BANKING ON MISTRUST

Co-operative banks in and around Hyderabad have been falling like ninepins of late. And they have taken down with them, the aspirations and secure future of many depositors who just wanted a few bucks more by way of interest.

My neighbor, a senior citizen, resides alone in the apartment next door.

A frazzled old man, he looks more like a mummy that came back to life.

The other day, he roused me out of my sleep by ringing the bell at 6:00 a.m.

Gummy-eyed and sleep weary, I answered his call.

He staggered in on his walking stick and requested for a chair (in a tone that was nothing less than demanding.)

I offered him a chair.

He handed me two sheets of scrawling handwriting that the best handwriting analyst could not decipher.

"This is a confidential matter. Regarding XXX Bank that has just gone bust. I had some money in it. I lost it all. I am now sending this application to the Honorable High
Court of Andhra Pradesh. For God's sake, please get this letter typed for me. I want four copies of it. And please do keep the matter confidential."

And with that, he bought his shivering palms together in a reverential salute and hobbled back to his apartment.

I did not bother reading the letter until the evening when I actually began typing it.

It was tragic in a comical sort of way. Words poured out in a style that was reminiscent of the British Raj. Words that made the right sounds but had the wrong grammar. Insufficient and sometimes incoherent words in an alien language. Words that were the only means of communication of a man trapped.

Read the letter yourself:

LETTER BEGINS:
To
The Chief Justice,
The Andhra Pradesh High Court,
Hyderabad,
Andhra Pradesh.

Sub: Daylight cheating of the public by the co-operative banks in Hyderabad city and around. A special prayer for justice.

Dear Sir,

I am a senior citizen aged 78 years. I am an unfortunate depositor of XXX Bank Begumpet Branch, Hyderabad for a short period of 91 days which is meant for medical purposes only in view. These deposits are to the extent of One Lakh in 10 pieces of 10,000/- and odd each. Three have matured already on 23/3/03 and the remaining seven are due to mature on 27/5/03. I was out of station from 4/3/03 and back on 15/3/03. By the time I returned, the unexpected turmoil of XXX going into bankruptcy has come to light.

My health which is already in a bad state has become worse and I developed gall bladder stones as per the medical reports from NIMS Hospital, Hyderabad received on 6/04/03 with instructions to go in for operation forthwith. But due to financial circumstances, I could not admit myself in the hospital.

On the working day of XXX Bank, i.e, on 8/4/03, I approached the Manager and shown all the papers indicating my medical position and emergency of the situation. The Manager has coolly forwarded all the papers to their Head Office and nothing is heard so far. If the operation do not take place at least within a period of ten days, my health will be in a precarious state.

As per newspaper reports are the XXX Bank Directors and their relatives and in some cases, their car drivers are the main loan takers to the tune of Rs. 53 Crores or so. All these transaction took place under very nose of the RBI and Registrar of Co-operative Societies.

Unless the Honorable Court comes to our rescue there is every likelihood of going to the brink of death in view of poor health in old age and the urgently due operation to be performed on my body for gall bladder stones.

I am enclosing herewith the Xerox copies of the NIMS Hospital card of pages, xerox copies of the deposit receipts and some Xerox copies of some Eenadu Newspapers indicating the duties of the Reserve Bank of India.

In view of the above precarious circumstances in which I have been (there may be number of others also of the same position) put, I implore the Honorable High Court to be kind enough to assume suo moto jurisdiction and arrange for payment of dues from XXX Bank, Begumpet Branch to save us from death.

The lapses are there on the part of the Bank Directors, the RBI and the Registrar of Co-operative Societies are multiplied by throwing aside the Narasimha Murthy Commission Report since the last 6 and odd months without looking into recommendations made therein to avoid such white-collar thefts and to wake up the state government from deep slumber.

Kindly save me from the turmoil please.
LETTER ENDS.

ON FORM AND CONCEPT…
Yesterday we initiated a small discussion on Form and Concept. It all began with a reply to an email that exhorted the good folks at Trina (yes, us) to dress in white to protest war. White, it was reasoned, stood for peace and dressing in white therefore was tantamount to protesting war.

A couple of us (Sanjeev and me) questioned the adoption of the same Form for multiple Concepts. (Dress up in blue for Cricket, dress up in white to protest war...Are we adopting the same response to both these issues?)

Bhavani (Naik) contributed to our questioning by stating “the Form is only a reflection/expression of the true intentions which is the Concept... Compare it to praying and you would realize that the ‘Idol’ (Form) you pray to is not as relevant as the real devotion (Concept) you carry with it. So adopting the same response to multiple issues would not be all that irrelevant.”

CONFUSION…
(I am confused about the Form-Intention-Concept axis, so I’ll respond to that later…)

Instead, let me take a step back and explain the rationale for questioning the adoption of "dressing in white" as a means of protest.

ON FRIDAY DRESSING…
Every Friday (rather, on most Fridays) we have a Theme Dressing event in our office. I do not know if my opinion will be contested if I state that the Theme Dressing event has traditionally been a "casual and fun affair". So much so, that we await with anticipation Monika's next piece of creative ingenuity (Here I should confess that rarely has she let us down!)

WHAT IS PEACE?
Now back to our "Peace" issue (Imagine Peace becoming an "issue", where are we heading to?!)

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Fourth Edition) defines 'Peace' as the following:
·The absence of war or other hostilities.
·An agreement or a treaty to end hostilities.
·Freedom from quarrels and disagreement; harmonious relations
·Public security and order
·Inner contentment; serenity
·In a state of tranquillity; serene
·Free from strife

MY TAKE ON PEACE…
Now let me add another "experiential" angle to "Peace".

To me: Peace is the non-transgression of my routine.

Ponder a little bit on this and I am sure most of you might feel this way too.

(Non-transgression of routine - boy, does that sound intellectual!)

Actually, it’s much simpler.

My life is ordered as a routine. It is partly the “Wake up: 6:00 am”, “Perform Breathing Exercises: 6:45 am” kind of a routine, but at a larger level it is also that I have a daily, weekly and monthly routine that I do not like varying too much. For example, I’d want to go back home every night and find my apartment intact and un-ransacked. During weekends, I do not want the routine of reading the newspaper supplements shaken or stirred.

My routine is an amalgamation of my biological clock and the propensities I have built over 25 years of lifetime. I take comfort in that routine. And when that routine gets shaken or stirred beyond a level, it’s a bit difficult to digest – like the morning a few years back when I woke up to realize that the friend I had seen off the previous evening at the bus station had met with an accident and had had her right arm amputated.

YOU HAVE A “ROUTINE” TOO…
Think of what your “routine” is and very soon you will start seeing it - the levels of predictability you’d like to see in your life and the limit to which such routines can be disturbed. The day your “routine is transgressed beyond a tolerable limit” you’d lose your “peace.”

Peace in a sense is maintaining the “status quo” of (y)our existence.

WAR AND THE FRIDAY THEME DRESSING – THE MISFIT AS I SEE IT
Let me make the move from “Status Quo/Peace/Routine” to “Form and Concept”.

It is within the state of our (Trina’s) “routine” that we situate the “Friday Theme Dressing”. It’s a routine that is casual and fun.

War is neither casual nor fun (though it can be foisted on a nation casually and for funny reasons, but that’s another matter).

By bringing the issue of “war” into the ambit of “status quo/routine/peace” I believe that we are actually extending the “status quo” of our “peaceful existence” to an unjust war. We are accepting war to be a daily reality –a routine- and making peace with it. In effect, we are paling a serious war into an insignificance that is casual and fun.

Also, by applying the same Form (Last Week: Wear blue to support the men in blue, This Week: Wear white to protest war, Next Week: Wear some other color to celebrate/protest something else) to different Events/Concepts, we are reducing history to fleeting granular events – like most of the news channels do. (How many of us know that for a week now, the fiercest of fighting has been going on in Afghanistan to eliminate regrouping and dispersing Al Qaida elements? This operation has been dubbed Operation Anaconda. Many of us do not because Afghanistan is not newsworthy - now that the same B-52s that bombed Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom are pounding Baghdad (Operation Iraqi Freedom!)

The hottest current event is Iraq and we empathize with Iraq/Protest War/Hope for Peace (or all of the above) by dressing in white for a fleeting 8 hours. As we move on to celebrate/protest something else next week, what happens to Iraq?

IN SUPPORT OF FLEETING/GRANULAR EMPATHY…
Sunil has an interesting point. “Isn’t it a good thing that we are able to empathize with Iraq/Protest War/Hope for Peace at least at this level of granularity?” asks he. Surely, something is better than nothing. But my counter-point to him would be: Are we fully aware why we are embracing a fleeting/granular mode of empathy? (One might embrace a fleeting/granular mode of empathy because one might be impotent to do anything more.) If the answer is yes, I agree that this fleeting mode of empathy (the Friday Theme Dressing) is a correct Form of protest.

FLEETING MOMENTS AND WHAT IF…
What if MK Gandhi had for a fleeting 8 hours practiced sathyagraha and then forgotten all about it? What if Bismark had fought just one skirmish on the Austrian border and hung up his boots? What if Sachin Tendulkar had decided he was content with the 657 (more or less) run partnership he had with buddy Vinod Kambli while playing for the Sharadashram School? What if Navjot Siddhu had just one one-liner?

What if our lives take on the fleeting language and the grammar of the hypertext?

What if we let things move on so fast that we don’t create or bequeath any history to succeeding generations?

What if things got so fleeting that they don’t register in human consciousness?

What if…

This is an email, I sent out last week to my colleagues at Trina:

In today's Value Session, I'd like you to hear me out for a minute.

I am going to talk on the "value of money".

Money is really valuable...that's why they keep it in vaults.

Have you ever seen money being swept aside like waste paper on the roadside by MCH sweepers?

That's because money is valuable and all the money on earth is stashed away in the vaults or in your wallet. (At the time of writing this, I have very little in my wallet, so that's why I am saying "stashed away in your wallet").

How can you save money? You can save money for example, by switching off the lights before you go home.

AP TRANSCO does not charge you for electricity not consumed. If they do, you can always prove that the meter is faulty and claim a refund!

When you switch off the lights (and the fans, and the ACs) before you are off for the day, you consume less power.

This power can be used at the operating theaters of the hospitals to save lives, it can work the neighborhood traffic signals (I am so afraid of dying a horrible death at the wheels of unruly drivers at unmanned signals); so by switching off electricity when not needed, YOU are actually saving MY life.

When you switch off the power before leaving for home, the money saved because of the unconsumed power can be used to buy us all some chilled "nimboo paani" for the summer.

When you switch off the power before leaving for home, the unconsumed power could help some little boy in a big slum to do his homework before the next day. Haven't you seen in the arty-farty movies that slum boys have only kerosene lamps at home? (Ugh! What a stink they raise!)

When you switch off the power before leaving for home, the unconsumed power could help you watch the live action of the 8th ICC World Cup on Sony MAX (including Mandira Bedi's expert commentary). On the contrary, if you waste too much power in the office, imagine what could happen...(you'd be forced to watch the World Cup in candle light!)

Remember (Navjot Siddhu utters the word 'remember' so elegantly) my dear friend, sometimes, all that does not glitter is GOLD, especially the darkness in the office because of switched-off power.

Go for GOLD. Save money. Switch off.

39 Degree Celcius on the outside...

Welcome to the great Indian summer !

When the dust rises from the macadamized roads vapor-like and settles as a second skin on you.
When water -not just Aquafina- becomes the purest part of you.
When the flies buzz around your ears singing that opera tune you have always wanted so badly to name.
When the afternoons invite you to have a siesta.
When the water in the bucket is never cold enough.
When copious quantities of iced lemonade fail to quench your thirst.
When the evenings begin at night – you don’t want to venture out for the fear of the heat.
When the stars shine placidly in the night skies.
When the sudden smell of fresh earth from afar creates an intense craving for big cold drops of rain to splatter on the nape of your neck and run down your spine.
When sweat mingles with sweat (yuck!) to keep physical camaraderie at bay.
When the parched earth cracks up just like your lips do.
When spilt water disappears into the bowels of earth like a pebble dropped in a lake.
When the mirages in the afternoon heat tease you to find water if you can…before you pass out of a heat stroke.
When life slows down and sometimes even halts.
When the yellows and oranges and the sky blues suddenly take a magical charm.
When watermelons seem like the best food on earth.
When sunrises lose their innocence by noon.
When sunsets are truly a joy to watch.
When sunflowers seem to narrate an epic poem...

When the going gets tough...
When we begin to understand how tough we really are...

Its 39 Degree Celcius on the outside.

If you are ever in need of good quotations and feel these fit the bill, please do not hesitate to use them. Just attribute them to me - Rajeev Balakrishnan, circa 2002.

1) You can't build a Las Vegas out of every desert.
2) When in a desert, never trust your map totally. Your cartographer could have marked a mirage, an oasis.

Three weeks ago I visited Kolkata (a business trip) for the first time. I had an evening all to myself and Saurabh, a colleague from the Kolkata office of my company offered to give me a whirlwind tour of the city. So off we set out in his Maruti car.

Kolkata, Calcutta renamed – the city that saw the rise to sainthood of Mother Teresa, the city that has become the citadel of the democratically elected Left Government, a city that was once the capital of undivided India and the jewel of the East, a city immortalized in Dominic Lapierre’s “The City of Joy”.

Today Kolkata is a gray city - a city that could do with a splash of color. The houses sport a resigned gray, industries sport a sooty gray; vehicles, roadside dwellers and urchins sport a grimy gray and the air - a smoky gray. Trams trudge along gray with the weight of tradition, buses speed along gray from dirt and the Howrah Bridge (Rabindra Setu for the Kolkatans) swings suspended – gray from neglect. The metro zooms on under the ground from Tollygunge to Dum Dum, gray with the weight of thousands of commuters while the Hooghly meanders slowly along gray from pollution.

In the dingy gray rooms of the brothel district of Sonagatchi, men achieve paid-for gray orgasms as a gray sky seeps in through rusted and dust enveloped gray windows. Outside, more working class men and well-off men jostle shoulder-to-shoulder waiting for the whores to come out and accept them in. The long night shift continues. On the roads beautiful young women -white skinned, wide-eyed and garishly made-up- stand provocatively, a glimpse of the midriff or a peek of the navel showing, their dark gray eyes hiding stories untold. Vehicles slow down and pulse rates go up as a multitude of traveling men instinctively hit the brakes and indulge in a minute or two of unrestrained and unpaid for voyeurism. The demo works on some and brakes are applied while others accelerate on.

I travel past the city’s monuments – the Salt Lake Stadium, the Victoria Memorial (gray from switched-off night lights), the Eden Gardens Stadium (men work on into the gray night renovating the cricket stadium), the General Post Office (resplendent and white even on a gray night), the Writer’s Building (not many security personnel around), the Governor’s Residence, the Howrah Bridge, the Howrah Railway Station and the boat jetties.

On my way back to the city, we stop over the Howrah Bridge as the heavy traffic slows down and comes to a standstill. As the Maruti slows down to a halt, I can feel a gentle, rocking, up-and-down motion as the bridge suspended between 2 giant pylons and stretched like a tight spring coils under the weight of thousands of passing vehicles with their cargo – human and otherwise. I see majestic warehouses from the days of the British gray (decaying plaster) and grand red (exposed bricks) – cast iron name boards still standing.

We park our car near outside the Girish Park Metro station and take the local Metro train to Esplanade – the heart of Kolkata. The betki pathoori (betki fish steam cooked in banana leaves with green mustard sauce) and the traditional Bengali "maha bhoj" we have at Aheli - a Bengali restaurant, are pure manna from the heavens. We take the Metro back from Esplanade to Girish Park to retrieve our car. We retrieve our car and travel homewards.

I soon reach the residential districts of Salt Lake City. The night air cuts my face from a small crack in the rolled up windows of the car. I snuggle deeper into the warmth of my jacket.

Kolkata moves on. Graying into history. Women bargain for luscious looking oranges on grimy gray pavements. A group of folk artists perform a mythological on the roadside to an audience a dozen strong as passing vehicles spew smoke on the scene to give it a Bollywoodian fantasy effect. Vehicles pass into the hazy cold night disappearing from view into the smog.

Kolkata moves on…graying into history…

A couple of days back I was online chatting with Amy Melnicsak, Director of Instructional Design at DigitalThink Inc. A very warm person, she is one of those who can put you at ease completely and disarm you. Cultural differences melt instantly and you talk things that you would otherwise not talk to a "foreigner".

I had just reached office and was checking mails when Amy came online. I had received an e-mail presentation from a colleague in San Francisco and was discussing its contents with her. Three of my colleagues in the Instruction Design domain based in the US were making a presentation to the larger Learning Design Community about their experiences working with India (For many, it was a first time experience working in a distributed environment).

One of the points mentioned in the presentation spoke of “developing cultural sensitivities”. I told Amy, that the “cultural sensitivity” part is often over-rated. I told her though our religions, customs and rituals might sound/look/feel alien and weird to them, we really weren't alien to the global (American) culture. We devour just as much (if not more) of CNN and BBC as do the Americans (It is another thing, I told her that Americans get to know so little about the rest of the world). In the morning, we wake up as a "strange Indian Hindoo" with our myriad cultural eccentricities (as perceived by the West), moult to become a global worker communicating through the most advanced of modern technology. Then when the sun sinks into the western seas, we again moult to become the "strange Indian Hindoo". The emphasis on “cultural sensitivities” could therefore be a little toned down was my argument.

Amy asked me if it bothered me that global culture has become synonymous with American culture. I said that it did. What bothered me was not that American (global) culture was spreading, but that it spread by erasing other cultures. To placate me, Amy told me of a study that measured a few key parameters of performance of the US of A and found that in many a parameter, the United States was declining whereas countries like India, China, the Middle East and Brazil were showing small but significant improvements.

I told Amy that I held nothing against America and was perhaps more saddened that the middle and the upper class Indians were embracing an American lifestyle at the expense of our own culture. Coke, the cultural ambassador of American capitalism is a hit with the Indian youth, but Coke was never designed for India. An acidified (phosphoric acid) drink, Coke only throws the body's Ph factor out of sync and makes one feel thirsty. The naarial paani (tender coconut water) is the ideal Indian drink - nearly neutral in Ph and the best thirst quencher for the sub-tropical Indian climate. But very few like to hang around with a chopped tender coconut in hand. A Coke cup is flashier. This was the reason why globalization bothered me, I explained and added that I had been away from Coke and other MNC drinks for nearly 2 years to date.

This morning, I again came face to face with the issue of “cultural sensitivity” - I had posted 2 questions on http://www.straightdope.com - a site that purports to be "Fighting Ignorance since 1973 - It's taking longer than we thought”. My questions were:

(1) Which is the mountain depicted in the logo of Paramount Pictures?

(2) Why do women laugh hysterically?

The picture near the answer showed an Indian-like male (a version of the naked fakir) sitting stretched on a bed of nails and thinking about a mountain, while an Indian-like female - a gaon-ki-gori (minus her blouse) stood nearby doubling in laughter and slapping her thighs.




What bothered me was the representation of "Indian" - ill clad fakir/gaon-ki-gori types. The representation reeked of insensitivity and prejudice.

The point that the caricaturist obviously missed was - a person who had browsed the most-modern, most-liberating and most-enabling of human communication technology to send an e-mail (to an American site) had a right to expect better representation than being depicted as a semi-naked pagan.

Cultural-sensitivity is not about accepting “the other” as “the other”. It begins with accepting the “other” as “equal”.

If it still were the white man's burden to liberate the lot of the colored races from bondage - amen.

But begin by liberating us from the prejudiced representation of your visuals, of your thoughts, of your looks...

And when you begin to “sense”, “sensitivity” will follow.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/020104.html

When I was a well-known humor columnist of a little-known neighborhood, I used to give away imaginary awards every quarter. I used to call them the Oohscare and Crummy Awards.

I decided I would do the same this year too...in reminiscence of the year that went by...

I will begin with a couple and update with more...

The Time magazine, I hear is still debating about the face that should adorn its front cover as the "Person of the Year".

My choice is simple - Osama Bin Laden. And the first award for 2001 -THE NO GREAT SHEIKS AWARD- will go to Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar - the sheiks who shook the world.

My next award: The "ACCESSORIES-NOT-SHOWN-IN-THIS-PROGRAM-ARE-PART-OF-THE-STANDARD-EQUIPMENT-AWARD" goes to FTV...er...can't explain more about this award in this forum.

Watch out for more awards....

The "american establishment" is not synonymous with the Federal United States Government. The "american establishment" is a rather fantastic construction...more like the "Great American Dream". It is a collection of white americans (descendants of the early european settlers who wiped out most of the native indian population and practiced that one great act of human indignity - the slave trade) who believe that America has as its birthright - the right to be the sole superpower among the comity of nations.

The attack on the Parliament is a direct attack on the heart of the Indian democracy.




So did I say anything new from what the media has been tirelessly ranting the above line for more than 24 hours after the incident? Trust the media to elevate an average line to a cliche. We all know that the attack on an institution of the State is an attack on Statehood itself. So we, the common folks with more common wisdom then our ruling (and opposing) netas and babus don't need to be told that "The attack on the Parliament is a direct attack on the heart of the Indian democracy."

Ask any kid on the Kaun Banega Crorepati-Junior:

What do you classify the attack on the Indian Parliament on the 13th of December 2001 as?
a) Attack on the Parliament building
b) Attack on the ruling (and opposing) netas and babus
c) Attack on Mother India
d) Attack on you and me

Aap ke paas koi bhi lifeline baaki nahi hain kyon ki aataankwaadiyon ke paas hain AK-47 assault rifles. (Excuse the Hindi but I am the son of a certain Mr Pallath Balakrishnan, a malayali from Kerala down south and not the son of Harvansh Rai Bachchan. So I have a right to speak screwed-up Hindi...)

Anyway, the kid will ask Computerji to lock "d) Attack on you and me" as the correct answer. And correct he will be.

For starters, more than half the MPs in the Indian Parliament have criminal and corruption cases pending against them. I don't care if the terrorists bump off those the courts couldn't. Unfortunately, here the terrorists failed. The result: innocent security persons fought valiently to repulse the suicide attack and martyred their lives to save scum.

The scum came out after the firing and instead of thanking the Government and the security apparatus for having saved their lives screamed "Security lapse".

Now I wonder how many of us have been watching the media intently for pictures and news. From a glance it was clear that the outer perimeter of the so called 5-ring security perimeter was very poorly armed. It was manned mostly by constables of the Delhi Police. Given the situation, the fact that a constable of the Delhi Police actually managed to close the main gate and rush away to raise an alarm and a lady constable tried to stop the intruding car (and was in the process shot dead) are deeds that merit the PVC (Param Vir Chakra) - the highest military award for gallantry beyond the call of duty (I feel policemen who die in the line of duty protecting the Parliament during a war-like situation --remember the terrorists were alien nationals; the attack therefore could be termed an invasion or war-- deserve the same medals of gallantry presented to the armed forces.). Newspapers, television channels and websites showed pictures of policemen with antique .303 Enfield rifles crouching behind trees and taking positions. Now, let me tell the scum that screamed "Security lapse" after the attack, that if you were a policeman with an .303 Enfield (or worse - the ubiquitous lathi), you are plain doomed. Before you can insert a cartridge into the rifle, cock it and fire, you would have been dead from automatic fire from the best assault rifle on earth - the AK-47.

Let the scum of the Parliament (who shout "Security lapse" after such incidents) realise that it is WE the common folk with our infinite common wisdom who elect them to the pinnacles of power. Let them realise that it was not their lives that were being targetted in the fidayeen attack, but the lives of common folk like you and me that was being symbolically threatened. The message was simple: We can strike terror where we want and when we want to. And what better way than to hit the Parliament complex itself to prove the point. Let not the scum assume that we elected our netas without understanding what we expect of them. Personal security is the most fundamental of our concerns.

Internal party wrangling, corruption, scandals and plain inefficiency - netas know little else than these today. Let them beware that we the common folk are losing patience. If they do not reform their wayward ways and return to the art of governance...we the citizens of this soverign nation might have to accomplish what the terrorists yesterday failed to achieve - to ensure our own safety...

Jai Hind.

Angel Eyes

Last weekend I watched this movie - Angel Eyes. It starred Jeniffer Lopez in it. And a few not-so-popular actors. The story is about a tough no-nonsense Chicago Police Department cop - Sharon, whose riveting eyes and persistant in-the-ear shouting helps save the life of "Catch" - a car crash victim whose life is ebbing fast. Catch takes a fancy for Sharon and follows her around worshipping her like an angel...from a distance. When Sharon is fired at by mobsters Catch jumps in to save her life. Then starts a tale of intrigue as Catch is caught in a "Catch 22" situation - falling in love with Sharon and yet not willing to open himself to her completely.

Sharon finds out that Catch is suffering from severe post-traumatic stress blaming himself for the violent death of his wife and kid in the same car crash that he survived. He then begins living the life of a recluse in a dilapidated apartment shuddering at the thought of going back to his old home - the site of many a pleasant memory.

Sharon herself has had a traumatic past, having called the police into her house (as a child) when her mother is abused by her father. But Sharon tries to exorcise the ghosts of her past and even shows signs of succeeding while Catch just sinks deeper and deeper into a self-invented morass of depression with every passing day.

How Sharon confronts Catch with his past and manages to get Catch's life back on rails (and lands her "Catch") forms the rest of the story.

The cinematography deserves special mention - the subtle monochromatic blues blended well with Sharon's and Catch's personal blues. The lights of the city (shown most often out-of-focus and in the background) created the sense of a world alive and exhuberant and yet closed to two individuals.

Jeniffer Lopez looks too stunning to be a tough cop - but manages to pull off a decent portrayal. Glimpses of "Jeniffer Low Piece" was definitely paisa vasool. Her brief appearance in a brief, black, 2-piece bikni had the collective male-dils maangofying for more.

In all, the movie "revealed Jeniffer Low Piece" at her "bust"...

Reflections after my visit to the fort of Golconda.

(This was brief I had prepared for a photo-exhibition on Golconda. The shoot happened but the exhibition never did...)

If stones can be called cold, cut stones that raise the looming and seemingly monolith structures called forts could be called coldly calculative. Yes, calculative of a desire to raise dynasties, calculative of a desire to survive against overwhelming odds and invading hordes, calculative about land, water, resources, produces, taxes, the throne, vesting power, divesting power, revolution, of conspiracy, greed, pain, joy, love, hate, murder, birth, death, void…

The cold stones never know their transition to 'coldly calculative'.

But yes, they play their part…in history…in time…in space…in destiny…

The stones still stand. Another revolution in the making??? Nay, implausible. Cold stones don’t spark revolutions. Coldly calculative ideas do.

The stones still stand…Well, almost. The sealing between the well-hewn stones are slowly disintegrating. The ants are building a modern transportation system. The next time you lean on those walls, watch it! You could topple over. The stones – they are crumbling.

On a gloomy Sunday morning weeks ago –when the faithful went to the mass, when the slothful slept through the remnants of the Saturday night that was- we set out to freeze in time, the fort of Golconda.

We saw all the way we saw. We saw some the way we wanted to see. What we saw the way we wanted to see, we wish you to see.

Look… Do you see? No?

Look again! Do you now see?

The stones; they tell a story - in their silence, in their age, in their decadence. Your names –the graffiti on those walls- they never can, they never will.

Look and ye shall see…
Seek and ye shall find…

The stones have a story to tell.
The stones have a life to share.
There is wisdom in these stones…

I was once violated...and this is my story...

Around me is a sea of greenery. Lush green paddy fields, coconut groves swaying in the early morning breeze and banana plantations. As I stand in the chest deep water of the small pond, I can see a collage of greenery rippling in the dark but crystal clear water. The dawn is breaking, but I still cannot see the sun on the reddish eastern horizon.

Perfect time for an early morning bath. Especially so for a city dweller like me accustomed to standing under a shower in the closed confines of 4 walls. I take a deep breath and plunge into the water. I stay there till my lungs begin to feel tight and my face swells in pain. I pull up to the surface of the water and let the air in my lungs out in huge gasps. Ripples originate and spread all around me in the pond. I use fresh green coconut coir and begin to scrub myself. Taking another deep breath, I plunge once more and come up again. My skin feels incredibly fresh and smooth after the coir scrub. I wait for the water to flow off my hair and over my eyes.

As I open my eyes, I stare directly into another pair of eyes – black eyes, staring eyes, cold eyes, unforgiving eyes. Instinctively, I step backward into deeper water. The water now touches my chin.

But his eyes never look away. They are still riveted on me. Black eyes, staring eyes, cold eyes, unforgiving eyes. I do not enjoy my bath anymore. I wash my hair quickly in the water by plunging into the pond a few more times. Every time I come up to the surface, I look around me half expecting him to stand beside me and stare with his black, cold, unforgiving eyes.

But he still sits at his position. On a rock just on the water’s edge, waiting for me to walk out of the water. The dawn seems unusually slow in breaking this morning. The eastern horizon is still reddish.

I look around in desperation. Can I escape to safety from the pond? Not a soul in sight. I walk to the water’s edge a little away from where he sits and get behind the tall rocks where I have placed my clothes. I soon get into my bathrobe, step into my bathroom slippers and take the towel in my hands. I begin to walk slowly and carefully.

He still sits there on the rock. Watching my movements. I have to get past him safely to reach the road. His eyes track my steps. As I get closer to his rock, I realize that he has slowly begun to rise. My body trembles in fear but I walk on. It’s now or never. His black, staring, cold, unforgiving eyes still follow me and his lips part to reveal a sardonic grin. As I begin to pass the rock, I can see the muscles of his neck tighten. His eyes gleam. His lips curl and his stained teeth still grin at me sardonically.

I stand frozen hypnotic by this macabre spectre. At that very moment, he leaps on me and grabs my robe…

Shrill terror erupts from my throat….

Aieeeeeeeee…..the frog….the frog….the frog….

Its that time of the year when...

Didchya expect that I'm gonna talk about X'mas and the spirit of X'mas? You've missed the correct answer by a mile. It is that time of the year when theives, cat burglers and other assorted scumbags stalk the innocent citizens of the city. Yeah, burglary seems to be the hottest thing in town. Car wheels and stereos are being removed, houses are being broken into in broad daylight, shopkeepers are being relieved of their of their cash boxes and so forth. Last night was another of those nights when the power failed for a brief while. A gentleman who operates a PCO business was accosted by a "stranger in the dark" who asked to place a cell phone call to a nearby district (calls on cell phones are cheaper than on land lines). even before the poor shop owner knew what was happening, the stranger in the dark had dissolved into the darkness...with the cell phone.

A couple of weeks back, burglar(s) broke into our bachelor pad and decamped with considerable booty - a SONY video camcorder, a NIKON camera, a SONY walkman, 4 wrist watches and 160 USD in cash. Like all honest-to-god citizens, we filed complaints with the local police.

And what are the police doing? Well, their increasing waistlines might be a good pointer towards their proclivities. The police are doing what they do best - nothing. One begins with an initial complaint followed by a typed and signed letter detailing the personal effects lost. The SI and a documentation person then visit the scene of crime. You then pay back the respect by visiting the police station half a dozen times... to find the SI misSIng or assuring you in loud boasts that the culprits would be brought to the book. Result: You begin to believe that your personal effects have become things of the past.

The khakhi has many colors. You begin to realise those subtle yet covert hints at a "gift" to get your lost effects back. At first you find it incredulous. Then you begin to debate and weigh the pros and cons of bribing the police to get your personal effects back. Finally you decide its better to have been robbed once and lost than robbed twice and lost more. So hashed though the comparisons are, you take refugee in Hinduism and the Wolf - Hinduism for guiding the mind to move away from material pleasures and the Wolf for teaching us to say "The grapes are sour", when the grapes happen to be beyond our reach.

So I chant,

Video cameras are gadgets so uncool
SLR's are no fun either, you fool
Walkmen don't produce great sound
Japanese watches are not swadeshi, I've found
And lets resist American imperialism by saying NO to the Dollar ...and embrace instead, the Pound.

By George! Wasn't Bernard Shaw right when he said "Cricket is a game where 11 fools play and 11 thousand fools watch!". Maybe he was a wee bit wrong - should have been 11 million fools instead. This issue of suspending half the Indian Cricket Team has evoked responses ranging from indignation to colorful language. Being the man of peace that I am, I don't subscribe to either. My raised left middle finger is my rather subdued reaction.

The episode of Deness the Menace, is just another in a long line of similar episodes. If you are a white cricketer or even a black man in a white team, you can get away with just about anything. But if you are a brownskin or a blackskin, then my colored cousin, you better discard those whites and clothe yourself in sheepskin. For only toughened hide can keep those abusive slurs from getting to you.

So the Indians bought the game into disrepute - thatz the charge. Mike Deness suspended 6 members of a 11 member international cricket team for probably the first time in the history of the sport. Wonder who brought disrepute to the game. And whatz with this freaking concept of excessive appealing and putting umpires under pressure? Well, is that exactly not what the umpires are paid for - working under pressure? Should an umpire wilt or succumb to pressure if the bowler or the fielders over-appeal? Conversely, would an umpire refuse to raise his finger if the bowler decides not to appeal?

And does the ICC ever think of the immense pressure that players are subjected to while playing in pressure-cooker type cauldrons of stadia - under lights, tens of thousands of spectators, television cameras and millions of TV viewing eyes. Will the stadia be closed down and television cameras banned? Will the game be played in sterile environs so the players do not feel the pressure? The ICC wants the wealth that the spectators and the television audience brings but is not willing to evolve and grow with the changes that the game is undergoing. The players have to face the pressure so ICC can grow into a fat pig but the umpires always want to officiate only in the Garden of Eden.

Lets get this right. Agreed, cricket is a gentleman's game. But cricket is also fast turning professional. When the going gets professional, the competitive get going. And there is no competition without aggression. So the appeals will only get more and more vociferous and the gestures violent. The ICC, the umpires and the match referees need to learn to evolve with the game. Gone are the days when quaint victorian ladies in frilly white cotton long gowns and white parasols watched the game from under the clubhouse sipping copious quanities of iced lemonade.

And let them all remember who have slighted India in the past few days - we have the biggest money, muscle, talent and the audience for the game. No India, no cricket. Revenues in Sharjah plummetted this year as India pulled out of the tournament. The last world cup in England was fed by the money that cricket-worshpping Indians spent in buying tickets. Lemme say this again - No India, no cricket. So before you suspend half the Indian team Mr. Deness, remember you might not receive that fat paycheck next month if you suspend Indians this week. What goes around, comes around.

Another point: He is hailed as not just the greatest batsman in both versions of contemporary world cricket, but Sachin Tendulkar is also endowed with a shrewd cricketing brain. In his nearly-decade-long experience, his image has not for once been tarnished. Not for match fixing (that claimed many a holy-cow - including white cows), not for sledging, not for gesturing and definitely not for ball tampering. And does Mike Deness really believe that Sachin would be so careless as to lift/pick the seam of the ball under the glare of the cameras? Did anyone ever care to check if he did have fingernails to pick the seam? Batsmen and bowlers cannot afford to grow fingernails. A lightening delivery on finger tips with long nails (even if protected by a pair of gloves) could put a batsman out of action for weeks. So with bowlers. Ever tried fast bowling with long fingernails or even the "mixed-bag" that Sachin normally bowls? You can't bowl with long fingernails Mr. Deness... not unless you happen to be a stunning broad - you can then bowl over, maybe.