Blogging here has suffered a serious slowdown (yet one more time) because I've been scrambling for several days to finish some assignments before tonight, when I get on a plane. I'll be outside Detroit over the next two weeks, then in California's Bay area for a few days, before returning to Bombay in the third week of October.
There may be a discussion around my book Roadrunner in the Bay area. Watch this space. (As always, watch others too).
And I hope to get back to some kind of speed on blogging over the next few days.
September 29, 2010
September 25, 2010
American sports and me
Friend Akshay Sawai, sometimes to be seen making me run all over the tennis court, has an article in the current Open, Desis Who Love American Sports. I figure in it, with a mention of my fast-bowling exploits that once involved scotch-tape.
Akshay sent me a detailed questionnaire some months ago while gathering material for this article. You might want to read the questions and my answers too: see below.
***
1. Where did you grow up in India? What sports did you follow when in India? Who were your idols?
I grew up mostly in Bombay, though I also lived in Delhi and then went to college in Pilani in Rajasthan. I followed cricket, tennis and hockey a lot, played the first two pretty regularly. In cricket I was a fan of Vishy, Chandra, Andy Roberts and Eknath Solkar (for his electrifying fielding -- I wanted to field like that). Tennis, McEnroe, Connors and Amritraj. Hockey, probably Aslam Sher Khan and Ajitpal Singh.
2. What events/games did you watch live at the stadium when in India?
I remember going to the Brabourne Stadium for a day of the Test against NZ in 1969. I was 9 years old, and it was nearly 36 years before I watched my second day of Test cricket in a stadium! (Bangalore Test against Pakistan, March 2005).
3. What age did you go to the US? Which city?
I went at 21, in 1981, to Providence, Rhode Island, to attend Brown University.
4. Could you talk about your early days in the US vis-a-vis sport? What did you miss about the Indian sports scene? Did you go to comical/dramatic lengths to get a fix of Indian sports news/telecasts?
I went in the days long before widespread internet and TV channels. There was American sport, and that's it. No mention of cricket or hockey anywhere. So while I missed it a lot initially, I simply got used to the idea of not knowing about happenings in cricket for much of the 1980s (while I lived in the US). That whole period is like a gap in my life -- I know that there were various Test series that took place, but only in hazy retrospect.
The exception was the 1983 World Cup triumph -- an Indian friend got me clippings about it all from Indian newspapers and sent them to me, so I pored over the reports of the final victory. I still have them somewhere.
Quite early, I started attending university football and ice hockey games, and later following pro and college basketball too. I never really grew to like baseball.
I should say though that in my time at Brown, several of us (Indians, Pakistanis, West Indians, a few English guys) got together and started playing cricket. We imported some equipment and played regular matches. (Yes, with real cricket balls). I was also then an impoverished student, and I had no money to repair my glasses whose arms had fallen off 2-3 days before one of our matches. So I played that whole game of cricket -- even pounding in to bowl fast -- with the glasses taped to my nose with scotch-tape.
That was how much I wanted to play cricket.
Incidentally, this club we formed has endured, and now plays as the Rhode Island Cricket Club in a weekend cricket league in New England.
5. How did you start liking the American sport of your choice? Can you describe the moment when you realised, "Hey, I think I like this"?
Basketball was probably my favourite American sport, purely because of the sheer tempo and athleticism of the game. I started watching pro basketball (NBA) in the early '80s, the heyday of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. Truly, watching them got me started liking the game. I particularly liked the way Bird played -- no great showmanship like Magic and later Jordan had, but an uncanny awareness of the court and his teammates, a completely unselfish game founded above all on playing hard all the time. I liked that because it's the way I always wanted to approach the games I played -- tennis, and later basketball too.
I also enjoyed football, because I found it fascinating how these teams would try to run these intricately patterned plays on the field, as if they were to be done with mechanical toys. Yet these were not toys, but big hefty athletes in frenetic action, going after each other! So the pretty patterns would invariably end in huge piles of humanity. And yet out of all that, I grew to understand that there was indeed strategy and guile and subtlety in the game.
6. What attracted you to the sports of your choice? Once you liked it, did you consciously educate yourself about it? Did you start spending more time on the sports section of American publications?
As I said, it was the skill of Larry Bird that first got me hooked to basketball. Later I also began following college basketball, where passion and school spirit feed into the mixture. The March college tournament (the NCAAs, also referred to as "March Madness") is one of the great spectacles of American sport, where invariably one or two unknown teams will score upsets over some fancied team and make a run.
I did start following the sports sections closely. But I probably learned most about basketball (in particular), and liking it even more, when I started playing it seriously. That's when the manouevres on court -- the "pick-and-roll", for example -- made sense to me, and then I started identifying them in the games I saw on TV.
7. Who were your favourite American sport analysts?
Probably John McEnroe and Mary Carillo in tennis. Mainly because both had played the game at the highest level and bring that understanding to their commentary.
8. When was the first time you watched a game live in the US? What stood out about the experience?
I think my first live game was probably a Brown football game, sometime in October of 1981. I barely understood the game, but what I remember is the whole college atmosphere -- the cheering students and alumni, the college band. Especially because the Brown Band is traditionally scruffy and disorganized, but plays beautifully coordinated music all the same. I also remember with wonder that each time Brown scored, the male cheerleaders would flop on their fronts and do as many pushups as Brown's score was.
And of course what also stood out were the (female) cheerleaders -- pert, pretty girls in little dresses doing impossible-seeming feats to get the crowd excited about the game.
9. What did you like to eat and drink at the stadium?
Usually a Coke and a hotdog. I have never been a beer drinker.
10. Was it possible to hear snatches of Hindi or any other Indian language at a hardcore American sports venue?
Only between me and any Indian mates who were along!
11. What was your favourite team and why?
In the college games, Brown. Of course because I attended Brown, but also because it is a small university with mostly weak teams that struggle to stay afloat against most others. Yet as a result they often fight hard and make games closer than they should be.
In the pro ranks, I liked the Boston Celtics in basketball, purely because of Larry Bird. In football, I liked the Washington Redskins, perhaps because they won the first Super Bowl I really paid attention to, in 1983. And they won it with a spectacular performance by John Riggins, a character in his own right. He once got drunk and fell asleep under a table at a formal Washington party, and when he woke up, he told the Supreme Court Judge Sandra Day O'Connor: "Loosen up, Sandie baby!" Gotta love the man and the team that he played for.
12. Who were your favourite players and why? Now that you are back in India, do they still remain some kind of role models?
Again, I'd choose Larry Bird. Because of his intelligence about basketball, his fabulous court sense and his unflinching work ethic about the game. For those things, of course he remains a role model. John McEnroe is up there too, for his court sense in tennis.
13. Did you have parties at home during Super Bowl or other major events? What was the food and drink menu on such days? What was the agenda?
I don't recall a party at home, but I did go to other friends' places for parties around games, Super Bowl or otherwise. Food was usually pizza and chips, with plenty of beer and Coke available too. The agenda? Not so much the game, just hanging out with pals.
One of my favourite memories from the States is about one such party, around an inconsequential college football game. I had just moved to Austin, in Texas, and had no friends there. An Indian friend from Brown told me about an Indian friend she knew in Austin and suggested I call him. So one Saturday morning, I did. He said he and some pals were going to be at home watching the University of Texas playing Baylor University that afternoon, did I want to join in? So I went. Turned out they were all UT students, fervent supporters of UT. Since I didn't much care about either team, I decided to support Baylor. As it happened Baylor just hammered UT that day. (Which is a very rare happening). So I ended up cheering a lot. That got me many dirty and angry looks. I was never invited back; in fact I never met any of those guys again.
14. Did you reach a point where you enjoyed American sport more than cricket?
Yes, I'd say I probably enjoyed basketball and tennis more than cricket. But probably because I played those sports regularly and with some seriousness, and got fairly good at them.
For a while in Austin, I played basketball competitively. Though our team had two superb players (I'll call them X and Y), collectively we were not much good. But two incidents stand out for me from that time.
Once, a friend from out of town came to play with us. He was now out of shape, but had played basketball seriously for years. He was a tough, skillful player, and though I was taller than him, I found it very hard to play against him, score over him. That evening, we met for dinner, and got chatting about the game. He asked me, who do you think your best player is? I named X, one of the two guys I mentioned above. He shook his head and pointed to me. You're the best player, he said. Because you play hard all the time.
I was floored, but it felt good. The Larry Bird influence, I thought.
The other time, we played a pickup game against the UT women's team, then nationally ranked. Again, it was hard going -- these girls were tough as nails, quick and smooth on the court. I thought they didn't think much of our capabilities, certainly not mine.
But the next day, I was sitting in my office working and noticed that the same UT women's team had come to my company on some kind of promotional tour. Watching them through my large window, their best player suddenly saw me too -- and suddenly broke into a huge smile, waved and told her teammates, who smiled and waved too. Somehow I got the sense that she had appreciated the game the previous day, appreciated playing against me and my mates.
A good feeling, again. Larry Bird, again.
15. In your initial days, did you feel intimidated at rowdy venues?
No.
16. What technical aspects of your favourite American sport did you take time to comprehend? Did this result in some amusing faux pas/ incidents?
Even though I played basketball a fair amount, I never did get the hang of the various rules for fouls and shooting. In particular, there's a rule about how your foot must not cross the line while shooting a free throw.
There was one game I played with my team in which we were (again) getting routinely thrashed. On the dot of halftime, I got fouled going up for a basket, and had to make the free throw. Since the buzzer had sounded, both teams went to their benches to sit while I shot the FT. The ref gave me the ball, I looked up at the basket, took a breath and threw it up. Swish -- nothing but basket! I felt great -- it was a nice shot, and we had at least narrowed the gap on our opponents by one point.
Then I heard the ref's whistle, and looked over to see him waving his hands. No basket, he shouted, pointing at my feet. I had stepped clear across the line. I tried arguing, saying the ball had left my hand before I stepped across -- I felt sure about that -- but he would not listen.
Apparently the feet need to stay behind until after the throw is made, not just till it leaves the shooter's hand. Or I think so. To this day, I'm not sure of the rule.
And to this day, my teammates have not forgiven me, even though that one point would have made no difference to the outcome of the game.
Akshay sent me a detailed questionnaire some months ago while gathering material for this article. You might want to read the questions and my answers too: see below.
1. Where did you grow up in India? What sports did you follow when in India? Who were your idols?
I grew up mostly in Bombay, though I also lived in Delhi and then went to college in Pilani in Rajasthan. I followed cricket, tennis and hockey a lot, played the first two pretty regularly. In cricket I was a fan of Vishy, Chandra, Andy Roberts and Eknath Solkar (for his electrifying fielding -- I wanted to field like that). Tennis, McEnroe, Connors and Amritraj. Hockey, probably Aslam Sher Khan and Ajitpal Singh.
2. What events/games did you watch live at the stadium when in India?
I remember going to the Brabourne Stadium for a day of the Test against NZ in 1969. I was 9 years old, and it was nearly 36 years before I watched my second day of Test cricket in a stadium! (Bangalore Test against Pakistan, March 2005).
3. What age did you go to the US? Which city?
I went at 21, in 1981, to Providence, Rhode Island, to attend Brown University.
4. Could you talk about your early days in the US vis-a-vis sport? What did you miss about the Indian sports scene? Did you go to comical/dramatic lengths to get a fix of Indian sports news/telecasts?
I went in the days long before widespread internet and TV channels. There was American sport, and that's it. No mention of cricket or hockey anywhere. So while I missed it a lot initially, I simply got used to the idea of not knowing about happenings in cricket for much of the 1980s (while I lived in the US). That whole period is like a gap in my life -- I know that there were various Test series that took place, but only in hazy retrospect.
The exception was the 1983 World Cup triumph -- an Indian friend got me clippings about it all from Indian newspapers and sent them to me, so I pored over the reports of the final victory. I still have them somewhere.
Quite early, I started attending university football and ice hockey games, and later following pro and college basketball too. I never really grew to like baseball.
I should say though that in my time at Brown, several of us (Indians, Pakistanis, West Indians, a few English guys) got together and started playing cricket. We imported some equipment and played regular matches. (Yes, with real cricket balls). I was also then an impoverished student, and I had no money to repair my glasses whose arms had fallen off 2-3 days before one of our matches. So I played that whole game of cricket -- even pounding in to bowl fast -- with the glasses taped to my nose with scotch-tape.
That was how much I wanted to play cricket.
Incidentally, this club we formed has endured, and now plays as the Rhode Island Cricket Club in a weekend cricket league in New England.
5. How did you start liking the American sport of your choice? Can you describe the moment when you realised, "Hey, I think I like this"?
Basketball was probably my favourite American sport, purely because of the sheer tempo and athleticism of the game. I started watching pro basketball (NBA) in the early '80s, the heyday of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. Truly, watching them got me started liking the game. I particularly liked the way Bird played -- no great showmanship like Magic and later Jordan had, but an uncanny awareness of the court and his teammates, a completely unselfish game founded above all on playing hard all the time. I liked that because it's the way I always wanted to approach the games I played -- tennis, and later basketball too.
I also enjoyed football, because I found it fascinating how these teams would try to run these intricately patterned plays on the field, as if they were to be done with mechanical toys. Yet these were not toys, but big hefty athletes in frenetic action, going after each other! So the pretty patterns would invariably end in huge piles of humanity. And yet out of all that, I grew to understand that there was indeed strategy and guile and subtlety in the game.
6. What attracted you to the sports of your choice? Once you liked it, did you consciously educate yourself about it? Did you start spending more time on the sports section of American publications?
As I said, it was the skill of Larry Bird that first got me hooked to basketball. Later I also began following college basketball, where passion and school spirit feed into the mixture. The March college tournament (the NCAAs, also referred to as "March Madness") is one of the great spectacles of American sport, where invariably one or two unknown teams will score upsets over some fancied team and make a run.
I did start following the sports sections closely. But I probably learned most about basketball (in particular), and liking it even more, when I started playing it seriously. That's when the manouevres on court -- the "pick-and-roll", for example -- made sense to me, and then I started identifying them in the games I saw on TV.
7. Who were your favourite American sport analysts?
Probably John McEnroe and Mary Carillo in tennis. Mainly because both had played the game at the highest level and bring that understanding to their commentary.
8. When was the first time you watched a game live in the US? What stood out about the experience?
I think my first live game was probably a Brown football game, sometime in October of 1981. I barely understood the game, but what I remember is the whole college atmosphere -- the cheering students and alumni, the college band. Especially because the Brown Band is traditionally scruffy and disorganized, but plays beautifully coordinated music all the same. I also remember with wonder that each time Brown scored, the male cheerleaders would flop on their fronts and do as many pushups as Brown's score was.
And of course what also stood out were the (female) cheerleaders -- pert, pretty girls in little dresses doing impossible-seeming feats to get the crowd excited about the game.
9. What did you like to eat and drink at the stadium?
Usually a Coke and a hotdog. I have never been a beer drinker.
10. Was it possible to hear snatches of Hindi or any other Indian language at a hardcore American sports venue?
Only between me and any Indian mates who were along!
11. What was your favourite team and why?
In the college games, Brown. Of course because I attended Brown, but also because it is a small university with mostly weak teams that struggle to stay afloat against most others. Yet as a result they often fight hard and make games closer than they should be.
In the pro ranks, I liked the Boston Celtics in basketball, purely because of Larry Bird. In football, I liked the Washington Redskins, perhaps because they won the first Super Bowl I really paid attention to, in 1983. And they won it with a spectacular performance by John Riggins, a character in his own right. He once got drunk and fell asleep under a table at a formal Washington party, and when he woke up, he told the Supreme Court Judge Sandra Day O'Connor: "Loosen up, Sandie baby!" Gotta love the man and the team that he played for.
12. Who were your favourite players and why? Now that you are back in India, do they still remain some kind of role models?
Again, I'd choose Larry Bird. Because of his intelligence about basketball, his fabulous court sense and his unflinching work ethic about the game. For those things, of course he remains a role model. John McEnroe is up there too, for his court sense in tennis.
13. Did you have parties at home during Super Bowl or other major events? What was the food and drink menu on such days? What was the agenda?
I don't recall a party at home, but I did go to other friends' places for parties around games, Super Bowl or otherwise. Food was usually pizza and chips, with plenty of beer and Coke available too. The agenda? Not so much the game, just hanging out with pals.
One of my favourite memories from the States is about one such party, around an inconsequential college football game. I had just moved to Austin, in Texas, and had no friends there. An Indian friend from Brown told me about an Indian friend she knew in Austin and suggested I call him. So one Saturday morning, I did. He said he and some pals were going to be at home watching the University of Texas playing Baylor University that afternoon, did I want to join in? So I went. Turned out they were all UT students, fervent supporters of UT. Since I didn't much care about either team, I decided to support Baylor. As it happened Baylor just hammered UT that day. (Which is a very rare happening). So I ended up cheering a lot. That got me many dirty and angry looks. I was never invited back; in fact I never met any of those guys again.
14. Did you reach a point where you enjoyed American sport more than cricket?
Yes, I'd say I probably enjoyed basketball and tennis more than cricket. But probably because I played those sports regularly and with some seriousness, and got fairly good at them.
For a while in Austin, I played basketball competitively. Though our team had two superb players (I'll call them X and Y), collectively we were not much good. But two incidents stand out for me from that time.
Once, a friend from out of town came to play with us. He was now out of shape, but had played basketball seriously for years. He was a tough, skillful player, and though I was taller than him, I found it very hard to play against him, score over him. That evening, we met for dinner, and got chatting about the game. He asked me, who do you think your best player is? I named X, one of the two guys I mentioned above. He shook his head and pointed to me. You're the best player, he said. Because you play hard all the time.
I was floored, but it felt good. The Larry Bird influence, I thought.
The other time, we played a pickup game against the UT women's team, then nationally ranked. Again, it was hard going -- these girls were tough as nails, quick and smooth on the court. I thought they didn't think much of our capabilities, certainly not mine.
But the next day, I was sitting in my office working and noticed that the same UT women's team had come to my company on some kind of promotional tour. Watching them through my large window, their best player suddenly saw me too -- and suddenly broke into a huge smile, waved and told her teammates, who smiled and waved too. Somehow I got the sense that she had appreciated the game the previous day, appreciated playing against me and my mates.
A good feeling, again. Larry Bird, again.
15. In your initial days, did you feel intimidated at rowdy venues?
No.
16. What technical aspects of your favourite American sport did you take time to comprehend? Did this result in some amusing faux pas/ incidents?
Even though I played basketball a fair amount, I never did get the hang of the various rules for fouls and shooting. In particular, there's a rule about how your foot must not cross the line while shooting a free throw.
There was one game I played with my team in which we were (again) getting routinely thrashed. On the dot of halftime, I got fouled going up for a basket, and had to make the free throw. Since the buzzer had sounded, both teams went to their benches to sit while I shot the FT. The ref gave me the ball, I looked up at the basket, took a breath and threw it up. Swish -- nothing but basket! I felt great -- it was a nice shot, and we had at least narrowed the gap on our opponents by one point.
Then I heard the ref's whistle, and looked over to see him waving his hands. No basket, he shouted, pointing at my feet. I had stepped clear across the line. I tried arguing, saying the ball had left my hand before I stepped across -- I felt sure about that -- but he would not listen.
Apparently the feet need to stay behind until after the throw is made, not just till it leaves the shooter's hand. Or I think so. To this day, I'm not sure of the rule.
And to this day, my teammates have not forgiven me, even though that one point would have made no difference to the outcome of the game.
September 23, 2010
Common wealth games
It's a good thing there was no newspaper today. I'm weary of the stream of bad news about the Commonwealth Games, and any form of respite from it, even the absence of my daily paper, is something I welcome.
I mean: a false ceiling collapsing? A bridge collapsing, injuring 27 people? Athletes quarters that are described as "filthy" (check these photos)? A Games official explaining that by saying foreigners have different standards of cleanliness that we do? Bamboo screens to hide slums? Tens of thousands of Delhi-ites thrown out of their homes and the city? Corruption on what looks like an immense scale? Officials from other countries complaining about the "indifference and intransigence" of Indian officials faced with these concerns? All this a day before the first athletes are to arrive, ten days before the Games are to start?
And I'm not even mentioning the security issues, which are another kettle of pomfret altogether.
Does none of this shame the organisers? Or forget as empty a thing as shame and ask instead: why has none of this spurred them to deliver the goods, on time and to standards, instead of delivering excuses? Isn't that a natural thing? (It once happened to me, is why I'm asking).
There is one silver lining to this enormous fiasco. If the Games really turn into the disaster that seems more likely every day, perhaps it will be the kick in the behind that will turn us into what we should have been all along: unforgiving and intolerant of corruption.
I mean that in every sense of the word you can think of. Yes, including bamboo screens and throwing Indians out of their homes.
It's a slim hope, but I'll cling to it.
(Dileep Premachandran had much the same thought, and puts it this way: "For the sake of future generations, perhaps we should hope that it all goes belly up. Only then might we see a generation of parasites evicted from the rotting carcass that they have reduced Indian sport to.")
I mean: a false ceiling collapsing? A bridge collapsing, injuring 27 people? Athletes quarters that are described as "filthy" (check these photos)? A Games official explaining that by saying foreigners have different standards of cleanliness that we do? Bamboo screens to hide slums? Tens of thousands of Delhi-ites thrown out of their homes and the city? Corruption on what looks like an immense scale? Officials from other countries complaining about the "indifference and intransigence" of Indian officials faced with these concerns? All this a day before the first athletes are to arrive, ten days before the Games are to start?
And I'm not even mentioning the security issues, which are another kettle of pomfret altogether.
Does none of this shame the organisers? Or forget as empty a thing as shame and ask instead: why has none of this spurred them to deliver the goods, on time and to standards, instead of delivering excuses? Isn't that a natural thing? (It once happened to me, is why I'm asking).
There is one silver lining to this enormous fiasco. If the Games really turn into the disaster that seems more likely every day, perhaps it will be the kick in the behind that will turn us into what we should have been all along: unforgiving and intolerant of corruption.
I mean that in every sense of the word you can think of. Yes, including bamboo screens and throwing Indians out of their homes.
It's a slim hope, but I'll cling to it.
(Dileep Premachandran had much the same thought, and puts it this way: "For the sake of future generations, perhaps we should hope that it all goes belly up. Only then might we see a generation of parasites evicted from the rotting carcass that they have reduced Indian sport to.")
Ayodhya deferred
As I write this, the Supreme Court has deferred the delivery of the judgement that's had the country in a tizzy for days and weeks. No Ayodhya judgement tomorrow, it will now be delivered a week from now. That's if the SC decides on a petition that pleads for a postponement of the ruling; it will hear arguments over that petition on September 28.
Given that this Ayodhya title case has dragged for decades, and the issue itself goes back centuries into our medieval history, postponing by a week is trivial. Right. But I'm worn out with this dispute dominating my country's politics, pitting Indian against Indian, for so long. Not that I believe a judgement will put an end to that, but at least it will be a small step towards some kind of closure. Now that's been put off by a week, and given my experience with the way our courts work, I suspect it will be put off some more.
I am uninterested in finger-pointing. Though I have always thought of December 6 1992 as a day of great crime and shame. Some great crimes have their day of redemption. This one, I believe, never will. I believe the same about the crimes of 1984, 1992-93 and 2002, among others.
There are many reasons for this pessimism, but if I had to choose one fundamental reason, it would be this: plenty of us Indians don't see those events as crimes at all. In fact, plenty of us see them as an expression of national honour. As long as there are these irreconcilable views of the same events, there is no hope of such things as justice and redemption.
Having said all that, please turn your TV to Headlines Today at 9pm tonight (September 23 2010). Anand Patwardhan's Ram ke Naam will be broadcast then. A fine documentary about the Babri Masjid issue, it will remind you of what hatred does to us.
Given that this Ayodhya title case has dragged for decades, and the issue itself goes back centuries into our medieval history, postponing by a week is trivial. Right. But I'm worn out with this dispute dominating my country's politics, pitting Indian against Indian, for so long. Not that I believe a judgement will put an end to that, but at least it will be a small step towards some kind of closure. Now that's been put off by a week, and given my experience with the way our courts work, I suspect it will be put off some more.
I am uninterested in finger-pointing. Though I have always thought of December 6 1992 as a day of great crime and shame. Some great crimes have their day of redemption. This one, I believe, never will. I believe the same about the crimes of 1984, 1992-93 and 2002, among others.
There are many reasons for this pessimism, but if I had to choose one fundamental reason, it would be this: plenty of us Indians don't see those events as crimes at all. In fact, plenty of us see them as an expression of national honour. As long as there are these irreconcilable views of the same events, there is no hope of such things as justice and redemption.
Having said all that, please turn your TV to Headlines Today at 9pm tonight (September 23 2010). Anand Patwardhan's Ram ke Naam will be broadcast then. A fine documentary about the Babri Masjid issue, it will remind you of what hatred does to us.
September 17, 2010
Smoke, flotsam, not lepto
Some corrections/followups to previous posts here.
* Some weeks after the events in Where there's smoke, the building concerned held a general body meeting. They passed a resolution condemning the 77 year-old for objecting to the smoke coming into her flat.
* Flotsam and Jetsam got me not a single response from the good folks at Crest, despite trying various ways to reach them. Not Kartikeya Tripathi, not his editors, nobody. I will assume that they believe all's well.
* In Sickness at Altitude, the 10 year-old boy did not die of leptospirosis, as the family first believed. The death certificate lists the cause of death as "Pulmonary haemorrhage in a suspected case of Dengue Haemorrhagic fever".
It was three days between the onset of the fever and death, three hours (!) between the onset of haemorrhaging and his death. The suddenness of it all.
* Some weeks after the events in Where there's smoke, the building concerned held a general body meeting. They passed a resolution condemning the 77 year-old for objecting to the smoke coming into her flat.
* Flotsam and Jetsam got me not a single response from the good folks at Crest, despite trying various ways to reach them. Not Kartikeya Tripathi, not his editors, nobody. I will assume that they believe all's well.
* In Sickness at Altitude, the 10 year-old boy did not die of leptospirosis, as the family first believed. The death certificate lists the cause of death as "Pulmonary haemorrhage in a suspected case of Dengue Haemorrhagic fever".
It was three days between the onset of the fever and death, three hours (!) between the onset of haemorrhaging and his death. The suddenness of it all.
September 13, 2010
Sickness at altitude
It's mentioned only right at the end, but I wrote the piece linked to below about my recent stay in Ladakh really because of leptospirosis.
Someone we know well lost her 10 year-old son to the disease. He had a mild fever last Tuesday, it went away. On Thursday it returned and by the evening a doctor told them to admit him. So far so good, nothing really to worry about, they thought, and at least he was now in the hospital and would be taken care of.
On Friday morning, he threw up blood and was shifted to the ICU. He sank all afternoon. At about 6 that evening, he died.
Leptospirosis is commonly caused by exposure to the urine of infected animals. In our monsoon season, when we all are forced to walk in flooded streets, it's not hard to imagine that such exposure happens easily, given the amount of filth on those streets, the rodents rooting around in there, etc (you can imagine the rest).
So who do we blame when the disease strikes? The Municipality for its half-hearted clean-up jobs? All of us for allowing filth to pile up?
Here's what I wrote: Sickness at altitude.
Someone we know well lost her 10 year-old son to the disease. He had a mild fever last Tuesday, it went away. On Thursday it returned and by the evening a doctor told them to admit him. So far so good, nothing really to worry about, they thought, and at least he was now in the hospital and would be taken care of.
On Friday morning, he threw up blood and was shifted to the ICU. He sank all afternoon. At about 6 that evening, he died.
Leptospirosis is commonly caused by exposure to the urine of infected animals. In our monsoon season, when we all are forced to walk in flooded streets, it's not hard to imagine that such exposure happens easily, given the amount of filth on those streets, the rodents rooting around in there, etc (you can imagine the rest).
So who do we blame when the disease strikes? The Municipality for its half-hearted clean-up jobs? All of us for allowing filth to pile up?
Here's what I wrote: Sickness at altitude.
September 12, 2010
Ketchup for all
Stopped at McDonald's for lunch today. (Yeah, I know it's junk. So give me that metaphorical kick sometime). While I'm waiting for our food, I notice idly that at the side-by-side pair of small tables nearby, there are two women, one at each table, one 20s, the other maybe 50s. They are not talking to each other, so I guess they are strangers.
A few minutes later, an overweight young man in a bright red Tshirt walks up to the table with the young woman, carrying a tray on which there are six McDonald's containers of Coke and nothing else. He sits down across from her. These two are going to consume six glasses of Coke? But the older lady reaches across and takes one, and that's when I realize that they are all together. Still, six glasses between these three?
Another couple and an older man join them. OK, six people now. Makes sense.
Then the overweight young man gets up and walks off to the food counter. He returns with a tray on which there are, I am not making this up, 24 little McDonald's plastic cups filled with tomato ketchup. Nothing else on the tray. Yes, a 6x4 array, each one carefully filled to the brim from the ketchup dispenser across the room.
These six are going to lunch on Coke and ketchup?
A McDonald's employee brings them burgers and fries. OK, that's their lunch. Still, 24 ketchup containers?
When they finish and get up, they take two of their four trays to the trash can. The other two, for no apparent reason, they leave on the tables. On one of those two trays are seven little McDonald's plastic cups filled with tomato ketchup. Untouched.
A few minutes later, an overweight young man in a bright red Tshirt walks up to the table with the young woman, carrying a tray on which there are six McDonald's containers of Coke and nothing else. He sits down across from her. These two are going to consume six glasses of Coke? But the older lady reaches across and takes one, and that's when I realize that they are all together. Still, six glasses between these three?
Another couple and an older man join them. OK, six people now. Makes sense.
Then the overweight young man gets up and walks off to the food counter. He returns with a tray on which there are, I am not making this up, 24 little McDonald's plastic cups filled with tomato ketchup. Nothing else on the tray. Yes, a 6x4 array, each one carefully filled to the brim from the ketchup dispenser across the room.
These six are going to lunch on Coke and ketchup?
A McDonald's employee brings them burgers and fries. OK, that's their lunch. Still, 24 ketchup containers?
When they finish and get up, they take two of their four trays to the trash can. The other two, for no apparent reason, they leave on the tables. On one of those two trays are seven little McDonald's plastic cups filled with tomato ketchup. Untouched.
September 09, 2010
Roadrunner in the Deccan Chronicle
Kankana Basu is the author of the novel Cappuccino Dusk. She has a recent review of my Roadrunner in the Deccan Chronicle. "The author makes frequent and irreverent detours," she writes, "to ponder over arbitrary and disconnected matters like bikes, boobs and Babri Masjid. It is obvious that D'Souza has a lot on his mind other than mere travel."
Now what could she have meant by that, hmm?
But seriously, please take a look: Joy ride into reservoirs of historical past.
Incidentally, Kankana tells me what she wrote was shortened for publication. I much prefer her original version, not least her last sentence which didn't make it into print: "Entering D'Souza's world is dodgy business, a little like straying accidentally into the Eagles infamous Hotel California - you can check out any time you like but there is absolutely no guarantee that you’ll ever leave."
See below.
***
A Memorable Trip
The title of the book evokes memories of a popular little bird which, along with a wily adversary, delighted millions of cartoon lovers in the early sixties. Roadrunner: An Indian Quest in America by Dilip D'Souza has the same perky quality as its avian namesake and the same ambiguity of purpose. The author, a familiar name for readers with his social essays and analytical pieces appearing regularly in the newspapers, makes it abundantly clear at the very onset that he has no structured itinerary to follow and no sharply etched destination that he is hoping to arrive at. Rather, it's a fun roller coaster ride across history, civilizations, diverse spatial and temporal zones - all very entertaining till uncomfortable questions starts popping up at the reader on this vastly informative joy side.
Spanning long periods of American and Indian history and fanning out to include diverse matters like music, automobiles, aircrafts, dinosaurs, politics and religion, the author makes frequent and irreverent detours to ponder over arbitrary and disconnected matters like bikes, boobs and Babri Masjid. It is obvious that D'Souza has a lot on his mind other than mere travel as he delves into the reservoirs of history and comes up with nuggets of information. These in turn form a surprising bridge between life in the US as compared to life back in India and thus we learn about a household waste disposal trip in Winchester, Massachusetts, which leads to the ideology of Gandhi, an effort to raise captive bison in Kentucky that connects uncannily with Alang, the graveyard of ships in Gujarat which in turn leads to a chance conversation overheard in a Mumbai local train.
A mention of the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville's seminal work, Democracy in America, at the very beginning of the book drives home the author's message that the outsider's eye is often more observant when defining a nation and its people. Somewhat paradoxically, the Indian's tendency to oversimplify while defining the average American (and vice versa) appears to irk the author as he sets about analyzing both premises with a degree of thoroughness and maturity. The entire book is an endearing soliloquy with many a chapter ending in stark rhetoric. At no time does the author talk down to the reader, rather the reader is swept willy-nilly on this ride through the two great democracies of the world. There is word play in plenty as well as puns and amusing anecdotes as D'Souza's love and deep understanding of cars, bikes, music and his anguished attempts to make sense of mindless violence in contemporary times, shines through. Not above questioning the words laid down by the holy texts, the author grapples with the frequently angry nature of god's words, as stated in the religious gospels. There is a sense of search in Roadrunner, a struggle to link events past and present and connect them into a comprehensive whole. While at one level the reader may be charmed by what reads like a meandering travel report of exotic and enjoyable destinations, at a deeper level is a bed of hard historical milestones, waiting to disturb the idyllic feel of a summer holiday. A rambling, informative, enjoyable and thought provoking ride, the D'Souza Express comes with a couple of bumpy speed breakers and a statutory warning is pressingly necessary here. The darker questions (which really have no answers) tend to niggle in the reader's mind even when the book is done with. Entering D'Souza's world is dodgy business, a little like straying accidentally into the Eagles infamous Hotel California - you can check out any time you like but there is absolutely no guarantee that you’ll ever leave.
Now what could she have meant by that, hmm?
But seriously, please take a look: Joy ride into reservoirs of historical past.
Incidentally, Kankana tells me what she wrote was shortened for publication. I much prefer her original version, not least her last sentence which didn't make it into print: "Entering D'Souza's world is dodgy business, a little like straying accidentally into the Eagles infamous Hotel California - you can check out any time you like but there is absolutely no guarantee that you’ll ever leave."
See below.
A Memorable Trip
The title of the book evokes memories of a popular little bird which, along with a wily adversary, delighted millions of cartoon lovers in the early sixties. Roadrunner: An Indian Quest in America by Dilip D'Souza has the same perky quality as its avian namesake and the same ambiguity of purpose. The author, a familiar name for readers with his social essays and analytical pieces appearing regularly in the newspapers, makes it abundantly clear at the very onset that he has no structured itinerary to follow and no sharply etched destination that he is hoping to arrive at. Rather, it's a fun roller coaster ride across history, civilizations, diverse spatial and temporal zones - all very entertaining till uncomfortable questions starts popping up at the reader on this vastly informative joy side.
Spanning long periods of American and Indian history and fanning out to include diverse matters like music, automobiles, aircrafts, dinosaurs, politics and religion, the author makes frequent and irreverent detours to ponder over arbitrary and disconnected matters like bikes, boobs and Babri Masjid. It is obvious that D'Souza has a lot on his mind other than mere travel as he delves into the reservoirs of history and comes up with nuggets of information. These in turn form a surprising bridge between life in the US as compared to life back in India and thus we learn about a household waste disposal trip in Winchester, Massachusetts, which leads to the ideology of Gandhi, an effort to raise captive bison in Kentucky that connects uncannily with Alang, the graveyard of ships in Gujarat which in turn leads to a chance conversation overheard in a Mumbai local train.
A mention of the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville's seminal work, Democracy in America, at the very beginning of the book drives home the author's message that the outsider's eye is often more observant when defining a nation and its people. Somewhat paradoxically, the Indian's tendency to oversimplify while defining the average American (and vice versa) appears to irk the author as he sets about analyzing both premises with a degree of thoroughness and maturity. The entire book is an endearing soliloquy with many a chapter ending in stark rhetoric. At no time does the author talk down to the reader, rather the reader is swept willy-nilly on this ride through the two great democracies of the world. There is word play in plenty as well as puns and amusing anecdotes as D'Souza's love and deep understanding of cars, bikes, music and his anguished attempts to make sense of mindless violence in contemporary times, shines through. Not above questioning the words laid down by the holy texts, the author grapples with the frequently angry nature of god's words, as stated in the religious gospels. There is a sense of search in Roadrunner, a struggle to link events past and present and connect them into a comprehensive whole. While at one level the reader may be charmed by what reads like a meandering travel report of exotic and enjoyable destinations, at a deeper level is a bed of hard historical milestones, waiting to disturb the idyllic feel of a summer holiday. A rambling, informative, enjoyable and thought provoking ride, the D'Souza Express comes with a couple of bumpy speed breakers and a statutory warning is pressingly necessary here. The darker questions (which really have no answers) tend to niggle in the reader's mind even when the book is done with. Entering D'Souza's world is dodgy business, a little like straying accidentally into the Eagles infamous Hotel California - you can check out any time you like but there is absolutely no guarantee that you’ll ever leave.
September 08, 2010
Ghost town Choglamsar
Still doing some writing about Ladakh, neglecting this blog as a consequence. Still, please take a look at my second published article about my experience there, on rediff.com. They have it up as a slideshow, with a few of my photos (not all the photos are mine, as you will notice).
Here: There's no one in Choglamsar. It's a ghost town.
Comments welcome.
Here: There's no one in Choglamsar. It's a ghost town.
Comments welcome.
Comments disappear
Random comments left on this blog by readers have been vanishing today; three tests I tried myself all stayed there for a minute and then vanished. This has happened before, and I figure it must be some glitch in blogger. Perhaps it will right itself in a day. In the meantime, if you post a comment and it vanishes, please know that it ain't me.
***
Postscript: Found the problem. Blogger was randomly labeling some comments as spam. I've unlabeled them and they have been published. !@#* too clever-by-half spam filter mechanisms. I'll be more vigilant in the future.
Postscript: Found the problem. Blogger was randomly labeling some comments as spam. I've unlabeled them and they have been published. !@#* too clever-by-half spam filter mechanisms. I'll be more vigilant in the future.
September 07, 2010
Wit and shortlists
From Malad station, I exit onto a road that, from the aroma, appears to be one massive garbage dump. I don't understand how the myriad shops here stand this stench all day, all year. But that's just what they are doing. I walk up and down in search of a rickshaw to go where I need to, with no luck, and I'm getting steadily more desperate because it is impossible to escape the smell anywhere on the road. There's absolutely no system here for rickshaws, so it is free-for-all mayhem. That, and the traffic and the rain and the noise and the smell make up the familiar scene that you will find outside most suburban stations in Bombay. Chaos, pure and simple.
Eventually, I get transport and escape the mess. Not far from the station, trundling down a long straight road, we pass several buses that belong to the Witty International School.
Do students of this excellent institution emerge from its premises every day spouting wisecracks and sundry sardonic remarks from the side of their mouths, leaving passersby chuckling at their droll humour? I look everywhere, but there's nobody like that about. Perhaps they are still inside this morning, being coached in the fine points of puns and banter.
Where I'm going is a pretty and wooded campus adjoining the Marve beach. There's a two-day workshop on journalism that 30 or so young men and women are attending, and the friend who is running it has asked me to come speak to them. "In Hindi," he added. That's a challenge. I feel fluent in the language in conversation, but giving a talk is something else. But with this attentive and responsive audience, it goes far better than I thought it would, with a spirited discussion afterward that lasts over an hour.
Incidentally, before I spoke each of the attendees introduced themselves briefly. Here's a shortlist of the Bombay neighbourhoods they had come from: Sion-Koliwada, Vikhroli Parksite, Antop Hill, Ambujwadi, Shivaji Nagar.
Reminded of the time I ordered one of the city's call taxis (Meru or some such) to go with two older women to Antop Hill. As we drove there, the driver told us again and again that this was the first time in a year of working for the cab company that he had taken customers to Antop Hill. Nobody ever comes here, he said.
So where do your customers usually want to go, I asked. He rattled off another shortlist of Bombay neighbourhoods: Nariman Point, Pedder Road, the airport, Worli, Malabar Hill.
No intersection between those shortlists. There's probably something witty to say about that, but I suspect I'll have to attend the school to figure out what.
Eventually, I get transport and escape the mess. Not far from the station, trundling down a long straight road, we pass several buses that belong to the Witty International School.
Do students of this excellent institution emerge from its premises every day spouting wisecracks and sundry sardonic remarks from the side of their mouths, leaving passersby chuckling at their droll humour? I look everywhere, but there's nobody like that about. Perhaps they are still inside this morning, being coached in the fine points of puns and banter.
Where I'm going is a pretty and wooded campus adjoining the Marve beach. There's a two-day workshop on journalism that 30 or so young men and women are attending, and the friend who is running it has asked me to come speak to them. "In Hindi," he added. That's a challenge. I feel fluent in the language in conversation, but giving a talk is something else. But with this attentive and responsive audience, it goes far better than I thought it would, with a spirited discussion afterward that lasts over an hour.
Incidentally, before I spoke each of the attendees introduced themselves briefly. Here's a shortlist of the Bombay neighbourhoods they had come from: Sion-Koliwada, Vikhroli Parksite, Antop Hill, Ambujwadi, Shivaji Nagar.
Reminded of the time I ordered one of the city's call taxis (Meru or some such) to go with two older women to Antop Hill. As we drove there, the driver told us again and again that this was the first time in a year of working for the cab company that he had taken customers to Antop Hill. Nobody ever comes here, he said.
So where do your customers usually want to go, I asked. He rattled off another shortlist of Bombay neighbourhoods: Nariman Point, Pedder Road, the airport, Worli, Malabar Hill.
No intersection between those shortlists. There's probably something witty to say about that, but I suspect I'll have to attend the school to figure out what.
September 06, 2010
That expletives deleted language
Took an especially crowded train to Malad the other morning. Something had happened which I didn't quite catch in the indistinct announcement, what I did catch was that trains were running 30-35 minutes late, and that always means a greater crowd.
So I'm crammed somewhere inside the compartment, and as often happens when there's a crowd, an argument breaks out. Squat young man who had got on, with two friends, just behind me, shouting at a slightly shorter older man, who's replying more mildly. All in Hindi, something about a bag on one or the other's foot.
Without warning, the young man switches to Marathi, lets fly a string of filthy abuse, and says: "Don't talk to me in that !@#!$ language! In this state, you better speak in Marathi, you !@#!$!"
Kind of futile, because clearly the older man doesn't know Marathi. He replies in Hindi. The argument subsides into angry glares.
Barely able to move where I stand, I think: people ask me why I'm fundamentally pessimistic about India. This repulsive young man's attitude is one reason. It stands for others.
So I'm crammed somewhere inside the compartment, and as often happens when there's a crowd, an argument breaks out. Squat young man who had got on, with two friends, just behind me, shouting at a slightly shorter older man, who's replying more mildly. All in Hindi, something about a bag on one or the other's foot.
Without warning, the young man switches to Marathi, lets fly a string of filthy abuse, and says: "Don't talk to me in that !@#!$ language! In this state, you better speak in Marathi, you !@#!$!"
Kind of futile, because clearly the older man doesn't know Marathi. He replies in Hindi. The argument subsides into angry glares.
Barely able to move where I stand, I think: people ask me why I'm fundamentally pessimistic about India. This repulsive young man's attitude is one reason. It stands for others.
Where once stood houses
The reason posting here has slowed down somewhat (if you noticed at all) is that I've been writing stuff on Ladakh ever since I returned from there ten days ago. And there's more to write, but as thought-provoking as the trip was, I need a break from thinking about Ladakh for a little while. I'll indulge myself, by catching up on all the other writing I need to do.
Himal Southasian carries an essay I did on Ladakh after the flood (on their site -- the magazine itself will have something by me next month). Take a look: Where once stood houses.
Any comments welcome.
Himal Southasian carries an essay I did on Ladakh after the flood (on their site -- the magazine itself will have something by me next month). Take a look: Where once stood houses.
Any comments welcome.
September 05, 2010
Lucas Tete
I'll admit: I think the root of our growing problem with Maoists is the years of abysmal governance across the middle of this country (and in fact, by and large, across the whole country); as also the way we have treated our tribals for too long.
But the Maoists' murder of their hostage Assistant Sub-Inspector Lucas Tete is a shameful atrocity, nothing else.
I'm all for talks and negotiations to bring some kind of solution to the crisis we seem to be hurtling towards. But you cannot take hostages and use their lives to demand that other imprisoned people must be freed. There is no negotiating there. Simple.
I mourn you, Lucas Tete.
But the Maoists' murder of their hostage Assistant Sub-Inspector Lucas Tete is a shameful atrocity, nothing else.
I'm all for talks and negotiations to bring some kind of solution to the crisis we seem to be hurtling towards. But you cannot take hostages and use their lives to demand that other imprisoned people must be freed. There is no negotiating there. Simple.
I mourn you, Lucas Tete.
September 03, 2010
He voted for me
My friend Nitin (known to all as "Bondo") got it organized. He made peculiar caps out of discarded computer punch cards (go ask your grandparents what those are), hastily slapped together some placards, insisted we wear the most unmatched clothes we could find, coached us in some catchy (we thought) slogans -- and we were ready. And boy, we hit the road running: a straggly bunch, perhaps 40, wending our hoarse-voiced way through the streets of BITS Pilani, where I struggled through college.
My election campaign procession. Certainly we had more fun than the other processions did.
Reality bit, as it always does, at the ballot box: I collected a grand total of 17 -- yes, seventeen, a number I will remember till the day I die -- votes. I mean, think of this: not even half my mates who marched for me voted for me.
Then again, what did I expect? I still have somewhere my major election speech in teenaged longhand, and I'm still astonished that I gave it that day with a straight face. "My fellow BITSians," I roared into the mike, "lend me your ears!" -- and then I listed my election promises. Among which were helipads in every hostel ("for students who want to reach home soon"), synchronizing the faces of the clock on the famous Pilani tower ("so we'll know the correct time from wherever we are"), and inviting only fourth-rate colleges to the annual cultural festival, Oasis ("so BITS can win every event").
Yes, in 1979 I ran for President of the BITS Students' Union. Humayun K and Deepak S, both good pals of mine, were the two major candidates. Humayun won a close victory, a thousand-and-something votes to a thousand-and-something-less.
And I got 17.
Clearly, my fellow BITSians hadn't lent me their ears long enough to truly appreciate my helipad promise. And the clock faces -- well, look for yourself if you get to Pilani. And of course, at the next Oasis BITS did not win every event. Serves my fellow BITSians right.
Still, there remain delicious memories.
One, the pair of freshers my pals and I met a week after the elections. "Whom did you vote for?" we asked.
"Oh, some guy called D'Souza", they said. No sign that they recognized me as the same guy called D'Souza.
Two, the meeting I got summoned to inside the hallowed gates of Meera Bhavan, the girls' hostel. The girls present had, it appeared, just one concern that they badgered me about: the condition of their showers. They wanted to know what I would do about them as candidate and if I won. I did quietly consider adding a slogan to my campaign to the effect of "Meera Bhavan ke har ek shower/nahin chalega, nahin chalega" (weak attempt to rhyme "shower" with "chalega" included) but better sense prevailed. A pity, if you ask me.
Third, I ran into Humayun K at a class reunion in Pilani in 2007. "You remember," I asked him on a late night stroll, "that I ran for President too?"
He stopped and looked at me with the twinkle in his eye I always liked him for. "Of course I remember," he said. "I voted for you."
So I now know the identities of two of those 17: Humayun and me. It's my fond hope that sometime before I die, the other 15 will reveal themselves. Maybe some of them will be women. Clean women, who have had showers.
My election campaign procession. Certainly we had more fun than the other processions did.
Reality bit, as it always does, at the ballot box: I collected a grand total of 17 -- yes, seventeen, a number I will remember till the day I die -- votes. I mean, think of this: not even half my mates who marched for me voted for me.
Then again, what did I expect? I still have somewhere my major election speech in teenaged longhand, and I'm still astonished that I gave it that day with a straight face. "My fellow BITSians," I roared into the mike, "lend me your ears!" -- and then I listed my election promises. Among which were helipads in every hostel ("for students who want to reach home soon"), synchronizing the faces of the clock on the famous Pilani tower ("so we'll know the correct time from wherever we are"), and inviting only fourth-rate colleges to the annual cultural festival, Oasis ("so BITS can win every event").
Yes, in 1979 I ran for President of the BITS Students' Union. Humayun K and Deepak S, both good pals of mine, were the two major candidates. Humayun won a close victory, a thousand-and-something votes to a thousand-and-something-less.
And I got 17.
Clearly, my fellow BITSians hadn't lent me their ears long enough to truly appreciate my helipad promise. And the clock faces -- well, look for yourself if you get to Pilani. And of course, at the next Oasis BITS did not win every event. Serves my fellow BITSians right.
Still, there remain delicious memories.
One, the pair of freshers my pals and I met a week after the elections. "Whom did you vote for?" we asked.
"Oh, some guy called D'Souza", they said. No sign that they recognized me as the same guy called D'Souza.
Two, the meeting I got summoned to inside the hallowed gates of Meera Bhavan, the girls' hostel. The girls present had, it appeared, just one concern that they badgered me about: the condition of their showers. They wanted to know what I would do about them as candidate and if I won. I did quietly consider adding a slogan to my campaign to the effect of "Meera Bhavan ke har ek shower/nahin chalega, nahin chalega" (weak attempt to rhyme "shower" with "chalega" included) but better sense prevailed. A pity, if you ask me.
Third, I ran into Humayun K at a class reunion in Pilani in 2007. "You remember," I asked him on a late night stroll, "that I ran for President too?"
He stopped and looked at me with the twinkle in his eye I always liked him for. "Of course I remember," he said. "I voted for you."
So I now know the identities of two of those 17: Humayun and me. It's my fond hope that sometime before I die, the other 15 will reveal themselves. Maybe some of them will be women. Clean women, who have had showers.
Best foot forward
Whatever else happens, I believe Andy Roddick is a fine tennis player. In any other era except the Federer-Nadal one, I think he would have won more than the one Grand Slam he has won (US Open, 2003). And even in this era, he's had his chances. Example: if he had made an easy volley at set point in the 2nd set of the '09 Wimbledon final against Federer, he might just have gone on to win that title.
But never mind. Much is being made of his meltdown at the US Open, where he allowed himself to get distracted by a foot-fault call and lost to an always dangerous player, Janko Tipsarevic. In truth, that call had no real bearing on the match: he was behind already and the foot-fault did not push him any further behind.
Except that he allowed it to get to him. Not because it was wrong -- it was not -- but because the lineswoman told him it was his right foot that went over the line (wrong, it was his left foot that just touched the line, clear from that clip). For reasons known only to him, Roddick spent the next 15 minutes telling her he never has dragged his right foot over the line while serving.
But what interests me about this whole thing is that some tennis pundits have suggested that it is "physically impossible" for a righty to drag his foot over the line. (Again, that same page says exactly that).
Why? Boris Becker's serve was famous for his legs' scissor action, his right foot crossing over and landing in the court first. In fact, here's Roddick himself, imitating Becker's serve, and if you look carefully, he crosses that right foot so it goes in front first (the opposite of his own service action).
Not that Roddick did this against Tipsarevic, but clearly it is NOT physically impossible for a righty to foot-fault with his right foot. Why do some folks (not Roddick) make out that it is? I'm puzzled.
But never mind. Much is being made of his meltdown at the US Open, where he allowed himself to get distracted by a foot-fault call and lost to an always dangerous player, Janko Tipsarevic. In truth, that call had no real bearing on the match: he was behind already and the foot-fault did not push him any further behind.
Except that he allowed it to get to him. Not because it was wrong -- it was not -- but because the lineswoman told him it was his right foot that went over the line (wrong, it was his left foot that just touched the line, clear from that clip). For reasons known only to him, Roddick spent the next 15 minutes telling her he never has dragged his right foot over the line while serving.
But what interests me about this whole thing is that some tennis pundits have suggested that it is "physically impossible" for a righty to drag his foot over the line. (Again, that same page says exactly that).
Why? Boris Becker's serve was famous for his legs' scissor action, his right foot crossing over and landing in the court first. In fact, here's Roddick himself, imitating Becker's serve, and if you look carefully, he crosses that right foot so it goes in front first (the opposite of his own service action).
Not that Roddick did this against Tipsarevic, but clearly it is NOT physically impossible for a righty to foot-fault with his right foot. Why do some folks (not Roddick) make out that it is? I'm puzzled.
Vidyadhar Date's book
My friend Vidyadhar Date has a new book out, called "Traffic in the Era of Climate Change", looking (among other things) at our obsession with cars and what it is doing to traffic and the way we live. It will be released and discussed this evening, please come! Details below.
***
TRAFFIC IN THE ERA OF CLIMATE CHANGE
Walking, Cycling and Public Transport Need Priority
A Book Authored by
VIDYADHAR DATE
Official Mumbai release of the book takes place
At
Mumbai Marathi Patrakar Sangh, 2nd Floor,
Mahapalika Marg, Mumbai 400001
On
Friday 3 September 2010 at 4:00 PM (sharp)
Shri Suresh Shetty, Minister of Environment and Health, Government of Maharashtra will do the honour and speak on the occasion.
The book launch will be followed by a panel discussion on the subject. Panelists will include noted transport policy expert Arun Mokashi, transportation analyst Sudhir Badami and sustainable transportation planner Faizan Jawed. The discussion will be moderated by Smruti Koppikar, Associate Editor, Outlook.
You are cordially invited to grace the occasion and participate in the discussions. Do please join us for tea.
Walking, Cycling and Public Transport Need Priority
A Book Authored by
VIDYADHAR DATE
Official Mumbai release of the book takes place
At
Mumbai Marathi Patrakar Sangh, 2nd Floor,
Mahapalika Marg, Mumbai 400001
On
Friday 3 September 2010 at 4:00 PM (sharp)
Shri Suresh Shetty, Minister of Environment and Health, Government of Maharashtra will do the honour and speak on the occasion.
The book launch will be followed by a panel discussion on the subject. Panelists will include noted transport policy expert Arun Mokashi, transportation analyst Sudhir Badami and sustainable transportation planner Faizan Jawed. The discussion will be moderated by Smruti Koppikar, Associate Editor, Outlook.
You are cordially invited to grace the occasion and participate in the discussions. Do please join us for tea.
September 02, 2010
Grenade
My son and I submitted a photograph and we forgot to check every now and then to see if it was used; today we found that it was indeed used, over two weeks ago.
This photograph.
This photograph.
Gosh
Today is three years since I lost my father, JB D'Souza. He spent his career in the IAS and wrote what I think (yeah, son's bias and all that) a good memoir of his experiences in government, "No Trumpets or Bugles: Recollections of an Incorrigible Babu".
After it was published, he started writing what he thought might be a second volume, of more personal memories growing up and working in a very different Bombay. Sadly he didn't finish that, though he put down a good deal.
For this third anniversary, I thought I would post here a small excerpt from that effort, some lines -- favourite family stories -- about his brother-in-law Hilary Carrasco. Hilary married Pat, JB's elder sister, in the early 1940s. (Their three children, my cousins, are among my favourite people in the world, not least for their wicked humour. This is the oldest of them.)
With no further ado, here's JB on Hilary.
***
One of the best-natured persons I have met, Hilary was generally laid back and relaxed -- at home, which for many years he and Pat made at Versova, in the firm that employed him, and on the way there and back. He commuted daily to his office in south Bombay in a third-hand Renault, a car that had seen many better days. Joe [JB's oldest brother] travelled to work with him. As they drove through Bandra on the Ghodbunder Road one morning, there was a sudden thud, and a full stop. A wheel rolled past. "Gosh, that's my rear wheel", Hilary exclaimed. And indeed it was.
One Xmas season Joe asked for the loan of the car to go to town for a "Bring in the New Year" dance. For Joe, the 31st December revels were always a must. Carefully attired in evening dress, he had danced in every New Year in since his college days. That year he asked a friend, Joe Rodricks, to come to Versova to drive the car, as Joe himself had long ceased to drive, and Hilary preferred to greet the New Year in the morning after a good night's rest.
So Rodricks came to Versova. They bathed, powdered themselves, and donned their formal clothes -- starched shirt, black tie and silk-lapelled black jacket. But then the car wouldn't start. With Hilary at the wheel, the two Joes began an attempt to push-start it. They pushed it up the drive, which sloped upward to the street. The wretched vehicle stayed stubborn, so they let it roll down the slope, to try again. Forlorn and breathing heavily after several tries, one of the pushers asked, as a bit of hopeless teasing: "Hilary, have you switched on the engine?"
"Gosh!" came the answer.
Hilary turned on the ignition and the car lurched forward; it was still in gear. By now the sweat was pouring down those starched shirts. Fresh baths, and a return to less formal clothing, delayed the would-be revellers still more. They reached the dance-floor just in time to wave the old year off.
Later, Hilary switched from his decrepit Renault to a tiny two-door Anglia. I remember the day when the car was parked in the hot sun, the windows shut tight. He courteously let us all in, then got in himself. Then he reached for his pipe, which he tapped on the dashboard to empty the bowl. He filled it with tobacco, which he tamped in, and began a series of attempts to light it. Pipes are, as you know, not the easiest things to light. Meanwhile, we squirmed and sweated on the back seat, but there was no escape.
After it was published, he started writing what he thought might be a second volume, of more personal memories growing up and working in a very different Bombay. Sadly he didn't finish that, though he put down a good deal.
For this third anniversary, I thought I would post here a small excerpt from that effort, some lines -- favourite family stories -- about his brother-in-law Hilary Carrasco. Hilary married Pat, JB's elder sister, in the early 1940s. (Their three children, my cousins, are among my favourite people in the world, not least for their wicked humour. This is the oldest of them.)
With no further ado, here's JB on Hilary.
One of the best-natured persons I have met, Hilary was generally laid back and relaxed -- at home, which for many years he and Pat made at Versova, in the firm that employed him, and on the way there and back. He commuted daily to his office in south Bombay in a third-hand Renault, a car that had seen many better days. Joe [JB's oldest brother] travelled to work with him. As they drove through Bandra on the Ghodbunder Road one morning, there was a sudden thud, and a full stop. A wheel rolled past. "Gosh, that's my rear wheel", Hilary exclaimed. And indeed it was.
One Xmas season Joe asked for the loan of the car to go to town for a "Bring in the New Year" dance. For Joe, the 31st December revels were always a must. Carefully attired in evening dress, he had danced in every New Year in since his college days. That year he asked a friend, Joe Rodricks, to come to Versova to drive the car, as Joe himself had long ceased to drive, and Hilary preferred to greet the New Year in the morning after a good night's rest.
So Rodricks came to Versova. They bathed, powdered themselves, and donned their formal clothes -- starched shirt, black tie and silk-lapelled black jacket. But then the car wouldn't start. With Hilary at the wheel, the two Joes began an attempt to push-start it. They pushed it up the drive, which sloped upward to the street. The wretched vehicle stayed stubborn, so they let it roll down the slope, to try again. Forlorn and breathing heavily after several tries, one of the pushers asked, as a bit of hopeless teasing: "Hilary, have you switched on the engine?"
"Gosh!" came the answer.
Hilary turned on the ignition and the car lurched forward; it was still in gear. By now the sweat was pouring down those starched shirts. Fresh baths, and a return to less formal clothing, delayed the would-be revellers still more. They reached the dance-floor just in time to wave the old year off.
Later, Hilary switched from his decrepit Renault to a tiny two-door Anglia. I remember the day when the car was parked in the hot sun, the windows shut tight. He courteously let us all in, then got in himself. Then he reached for his pipe, which he tapped on the dashboard to empty the bowl. He filled it with tobacco, which he tamped in, and began a series of attempts to light it. Pipes are, as you know, not the easiest things to light. Meanwhile, we squirmed and sweated on the back seat, but there was no escape.
September 01, 2010
The banality of hatred
The September-October 2010 issue of HouseCalls magazine carries the third in a series of essays I'm writing for them. (As of this issue, they are calling the series "Left Brain"). The essay is not on that website yet, but I have the print copy here as I write this. Appended below is the essay. I called it "All there is here"; in print they called it "The Banality of Hatred".
Any comments welcome.
(Previous essays: Not just about tennis, May-Jun 2010, The crane preens, Jul-Aug 2010.)
***
Most of the pages contained routine stuff; then, as if a stern schoolteacher had been at work, two lines were heavily blacked out, word by offending word. I was reading, of all innocuous things, a Bombay housing society's book of minutes. What could have caused such a fit of pique?
The minutes from a later society meeting, when the residents first noticed the black marks, solved that mystery. Referring to the black marks, they observed that a previous society resolution had been "illegibly scored out by some member." So they "incorporated" it again: "It was unanimously resolved that any member wanting to sell his flat will not sell to a Muslim."
This time, the words were not "illegibly scored out" by that same unknown member. Nor even some other unknown member. No: there they were, black ink on white paper. There they were, recorded on January 26 1994.
And I was stunned. On India's Republic Day, when we commemorate a constitution that's eloquent about secularism and the freedom of faith, a set of affluent, educated Bombayites put down in writing, and for the second time, their distaste for Muslims. But what depressed me more than the distaste itself was this: while one among this lot did not share his neighbours' feelings, he lacked the guts to speak his mind. He wasn't able to stand up to their expressed prejudice. And that says something.
To me, the episode suggested a moment in the early 1990s when something changed in this society -- and I mean that word now in a wider sense. A moment when it became respectable to give voice to prejudice and hatred; but more disturbing, a moment when people who would confront them became scarce on the ground. It became easy to leave hate unchallenged, to look the other way.
The trouble is, looking the other way is no passive act. Instead, it is too often the way to horror. Example: Rwanda.
By 1994, Rwanda, a small country in the middle of Africa, had gorged itself for months, even years, on hate propaganda that few thought to stop. The majority Hutu tribe in that country came to believe the worst about the minority Tutsis, their neighbours and fellow-Rwandans. Radio broadcasts called explicitly and openly for eliminating the "cockroaches" -- the Hutu extremists' word for the Tutsis that became commonplace. Inevitably, in April that year Hutu turned on Tutsi -- Rwanda turned on itself -- with a fury that staggered the world.
This late-20th Century genocide was rawer, more elemental, than what Hitler or Stalin accomplished. In one hundred days, Hutus slaughtered 800,000 Tutsis with machetes and sticks, fire and guns and farm implements: anything that could serve as a lethal weapon. The arithmetic is surreal and defies description: 8000 killed every day, 330 every hour. One Rwandan murdered every 11 seconds, 24/7 for 100 days.
This was barbarity beyond comprehension. This was slaughter three times faster than Hitler managed with Europe's Jews. Rwanda decimated itself in the primordial meaning of the word: one of every ten Rwandans died.
During the massacre, there was actually a UN force (UNAMIR, or the United Nations Assistance Mission to Rwanda) present in the country, established there months before to keep the peace. Its "Force Commander" was a Canadian soldier named Roméo Dallaire. He later wrote a memoir -- if that bland word really applies to memories of genocide -- of his time in Rwanda, "Shake Hands With the Devil." It is a searing, shocking book, but not just because of the killing. Dallaire describes how, after nobody stopped the propaganda and the killing began, nobody stopped the killing either. The rest of the world did nothing.
I'm sorry: the word "nothing" actually overstates what the rest of the world did.
Two weeks into the massacre, with plenty of news already out about the thousands already dead, the UN's Security Council decided to withdraw its UNAMIR from Rwanda. In her foreword to Dallaire's book, Samantha Power describes this as "the single most shameful act in the history of the United Nations." (Dallaire himself refused to leave Rwanda. He was left with 450 men who, Power writes, "watched helplessly as the bodies piled up around them".)
Early on, a group of bureaucrats from an unnamed country came to Rwanda to assess the situation. Their report contained these words that Dallaire says are "engraved still in my mind": "We will recommend to our government not to intervene as the risks are high and all that is here are humans."
Only humans. Think of the import of those words. Rwanda is a small, poor, landlocked country with no particular strategic or mineral wealth, which is why the world did not care what happened there in 1994. Indeed, all there is in Rwanda is its humans. If you're like me, you've grown up believing that's worth infinitely more than any mineral wealth. Yet their existence itself was reason to turn away from Rwanda. To let 800,000 humans die horribly.
This was not "doing nothing". This was far worse. The world's apathy to bloodshed in Rwanda actually fueled the massacre, kept it going. That's the danger when those who can take a stand, won't.
Is it a stretch to link prejudice in a Bombay housing society to the slaughter in Rwanda?
Only if you live in a utopia where people suppress prejudice and hatred. In the real world, these eventually find expression. Stand up to them when they are merely aired in a society meeting, and you stand a chance of heading off catastrophe. Don't, and a society begins the slide to depravity. Like when three thousand Indians were killed in Delhi in 1984, or over a thousand Indians were killed in Gujarat in 2002 -- or like Rwanda's agony of 1994. When hatred boils over and massacre begins, it's much harder to stop, much rarer to find people with the fibre to stop it. Exactly as Dallaire discovered for himself.
That's why I can't help finding seeds for the massacres in those of us who will not confront ugliness in our neighbours.
To the writer Hannah Arendt, the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann stood for what she famously called "the banality of evil". Explaining the phrase, she spoke of "evil deeds, committed on a gigantic scale, which could not be traced to any … wickedness, pathology or ideological conviction in the doer, whose only personal distinction was a perhaps extraordinary shallowness."
It's that shallowness that, for me, connects the unknown man who blacked out his society resolution to the bureaucrats for whom Rwanda meant nothing because it contained only humans.
Yet in small but profound ways, some of us do dig beyond shallow.
After the Gujarat massacre of 2002, a group of anguished citizens met regularly in Bombay to discuss the tragedy and what their response should be. I joined them every now and then. We gathered once just days after the police shot dead two suspected terrorists at Ansal Plaza in Delhi. It was an acrimonious evening. Several people supported the "encounter", several were outraged by it. Till a short exchange brought the discussions to an abrupt end.
First, a man I'll call P said, as close to verbatim as I can recall: "These guys deserved to be killed! I'm from Kashmir and I've seen plenty of these Islamic terrorists. Trust me, these two looked like terrorists, so I'm sure they were terrorists!"
Silence as we digested this. Then G, wearing a deep blue turban and beard, stood and said simply, quietly: "In the '80s, most of you would have said I look like a terrorist. Does that make me one?"
Silence again, even from P. Our Sikh friend had asked the question that laid bare the absurdity of P's claim: they "looked like terrorists", so "they were terrorists". What a stupid, abhorrent remark. Fortunately, G had the fibre to call the bluff on it.
In his preface, Roméo Dallaire writes: "May this book help inspire people … to rise above national interest and self-interest to recognize humanity for what it really is: a panoply of human beings who, in their essence, are the same."
The words speak of both the magnitude of what Dallaire experienced and the kind of man he is. They also make me wonder in some despair: what, really, is humanity? Maybe what Dallaire saw around him in Rwanda, indeed in the world outside Rwanda, is humanity as it really is. Raw, elemental, all there is here.
But then there's someone like G, who gives me hope.
Any comments welcome.
(Previous essays: Not just about tennis, May-Jun 2010, The crane preens, Jul-Aug 2010.)
Most of the pages contained routine stuff; then, as if a stern schoolteacher had been at work, two lines were heavily blacked out, word by offending word. I was reading, of all innocuous things, a Bombay housing society's book of minutes. What could have caused such a fit of pique?
The minutes from a later society meeting, when the residents first noticed the black marks, solved that mystery. Referring to the black marks, they observed that a previous society resolution had been "illegibly scored out by some member." So they "incorporated" it again: "It was unanimously resolved that any member wanting to sell his flat will not sell to a Muslim."
This time, the words were not "illegibly scored out" by that same unknown member. Nor even some other unknown member. No: there they were, black ink on white paper. There they were, recorded on January 26 1994.
And I was stunned. On India's Republic Day, when we commemorate a constitution that's eloquent about secularism and the freedom of faith, a set of affluent, educated Bombayites put down in writing, and for the second time, their distaste for Muslims. But what depressed me more than the distaste itself was this: while one among this lot did not share his neighbours' feelings, he lacked the guts to speak his mind. He wasn't able to stand up to their expressed prejudice. And that says something.
To me, the episode suggested a moment in the early 1990s when something changed in this society -- and I mean that word now in a wider sense. A moment when it became respectable to give voice to prejudice and hatred; but more disturbing, a moment when people who would confront them became scarce on the ground. It became easy to leave hate unchallenged, to look the other way.
The trouble is, looking the other way is no passive act. Instead, it is too often the way to horror. Example: Rwanda.
By 1994, Rwanda, a small country in the middle of Africa, had gorged itself for months, even years, on hate propaganda that few thought to stop. The majority Hutu tribe in that country came to believe the worst about the minority Tutsis, their neighbours and fellow-Rwandans. Radio broadcasts called explicitly and openly for eliminating the "cockroaches" -- the Hutu extremists' word for the Tutsis that became commonplace. Inevitably, in April that year Hutu turned on Tutsi -- Rwanda turned on itself -- with a fury that staggered the world.
This late-20th Century genocide was rawer, more elemental, than what Hitler or Stalin accomplished. In one hundred days, Hutus slaughtered 800,000 Tutsis with machetes and sticks, fire and guns and farm implements: anything that could serve as a lethal weapon. The arithmetic is surreal and defies description: 8000 killed every day, 330 every hour. One Rwandan murdered every 11 seconds, 24/7 for 100 days.
This was barbarity beyond comprehension. This was slaughter three times faster than Hitler managed with Europe's Jews. Rwanda decimated itself in the primordial meaning of the word: one of every ten Rwandans died.
During the massacre, there was actually a UN force (UNAMIR, or the United Nations Assistance Mission to Rwanda) present in the country, established there months before to keep the peace. Its "Force Commander" was a Canadian soldier named Roméo Dallaire. He later wrote a memoir -- if that bland word really applies to memories of genocide -- of his time in Rwanda, "Shake Hands With the Devil." It is a searing, shocking book, but not just because of the killing. Dallaire describes how, after nobody stopped the propaganda and the killing began, nobody stopped the killing either. The rest of the world did nothing.
I'm sorry: the word "nothing" actually overstates what the rest of the world did.
Two weeks into the massacre, with plenty of news already out about the thousands already dead, the UN's Security Council decided to withdraw its UNAMIR from Rwanda. In her foreword to Dallaire's book, Samantha Power describes this as "the single most shameful act in the history of the United Nations." (Dallaire himself refused to leave Rwanda. He was left with 450 men who, Power writes, "watched helplessly as the bodies piled up around them".)
Early on, a group of bureaucrats from an unnamed country came to Rwanda to assess the situation. Their report contained these words that Dallaire says are "engraved still in my mind": "We will recommend to our government not to intervene as the risks are high and all that is here are humans."
Only humans. Think of the import of those words. Rwanda is a small, poor, landlocked country with no particular strategic or mineral wealth, which is why the world did not care what happened there in 1994. Indeed, all there is in Rwanda is its humans. If you're like me, you've grown up believing that's worth infinitely more than any mineral wealth. Yet their existence itself was reason to turn away from Rwanda. To let 800,000 humans die horribly.
This was not "doing nothing". This was far worse. The world's apathy to bloodshed in Rwanda actually fueled the massacre, kept it going. That's the danger when those who can take a stand, won't.
Is it a stretch to link prejudice in a Bombay housing society to the slaughter in Rwanda?
Only if you live in a utopia where people suppress prejudice and hatred. In the real world, these eventually find expression. Stand up to them when they are merely aired in a society meeting, and you stand a chance of heading off catastrophe. Don't, and a society begins the slide to depravity. Like when three thousand Indians were killed in Delhi in 1984, or over a thousand Indians were killed in Gujarat in 2002 -- or like Rwanda's agony of 1994. When hatred boils over and massacre begins, it's much harder to stop, much rarer to find people with the fibre to stop it. Exactly as Dallaire discovered for himself.
That's why I can't help finding seeds for the massacres in those of us who will not confront ugliness in our neighbours.
To the writer Hannah Arendt, the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann stood for what she famously called "the banality of evil". Explaining the phrase, she spoke of "evil deeds, committed on a gigantic scale, which could not be traced to any … wickedness, pathology or ideological conviction in the doer, whose only personal distinction was a perhaps extraordinary shallowness."
It's that shallowness that, for me, connects the unknown man who blacked out his society resolution to the bureaucrats for whom Rwanda meant nothing because it contained only humans.
Yet in small but profound ways, some of us do dig beyond shallow.
After the Gujarat massacre of 2002, a group of anguished citizens met regularly in Bombay to discuss the tragedy and what their response should be. I joined them every now and then. We gathered once just days after the police shot dead two suspected terrorists at Ansal Plaza in Delhi. It was an acrimonious evening. Several people supported the "encounter", several were outraged by it. Till a short exchange brought the discussions to an abrupt end.
First, a man I'll call P said, as close to verbatim as I can recall: "These guys deserved to be killed! I'm from Kashmir and I've seen plenty of these Islamic terrorists. Trust me, these two looked like terrorists, so I'm sure they were terrorists!"
Silence as we digested this. Then G, wearing a deep blue turban and beard, stood and said simply, quietly: "In the '80s, most of you would have said I look like a terrorist. Does that make me one?"
Silence again, even from P. Our Sikh friend had asked the question that laid bare the absurdity of P's claim: they "looked like terrorists", so "they were terrorists". What a stupid, abhorrent remark. Fortunately, G had the fibre to call the bluff on it.
In his preface, Roméo Dallaire writes: "May this book help inspire people … to rise above national interest and self-interest to recognize humanity for what it really is: a panoply of human beings who, in their essence, are the same."
The words speak of both the magnitude of what Dallaire experienced and the kind of man he is. They also make me wonder in some despair: what, really, is humanity? Maybe what Dallaire saw around him in Rwanda, indeed in the world outside Rwanda, is humanity as it really is. Raw, elemental, all there is here.
But then there's someone like G, who gives me hope.
Herbs of the herbivores
Long-in-the-tooth watchers of this blog will know that I have been a fan of Chate coaching classes, or their ads at any rate, for as long as your teeth. So it was with great interest and fascination that I found that they have expanded their offerings from mere coaching classes, as evidenced by an ad in the Indian Express a couple of weeks ago. Here is the meat of it, absolutely I swear verbatim.
To Whom are you Imitating?
The world famous insect expert Fabrey have studied the behaviour of an insect in a very subtle manner. In one of his experiment he had registered the behaviour of a herbivorous insect. He had arranged the herbs of this insects in the middle part of the circle. Rhythmically all the insects started revolving around the circle. From all these insects Fabrey's expectation was that, atleast one insect should cross his way towards the herbs. But this wouldn't happen. Each and every insect tried to imitate his following insect. The insects did not break their line after waiting for several hours. At the end all the insects were dead.
Each and every person starts thinking about this experiment of Fabrey. While thinking about career each & every person tries to imitate the other person which proves to be injustice on this. Try to avoid imitating while selecting your career. Select the stream which gives complete justice to your intelligence as well as capability. Instead of imitating some other person try to get guidelines through a guide which are extremely valuables.
Have a glance that, Maharashtra is blessed with 720km. linear oceanic (marine) bank. A world wide standardized part "Mumbai" is also in Maharashtra. There are such types of career opportunities available in marine transportation which will make your dazzling capability well known. But the youngsters of Maharashtra are neglecting towards the marine transportation stream like the insects of the story who are imitating each other crazily. This is the reason 'Chate International Academy' had associated with Bharat Sevak Samaj a national development organization & started a diploma in International Marine Transport Management. By completing this course you can make your career shine in the shipping stream."
As always, I have some takeaways from this.
* It's a good idea to arrange the herbs of herbivorous insects in a circle.
* Because Maharashtra has 720km of linear insects.
* But they will end up dead.
* Therefore, you should get a diploma.
* But watch out for the subtle Fabrey, world-famous for his imitations.
(A previous time I had takeaways from a Chate ad is here).
To Whom are you Imitating?
The world famous insect expert Fabrey have studied the behaviour of an insect in a very subtle manner. In one of his experiment he had registered the behaviour of a herbivorous insect. He had arranged the herbs of this insects in the middle part of the circle. Rhythmically all the insects started revolving around the circle. From all these insects Fabrey's expectation was that, atleast one insect should cross his way towards the herbs. But this wouldn't happen. Each and every insect tried to imitate his following insect. The insects did not break their line after waiting for several hours. At the end all the insects were dead.
Each and every person starts thinking about this experiment of Fabrey. While thinking about career each & every person tries to imitate the other person which proves to be injustice on this. Try to avoid imitating while selecting your career. Select the stream which gives complete justice to your intelligence as well as capability. Instead of imitating some other person try to get guidelines through a guide which are extremely valuables.
Have a glance that, Maharashtra is blessed with 720km. linear oceanic (marine) bank. A world wide standardized part "Mumbai" is also in Maharashtra. There are such types of career opportunities available in marine transportation which will make your dazzling capability well known. But the youngsters of Maharashtra are neglecting towards the marine transportation stream like the insects of the story who are imitating each other crazily. This is the reason 'Chate International Academy' had associated with Bharat Sevak Samaj a national development organization & started a diploma in International Marine Transport Management. By completing this course you can make your career shine in the shipping stream."
As always, I have some takeaways from this.
* It's a good idea to arrange the herbs of herbivorous insects in a circle.
* Because Maharashtra has 720km of linear insects.
* But they will end up dead.
* Therefore, you should get a diploma.
* But watch out for the subtle Fabrey, world-famous for his imitations.
(A previous time I had takeaways from a Chate ad is here).
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