Ego cogito, ergo sum

Demeter, the Olympian goddess of harvest and climate, is known to act in extremes, at times her benevolence knows no bounds and so does her wrath. Probably, the climate nowadays seems to be going along with the whims of the ancient Greek goddess. Suddenly, there is a flash-storm in Philippines, an earthquake in Haiti, hurricane in Florida, unbelievable snowfall across Europe and now the east coast of the US. The whims of Demeter seem to be dictating the climes now.

And she isn’t the only one whimsical around. The climate-wallahs or more appropriately the climate change-wallahs seem to be more whimsical thanDemeter and with passage of each day they seem to turning ridiculous as well.  Savour this, not such a long-time ago, there was a large looming question mark over our very existence, every action from the computers we run to the farts of the cows (they are a big cause, by the way) were dubbed as detrimental to our environment and hence our health as well. The climate seers while predicting doom, also prescribed big sacrifices from all, from what we eat to how we commute. Read more…

Let me first make an honest confession, I am a great fan of yours and your work. Even though, I cannot imagine ever being able to own a Husain piece (and so do probably 99.99999 crores of Indians), yet there is an unknownaffinity that pulls us to your canvass or any piece that you touch including tablecloths, handkerchiefs and even walls. Probably, it was exclusivity of your work that made it so valuable to us. Sotheby used to auction your work for millions of Dollah. I well remember there was this industrialist that had commissioned a hundred paintings from you for some Rs. 100 crore. Now, it is not every day that a painter gets that kind of money, do they? We all Indians were awed and intimidated by your paintings, even if those stark and blurry figurines did not make any sense.

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At some point in time in our cyber lives, each one of us has encountered the Nigerian 419 mail. Namely, a mail that comes from some old bank employee or a widow, that promises huge sums to the gullible fool that does not dump the mail into the trash bin.

The scamsters, which in spite of their rather mundane modus-operandi, are pretty much successful and account for millions of dollars in fraud each year. One of the reasons behind their high success rate, is their adaptability. So when the US invaded Iraq, their were lot of messages coming from the Baath Party, or even from Afghanistan. The Nigerians are pretty well aware and out there to con you.

So, when my friend Nelson Johnny sent me a forward from Mrs. Radha Ramalinga, I was much amused. The text was strikingly similar to the Nigerian 419 scams. The same bait, the same hook and the same story. Some preliminary Googling on Radha Ramalinga revealed that the con mail has been around for some time, with many people reporting about the same. Also the fact that Mrs Ramalinga is a real person, was another interesting bit.

Somehow, I feel this mail did not originate from a cyber cafe in Lagos, but some where in Ulhas Nagar in India. The look and feel of the same give a very ‘Indian’ touch to the mail. Though on closer inspection one finds that the Namaste spelling is incorrect and there are quite a few typos, namely no space after comma. Also, the mail id provided for future interaction is slightly different from the one the message originates from.

Nonetheless, I have high regards for Ramalinga Raju as a con artist, his corporate swindling should be studied like a case study. In fact, I had written a piece on it earlier, “Why demonise Raju?” (http://shashwatdc.com/2009/01/why-demonise-raju/). And now receiving a con mail fron someone purporting to be his sister-in-law, I really felt good (though I need to thank Nelson, but whatever).

So, if you have been unlucky till now in receiving the mail, here is a copy of it: Raju420. Read more…

‘The mountains are Vishnu’s bones, clouds are the hairs on his head, the air is his breathing, rivers are his veins, trees are the hairs of his body, the sun and the moon are his two eyes and the passage of day and night is the moving of his eyelids.’

- Rig Veda

From the time when I boarded an aircraft over a decade ago, have been fascinated by the sights that one comes across from the tiny glass pane up in the sky. It is nothing less than magical to see giant bridges turn into tiny dots, long railways transform into an micro-toy trains and looming sky scrapers mere indentures on the landscape. Even after scores of trips over the Indian map and other ones, I still take the window seat and keep peeping out, as if there is something else that might just come up. Or it could be someone as well, like say, God. After all doesn’t he (she or even it) lives in the heavens. I have been keeping a watch out for him as well, because looking beneath at the wonderful creation that more or less fits on my palm, my belief in his existence is reaffirmed.

To-date, my most memorable journey was the one I took from Mumbai to Newark, non-stop. The American Airlines plane, to cut the route short, flies over Asia and Europe to the North Pole and then descends over the American hemisphere via Canada. I spent hours peering out in the darkness of the North Pole, could somehow feel the chill of the immense block of ice and the moon kept me company in the vigil. The fact that almost a century and more back there were so many valiant explorers who were racing to the find the North Pole to plant a flag. So many perished in the endeavour and so many just disappeared. And here I was their descendant, flying over the Pole in the comfort of a cosy cabin munching on cashews and sipping wine.

Here is one such journey I made, albeit much shorter and in daylight: fromMumbai to Delhi, on Indigo Flt 6E382. As I was looking out of the window as usual, random thoughts kept popping into my mind (as usual again), with a small difference though, this time I had a pen and paper on which I could jot down whatever came to my mind. This post is a chronicle of the same mind that was travelling at 100s of Kms per hour. Here it goes:

• The captain makes an announcement; “Welcome onboard, we are flying at 37000 feet . The place is near Ahmadabad. It almost seems like am flying over the Indian map. Read more…

Yet, for all his desires to be away from the dust and grime of politics, he was destined for it. With the death of his brother Binda Thackeray in a car accident, his mother Meenatai in a cardiac arrest and relationship souring between Jaidev and senior Thackeray, his ageing father had no shoulder to lean on, except Uddhav’s. Though, there was indeed Uddhav’s cousin and Balasaheb’s nephew Raj, who had completely imbibed his uncle not only in the way he looked, but also the way he spoke, he thought and he reacted. Raj also had a keen business mind, and was not averse to using any means to achieve his ends. The Ramesh Kini murder case was an example, Raj was accused of threatening and subsequent murder of Ramesh Kini for a real estate deal. Raj over the years, under the aegis of Balasaheb had become the de-facto heir, whose anointment was just a matter of time. But destiny had other plans for him as well.

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Blood oozed out profusely through Neda Agha-Soltan’s nose and mouth, as lay dying on the pavement. Within seconds of it, her eyes rolled to one side, and it was evident that life was ebbing out of her. The 26 year old, had been shot apparently by government militiamen as she was proceeding to join a pro-democracy protest against the alleged fraudulent victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the Iranian. Neda’s sad end was captured on a mobile phone by one of the onlookers, and uploaded on Youtube on the same day, i.e. June 20th 2009.

Within a few hours the short video clip had been viewed by millions across the globe, and over the next few days Neda became an emblem or rather a martyr to the cause of ‘the Green Revolution’ in Iran. Numerous websites spawned up paying tributes to her, bloggers furtively wrote in her memory, even the mainstream medium joined in, with the video clip being shown on CNN, BBC, etc. In a quirky way, Neda became the first celebrity of the citizen journalism, a method wherein information is created, disseminated and consumed by the laymen and not by journalists working in the media.

Yet the concept of citizen or participatory journalism is not a novel one, it has been around for quite some years. With the mainstream media turning into a pamphleteer of the rich and powerful and doing little about mundane issues that really matter to the common man. A new street journalism that was essentially “by the people” began to flourish facilitated by the emergence of the Web earlier and mobile later. The Web was the catalyst for the movement, as individuals with a web-connection and a point-of-view could now broadcast the same to the world at large. The new world was now populated by bloggers and writers who were furtively punching in stories, uploading video clips, etc.

Some years back I had met Oh Yeon-Ho, the founder of one the most popular citizen journalist portal, Ohmynews. When, I expressed my reservations on how untrained individuals could be dubbed as journalist and expected to create news content, Yeon-Ho assured me that it was well possible and quite required because the conventional media completely ignored the common man. “This is the common man showing his thumb to the mammoth news organizations that think he does not matter,” he had joked. Indeed, the whole edifice on which the 4th estate rested, namely, a controlled medium and a controlled message, was the danger of being swamped away in the new world, in which the consumer was also the creator. Read more…

It has been 5 years since Hindi Film industry’s foremost villain, Amrish Puri left for the heavenly abode of Dongrila and Hindi films have never been the same again. He was the last ‘villain’ of Hindi movies and great one, by par. In these few years, his absence has been acutely felt by viewers of Hindi movies. The hero no more seems as heroic as he did in the past, simply because there is no villain who can tower over him. He was the epitome of villainy, who merely by his presence on-screen could repulse you or send a shiver down your spine. To be honest, he was the last of the great school of villains, that went long time into the past, having illustrious names like Pran, KN Singh, Kanhaiyalaal, Madan Puri, Amjad Khan, etc.

Let me illustrate this point with a personal example, sometime back while watching the film Ghazini, I realised the importance of a good villain in a film. Somehow, I could not sympathise with the character played by Aamir Khan, simply because the ‘bad guy’ did not seem to be menacing enough. He was bad alright, killing or maiming people like any other villains are expected to. But he was not evil, he was not sinister, he was not wicked. And therefore, the protagonist did not seem to be valiant and gallant. Now, imagine Amrish Puri in the role of Ghazini, the main villain and the contours change completely. Almost instinctively, you start to sympathise with hero even before the film starts that was the power of Amrish Puri.

The reason is fairly simple, unlike the West that tends to see the world in grey and color; we are brought up to see everything in Black and White. So, if it is not good, then it has to be bad, if not punya then paap. Even humans are bracketed into these slots, so if you are not a suputra (or suputri for that matter), you are definitely a kuputra (kuputri similarly). Our allegiance to the good is equally matched by our ambivalence of bad. And so we happily exist in this two-dimensional universe. Read more…

Little Sunflower

  Raising a kid is like working on an amazing job; there might be loads and loads of fun, but at the end it is a job nonetheless. The difference is that you don’t get paid (on the contrary, you have to do so) and there is never a break from this one, no PLs, CLs, or sick leaves. There is never a time when you stop being a parent, and being on the edge becomes a habit or so. Suddenly, dust, mites, cold, fever, mosquitoes, et al become your enemies, while crocin, colimex become the trusted friends.  

Are there any KRAs for the child rearing job? Of course, the difference being  that they are called as milestones. These milestones usually turn into an obsession for many parents, as they do not want their ward to lag early in life.  Read more…

Any batsmen worth his salt will tell you, that the most disconcerting and nerve-wrecking time at the crease is not when one opens the innings, but when the personal score is in the edgy 90s. More so, if it is 99; just a single required to cross over into the triple digit club of 100. Usually most falter that this very edge, even the mighty and so do the lowly. That’s the power of 100, it can daunt anyone. But, if you do manage to cross into the club. It is a indeed a very exhilarating experience. The feeling of being a centurion!

Thus, eversince I saw my Wordpress Dashboard tell me that I had 99 posts on this blog, I was stumped. It was a great a feeling to know that in spite of all the odds, the biggest one being my own laziness and tardiness, I have indeed managed to somehow keep this one venture of mine alive, when so many others have vanished in the realms of time.

So, when it dawned on me that, I too will be a centurion blogger, namely, who has written 100 odd posts, I was all caught up in thought. It took me many many days to decide on what would be that 100th post. Since, it was to be special, I thought that I’d indeed make it very special. So, I begin thinking over it, should it be my favorite published article – but then there aren’t many of them, or should it be an unpublished one – there are just so many of them. Should it be a feature, comment, short story, interview, etc. I just kept ruminating over it.

Every passing day, whenever I would find some free time on my hand I would think on that special 100th post. It almost took me a month before I realised that in the process of trying to make my post special, I was steadily returning to my old self, wherein there is much thought and little action. Like a bolt it hit me that the 100th post will not be special because of its structure or form, but simply because it is 100th. Nothing more and little else.

So this is my 100th post, and it kind of is an announcement of my committment to shashwatdc.com. Read more…