Mahanagar — Satyajit Ray

Movies as fantasy and movies as reality. It's the relentless depiction of reality that is so awe-inspiring about Ray's films.


The tears shed somehow appear real and affect you deeply.


Ray in fact raises expectations so high that I feel like I must point out the only things that I felt were missing: a clothesline and the location of the bathroom in the house.


I am curious where the family would have hung its clothes to dry and if they had a common or shared bathroom or an exclusive one.


To talk about the particulars of the story and the characters involved, the couple at the center of the story seems pretty grounded.


It's a family in some financial trouble. This necessitates the daughter-in-law to get a job which is considered shameful in traditional society. So a generational battle ensues between the old-fashioned old man and his son and son's wife.


We see how holding a job changes the lady in various ways — above all making her confident about dealing with people outside of her family circle.


We see by the end of the movie that she has a sure sense of her moral compass when she chooses to take the side of her colleague rather strongly and confront the boss.


The movie ends with the couple out there in the big city struggling with the vagaries of life as so many other couples and individuals.


Ray's movies do not feature walks into sunsets or dancing around trees. What I remember is the old mom wiping her tears and serving the fish head (the most delicious part perhaps?) to the daughter-in-law on a leaking and bent steel plate. Only a genius movie-maker would depict that.

News Roundup

It's time to perform one of my irregular news roundups as I seem to be coming across a variety of interesting stories.

Here's a sad story about the continuing tragedy of unmarked graves in Kashmir from the BBC. Hopefully, a full investigation will happen and the truth come out.

It's clearly not difficult to imagine the police or the military being involved in certain amount of torture upto and including custodial killings of civilians. Very sad reality in a democracy.

Ok. Have some fun watching this stand up act by an Indian in the UK.

And here's a good, inspirational speech by a young man who was raised by a gay couple.

And here's an old article about the shocking tale of AIDS in Africa.

Life is very strange. Agreed. An obituary.

Ha! Can you imagine the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory and the rover Curiosity was so perfect that it won't require a planned course correction. Its trajectory is initially designed so that it will MISS Mars by thousands of kilometers! This is so as not to contaminate the Martian environment with microbes that may possibly have been carried by the Centaur stage attached to Curiosity. Talks about precautions!! This is the zenith of what NASA is all about. I'm happy to be around to witness all this.

One sure wishes to see great intergalactic ships starting on their great intergalactic missions with thousands (if not millions) of humans on board in one's lifetime. But probably that won't come to pass. What a tragedy.

A lecture at the MIT Sloan School by the smart Eric Schmidt.

The Barney Frank eulogizing continues as he decides to retire from Congress.

Here's a TED talk about learning in fetuses.

And another TED talk about living to be 100 + years old. Clearly, I'm not interested. If only because I'm neither healthy enough nor wanted enough. Some fascinating tales about real people in pockets of the world such as Sardinia, Italy and Okinawa, Japan where many people live to be centenarians.

Ok. That's it in this collection or it will go on and on and I'll keep adding stuff endlessly.

The Web of Science

Think of the spectacular imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope. I continue to marvel at all the wonders of the universe this single scientific instrument has revealed. And I think of the tiny number of humans who work at the Space Telescope Science Institute who’re responsible for this.

A few hundreds of men and women whose work reveals to all seven billion of us humans on this planet the true splendors of the universe far surpassing anything contained in any mythological tales. The world owes a great deal to the Hubble Space Telescope … for opening our eyes, for expanding our horizons, for showing and proving again and again that the zaniest predictions of theoretical astrophysics are commonplace occurrences out there in the cosmos. And Hubble has also revealed phenomena that have left the theorists stunned before they started to contemplate about it and could barely believe that such stuff was really happening.

But the success of Hubble is a story which wonderfully demonstrates the complex connectedness of all of science. It’s not merely the small team at the STSI who can be credited with its achievements. The Hubble Servicing Missions come to mind. The space shuttle was clearly indispensable for this. Hubble could have been launched without the shuttle but it could not have been serviced without it. So the shuttle program becomes a prerequisite. The gigantic technological marvel that was and is the space shuttle is one of the true triumphs of human ingenuity and engineering.

The debates about its cost effectiveness apart, it was a triumph that was a witness to the hard work of thousands of people. The shuttle was in many ways an epitome of many braches of science and engineering such as material sciences, aeronautics, etc.

The shuttle program itself was a successor of the historic achievements of the Apollo missions. Apollo certainly expanded the envelope of human capability in many engineering disciplines. The Saturn V rockets were extraordinary examples of engineering complexity that unmatched reliability. The lunar modules, the ascent engines, all those things never failed. Even the accident of Apollo 13 was converted into a gigantic triumph with incredibly innovative ingenuity. Perhaps a million people were involved with the Apollo project.

Apollo itself could only be conceived because of the advances across the scientific spectrum in the 19th and 20th centuries.

So the Hubble is like the top of a pyramid. The top can’t exist without the rest of bulky whole. This would also apply to other achievements too. Think of the Voyager missions whose legacy continues to this day with the extraordinary Voyager spacecrafts that work to this day.

Whereas telescopes let us marvel at the vastness of the universe and let us peer back into the early universe, particle accelerators help us look deep inside into the fundamental structure of nature.

The cutting edge Large Hadron Collider at CERN is again an engineering marvel that meshes a variety of high technology components. It has the world’s largest superconducting magnets and incredibly complex machinery to detect evanescent stuff such as the Higgs boson and other particles which might lurk in tiny nooks and crannies of the universe.

Perhaps we’ll detect the presence of extra dimensions with the help of the LHC …

Humans have not set foot on Mars yet. Clearly, it’s going to be decided based on cost considerations. Humans consume so much food that transporting what three or six of them might consume over a two-year time period to Mars becomes a logistical nightmare. So, appropriate decisions will be made based on what we can afford.

I’m reminded of Carl Sagan saying: ‘To make an apple pie, you must first invent the universe.’

That’s so true! Whether you want to make an apple pie or send a Hubble to space.

Nehru Killed Gandhi

It isn't as absurd an idea as it might appear at first sight. Which is to say, it would be easy to find folks who might peddle this idea or believe in it.


Of course, you better just listen to such ideas without your jaws hitting the floor and not try to argue or anything.


Others blame Gandhi for the partition of India. I don't know what they wish for ... a Great India encompassing present day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh perhaps. Which would translate to a current population of a cool billion and a half people.


Some people praise the great deed of the great hero Godse. They do not see him as a killer or a murderer. They see him as a great scholar intellectual who had authored Great Books. So, with a few million published books out there to choose from, people seek out Godse's book to read.


Some people consider Nehru to be the No. 1 villain in the story of the independence movement of India. They blame him for the festering troubles in Kashmir. They blame his selfishness for the partition of India. They wish for Patel to have been the first PM of independent India.


Clearly, Mr. Patel had the magic wand which he would have waved and which Nehru did not possess. Mr. Patel is supposed to have had many miraculous qualities. He is supposed to have united India with contributions from no one else.


Oh and of course Gandhi schemed to get Bose out of Congress too. If only Subhas Chandra had met Hitler !!! India would have been FREE sooner!!!


The assumption being that the British were occupying India using brute military force. Which perhaps above all was an impossibility considering the fact that Britain is 10,000 miles away from India and it's just a tiny island with a fraction of the population of India.


It's to the credit of the people of India that they did not have any trouble with the British presence in India for three centuries. And the British conquered India in a creeping manner and not suddenly. And they kept themselves in the background mostly and cleverly manipulated Indians to control them. The famous Divide and Rule policy.


India is a diverse country and this worked.


Perhaps Indians preferred to be ruled by a rank outsider rather than a North Indian lording over South India or a South Indian lording over the North or a Hindu ruler ruling Muslims or vice versa.


Perhaps this mindset to some extent explains the weird endurance of dynastic politics and politicians in India.


We see so many former kings and maharajas and nawabs who've transformed into various sorts of elected representatives of the people in the state legislatures and the Parliament.


Why do people vote for them? Clearly, they like the idea of being STILL ruled by these same folks.


And the Congress Party of India has chosen as its leader mostly someone belonging to the Gandhi-Nehru family. This can be explained the same way.


If you look at the current crop of Congress stalwarts, you can clearly see how Ms. Sonia Gandhi (and Rahul Gandhi or Priyanka Gandhi after her) is indispensable to the party. Who else will be the leader do you think? Pranab Mukherjee? Sharad Power? Antony? Chidambaram? Manmohan? Who?


Not that any of the above are not qualified enough. The problem is that there are always too many people in Congress who think of themselves as the most qualified to lead the party and who will defer to NO ONE ELSE apart from a Gandhi or a Nehru.


So the crucial role for the present Ms. Gandhi. Mr. Nehru of course gets blamed for perpetuating nepotism. Oh !! What a scandalous crime ! What a terrible, terrible crime !!!


Who else in India commits such an egregiously immoral act such as nepotism ?!?! Well, about 99 percent of Indians probably won't mind either helping a family relation or taking help from a family relation. This would be considered normal practice.


So the fact about the three-decades long rule by the Gandhi-Nehru family is that they were neither like the Assad family of Syria or Saddam Hussain of Iraq or Qaddafi of Libya or Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.


People of India voted for the Congress. In the old days when they ruled, there was no question of coalition politics and in fact Jawaharlal and Indira and Rajiv used to get huge majorities in Parliament.


Call it the immaturity in decision-making of the young electorate of a young democracy. As things have matured, people have come to embrace their specific regional identities based on caste and religion and language and what not and regional parties and leaders have accordingly acquired ever greater importance.


This is a evolution of Indian democracy in the right direction.


The danger lies in that people can be easily persuaded to behave in a parochial fashion. It's easy to use the tool of religion to persuade believers of one religion that the followers of a different religion are less than human and therefore it's okay to kill them.


That's the greatest danger in a multi-religious and under-educated society like India. Caste consciousness too is a fact of life that goes back thousands of years. It's not going to disappear overnight just because of some legislation.


People develop a lot of liking and fondness for instant heroes and instant revolutionaries — hence the popularity of a movie like Rang de Basanti. Predictably, Bhagat Singh and a few others like him who happened to have died young and in a violent fashion during the British period are projected as Great Heroes, as the Real Heroes of India. These heroes hold much appeal ... particularly for the young in India. I don't know what people wish for. Do they wish for Bhagat Singh to have been PM? Or Subhas Bose?


This hankering for heroes has in the year 2011 produced one more instant noodle ... hero ... by the name of Anna Hazare. That's a different and perhaps an ephemeral story in the long story of the civilization of India ... oh, how I wish I had a fraction of the fluency that Nehru had over the English language !!!


Then there are the other faux heroes of this nation ... Swami Vivekananda and his guru Ramakrishna Paramhansa. One a mad guy and the other his pot smoking student. Two crazies and what a legacy !


People don't bother to read books of course. They are happy to be swayed by myths ... myths of finding god and of god revealing himself to someone and people performing miracles and living 200 years or defying death or conquering it or dying on a pre-planned day or whatever.


These two guys have contributed nothing and just uttered a bunch of mumbo-jumbo and babbling nonsense. One will occasionally find some old people in India who'll have read books by these worthies and will consider themselves to be therefore very wise. I consider such old people to be extremely insufferable and I would love to give them a piece of my mind any time.


Then there are the godmen. These have existed in India perhaps through the centuries. The ones who survive or whose memory survives to the present day include the 19th century Sai Baba, the 20th century Sai Baba who died in 2011 causing much sadness to his followers, new age gurus such as Sri XX Ravi Shankar and countless other miracle-peddlers. There's a godman whose name ... and see how HUMBLE he is ... is simply 'god.'


And people take these folks seriously ! Millions of Indians do. And therein lies the danger. As long as things are fine and people are merely caught up in the USUAL personal maelstroms of life (which are commonplace ACROSS THE WORLD and yet which appear BRAND NEW to each of us), they go to these supposed wise men for guidance about how to live a happy life.


That's a silly thing to do. Even a stupid thing to do. There's no other way to describe such a decision apart from calling it stupid if the concerned person considers himself or herself to be educated. Many or most of the paying members of the Art of Living stupidocracy are pretty well educated by conventional standards. But clearly they are behaving no better than sheep.


When things get worse, if we face some serious crisis, a water crisis, or environmental disaster or something along those lines, how will people react then, under those circumstances? That's the crucial question. And the answer has got to be a pessimistic one.


Clearly going by the lack of logic that people display in general, it would be highly unlikely that they'd suddenly start becoming very logical people in crisis situations. If anything, they'll become even more illogical and will retreat to their tribal identities and mindsets.


Riots and other horrible possibilities and lack of empathy for the suffering of fellow human beings appears inevitable in such circumstances.


When will educated people stop blindly following THEIR rituals? Don't they realize that rituals are MEANINGLESS by their very DEFINITION? Don't they realize that rituals are MAN-MADE? What is achieved, what do they feel that they've achieved by observing or preserving some moribund ritual? Oh, of course, the old folks in the family want to preserve them and when you follow stuff like sheep, that makes the old bastards happy.


In such circumstances, the young generation must learn that the old generation is a stupid generation. That too is obvious. Humanity is making progress from one generation to another. We are better than our ancestors. We are smarter than our ancestors. We are not more stupid.


Let the old people live out the rest of their miserable lives in any which way they will and then die out quietly. Otherwise, we need to wish for their swift demise.


My credulity was absolutely stretched to the limit one day when I visited a long-lost school friend and he proceeded to eventually thank god for the good fortune he had in that he had a wife, living parents, a kid, a house, a car, etc. I don't know if all or most Indians carry such self-centered worldviews. Do they realize that when they think god is bothered about them, they are rather magnifying their importance in the overall scheme of things? The universe is large. But that's an astronomical fact that people don't feel the need or the urge to learn or understand. That's a huge tragedy.


We'll begin to become something of what we're capable of as human beings ... think of Einstein or Feynman or Carl Sagan or any of the scientists and inventors and engineers and doctors and others who've immensely improved the quality of human life ... when we learn that god is a fictional invention of the human mind.


Is there hope?


So what if Nehru killed Gandhi? What meaningless rituals have YOU murdered?

The Dour Banker And The Swaggering Businessman

Banking in India, still remains a somewhat boring profession. For a generation and more, nationalized banks have offered job security, something poor Indians value a lot.


So, there used to be (and continues to be) a lot of preparation and competition for Bank P.O. exams and Bank Clerical exams. Some got selected and joined their lifelong, drab vocation as a teller or something or the other.


Some, in the executive cadre, become managers and chief general managers, etc. in these PSU banks. They're the Deciders who decide on loans running into thousands of crores.


Sometimes, these gentlemen (almost exclusively men) have been found to be involved in various illegal activities such as lending to persons with rather dubious reputations such as Harshad Mehta or other third-rate businessmen or stock traders or gangsters or mine owners or whatever.


Perhaps only the not-so-smart ones get caught in some CBI net or the other ... and may be that only happens when you are not sufficiently politically savvy ... and we get to hear about them.


The rest, I suppose, lead a life of drabness and perhaps earn a few crores through underhand means and send their kids for education abroad and ultimately retire to some big house in a large Indian city.


It's quite unlikely, in the normal course of things, that one would be able to use PSU bankers and models in one sentence.


Once in a while, however, things might conspire to make such unlikely possibilities likely.
Suppose you have a one-of-a-kind flamboyant businessman who's successful and glamorous who needs money for a new business. Or, extra loan to help expand an existing business.


For whatever reason or circumstance, this businessman is able to attract many beautiful (or sexy) young females ... for apparently professional purposes.


Now imagine the loan negotiation taking place between a bunch of dour old men (the PSU bankers) who can barely speak English and the sleek globe-trotting businessman and his equally sleek lieutenants.


In India ... and I'm sure in the United States and elsewhere too ... there are many unwritten codes and true stories about the lives of the rich ... and these bankers would know a bit or more about the legendary partying of this businessman.


Perhaps as part of standard procedure (for the businessman), the bankers may even already have enjoyed an all-expenses paid (by the businessman) trip to fabulous Goa and seen a glimpse of this glamorous lifestyle.


If the businessman is smart, what he'll do is let the old sex-starved Indian men get to ogle at a few scantily clothed young females roaming about in the party ... perhaps serving drinks or whatever.


And somehow, the bankers should get the hint that there's MORE ...


So, when it comes to the crunch (or a difficult loan negotiation), when the bankers might be worried about the balance sheet and the growing red ink of the businessman's enterprise, the businessman can casually start discussing new year eve plans and partying in Goa and whether the bankers had enjoyed their last trip or not.


The businessman can emphasize that the last party was just a trailer and not the real thing. I'm sure the bankers would get crazy with excitement with their male imaginations going wild.


The loan amount (say 4000 crores) will be duly if with hesitation approved with suitable collateral.


Now cut to the promised new year party in Goa. Off the bankers fly to a swanky resort and enjoy a relaxing massage.


Then the evening comes and the party starts. The bankers join the businessman on board his yacht and the businessman greets them personally and there are many well known female starlets around. The old bankers are feeling equally excited and shy.


As the party progresses, young females ask the bankers if they may join and the bankers are more than happy to say 'yes.'


So the old men's heartbeats now start going crazy !!!


The drink is good with good food too. And so the bankers get a little bit drunk but are surprised to see that the young females are even more drunk than them and the bankers are happy to hold the females to prevent them from falling.


Eventually it gets late and the young ladies direct the bankers to their assigned rooms. The ladies fall down on the bed ... too drunk to move apparently.


The old men (at least those of them who're not too drunk to pass out/vomit) get the hint by and by and enjoy some physical intimacy with a female after about one-and-a-half decades.
And then morning arrives. A huge hangover. No females to be seen. Oops ...


Were they dreaming?


Anyway, the bankers gather their senses back eventually and take the return flights back home. The more adventurous ones continue to talk about their Goa adventure and joke about it during lunch-time conversations among themselves.


Those who passed out can't stop cursing themselves. The conservative types keep absolutely mum about it.


The old wives ... perhaps notice some sudden change in their generation-old husbands. The wives however put it down to temporary insanity (as usual) and decide to wait it out. They know that this too shall pass ... in a week or two. And sure as hell, it does. The pressures and the boring nature of the job they do soon pulls the bankers back into the whirlpool and by and by they start wondering if the Goa thing was just a dream or a reality.

The Children That God FORGOT

There's one cruelty, one injustice, which trumps all others in this world — it's the sight of kids having to work.


But we let this endure, don't we? We in India. I've been witness to some cases of child labor.


Luckily (is that even a correct word), I've never been personally responsible for child labor. Which is to say, I've not kept a kid at home on a 24 X 7 X 365 basis like some folks do.


I don't know if that exonerates me entirely though ... for I have surely BENEFITED from child labor.


Let me tell the few stories that I have witnessed and I remember. I hope these are ALL that I've seen. I hope I've n't forgotten any.

1. I remember the super-smart kid in Mohali who was managing his dad's tea-stall for the better part of the day.
2. The kid in the roadside dhaba.
3. I sit quietly and observe how two kids react to food: one rich kid who got a glass of sugarcane juice in the hot summer and the poor kid who bought an ice-cream.
4. I think of the kid in Gurgaon who ran his dad's tea-stall when his dad happened to be absent. He was street-smart too. Such kids invariably acquire this street-smartness.
5. And yes, the sexy lady neighbor who was apparently running a gym and kept a minor girl at home 24 X 7 X 365.
6. Oh and the wonderful ladies — my former colleagues at my former office — who all had babysitters (again available-round-the-clock kind) at home who were themselves minors.
7. And that extraordinary scene of the beggar kids (presumably brother and sister) that I saw on a local train while on a trip to my home state.

In India, manpower is cheap. Perhaps that explains everything. Above all. Economics. Selfishness. The survival instinct. The instinct that enables us (apparently) to survive on insects and snakes if need be in an emergency. The Cast Away thing. We adapt.


There's child labor in India. So?


It's a part of the natural order of things in India. People GROW UP witnessing it, benefiting from it, getting USED to it. It does not stand out like a sore thumb.


When outsiders visit India, the same things appear to them as egregiously revolting.


There's NO WAY that I can attempt to enter the mind of a laborer or a rickshaw puller (perhaps an illegal immigrant from Bangladesh) who lives in a plastic tent in a slum in Gurgaon with his wife who works as domestic help. And they'll have three little kids.


Sex is probably the cheapest (free) form of entertainment they've access to. Even condoms cost money. And for poor people, male (or may be it's gender independent) kids can mean SOURCES OF INCOME in short order.


But why am I trying to solve problems that are clearly way beyond my capability to solve?


Let me tell stories instead.


The Mohali kid, real name Sachin, was sharp as a Gillette razor with three blades.


At perhaps 10 years old, he could go toe-to-toe in using swear words with adults who made the mistake of making fun of him using swear words.


But being 10 years old, he was passionately into cricket as all 10-year-olds in India tend to be. So, he used to be fidgety during the afternoon when all his friends gathered in the playground and the play began. He had a bat and ball of course. When there were no customers, he would play by himself. On the main road. With buses and two and four-wheelers zipping by. That's India. You learn to take chances.


And the kid was fast with arithmetic of course. One has to be. Customers order this cigarette or that ghutka or something and have tea and then hand over a hundred rupee note. You've to be able to do fast and correct arithmetic and return the correct change amount to the customer.


He spread a large tarpaulin on the sidewalk (or footpath where the tea-stall is located of course — it's a completely temporary structure) one hot summer afternoon to rest awhile as there usually tend to be hardly any customers during that hot time. The trees luckily provide some shade though kids being as active as they naturally are, they tend to be drenched in sweat.


The duty hours for him: 6 AM in the morning to 7 PM in the evening. I often sat at the makeshift seats available at the stall for the customers and observed his many activities and mannerisms.


Perhaps a Fitzgerald or a Dickens would have written a novel. I wonder about what the future holds for him. A lifetime of menial labor is probably guaranteed. In a crime-prone place, such people might easily drift into crime (or drugs or alcohol abuse if those options were available) and a consequently very uncertain lifespan.


I don't know what might have happened to him now since what I'm narrating here are events from the summer past — some 5/6 months back.


And the 10-yr-old had a back-up too. Predictably. Let's call him Kid. The assembly line NEVER sleeps in India.


I saw a car stop near the tea-stall one day and the owner got out and went somewhere nearby on foot. The wife and the kid were inside the car. They were waiting for the man to return. The kid got a glass of sugarcane juice from the nearby stall for his mom. Then a glass for him.


He drank it reasonably happily. He was doing a bit crazy stuff like any kid such as lying on the back seat of the car and trying to look at the underside of the car. His mom was meanwhile checking the school notebooks of the kid.


The tea-stall junior kid (that's Kid) meanwhile brought a stick of ice-cream from a passing ice-cream vendor and happily slurped at it. I thought the poor kid was more carefree. The rich kid was already getting more reserved.


But I wondered about the different futures that awaited them as they grew up. The rich kid, if he doesn't lapse into some stupidity will eventually end up in some job or the other after getting some sort of an education.


The fate of the poor kid of course is immensely unpredictable. I just remember this one-time incident and remember sitting there and thinking about it. I know I am probably not adding any valuable insights. I'm just recording it for posterity. I will forget all this after some time.


And then I saw one day how a mother's love for her infant is the same across the wealth range. This rag-picker family came by one day to pick up waste from the hip in a gunny sack. And the wife had to help the husband in the process. She placed the infant she was holding on the sidewalk. While she was helping her husband, she was also looking back intermittently and keeping an eye on the infant just so the kid didn't do something stupid like eating stone or may be wandering on to the road or something. I saw the mother sit on the pavement holding the baby and sort of grooming her with affection. Some universal stuff.


Kids in roadside dhabas are almost compulsory fixtures. Of course, the local police uses the dhabas too for their lunch and dinner. These dhabas are relatively cheap. You can get sufficient stuff to eat for a dollar or under a dollar.


Shows that our law enforcement personnel are probably not paid very well.


I was a regular at the dhaba too. I would see this kid in charge of removing plates after folks had eaten. And mop up the table a bit with a wet cloth.


As the clock reaches towards 10 PM though, the kid obviously gets quite tired and sleepy. He sleeps on any available surface: the bench or even sitting on a chair. And it's difficult to wake him up once he's asleep.


It's a strange sight to see. The staff wake him up by making fun of him of course. May be they sprinkle a bit of water on the kid and the kid wakes up surprised. Nobody is inhuman enough to torture him of course. But that does not negate the basic illegality and cruelty involved.


I've no solutions to offer. Just recording what I saw. I'd love to go back and check up on the kids now. I think the hotel kid probably went back home (or wherever) even before I had left Mohali. I think the tea-stall would still be there. And the kid. Unless some tragedy has struck the family. The temporary structures often belie the enduring nature of enterprises in India.


I remember one guy selling sweets on the veranda just outside the Pizza Hut place near CP in New Delhi. I used to work in an office in the vicinity many years ago. When I revisited the place recently, the guy was still selling ice-creams as usual. Much else had changed. Much bigger businesses had started and closed down in the meanwhile in the vicinity ... Maruti showrooms and BMW showrooms included.


And so we leave Mohali and reach the capital of India. The shining city on a hill ... you could argue, no?


And at every traffic light (almost), you find kids begging.


And in rich Gurgaon, the tea-stall owner outside the apartment where I lived was an old man, a curious character, one-of-a-kind. When I asked for extra sugar once, he added it to the glass of tea and when I asked for a spoon to mix the sugar with, he handed his pen over to me instead (so that I might use it for mixing the sugar — in case someone is somewhat mystified). I chose not to use the pen.


He is blessed (as Indians would put it) with about five kids (most probably). And the youngest two kids often spend significant amounts of time at the tea-stall. I had the occasion to observe them. They went to school ... in a manner of speaking. About once a month. I guess it must have been a government school.


The 10-year-old kid (his name appropriately enough is Vikas or development) is there to help his dad. And slowly, he has learned the business: how to make tea, serve it to folks, and collect money. And the kids grow smart about money unavoidably. The poor laborer types who tend to be the primary customers might try to not pay for something or the other. So the kids have to be tough and smart about that. And the kids ARE.


Eventually, the kids manage to run the tea-stall in the absence of their dad. And to my mild surprise, I noticed one day that this kid was sitting at another shop. I realized eventually that he was now working at that shop ferrying supplies on a bicycle. Clearly, the kid or the dad realized that there was no point in whiling away time loitering at the tea-stall. The time could be better utilized to earn some money. Take that ! Long live the entrepreneurial spirit !


I'm fairly sure that things would be in pretty much the same shape now as well. Things often have a way of not changing in India. And changing in strange ways.


Those tea-stall kids would at times bring a toddler to the shop ... the toddler could barely walk. And after a year or so, I was surprised to see a similar looking toddler again and I was a bit surprised — kids don't grow younger with time !! Then someone brought home the point to me that THIS toddler was not the same one as THAT toddler. A year in India translates to a NEW toddler. A NEW arrival. EUREKA!!


And I'm sure now there would be even more babies now. I remember how a couple of laborer families were living in plastic tents on a ground there ... they're working on some construction happening nearby. And the two families between them had NUMEROUS babies and I used to try and count all of them.


I had named them as Sec-56 village. One day it all disappeared. They must have shifted some place else. They won't die. They'll survive. Millions survive in that manner in India. Human are enterprising. We endure despite many challenges. Perhaps like Faulkner had put in a different context.


I saw kids one day walking to the cigarette stall for toffees. It was a hot summer day. You or I won't be able to walk barefoot on the blazing hot asphalt surface. I touched the asphalt with my bare foot to test the temperature. It was blisteringly hot. The kids walked barefoot on it quite non-nonchalantly.


Now to tales of babysitters ... of permanent domestic staff. There are some unique advantages to being rich in India.


If you're making even moderately good amounts of money, you can employ a bunch of servants. Let's count. The average salaried person with a family and a kid or two usually has the following help: a guy who washes the car in the morning daily, domestic cleaning lady who washes the dishes, etc., of course the dhobi for washing and ironing clothes, perhaps a driver to drive the car, a babysitter for the kid (s) if needed.


So the neighbors in the apartment complex where I used to live were very typical for Gurgaon. The husband was quite decent and gentlemanly, talking nicely. I would guess him to be an MBA working in some MNC. The wife was sort of high-end wearing tight clothing. The couple probably had a kid about 6 or 8 years old.


This lady was running a gym. Let me mention here that she looked quite fit as well. Now I do not USE gyms. Per se. So, I don't have too much idea about them. Perhaps there's a need for lots of towels in gyms. Makes sense since exercise means sweating and you have to use various exercise equipment on which you have to place parts of your body. The idea already appears quite ghastly to me.


Hence towels are quite useful. For some reasons, gyms always employ minor boys as the support staff. Well, I guess, the reason is simple — you can afford to pay them less.


And this gym-owning lady also probably had a full-time day job. So, throughout the day, somebody needed to be present at the apartment. For what? Well, so that when the gym staff boys came, they would find someone at home to whom they could give the dirty towels and take fresh towels with them.


So that's the economics of that. You need human presence at home. So keep a child at home. Of course, the kid must double up as domestic help. She can certainly wash the dishes after everyone has eaten their sumptuous food. I don't know if these domestic help kids get to share the same food or they are left to merely look at all the mouth-watering food and salivate. What a crime that would be if that happens to be the case.


And I observed that the minor girls that the lady kept at home kept changing. What seemed to happen was that the kids were probably careless or something and did not satisfy the madam and so she may have fired them. I remember overhearing one time the conversation the lady had with the parents of one such kid. She was telling the parents that they must tell the kid to be more careful while handling expensive stuff and she must admit to breaking stuff when she does break them. The kid MUST NOT cause economic loss. And the parents of course COMPLETELY agreed with the lady and promptly told their daughter in Bengali that she must be more careful and truthful, etc.


So you see the strange and difficult reality. The parents are volunteering their own kid for this kind of a job of domestic help. For them, the advantages are obvious. The parents probably even get a monthly salary to keep on behalf of their daughter. And the daughter gets a nice home to stay in and all the rest of it.


So how does one even begin to get out of this curious conundrum?


And so unto the power ladies of 21st century India. India, the IT superpower of the world. Or, as I like to put it ... just as the state of Bihar provides laborers to the rest of India for all sorts of menial activities such as construction work, farm work, etc., India has the proud honor of supplying IT professionals to the ENTIRE world to do similar low end, project work. 


So you'll find the world-famous Indian IT professional in all sorts of corners of the world — from Oman to Egypt, from Dubai to Denver, from Boston to Berlin. Anyway. I digress.


There are women working in IT as well. Women in IT are curious creatures. And before I get accused of misogyny,  let me quickly add that males in IT are curiouser and not merely curious.


So, in the office where I used to work earlier, there were a few married females working who are relevant here since we are talking about child labor.


And sometimes, I would hear them discussing about how the domestic helps absented that day causing a lot of trouble to them. I get a sense that they tend to have a rather overblown perception about themselves.


I used to also see a minor girl visiting the office during the evening hour with the baby of one of these female workers. Clearly, this minor was a permanent domestic help.


Ideally, the family support structure in India is of immense help in these situations. It tends to be the job of the grandparents to take care of the grandchildren. But then in some cases, the grandparents may not be alive. But mostly, Indians do things predictably; on time. They get married on time; they've babies on time. So, by the time the grandparents are 60+ years old, they usually tend to be blessed (to use terminology that Indians might prefer) with grandchildren.


So do these educated people have any regrets at all about the lives that they're destroying by employing children as domestic help? No sir !!


If you point such things out to them, I think they'd argue that ON THE CONTRARY, they're providing a BETTER life to these impoverished children. They'd probably innumerate all the good things that they've done for the domestic help.


I of course do not have these arguments. The last thing I'd waste my time doing would be having fruitless arguments with female IT professionals.


And so the last instance I want to mention here. Extraordinary stuff that you will see probably only in India. Even on the streets of New Delhi, you find kids performing various gymnastic tricks at traffic lights. That is their form of begging.


I was on a train in Orissa on a short distance journey. Train journeys in India (in non-AC compartments) can provide the most extraordinary, unpredictable, and joyful and heartbreaking experiences.


So as the train was chugging along (or perhaps just after it started after stopping at a station), these two kids appeared out of nowhere. The boy probably had a little mustache painted on his face for effect.


The kids were cute looking as all kids tend to be. Having become an infrequent visitor, I was in a tourist frame of mind and immediately took out my camera and started taking pictures of the two kids.


I was astonished to see the way the boy performed various poses for the camera. It was as if he was born to some movie star and instinctively knew how to give a good pose.


He used his sister as a nice prop and sort of tended to push her out of the frame when I wanted to take a picture of her as well.


I took pictures to my heart's content. But I was conscious of the extraordinary tragedy of their lives and the extraordinary lack of empathy that we have come to internalize.


The kids had forgotten why they're there ... from all the excitement of getting their photos taken. But their purpose was to beg of course. And they're 5 or 6 years old or perhaps even younger than that.


Not every passenger on those trains is a tourist. Not everyone will take photos. The kids will beg after performing whatever tricks they have been trained to perform. Most passengers will be irritated with the kids and shout at them, scold them, try to shoo them away in any which way they can. It's worth stressing that this is the stuff of everyday life for those kids. They start begging on Sunday morning and continue till Saturday. And begin again on Sunday.


What will they grow up to be? After a few years of begging, they will turn into hawkers probably selling various eatables on the trains. Any Indian is familiar with how various hawkers get on the train at one station and then sell their stuff for a while and then get off at another pre-designated station. Their area is demarcated — there are many such vendors and everybody needs to do some business. Everybody shares in India.




What's the point, you might wonder, about all of these stories? Is it ok to call them stories? They're very much real ones.


I think it's important to begin to acknowledge the faults in us, if not the monsters. We must first open our eyes and look at the problem and acknowledge that there's a problem. And one of the ways of doing all that is by becoming conscious when we are benefiting from child labor, even if indirectly. The next, difficult step involves not employing child labor directly as domestic help or gym help or whatever other kind of help.


Those sort of decisions will have economic consequences. We'll have to determine our priorities. Is it okay to let child labor persist so that a few educated rich people can lead lives of luxury and convenience? What matters more to us as a society? To ensure that the folks riding the corporate ladder have a smooth journey or to see to it that kids are not discriminated against? Wealth versus human dignity. The decision is ours.


When will we consider child labor a serious enough crime that we won't mind putting some rich lady in jail for it?


I think it's easy to prove that god doesn't exist — else, there won't have been kids working.

The Allure of Lying

So we have a real-life slumdog millionaire now. What's the problem with a fiction just remaining in the realm of fiction? It was a good movie.


Oh, BTW, didn't any smart-ass MBA professor type get the idea to use the movie's story to teach some mumbo-jumbo to the bozos? Remember that guy who used Lagaan to teach management? How shameless. But then the MBA business is all about cheating and making money. So, smart cheaters (which is an anagram, interesting enough, for 'teachers') cheat some MBA students who must eventually wise up and realize that it's all about maximizing cheating. Anyway, I digress.


I've a bone to pick. I'm somewhat suspicious of this story being peddled of this commoner guy suddenly showing smarts and winning a million dollars on a game show. I think the show is fixed. Pretty.


I had sort of predicted to myself back when the show started on 15 August that we'll have a winner of the jackpot around Diwali. How prescient of me to have seen the future!


The participants this year all seem to be poor guys from poor states of India with heart-rending sob stories for life stories.


How do we know that the producers do not fix the process of selecting who'll be selected to try for the hot seat in the studio? Is it truly random? Why do not really talented people come on to the show?


Perhaps everyone knows and agrees that it's an obvious conceit. But then why don't people protest? Is that ok? Lies are ok then. It's ok for Bachchan to be a flagrant liar?


Some of the questions on the show of course can be beyond silly. I remember one question from the first episode where it was asked as to who unfurls the tricolor (the Indian flag) from the Red Fort on the day of India's Independence? Well, every kid in India knows that it's the PM who does that.


Is it that there's this deeply embedded class system in India? Perhaps there are two Indias (oops ... I'm taking this from John Edwards' Two Americas).


There's an India that's smart and corrupt and knows that everyone is corrupt and everyone is in on the loot. And then there's the other 99 percent of India which is simple and stupid and thinks it's all fair, believes in stupid gods, makes gods out of duplicitous movie stars, cricketers, etc.


It would be so sad if there are hundreds of millions of Indians out there who watch such game shows thinking that it's a true quiz show ... not a faux, fixed game show.


Perhaps people deserve the heroes they have. We have third rate movie stars who preen and more and people for some reason worship them. Some of these stars make a big deal out of kissing or not kissing some co-star or something. Some females make various rules as to how much of their body parts they'll show ... how much of their skin they'll put on the silver screen. As if there's anyone who thinks for a moment that these females are there for any reason other than their boobs and white skin and other body parts.


In all this pandering to false morality, I've always had this thought in my mind — what about when male and female lovers in a movie hug or squeeze or roll on the bed or whatever else that they do as per the allowed morals of Indians. Is there no sexual component to it? Is it just pure acting? Just because you're an actor, you can completely get rid of your sexual reactions for the duration of the acting?


Well, I do not think so. If I was very close to a fancy female star, I'd feel it sexually even if I was acting. Of course, the fragmentary nature of movie making perhaps dehumanizes the participants and makes them realize how it's all a bit of a charade anyhow.


Think of doctors. They all learn the details of biology and of hormones and about the biology of love and sex. But does that mean that doctors don't fall in love or don't enjoy sex?


I remember — out of the bulk of 600 + or 800 + pages — from the novel Doctors about how in an entry-level medical school class, the teacher asks the students to explain what happens during an erection and the female lead character explains before the male students. Fun ...


I wonder if Indian medical college students and teachers are that open-minded or not ...

Living One's Dream

Every Monday morning, there's a universal outpouring of groans — that it's MONDAY again! It's as if everybody's mom-in-law AGAIN was about to come to visit them on Monday. This deafening noise is heard in specific parts of the world. It comes from the office-going class of people. In India, the young generation of IT and other professionals make this noise through all available means such as Facebook and Twitter. I suppose it's the same in the developed world where people have been caught up in this vicious cycle for a generation or more now.

I don't know about rural America or rural Europe, but in rural India, villagers don't start groaning on Monday mornings. There's hardly any difference between Mondays or other days of the week. Their life-cycle is not a weekly one.

Conversely, there's invariably an exuberant outpouring of joy come Friday. It starts in the morning itself and rises to a crescendo by the afternoon by when the youngsters in their office cubicles can hardly contain their joy — this is almost akin to the joy a prisoner might experience on the day of his release after completing a long prison sentence.

"Keep looking." That's what Steve Jobs advised in his famous Stanford commencement address. "You got to find what you love to do." Or words to that effect. Many have expressed similar sentiments — in inspirational speeches and inspirational books. I'm sure that's what Oprah would exhort. J.K. Rowling talked about the importance of failure in her Harvard commencement address but truly what her success shows is that she found her calling at last and devoted herself to it entirely and found success.

But I wonder how many people really are lucky enough to discover the purpose of their life. Was becoming the President of the United States Mr. Barack Obama's lifelong dream and does he feel that he has fulfilled his dream now?

New Age gurus are laughing all the way to the bank apart from laughing at their gullible devotees. There are the old stalwarts such as Deepak Chopra who peddles meaningless mumbo-jumbo that merrily combines quantum physics and DNA and microbiology and endocrinology and other ingredients to make the soup look suitably exotic to persuade the masses. Perhaps his heyday is over now. Everyone has a sell by date. Mr. Chopra is probably expired. But do not despair — or DESPAIR. Depending on your inclinations.

There's no shortage of seekers with money who are willing to spend liberally for simple and appetizing answers to questions about the mysteries and meaning of life. So you have the double Sri guy who claims to have followers all over the world. His particular crap teachings contain much nonsense to fill several small books. Being from a Hindu background, there's no escaping the presence of the micro-managing, all-seeing god in Ravi Shankar's ramblings.

He essentially teaches like Deng Xiaoping "to make money is glorious." Thus the rich people breathe a sigh of non-guilty relief. In a country like India, there's much social inequity and inequality, much squalor, much horror, much cruelty. And therefore, there's scope for doing good. The rich might once in a while feel in some moral dilemma. Their inner voice might question the way they oppress the poor. Ravi Shankar provides the soothing balm. "It's all god's fault, my child," says Sri Sri.

Ravi Shankar is not sui generis. Osho and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi before him peddled their own unique versions of the truth and mixtures of nonsense to believers who chose to believe for various reasons. All these godmen smart, incredibly self-centered, conceited, megalomaniac charlatans. Some might think of themselves as incarnations of a non-existent god — this is again something which is particularly possible in a country with a Hindu way of thinking. So the most charitable thing one can say about someone of their tribe is that they are probably deluded, perhaps suffering from some strange form of mental disease.

But the fact that these godmen have millions of devotees — inside and outside of India — is perhaps proof that millions of people have not found their calling in life and are hoping that they will find some meaning and make some sense of life with the help of the bearded bastards.

This is unfortunate. Where there's a sucker, there'll be a charlatan.

It's quite clear from the popularity of these providers of faux wisdom that millions of people are searching desperately for answers. Also, considering that there are probably millions of accountants in the world, it's probably safe to say that all those accountants probably did not dream as children that their Holy Grail in life was to be a perfectionist in the art of double-entry bookkeeping. Many, many people are slaves to circumstances in life that determine the route that their life takes. Lawyers, whether they be tax attorneys or plaintiffs attorneys, it can be safely surmised, probably do not derive much deep inner satisfaction from their professional activities.

Some careers would appear to be better than others in terms of providing a sense of satisfaction. The childhood dream of every child it seems to me is to grow up to be a pilot. This is true of many or most parts of the world. The second most favorite childhood dream of kids tends to be to grow up to be a sportsperson. The nature of the sports varies from country to country or continent to continent.

But do actual sportspersons lead a very fulfilling life? I have doubts.

Those who do grow up to become real airline pilots seem to have good careers — it all at least appears glamorous from the outside to those of us who don't have much insights about the profession of piloting. I'm sure professional pilots go through life crises just as others do.

No profession makes me feel more reverential towards its practitioners than medicine. Medical science is about saving lives. Modern medical science is a story of many miracle technologies and cures. Emergency medicine does wonders. The fight against cancer is truly a fight though still, in many cases, it's unfortunately a losing battle. But infectious diseases have been mostly consigned to history. So, perhaps, medical doctors get a lot of satisfaction out of the job they do.

Teaching is the other line of activity that has a lot of scope for deriving satisfaction. Whether you're a teacher to young kids, or school-going kids, or college students, you have the ability to transmit knowledge and understanding to a new generation and an incredible opportunity to influence their thought process and belief system. Teachers probably can sleep well at night knowing that they do a job that matters a lot.

Firefighters also get much-deserved appreciation for the crucial contribution they make to society. They too are a passionate bunch of people and perhaps satisfied about having achieved their dream.

But that still leaves millions of others who are stuck in dreary jobs of various kinds. When I think of people of my parents' or grandparents' generation and try to analyze their lives and look for some meaning, all I can see is dreary repetition and an unerring herd instinct. The purpose of life for many would appear to be to perpetuate their gene pool. People go through the motions of acquiring an education in school; then, when they're of an appropriate age, they get married and promptly start producing children; then, they're caught up in the whirlpool that they themselves have created; the children start growing, their needs grow, and life becomes an endless marathon run in circles. Often the children grow up, then get married, and then have children of their own. And this can happen with an astonishing, mechanical, unwavering regularity that takes one's breath away.

Of course, in the meanwhile, Indians keep themselves busy through participation in various social and religious activities. There's a peak season when a variety of gods are remembered in quick succession. This leads to much excitement in the lives of the worshipers. So, perhaps the chief beneficiary is not god, but the supplicants themselves. There's a season for marriages when people get busy marrying each other and having celebrations and rituals that go on for days if not weeks. This also makes people giddy with happiness as it brings some color to their usually colorless lives.

Religion and its many unending, dreary, meaningless, stupid rituals have a key role to play in the lives of the believers. Most of all, these rituals provide a scaffolding that holds up the structure of their life. So the ladies can spend anything from 15 minutes in the morning to 2 hours if they so choose in performing various ritualistic actions such as reading some meaningless book repetitively sitting in front of the image of some god or gods or the other. Well, men can do this too. I know some who perform this daily nonsense that lasts hours.

You can spend more time worshiping a plant (perhaps a tulsi) if you so wish. Since more the merrier, you can spend more time in paying a visit to some god or the other. There are temples aplenty in towns and villagers small and large. You can pay your visits daily or weekly as you wish. Particularly stupid (otherwise known as 'extremely religious') people can pay daily visits (or twice daily). I think this is kind of reflective of the idle time people have available to them.

If people are able to devote six waking hours everyday to religious stupidity, it shows that they're clearly engaged in some very nonsensical activities otherwise. It could be that they have so much inherited wealth (or stolen wealth) that they do not have to worry about making a living, or they could be holding some low-level government job that is perhaps at the opposite end of the spectrum from what is known as a 'mission critical' job.

So how many people live their dreams. Not many, would be my answer. Not many are propelled by any great sense of mystery about the purpose and meaning of life or the vastness of the universe or the sheer absurdity of this random occurrence of the very existence of all at this particular moment in time. Not many reflect or try to make sense of the fact that billions of years went by before we came along and after we have spent our few decades in existence here on Earth, billions of years will still lie in the future when we will no longer exist.

Men (and women) are more inclined to think about more prosaic thoughts. They are propelled by jealously or a sense of competition with the neighbor or a herd mentality — just do what everyone else in the family is doing or has done or what elders have done preceding me.

So people look for a job, look for sex, make babies, own stuff, show off, feel superior, jealous, are inclined to be easily persuaded that the very average kid they have made is sure to follow in the footsteps of THE, one and only Albert Einstein (or Bill Gates — as the case may be).

Looking for answers, asking questions, is a difficult and mind-bending affair. Particularly since, some questions may be bereft of answers. What is the meaning of life, one might ask. The most current answer that science seems to suggest is precisely that life has no meaning. As Steven Weinberg had famously simplified: "the more we understand the universe, the more it seems meaningless."

If you ask the deep questions, you risk getting such bewildering answers. Better perhaps not to ask those question. Or you could ask those questions to the godmen, to the purveyors of easy answers, to the charlatans, to the peddlers of placebos. Their answer will appeal more to the unthinking millions. The answer that these ignorant buffoons will give is that each of us humans is central to god's creation and design and operation of the universe. We are doing great with our lives, with whatever miserable circus we are running in our personal lives, we are doing exactly what god wants us to do, god is watching it all and will be awarding us accordingly. Which believer won't be soothed by such sayings?

But of course it is noticeable that the world is influenced and changed in different ways by very few individuals and these individuals tend to ask such questions of themselves.

The people who bring about real change or make a real difference do not do so by accepting easy or hand-me-down answers or the stupid answers of traditional religion. Very few thinking men (and women) believe in the nonsense that is peddled by religion.

All of us have a choice: whether to live our lives without bothering to go near the precipice and taking a look at what lies beyond the edge or to bother to do exactly that. We should choose to survey the unknown. We may find some answers. We will not find the answers to the unanswerable questions. But jumping into the abyss is the fate for all, whether we look or not.

The religious believers are as dead and as much reduced to oblivion as the skeptics. The skeptics at least would appear to have put that marvelous thing known as the human brain to some respectable use rather than showing characteristics that might be more appropriate to other members of the animal kingdom.