seen with in the next edition of IPL circus.

Now we come to his father, brand ambassador, party goer, wearer of gastly red couture- all rolled in one. He is also a patriot mind it! Mallya senior brought home Tipu Sultan's sword and Mahatma gandhi's letters. As a stakeholder in Deccan Aviation which is now Kingfisher, I want to know if tha cash he used was his own or the he dipped into the till. This colourful person has been fooling investors for years and leaching off his brewery business to fund his other ventures most notably among them- Kingfisher airlines. It is really a sad state of affairs and you only have to step into Kingfisher lounge (where you pay for what you consume) to gauge where it has fallen to. The waiters and bartenders are chatting with flies and I don’t want even talk about the quality of food; alas I must. The burger was chewy, the tikkas were just cooked pieces of meat with some seasoning on top. All in all, it was a shocker and of course a nice end to a lovely holiday that we had in a remote village in the Yorkshire Dales in England. Did I forget to mention (by the way) that I opted for a chicken meal on Kingfisher flight and was given a lamb/ mutton meal. I politely told the airhostess (I never show my authority to those who service us, the fear of a spit going ballistic is always present) that I do not eat mutton.
“ You don’t want it?” I stared at her incredulously. It was like asking a vegetarian to shut up and eat what he was given so what if it was beef!
“No please, I do not eat mutton, could I have the chicken mean or if you have run out of it, I can have a vegetarian meal.” She made a tch tch sound and walked away even as I could hear her feet stamping in a huff. She returned after making me wait a while and plonked a box on the tray. If the box were open the contents would be flying everywhere.
Today the Economic Times is carrying a front page article about an auditor questioning Kingfisher’s ability to keep flying. Of course they owe fuel companies money (and not to tune of 500 or 1000 rupees, we care talking probably a couple of thousand crore), they are suffering losses to the tune of 4K crore and to top it all they are defaulting on PF and TDS. As a citizen of India who pays her taxes and whose salary gets deducted for PF, I find this completely outrageous. Of all crimes, Provident Fund Chori is the worst chori of all. You are deducting amounts as employees’ contribution to provident fund and then withholding it from the government. This puts the Mallya business group at par with Jog tuition Classes of Pune.
Jog’s Classes were the premier tuition classes in Pune. Among the elite who attended their classes were those who topped the board exams and medical entrance exams. Jog Sir was quite a figure, effeminate in his mannerisms, he was anything but feminine in his dealings with the staff who he used to treat like his personal and bonded labour. I have never seen anybody being treated with such scant respect. I had a chance of teaching in his institute where at the end of the month the salary would be transferred to an account and his chief administrator (and his personal punching bag, who for years suffered silently all the insults meted out to her and now is the principal of Jog School. I admire her tenacity) passed out a big fat ledger for us to sign. It was a signature against the column titled PF. I asked her about it and she smiled apologetically and was quite open about it telling me that even though the amount for PF was deducted, it was never paid to the government. The guy was ripping us off our hard earned money. Later when I had to go to the PF office in Pune, he figured prominently in the PF defaulter’s list. So where’s the difference between Mallya who holidays with the other buffoon Branson and Mr. Jog who has an aviary which is nothing but a nuisance for the neighbours. There is absolute nothing that differentiates the two businessmen who don’t care two corn flakes about it. It’s just sad that his son who will inherit the empire (or what remains of it..hic) is talking about his progeny somewhere in the world (I know he is joking about it and also attributes it to his ‘British’ sense of humour) and how to avoid it always ‘don’t be a fool and wrap your tool’. Somehow I really find it hard to believe that a guy who spouts such premature wisdom can do better than to practise the fool and tool gem.
Ahoy there!