sunlight through the blinds...

made a new text twist personal record today....325640!!! try beating that!!!

After almost exactly 12 years, I return to Bhutan. This will be our first Mission Orientation visit (we have to do three, all in SAARC countries). It sounds strange, but I vividly remember having stood on the Mall in Thimpu as a fourteen year old, throwing a huge tantrum because I wanted to stay longer, with my mum pacifying me that they would get me here again. I could see that she was lying...obviously, this is was a once in a lifetime trip for my parents, and they clearly had no intention of coming back. That is when I did something, which in retrospect was very childish and melodramatic...I took a vow! Really! As our taxi turned and as I caught a last glimpse of the astoundingly clean and beautiful capital city, I vowed silently that I would return, on my own, without my parents. So you can imagne what significance this visit has for me!!

I finally got freedom from being the coordinator after three consecutive weeks! It looks like quite a simple task from the outside, but my god, it is one job that certainly has the ability be one hell of a nuisance.
In all probability I found the task tougher because this was my first real experience of being escort officer/coordinator. I was never made the escort officer in LBSNAA and in the first round of coordination duties here at FSI, the policy of one person for one week had not evolved yet, so I did only one lecture.
Arindam handed over the baton to me in the middle of the Kashmir trip, which for some inexplicable reason the JS decided in his infinite wisdom to turn a blind eye to and made me continue after we back to Delhi. I fretted and fumed, but there was little I could do. Besides, I thought what could be simpler than reciting template speeches? Was I wrong! As I discovered to my dismay, I had to hunt through heaven and earth to get my hands on the biodatas of some of the speakers, cater to their whims and fancies, send a plethora of messages to my batchmates about last-minute changes in the schedule, handle last-minute demands for obsolete equipment (with an adamant refusal to deliver the lecture in its absence!!) etc etc. All this apart from the usual being on alert, standing at the gate to receive the guests, making inane conversation with them to keep them occupied while they waited etc etc.
To make matters worse, Manish decided that I should continue for a third week, because some defence module lectures were spilling into the next week...
So after 14 days, I finally handed over charge today...I'm so so so happy!!!!

Serves me right for wanting to get off easy by doing only four days in Kashmir!

But on a more positive note, the experience of the past three weeks has not been all bad...I've learnt a lot, interacted with some truly great minds at close quarters (though some of them could do with a lesson in basic manners and etiquette!). Right now, I am just harrassed and thus a little pissed off, but I'm sure when I look back I will remember this period as a valuable learning experience.

Just returned from my 12-day Jammu and Kashmir trip, which included the 6-day army attachment. I (alongwith the only other lady officer in my batch) stayed with one of the battalions of GR. It was an experience of a lifetime, to say the least. Considering that I knew absolutely nothing about the army, its organisaton or structure, it was an intensely educative week for me.
But apart from the education, the symbolic significance of visiting the sacred places where our courageous jawans have lost their lives to protect the sanctity of our land, was the high point for me. Looking at the enemy posts, actually wathing the enemy moe around..it gave me goosebumps. Suddenly, patriotism was no longer a word, but a tangible real thing, the taste of which i could feel in my mouth. Hearing the stories of valour of the battalion, of their sacrifices and their triumphs, of their customs and superstitions, I started to feel a part of their world...and all this in a matter of days. The battalion had the warcry of "ayo gorkhali" which they used to telling effect in the 1971 war's famous Sylhet operation (India's first successful heli-borne operation). A mere handful of troops fooled the Pakis into thinking that there was an entire battalion in the jungle, by screaming out this warcry on the top of their lungs!!! wow!

I think it will take a series of posts to recount the experiences that were packed in those few precious days. So more later...

...and i apologise to the dogs for the unsavoury comparison.

Enough has been written and lamented about the tabloidisation of mainstream Indian media, both print and electronic, for a long time now. I must confess that everytime I heard this debate earlier, I would obstinately shut my brain to it and doggedly (what's with my canine obsession today?!) refuse to participate in it. I think the reason for that was my past association with the media. Having worked for the infamous newspaper that is credited with single-handedly pusing the print media into the abyss of crass commercialisation, I was secretly ashamed to own up to my share of the responsibilty (I worked at the Features Desk, which is most definitely the flagbearer of the skin-fest that this particular national daily has now become).

But last Thursday, I was forced to face up to the truth...

On Thursday, while our seniors were enjoying the government holiday on account of Ambedkar Jayanti, I (along with my IFS batchmates) attended the formal reception of the Emir of Qatar at the Rashtrapati Bhawan. It was fun to watch the pomp and show (the building is certainly grand in scale, even though in terms of architectural idiom, it is a complete disaster), the guard of honour (an officer fainted in the heat and was whisked away to be replaced by a substitute in a matter of seconds), the horses (who exhibited how impossible it is to potty-train them), and of course, the famous faces (the Prez, the PM, Laloo, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Shivraj Patil, a couple of other ministers who I reconised from TV but couldn't recall names of etc). As was to be expected, there were loads of photographers and TV camerapersons too.

Frankly, it never occured to me that I should check out if the event was being aired on TV or not. In my mind, it was official duty, done and over with, not a thought spared to it later. But when I reached home in the evening, I found my parents (only my dad actually) quite eager to catch a glimpse of his daughter on TV!! Well, what can I say? My dad, besides being obsessed with his only child, is also from the old school, where Important Events attended must be dutifully checked out in the media later!

So there I sat, plonked on the couch, going through the numerous news channels. You can imagine what I found. Forget about catching any coverage of the event (which I didn't care about anyway), this targeted surfing brought home the truth painfully about what passes for news in our country today...it was horrible, I tell you. One channel was following the trail of a serial rapist (with vulgar, gory detailed victim interviews that made me want to throw up my dinner), at least two channels were very seriously and sanctimoniously analysing the finer nuances of the proposed ban on Mumbai's dance bars and no less than three channels were airing cricket-related stories (expert analysis, preparations in Delhi for the match, Ganguly-bashing etc etc).

This is primetime national television's idea of news. There was a time, when I was a kid, that visiting heads of states were given front-page coverage (and this was a state visit, for God's sake!!) with those funny, posed photos of the guests and our leaders, standing together or shaking hands, smiling self-consciously at the cameras.

I wonder what happens to all those hajaar pictures that those camerapersons took that day? If the papers/channels have no intention of carrying the story, then why the hell bother deploying all that expensive manpower and material to the event?

This has become a rather long post...to end, I am reminded of our interaction with the Hindustan Times Associate Editor during our XP attachment...in answer to our heckling about why HT carries bullshit, he held up that day's edition and asked "which if this items is not important?". We answered, "It's not about what is carried, but what is not carried." I wonder how many important stories get sacrificed everyday that you and me never get to hear of, because some other crap is bieng aired instead.

It seems to me that Garnier Laboratories, a line of toileteries and cosmetics, has really taken over the Indian market. I realised this the other day when my dad offered to buy me stuff and I greedily began dictating a long list of all that I wanted. Suddenly, it occured to me that all the products were Garnier. And this wasn't because I was some sort of loyalist. Although reasonably brand-conscious, I have no problem with buying any company's products as long as they suit my skin/hair. So this sudden takeover of my bathroom and dressing table by the House of Garnier was completely inadvertent on my part. But it got me thinking.

A few years ago, when Garnier had entered the Indian market, it was an exotic, new, phirang brand that was advertised as such. It's advertisements featured phirangis to lend credence to this whole "imported-hai-toh-accha-hoga" image. But slowly and steadily, the products diversified and so did its branding. Soon, everything from a facewash to an anti-wrinkle cream, was available under the Garnier umbrella. Recently, it has launched an anti-dandruff shampoo under the Fructis brand, while it's Ultra-Doux line continues strong.

Of course, the marketing has been extremely aggressive. Open any magazine (it needn't even be a fashion or a lifestyle magazine) and Garnier ads are sure to stare back at you. Television is full of thier ad spots too. Garnier is completely inescapable, I tell you.

I believe that the best place to judge a brand's popularity is in a supermarket. So I decided to check this out in Delhi's (ok, Gurgaon's) Big Bazaar. What I found was even more surprising than what I had expected. Instead of simply better placing, more offers or some such thing, what I saw was the almost monopoly of Garnier...in most categories, there was simply no other product other than a Garnier!! Now that I think back, even in Ahmedabad, a hair conditioner meant only the sleek orange Ultra-Doux bottle that every kiranawalla or chemist invariably stocked.

What is with this Garnier Monopoly?

That's the only conclusion I could come to after the nightmare of a driving experience that I had last Friday...the whole world and it's cousin seemed to be out on the roads throughout the bloody day, not to mention the night. Now some of you might say, so what's new about that? But believe me, it was truly beyond one's imagination. I've been driving in Delhi for years now and know the traffic volume on my usual routes, at various times of the day and on various days of the week, pretty well. So I know, for example, that Route X is quieter in the morning but a madhouse in the evening, Route Y is less crowded on Tuesday (with the market there being shut that day) but a total mess on other day of the week, and so on... So imagine my utter surprise when all my well-calculated moves notwithstanding, I got caught in no less than six jams that day, some of them absolute horrors!

And it wasn't simply about the traffic...there were just people about...too many of them...in hordes. It was surreal, I tell you. What the hell were all these people doing baking in the not-so-subtle sun? Even at the parking lot in South Block (my office for two weeks), there were all these official cars whizzing about. It was crazy, I tell you. And it continued late into the night. At the Delhi-Ghaziabad border, where I found myself at around 11pm, there were tons of those weird, noisy contraptions that remind me of an auto on steroids. Usually, there are harldy one-two about. But today, there were everywhere! It was just mad, mad, mad!!

And it wasn't me alone. Everybody I spoke to was cribbing about the same thing...jams everywhere in places and at times that usually see no traffic at all! Unfortunately for me, I had a thousand chores to do that day, so I had no option but to battle valiantly with this sudden, unexpected population explosion on Delhi roads...

As with all things that you can do nothing about but grin-and-bear, the best way to cope is humour. Here's the insane theory that a friend came up with to explain the madness...here's how the conversation went...Y is me, F is friend...

Y(indignantly): what the hell are all these people doing out on the roads?
F(calmly): celebrating their birthdays.

...silence...

Y: excuse me?
F (repeating with infinite patience, as if to a retarded child): celebrating their birthdays
Y: and why do you think all these people are celebrating their birthdays?
F: you remember, last year there was a news item about 14,000 weddings on the same day because of a heavy saaya?
Y: yes, but what does that have to do with traffic jams?
F: elementary, my dear...all those people getting married on the same day...obviously, they started enjoying the bliss of marital life together, if you know what i mean...so they all must have produced the result of the bliss on the same day...hence, all these people on the roads, celebrating. QED.
Y: so you mean there are 14,000 birthdays today?
F: if there can be 14,000 weddings in a day, why can't there be 14,000 birthydays?

...silence...

Y: i guess we must wish them, then..
F: yes, absolutely...
Y: okay, the next signal, i'm rolling down the window and wishing whoever is next to me a very happy birthday...
F: great! so will i!!

you can imagine how many people we freaked out that day... :-)

While writing out invitations for a friend's photography exhibition, I realised that I didn't know the names of some of my friends' and batchmates' wives. My mother suggested that I take the easy way out and simply address them as "Mrs. and Mr. so-and-so". I explained to her that I, of all the people, could never make the cardinal mistake of simply assuming that the lady had changed her surname to her husband's...this is not misplaced idealism, divorced (no pun intended) from reality...none of my friends have changed their names after marriage, so I guess it is an increasing trend.

Anyway, my queries about wives' names (in some cases, I didn't even know their first names) led to an interesting discovery.

One of my Rajasthani batchmates in the IFS said in his lovely, calm way that a married lady's surname shouldn't be a problem to guess, because it will be the same as her husband's...I suppose my consternation at his obvious chauvinism showed, because he went on to clarify that he didn't mean the lady should change her name, but that it in all likelihood, she didn't need to! I was as lost as you probably are by now.

Let me explain...

Being a staunch traditionalist, what he meant was that in India, all (okay, most) marriages continue to be not only caste-based, but subcaste-based, so clearly, the surname of the would-be husband and wife would be pre-matched!!! Now I must confess that this was something that had never occured to me. Actually, now that I thought about it, he was right...most traditional, arranged marriages that I could recall were between families that had the same surname to begin with, so no problem for the lady! Wow! In a strangely convoluted way, this was pretty liberating for her, no?

found myself in lajpat nagar's central market on sunday, shopping for new ACs with some friends... the shop we were browsing through had another branch close by, where it was displaying the brand we wanted. so there we went, following the salesguy to this promised second branch.

as was to be expected, he didn't take us through the traffic-heavy main roads, but the quieter bylanes, some of which were service lanes for the residences, while others were corners of urban parks that are a lajpat nagar peculiarity (like many refugee colonies of delhi, lajpat nagar homes are wrapped around a series of rectangular parks that overlap at the corners, forming some interesting street spaces).

we were happily tripping along, joking about this and that, when suddenly, i found myself walking through somebody's house...yes, you read that right...through someone's house!!! through his living room/parlour, to be precise! with the owner (presumably) happily sitting there, reading a newspaper, completely oblivious to the fact that four complete strangers (well, i didn't know the man from adam, so i assume that the feeling was mutual) had just walked through his property!!

i wonder if allowing your house to be used as a thoroughfare is common practice in this area or if it was simply this particular gentleman's generosity towards pedestrians? i think Indians in general have a very relaxed sense of what is personal and what is public when it comes to street space. At least that's the way it was in traditional Indian settlements, where the street flowed seamlessly into homes through the otla (a kind of half-raised public platform that connected the home's threshold to the street, where activities like cutting veggies, oiling hair and gossiping were happily performed in full public gaze!).

however, on a cynical note, i suspect that there were no generous motives behind this particular incident, but rather that the man had encroached his house onto the 45 degree street corner junction, which of course, is public property. after some friendly neighbourhood slanging matches, this lovely compromise must have ensued, that he gets to use the space, as long as he welcomes all and sundry to walk through his parlour!

returning to blogging after a long, long hiatus...promising to stay.

How many times can a man turn his head
and pretend that he just doesn't see?
— Bob Dylan.

in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king...what happens to the two-eyed man???

the way people are losing their tempers with each other here, either everybody has only now started showing their true colours, or this place is getting to them...i suspect its the latter...

all i hear all day long is people snapping at each other; moa included. like the stanford prison experiments, i suppose the natural reaction of people in situations of complete control and subjugation of free will, is to turn on each other. i really feel like going and telling the faculty that this is hardly the way to foster bonding. i don't know about the others, but for me, the attempt to convert me from a thinking individual to just one in an unthinking herd makes me want to scream. i guess it is especially torturous for me because its been a good 10 years that i was last told what to do, when to do, how much to do and with whom to do it with. school was the last place i was under some sort of regimentation. i consciously chose to go to college in a creative campus, where the emphasis was on self-development, which does a far better job of inculcating a sense of respopnsibility. the philosophy there was "here are all these world-class facilities, here is faculty that boasts of some of the best names in the field in the country (and some in the world), here are courses designed to excite you, enthuse you and teach you amazing skills...you want to take advantage of them, please do, that's what we are here for. if you don't, fine..your loss." after that this place really really sucks. i mean forcing people to watch movies and folk programmes is really taking things a little too far.

They teach us Theory X (people are essentially work-shirkers and unless whipped, won't move a single lazy, good-for-nothing muscle) and Theory Y (people derive meaning from their work, which gives them a sense of fulfillment and achievement, are self-motivated and therefore need not be forced to do anything) here...they ask us to follow Theory Y, but themselves follow Theory X to the hilt. Talk about hypocrisy!

and i'm sorry, but the bullshit explanation that you must learn to live and work with whoever you are assigned, because that's what you will face later in the services, doesn't cut any ice with me....enough ranting for a day....

"the best governance is no governance. we need controls to introduce insecurities..."
— prakash jha.
brilliant!

the phantom spoke about the power of one good officer to do with one stroke of his pen what a thousand NGOs cannot do in a thousand years. he was quoting madhu kishwar, so i don't know whether or not he believes that himself. [his readers, including yours truly:), have for some inexplicable reason, led the discussion into a circuitous discourse of public morality and ethics, so i can't really make out his views about this particular point]. anyway. but, i certainly believe it. it was this belief that made me, a staunch votary of the minimalist state that should get out of the hair of the average citizen, join the system.

which is why i was extremely happy to get some validation yesterday from another guest speaker — barkha dutt of ndtv — about the singularly extraordinary opportunity that the system provides to good officers to make a difference...a real difference.
while recounting her experiences of covering Kashmir, she spoke eloquently about how J M Lyngdoh is single-handedly responsible for altering the political future of the Valley by spearheading the landmark 2002 elections, which were globally certified as free and fair (again thanks to his efforts to allow international observers to inspect and ratify the electoral process).

of course, there is exaggeration in this portrayal of the lone crusader...but the sad truth is that in many ways, that's what honest and well-meaning officers are sometimes forced to become.

an aside: the woman knows how to evoke emotion...at least in me. goose-pimply many times (especially when she spoke about Lyngdoh), i was even moved to near-tears on occasion...but then, i cry at the drop of a hat, so that doesn't say much :-) !!

waiting for the phantom's promised sequel...

i wonder why heterosexual women (usually) have no problem in admitting that they might have, sometime in their lives, been attracted to another woman, but heterosexual men totally cringe at the very suggestion that they might be attracted to another man.

does it have something to do with the differences in the popular perception of gays and lesbians? or does it go deeper than that? i've read nothing on the subject. this is simply what i think, just a hunch. so please excuse the lack of knowledge and the sweeping generalisations...this is just me thinking aloud.....

generally speaking, in any homosexual relationship, whether between two males or two females, one person assumes a masculine role and the other feminine. thus, in a lesbian couple there is usually a butch playing the masculine part, and in a gay couple there is usually this really effeminate guy playing the feminine part.

so, for a woman to admit that she might harbour secret feelings for another woman, the maximum she is admitting to is that she might have some masculine characteristics. well, what's the big deal in that? since most women today grow up as "tomboys" and continue to dress, talk and act in definite so-called masculine ways as adults.

but, for a man to admit any such inclinations, he is effectively exposing himself to the danger of being thought of or labelled as effeminate... something completely appalling to most men.

thus, so-called masculine characteristics such as firmness, ruthlessness, cold hard logic, precision, aggressiveness etc. are seen as some sort of universal ideals to be pursued by everyone alike, while so-called feminine characteristics like nurturance, emotionality, compassion, delicacy of thought and action etc. are seen as some sort of "weak" and therefore dispensable attributes, that even the women don't want to be identified with, leave alone the men!

this is something so obviously visible even in something as simple (yet funadamental) as clothing. the women rush to emulate the male way of dressing, but find me a guy who wants to try out skirts and saris (no, rohit bal fashion shows don't count!)

so the clever raymonds advertisement notwithstanding, i believe that the day is far, far away when a man will take pride in admitting that he has a "feminine" side to his personality that makes him complete...

got a firsthand experience of how things are in the bureaucracy... and what havoc level-jumping can cause...

got a call from tiku early in the morning, asking me to organise a house journal meeting, as if i'm the secy! then he asked me if K is a journalist in a derisive tone, didn't wait for a reply and answered himself, saying he obviously isn't because he doesn't know anything... gawd! i'm getting caught in the middle...tiku asks me to do things, which makes them my responsibility, but i have no authority to implement them! what to do? plus, i don't want friction with K, considering that we became friends on the trek...i hope things work out...

the stupid meeting screwed up my life on the personal front as well..i was planning to run off home over the weekend, which i had to scrap. and even the trip to doon had to be cut short, making it a whirlwind shopping spree (ended up splurging over eight grand on full-price branded stuff!!) but good fun... felt great to get tangible proof of my weight loss, since i had to buy one waist size smaller :-)

the evening meeting (with tiku, raju and chameli), was for all the clubs and societies secretaries. i wondered what the hell i was doing there? to make matters worse, the dussera celebrations organisation was thrust on me by chameli, which includes ramlila!!...shit...i'm being forced to bite off more than i can chew...with parasailing, river-rafting, cultural night, house journal, treasure hunt, editing the management circle's journal et al, when the hell am i supposed to read, write the essay, make the trek report, work on the syndicate work? AAAARRGH...i want to tear my hair out...

forced to lie flatback on the soddy, soggy dhurries in the biting cold of a misty mussourie morning, i saw it...the eye in the sky...
wisps of thready, stringy, clouds forming an uncannily symmetrical circular portal, beckoning me to rise up and escape...quite surreal. or maybe everything takes on a mystical connotation at 6am after a sleepless, weepy night!

(courtesy: the volokh conspiracy, www.volokh.com)
A man who told his doctor that he drinks more than a six-pack of beer a day, had his license recalled, because the physicians reported him. A state law, dating back to the 1960s, REQUIRES doctors to report any physical or mental impairments in patients that could compromise their ability to drive safely, leading to an indefinite recall of the license until the driver can prove that he is competent enough to drive. Aside from a drunken-driving conviction when he was 21, this man said he has a clean driving record and doesn't drink and drive.

This sounds like the movie Minority Report.Because you like to have a few beers, even a few too many beers, you're considered guilty of driving drunk before the fact?!
Eugene Volokh says, "What troubles most people about the Minority Report situation, in which people are prosecuted for murder because precogs (people with special powers of precognition) say that they're going to commit murder, is that someone is prosecuted because of what they were supposedly going to do, not because of what they actually did. But I think we're quite right to prosecute someone for attempting to commit a crime, even if they don't take the final step.
If the police catch someone sitting at his window pointing a rifle at someone, with a finger on the trigger, and then an investigation shows that the person was almost certainly planning to kill the person, I think prosecuting the person for attempted murder is just fine. Some amount of "precognition" is a normal part of the legal system.
Say, someone goes to the doctor's office and says "I'm having these seizures every day or two; I just black out for a few seconds." It may be "precognition" that the person might well black out while driving, but it's a pretty sensible precognition. Similarly, if someone fails a driver's test, it's "precognition" that the person will likely be a bad driver, but it's again a pretty sensible precognition.
Recalling somebody's licence is not considering him guilty of driving recklessly before the fact: no one is being found guilty, or sent to jail. Rather, the person is being judged to be the sort of driver who ought not be given a license. Unless, you think that everyone should have the right to drive until they commit a serious traffic offense or are caught doing something dangerous.
But if you think that driving on the public roads is something that should be licensed, and licenses should be given only to those who the authorities think will be safe drivers, then precognition is precisely what you're endorsing: you're calling for a judgment, before the person does something dangerous on the roads.
The principle of driver's licensing is precisely that the licensing authorities should exercise some precognition about who is likely to be a safe enough driver and who isn't.

MJ Neela says: Patient information should be confidential. To stretch the logic of precognition a little more, the doc could be showing early signs of a psychopathic whistleblower. Should be denied confidential information as aprecaution??? That would be the end of his medical career. Huh!"

you know, i'm sick of people going around glorifying everyday events and activities as being something more than they actually are...

every kind of talent is a type of "intelligence". so we have kinesthetic intelligence, social intelligence, emotional intelligence, even, god help us, culinary intelligence! why can't they simply say culinary talent? or emotional sensitivity? or social etiquette? or kinesthetic skill? why does everything have to be "intelligence"? far from trying to dissociate from the snobbish purely-cerebral nose-in-the-air connotation of the word "intelligence", this amounts to the desperate bid of "intelligence" wannabes, who want soooo badly to be recognised by the cranial types as one of them... we can't count beyond 2+2, but hey! we can dance like a ballerina on coke...so that make us intelliegent, right?!
another typical one is "architect"...now nobody is the designer, conceiver or planner of anything... they are all architects... so you have the "architect" of peace processes, welfare programs, manifestoes... as a "real" architect, i get quite irritated to see this increasing trend.

why are we here? we arrive on this tiny speck of dirt called earth, study, work, fornicate, reproduce, hate, worry, love, fight, teach, achieve, learn, dream, and just when we get all puffed up about our own importance, we die. what is the point of all this? how different can you really make your life? it's all so ...ummm...boring! u know, what i mean?

for instance, why am i so singularly unecstatic about having fulfilled my life's dream of becoming a diplomat? after all, there are lakhs of people who would die (and kill) for what i've achieved...then why don't i feel that overwhelming sense of achievement that everybody assumes i should feel? every day i wake up trying to whip up some enthusiasm, reminding myself of all the times as a child that i had replied 'IFS' to the question of what i wanted to be in life (never IAS, mind you :-) ) but to no avail...