Legalise bribes? Mad-o-wot!

Legalise bribe as speed money, so said Mr Adi Godrej Chairman of Godrej Industries.Bribe is no longer bribe, it is ‘speed money’, prostitution is selling ‘emotional comfort’ via a commercial transaction, rape is not rape, it is called bleeding the society of weak creatures who are unable to defend themselves by stronger ones who are able to impose their will. Traffic accidents are not accidents caused due to negligence or oversight of laws, it is merely that the machine has a mind of its own and wills the owner to its ways. Wah! Euphemisms are lovely as long as they are literary, used in the printed word. They acquire a cruelty when you use them to subvert something that is obviously unacceptable. And when Mr. Adi Godrej of Godrej industries and Kaushik Basu, chief economic advisor to the Ministry of Finance make these suggestions at the opening session of the annual India Economic Summit of the World Economic Forum, my tongue refuses to move at their capability to be facetious. These are men who know their economics. How does it help to legalise bribes? If bribes were to be legalised, then I would still have to bribe the official to get my work done since I still haven’t paid him haven’t incentivised him enough to do my job that he was supposed to do in the first place in exchange for a salary. So on top of the official fee, official bribe money which is called speed money, I will still have to pay him something under the table that he does not have to issue a receipt for. I was surprised to read that N Narayanamurthy had made the same suggestion. I would very much like to dismiss these ideas as idiotic and an insult to the man on the street (the middle class who has to pay taxes and also bribes).
I would have loved it if these ‘captains of the industry’ has taken a non-compromising, stringent view of bribery that is anyways an integral part of any transaction that is out of the ordinary- house registration, name change in corporation, electricity and water supply meter, various permission one must get from the government. So legalising bribe would be just like heaping one more form of tax on us ordinary folks. This idea is not revolutionary if that is what the Big Guys were aiming for. It is not way a game changer if that is what the Big Guys thought. It is downright silly like a kindergarten child make an outrageous request only to have it turned down in an understanding manner because the child in Kindergarten! But Mr Godrej, Mr. Basu and Mr N Narayanamurthy are no KG kids (it’s a different issue that they might feel they are in Kindergarten and they can do as they feel because they have done their life’s work and it is now time to play, yay!). You idiots, you have to fight bribery not legalise it. You have to fight prostitution and not legalise it thereby sentencing thousands of helpless women to hell.
We need to diss these ideas right away and not give them even an inch for them to take root.
This idea came up in the India Economic Forum where all the ‘important’ people whose last names have synonymous with enormous wealth and power have exhorted the government to end policy paralysis. It couldn’t have been more dichotomous.

I witnessed club culture at its most HIDEOUS today

.....at the Besant Nagar Tennis Club.
I reproduce here ad verbatim the conversation between me and the coach/ manager/ supervisor of the club.
Me: Excuse me, I want some information on coaching…
Man in cap: yes? Ok. Where do you live?
Me: How does it …….
MIC: Please come in, sit down..where do you live? Do you work?
Me: If I want to be a member here, do I have to tell you where I live?
MIC: Do you work?
Me: Yes..can I get coaching here?
MIC: yes, you can play with the markers for 40/ 45 minutes at 6.30 in the morning. They will feed you balls.
Me: Can I come at 8? I would like to see my children off to school…
MIC: Which school do they go to?
Me: They go at 7.45…(ignoring his question) so 8 is convenient for me.
MIC: The markers are uneducated, illiterate and nobody can tell them what to do. They are mannerless. They want to do other job so they want to go at 8. If you come at 8, they won’t listen to you because you are new. It’s good that you come at 6.30. Members here give them 50, 100 Rupees so that they do a good job.. They are habituated to this. I am also working here for 10 years and I am also suffering.
Me: So you need to bribe the markers to feed you balls?
MIC: Not like that but they also become enthusiastic when you give them money.
Me: I will have to give them something everyday???
MIC: See that boy? His father and I are friends. He is a rich man. So when he comes to the club, the markers will worship him and feed him balls while others are waiting for their turn.
MIC: See it’s up to you. You can start from the bottom, suffer and then come up. Or you can hire a coach. But he is expensive. I have also suffered. For 10 years.
Me: What you are telling me is not very encouraging…it is….(he interrupts me)
MIC: See I don’t want to cheat you or give you false promises (Did I agree to sleep with him in exchange for a house on ECR by the sea, I wondered!)
Me: I mean if you tell this to everybody who enquires about coaching, not many people will join will they?

In the end, I found all this so sickening that I left. Once again I cast an eye on the scene on the courts and decided that I don’t want to play where in a rich man’s club where arrogant little buggers wield rackets because their daddy leaks paper with pictures of Gandhiji. I don’t want to play in a club where the atmosphere reeks of privilege and where players strip off their T-shirts because oh its so hot and sweaty. I don’t want to play because the markers who are the lowest in hierarchy (not unlike the Khaki clad peons) call the shots here and who are too lazy to work unless they are given a monetary incentive. I do not want to play in a club which is nothing but a showcase for ugly attitudes (like T-shirt stripping or holding face under the mouth of a water bottle and then shaking the face under the flow of water). Fuck that and Fuck you Besant Nagar Tennis Club. I don’t judge so easily or harshly but this is my second experience with your club and has been consistent with the first one four years ago. I have no respect for exclusivity nor corridors of privilege and hierarchy when it is based solely on rich daddy and when rich daddy and his kid revel in it (the smile on the son’s face when the coach mentioned his father is a rich man was the one to see. It was a smile full of pride). I hate it, I will never support it and I will never be a part of it. I’d much rather prefer the Grand Slam Tennis Academy on ECR where the coach is quiet, earnest and unassuming. The markers do as they are told, they are encouraging, and never step out of bounds (by assuming a greater role than the coach or by engaging unnecessarily with the players). Go for it people. If you are residing anywhere on ECR and want a good game or coaching, head straight for GSTA. Talk to Coach Guruprasad at 9282160609. Hope you enjoy the game!

I think there is truth in 'Indians and pigs not allowed'

I went to Mahabalipuram yesterday and came away feeling sick. No, it was not water or something I ate or the blazing sun. It was the sights and sounds of Mahabalipuram that made me feel severely sick. Consider this- This city is the a treasure trove of caves, carvings, sculptures, temples that are at least 1300 years old and in cracking condition. If viewed aerially, it would look magnificent but alas my friends I was very much on ground and very much in of company of mortals, dirty mortals. I saw a group of people picnicking under the shade of the butterball and to my horror they were playing a game of ‘plastic bag racing’ wherein they would let loose a bag from the top and see whose bag floated to the bottom faster. Needless to say the bag contained the food of the picnicking assholes. Pickle, sambar, biscuits etc. The men were in baniyans, and the women were egging them on. Next to the butterball, a woman was selling cucumbers (open to sky and anything else like flies for instance). Her children had made themselves entirely at home on this site. One of them had a runny nose, so she wiped it with her bare hand, wiped it off on her saree and then touched the cucumbers to rearrange them to her satisfaction. Did I mention defecating dogs, pups, goats, touts, irritating hawkers of post cards, souvenirs and maps, they follow you from the minute you step in and leave you only when you growl at them or buy whatever it is that they are selling. It makes them only little better than beggars, unfortunately.
The next scene I saw was a cleaning lady doing her job diligently in the Varaha temple. To my horror she was sweeping the statues and the corner spaces they were located in with her harsh broom- the kind that is made of bamboo and used to clean terraces or open spaces. I had a heart attack. There is dignity and no awe surrounding this historical site that is amazingly intact in spite of 1300 years of braving the eroding elements of nature. There is no natural sense of wonder for these creations of the Pallava empire. There is no sense of drama and theatre only a persistent feeling of being nagged by the mundane and the pedestrian. Indians treat any open space as a picnic spot with a license to do as they feel and this spot of historic value was treated in the same manner. Next to each temple or cave I saw big blue boards telling me not to deface, not to photograph, not to indulge in any ‘rowdy’ activity etc but I could not spot any information boards telling me a story. On persistently looking for them, I found them shrouded in honeycomb like mesh that hid for most part what was written on them.
Did I not mention numerous plastic bags, plastic bottles that litter the stone receptacles like accumulated filth in the nook and cranny of the jewel?
I came away depressed. We Indians are ‘the mantally sick’. We have no sense of history, no sense of hygiene, no sense of cleanliness and certainly no sensibility that shies from public littering. And in this context the sleek BMW is no different that the state transport bus that regularly chucks, food bags, mucus, spit and vomit. Really we are to the litter born!

Hospital, library, hospital, library..ooops last petal in my hand and hospital on my breath.....

So hospital it is..........
I guess once in a while our leaders slash politicians needs to take decisions that have not been prompted by any fast or are not seen as reactive to public anger. These are decisions, call it governance decisions or decisions for the betterment of the society (incidentally also one of their core key performance areas) that they govern. Being an ordinary person who is more concerned about a. prices of vegetables, b. whether to cycle on the road, through the pipes lying on the road or in and out of the puddles (the size of a nice village well) on the road, I am quite unaware as to how our leaders decide what will improve our lives. In this instance, The Leader decided that maybe she needed to move some books and make space for tiny kids with broken arms, legs and runny nose so that they will be able to get nice, free treatment. So far so good. I say go for it. What do we need books for? It is just a useless hobby of the rich and the retired, something for their twiddling fingers to hold while the poor kids are suffering and dying of diseases and ailments that can be cured only in a hospital that is located in an erstwhile library. Did she consult a Vastu specialist or a Feng Shui consultant? For only they can come up with such apparently illogical but profoundly wise spatial selection that has all the cosmic richness and a healthy froth of spiritual nutrition. A university library can be located anywhere. It can be especially located @ 10 kms from the university. The cabinet felt it would be appropriate to locate the library with other educational related facilities regardless whether the user is close to it or not. Madam Chief Minister this is exactly like relocating multiplexes, malls, restaurants and public gardens to places with a climate that is far agreeable than Chennai, like say Shimla or Binsar or Nashik or Sikkim. It’s nice and cool here. So I think it’s ‘appropriate’ to locate places of pleasure in pleasurable environments where people need to travel a 100 hours by train to read a book or see a movie. Oh but the fun of it!
The nine storeyed Anna Centenary Library cost 172 crores (this is info I gleaned from the papers. Personally I do not have the capacity to count beyond 10 lakhs and now 5 crores as that is the prize money of the new KBC). Now again as an ordinary person with a pretty ordinary sense of logic (as opposed to death defying logical capabilities of our Leaders)I feel that the a hospital and library are at terrific odds as far as their designs are concerned. Is a library building interchangeable with a hospital? My answer to this question (rhetoric as it is) is that only during war time when anyways anything that works goes but does it mean our doctors operate upon patients without anaesthesia ? Has The Leader and Her Cabinet taken into consideration the costs that this will involve?
I have a better idea. If Our Leader is obsessed with home improvement, then why not have the super speciality hospital in the premises of the Central Leather Research Institute on the road opposite to IIT (I don’t know what it does, but it must be something pretty out of the ordinary ‘cause my ordinary sense cannot fathom it). I mean the CLRI is lush with greenery that I can only envy. The campus is huge and ideal for a hospital, it is clean and green and humming with innovative ideas that have fuelled the Leather Industry in India and ushered a revolution (I don’t know for sure, but it must be).
Idiots, thick heads, nincompoops, berbers, lungi-wearers (that is quite damaging), possessors of a thousand pairs of chappals! My capacity to abuse stops here!

Visa woes

I always envied my friend who has an American passport. she can come and go to any country as she pleases, without the excess baggage of terrorist links, being black or Islamic or poor. She doesn’t need to scurry for a visa and all the associated pains aka photos (to the last specified inch and mm) application forms and the anxiety concerning the ‘ t’ with a slanting slash or a straight slash and if I have heeded the specs of the French authorities regarding the delicate dot and not a strong, dominating dot in which case my application will be rejected etc) . So I really envy her.
The first time I felt like I was in her shoes was when we planned a vacation to Sri Lanka. I realised I didn’t have to apply for a visa when I was doing some generic research on the hotspots on the island. I exchanged Rupees for Sri Lankan, clicked the bags shut, checked our passports and got on the plane to beautiful island. My heart still heaving with anxiety, fear of whether I had gotten the information about visa right. And voila the customs officer ushered us right into paradise for free and with a smile. I felt like a rich woman and wanted!
I will never ever travel to the Yoo Es of Ae for the simple reason that I am not wanted as is evident from the behavioural indications of the visa interviewer and the fees accompanying the application. We charge the Americans $73 as against the $140 they charge us for a 6 month multiple entry visa. But I am digressing. It came as a surprise tinged with sadness when I read in the papers yesterday that I will now need to have a visa in hand before making my travel plans to Lanka and also pay for it. Though the fees will be nominal as has been assured by Controller General of Immigration Chulnanda Perera. But these are mere tokens to pacify India and rightly so. I consider it a privilege and an indication of my status outside my country when I don’t need a visa (permission to visit and stay in the country). It means I am considered a safe, well-behaved, well-adjusted and a civil person with an awareness of the laws of the country I am visiting. The fact that we need a visa for most of the countries in the world (the ones that count anyway) …well…I don’t need to say anything really. That’s my mark sheet.
Visa fees is the easiest way for a country to start earning off its assets even before the tourist steps inside. These are easy pickings. India has failed on both fronts- making India a tourist destination and diplomacy. Visa fees are the easiest and cheapest method to make a point and also fund some initiatives in the country like the Yoo Es did when it charged us extra for H1B visas to finance more beef along its borders with Mexico. But you can also use the medium of visa to make our neighbours feel special. Sri Lanka is no longer a threat as far as terrorism is concerned. Let’s give them a visa on arrival and recompense for this loss to the treasury by charging the Americans, Europeans as much as they charge us as visa fees (or double for the Americans and ten per cent more for Europeans). Visa is like the receptionist in an organisation. She or he is the face of that brand and the first point of contact before contact. Given that we are a lazy folk when it comes to international relations Visa is like a god-send. Use it guys!

Are these statues?

…is what my son asked me as I was casually browsing through a photo gallery of slebs at an event. Sometimes (actually more often than not) children come up with most interesting and accurate summation. There was Deepika with her usual left foot before right pose, then there was Milind Soman looking ‘oh soo old’ in young clothes and also Siddharth Mallya wearing ink blue jeans and a tight ripper of T-shirt that showed off all his muscles (biceps) looking funny in his ensemble. How I wish he would really concentrate on his family business (sorry sorry, I mean the business that has shareholders in it, like Deccan Aviation for instance. Sorry Mr Mallya you are my pet peeve) and not potter about such dos. Then there was Rocky S and if you didn’t know that these were photographs, you would really mistake them for statues for their poses were so awkward- shoulders raised at a weird angle, legs positioned in an unnatural way, head lowered but eyes staring at the camera dramatically etc etc.
Trust my son to come up again with one of his gems when he stared at me quizzically one day (and that was not the end of it) He kept staring at me. Then he looked away into the newspaper. Oh oh something was definitely coming. And then he observed- You never work at your laptop wrapped in a towel or just a white shirt, do you? I looked at him. “See this picture”, he pointed at a picture (alas Times of India again) of a woman with a laptop in her lap and wearing just a white T-shirt. How do I know that? Her thighs were showing! He says how come I never cook in the kitchen in you-know-whats, when he could see a picture of a woman chopping vegetables dressed in just that. He is quite the owl- looking like a wise old sage in his glasses. What do I tell him? He thinks women are disgusting (having only recently learnt the word from my older one) because they wear clothes that are generally worn on the inside…outside (this was when we caught a glimpse of a song where a single male was surrounded by females running their hands all over him and I quickly changed the channel) but only a glance is enough for such strong imagery always stays the longest and the strongest. I have no answers to that. He also has plenty of other interesting questions which I shall not bring up here but it is because he constantly sees such visuals across all media- print and TV (obviously my friends and I not responsible for this!)
I have been constantly harping, nagging, begging, pleading (oops the last two activities are fictitious) with the TOI not to use images that are a far cry from the articles they represent. By now we are so used to mismatched images and the written content that we don’t bat an eyelid the extent of artist’s liberty taken by this daily. Yesterday of course, the TOI was well within its rights to show a naked picture of a woman with her nipples circled, magnified and labelled. It was an image blown out of proportion (literally) . But then the article was talking about breast cancer and it awareness among woman. They left no nipple....err stone unturned and nothing left to the imagination of the dumb readers.

Where is that perfect cup of coffee?

My tryst with coffee started at railway stations at the Nescafe dispensing machines. I would press into it two Rupees and fifty Paise and get a small Styrofoam cup brimming with the liquid topped with lovely foam. I had it whenever we travelled by train as the machines were mostly available at stations en route a long distance destination. I remember how I savoured it to the last drop. Alas I do not find these machines anywhere now, least of all railway stations. Airports do have them- rather fancy ones but I don’t trust these machines to deliver an excellent cup of coffee, the coffee looks great, but oh the first sip is always the last sip.
My tryst with evolved coffee (the ones that where coffee is not just coffee but espresso, cappuccino, cherry laced, mocha, chocolate, latte and other seemingly endless versions that the coffee serving staff is trained to ask the customer when all he wants is a simple cuppacofee!
I have always dreamt of having a cup of coffee under the lovely awnings on a Paris sidewalk, in the many cafes that line European streets. It is still a dream. The books I read in college led to visions where I discussed philosophy in a smoke filled cafés with painters, artists, and it was always Paris, it was always the beret, the Gauloise and of course Sartre and Camus, of days spent on cheese, wine and Baguette under the arms and to top it that great cup of coffee. Over the years I must have invested a fair bit in foreign currency for that full-bodied, satisfying sip. As an investor since I am more in the mould of Warren Buffet, I still do not consider my investment as wasted, I am into it for long-term! But so far, so wrong, or so empty, my name should be de Nada as far as my luck with this brew goes. I would say the coffee that comes closest to my buds is Bru. The best so far- it is sweet but not too sweet, bitter but not so bitter that I need to empty endless spoonfuls of sugar. Nescafe is too sweet and it leaves an aftertaste and oh oh a coffee breath. So if you are in a closed meeting room with zero ventilation, chances are that the customer is going to take his or her business somewhere else.
There a bottle called Café COlombe- I think brought out by Nestle- and I think you do get it here. I first had this six years ago, when my friend bought it for me at a princely sum of seven Pounds. I was quite stingy with doling it out and had it maybe once in a week. I made that jar- all of 500 gms last me a good six months. Later I had to finish it for the fear of it getting congealed. It was different than out Bru or Nescafe. The coffee was all granules. They would dissolve so easily in water or milk and the aroma that it released when it mixed with either of it was ...well let’s put it that way, it brought tears to my eyes. But one cup was always different than the other.
I still didn’t get the desired consistent results with the best coffee I have had to date.
I still believe that there are two dishes/ drink/ foods that are best made at home- coffee and pasta.
Coffee is best made by yourself or someone who knows perfectly how you like it. The right measure of milk, cream, sugar, water and the right temperature. The hunt is still on. The best hunter is not the one with the biggest gun but with patience and so I have decided it is with coffee.