Well...Its the time for Panjim Feast!
Happy Deepavali
Its not your fault if you wonder what this photo has to do with Deepavali, a Goan Deepavali to be precise. Branded world-over for the beaches, coconut palms, feni, new year parties, IFFI and much more like casinos, cruises and churches, we did not have high expectations when we ventured out on the Deepavali-eve. "... the whole city transforms into a mela!", we had taken that tip of our friend lightly. It was close to 10 PM. But for the slightly extra crowd near the MG Road and the unusually long queues of cars at the petrol stations we did not find anything that told us what was in store - until we reached Fontainhas.
The thumps from a distant woofers pierced through our car doors as we gradually realised the empty road we had taken was no more. We were stranded in the middle of a traffic hiccup with a couple of cars and two-wheelers giving us company. No respite in sight; we got down. The woofers tried their best to shatter our ears. Waded the crowds and ... Woo!! What was that?! A well-lit, 30-foot massive four-armed dracula.. demon.. beast.. a combination of them was menacingly standing right in the middle of the road. Curled horns, dangerously black nails, shark teeth, bloody eyes. Huge loudspeakers were kept around. Tiny humans happily posed for cameras. Dozens danced around. But hello..tomorrow is Deepavali, are we not supposed to be bursting crackers and visiting temples? Well, for Goans this beast is Narakasur (the villain in memory of whose demise this festival is celebrated) and after such dances and merry, they burn down these demons before the dawn breaks and with that the evil is dead and Deepavali sets. Amusing! This was just one such beast we had seen that night; The narrow roads and wide streets were teeming with many of them. Each beast was unique in its own way. Some were painted fully green while a few were in violet, some resembled modern-day dinosaurs while a few looked like unfinished King Kongs, a few were almost-naked while others were royally clad, a few were gigantic and a few were baby-like, some demons were quite frightening while a few were really cute. Huge crowds migrated from one location to another to catch a glimpse of as many Narakasur as possible. Dancing. Enjoying.
No demon looked like any other. I heard that local groups took it like a prestige issue and wanted to out-perform each other in making these demons as creative and interesting (intimidating?). Even the local FM channels distributed prizes for the best Narakasur. Unluckily for us, the glooming rain clouds had made the organisers advance the competition. What should have culminated after the midnight was finished much earlier. Anyway still there were lots of interesting Narakasurs all over the place and one could not help but just sit back and wonder - how many more attractions will this tiny state offer?!
Robot Kaleidoscope
Superstar movie - first day. That is very special anywhere. To my utter surprise even the Panaji Inox was almost full for the 11:15PM Robot (not Endhiran).
Coming out at around 2:30 AM into Gandhi Jayanthi I find myself quite puzzled and disappointed. I miss Baasha (Tamil/1995/Suresh Krissna starring Rajni) and Indian (Tamil/1996/Shankar) days. No doubt Robot is a technological marvel and exhibits the homegrown talent in an impressive way yet and is definitely worth a watch.Hats off to Shankar and team for that...but wait a minute, where is the Superstar? Where is Indian Shankar?
Amidst a loose script, world-class graphics, the usual compulsions of an Indian commercial cinema and above all the huge responsibility of proving a point to the world - we lose the Superstar; And Shankar too. Superstar has done a very decent performance as Dr.Vasi and of course quite a great role as the robot Chitti. He has carried the movie skilfully and with ease. Superstar's acting talents are explored once again after a long time. Kudos! But soon the Superstar is engulfed in a maze of computer graphics to the extent that even I felt a little suffocated towards the climax that looked like a kaleidoscope where miniature toy Superstars in black goggles had replaced the usual broken pieces of colourful glass bangles. See it to believe it...King Kong, Anaconda, Godzilla, Globe, Cylinder, Spiral, Drilling bore...you name it you have it!
Director sir, your movies stand out for their taut scripts. (Thanks to the late writer Sujata too). Be it the all-time classic Indian or Muthalvan or the latest Sivaji the script plays a key role in your movies. Though thrilling at places like the hospital delivery sequence or the fire accident pages, Robot's screenplay is much below average and we know it from the "Not again!" murmurs for some songs. They just pop out of nowhere. Further, one vital ingredient in your usual movie recipe is the songs picturisation. Be it Chiku Bukku... (Gentleman, 1993) or Mukkala Mukabla (Kadhalan, 1994), Andankaka Kondakkaari (Anniyan, 2005) you have excelled in this arena. But here all the second half songs look the same with lots of people dressed up in aluminium foils dancing in a tech background. Even the song with full of Superstars was not exactly palatable.
And what was that mosquito sequence in name of humour? Comedy is another area where Shankar-Rajni had done really well so far...but now they seem to have dumped that. Karunas and Santhanam are used a little more than as props. It is a disaster.
Rajni is one of the best villians that Tamil cinema had ever-seen and the movie fails in the attempt to capitalise on that. Robot Rajni is a commendable performance by the Superstar but as you will see the technology and imagination that has run wild, take over from the Superstar. The movie as a whole could not give the high that motta boss Rajni gave in Sivaji in just about 30 minutes. I had that as the base level for Endhiran. I was asking for disappointment.
I liked the movie's plot and am just awed by the kind of efforts that has gone into making it. Robot will probably go down as a highly successful box-office piece and might make the world take a closer look at Tamil cinema, but when will the glorious days of Baasha or Indian return?
(PS: I guess the Tamil version will be a tad better with the Superstar's own voice)
U-Turn
It was a pleasure to drive down the four-lane NH7 from Madurai to Tirunelveli and then to the tip of India, Kanyakumari. The diesel Indica could not take us above 120kmph though the smooth road offered me the chance. I could experience a complete transformation of what was called a national highway a few years back. Now I get to race on the highways without any harm to anyone (including me), lots of huge trucks save a lot on fuel cost, journeys done by state bus corporations get slightly more comfortable, supply chain companies get to earn more on prompt deliveries, and a customer sitting in one corner of our huge country gets to buy what he wants, whenever he wants at a lower price. A big thanks to the prestigious NS-EW corridor of the National Highway Development Project. These highways will make a positive impact on our GDP figures as well. But wait...I could see a toll gate down the road that is going to take some 50 bucks from me. Well, there is nothing called a free lunch. I better pay up and continue my drive whizzing past the tree-bottom temples and dried-up river beds.
But someone reminded me that I was an honest tax payer; I had paid the road cess too for sometime, in addition to the road taxes I coughed up when I bought this car. Naturally I presumed that all my payments had gone into making these fine highways and it was our basic right to have a good road. Looks like I was wrong. These brand-new four lanes needed huge funds and the petty payments we made were obviously not enough...and of course, there is a host of areas like defence, law and order, education etc fighting for the money we gave. So there is this flashy parade of toll gates from time to time to break the monotony of the long drives and to remind us there is no free lunch. Fair enough.
One fine morning I wake up to see that I have gone almost bankrupt and all that I am left with is an old moped; In search of some job I drive down to the next city on the highway; I am stopped at the toll gate; I do not have anything to pay; I am not allowed to proceed further; I take a U-turn; I decide to take the old highway to the city, though not smooth, it is free for all.
Alas! The old road is no more. I have nowhere to go.
Who Won?
Scams are not new to us. Every other day the media exposes a major scam with grand levels of corruption. The news comes as a shock first, slowly takes the shape of frustration and helplessness and ends up with you playing with the TV remote to land up in some MTV Roadies or a movie. On the other hand it is but rare for us to come across people who, with sheer grit and against all odds, have done their bit to expose a scam. I came across two such individuals in the recent past. One is a male; The other a female. Both unassuming. Both have had their share of bitter days during their pursuit of the rotten eggs. One of them had worked with a very critical Central agency somewhere in the Eastern side of our country. A part of his job included monitoring the performance of a few topmost NGOs that were tied up to massive foreign funds from a few UN Agencies. Those of us who are even slightly familiar with the way the NGOs function can pretty well appreciate the fact that some of the NGOs/trusts give a tough competition to the Government when it comes to the level of corruption and siphoning of funds. Our man here, a novice then, was a little shaken when he stumbled upon a few facts that tended to expose the murky face of one of the most famous NGOs of our country.
Disbelievingly, at the same time being fair to his duty, he collected the dirty facts needed to seal the case. And as with any other important report, he did not trust anyone else while giving shape to all those evidences and facts he had painstakingly collected. He sat through the nights to stitch that solid report that had the potential to shatter the image of one of the "best" NGOs here. Now he needed the bosses - only the bosses and not any middlemen - to take note of the report. He did mail the report one of his trusted big bosses who takes his review. The big boss gave our man a pat on the back. She was not able to locate any gaps in the report. She had a great case. Our man had a good night's sleep.
A few days after an urgent meeting of the bigger bosses an order knocks our man's doors. He gets his air ticket booked to Srinagar. Calls up Movers 'n' Packers to find out if they operate out of J&K. Interestingly that Agency did not have any office in Srinagar at that time. Our man was to work out of a hotel room. As a consolation he was permitted to take some help from the state government when in need.
A few months later, the high-profile head of the NGO steals the headlines for winning some XYZ international award for some tremendous contribution at the grass root level.
A few more months later our man quits the job after landing himself in a better job - nothing new.
But leaves back a newly-built office in Srinagar!
Songs and Signs
During our initial days here we were forced to watch Hariyudan Naan (Roughly translated as With Hari) in Jaya TV. We do not have DTH in the guestrooms here and the local cable guy did not have any other Tamil channel. Only Jaya TV gave us good company and in addition to hitting upon many creatively boring programs, we luckily ended up watching this music contest-reality show on the weekends. The idea was the winner of the show would get a chance to work with Hariharan, one of the most versatile and successful singers around. How can one ever forget his “Uyire…” (Bombay/Tamil/1995) that foretold us he was here to stay; and stay at the top. Close to two decades after his arrival Hariharan’s distinctly pleasant voice continues to enthrall us till this day. There are two other eminent South Indian music composers in the jury with, of course, Hariharan taking the centre stage. All the songs are from Tamil movies. There are many contestants and many rounds of the contest. But that thing that sets this program apart is the comments the jury give after every contestant finishes singing. “Very good”, “You can improve a bit”, “You are not singing well”… these are some of the comments that do not find a place in this program usually. Rather the comments are highly pin-pointed and technical to the extent that I do not understand most of them. In many cases Hariharan even sings a line or two to drive home a point. It is lovely to listen to him. The other members of the jury are equally technical with their comments but rather extra-frank – just to help those young contestants blossom as great singers. The show has moved into its final stage where only the last twenty are left. These days I’ve realised music is as technical as chemical engineering or accountancy.
As a kid most of us have a fascination to give “autographs” or keep signing (scribbling?) in the last pages of our notebooks. This usually happens during the History classes or whenever one gets hold of a new pen. It kind of gives a kick. This liking to see one’s own signature in various styles and pen colours continues even during the college days. The “signature” also gets a new status when one opens the bank account for the first time. You try out various patterns of your signature till you hit upon the most impressive one and fix that one in your new bank account formalities. Some of us are known to relentlessly improvise our signatures and keep them contemporary with the changing times just like the way companies like Tata, Videocon have done with their logos. You can witness this stylish evolution of a signature if you pull out all your certificates from Class X to Graduation, Driving Licence, job offer letters, and the bank accounts opened, and arrange them in the time axis. As a kid I too have had a love affair with my signature. But with a difference. I have always had a plain vanilla signature – I just write down my name. Since the usual practice is to write down one’s name below the signature, I write down my name in CAPS just to differentiate it from my signature. At times, a few have even returned the forms to me saying that I have just written down my name while I was actually supposed to sign there. Nevertheless, my love with my autograph continued until May 21, 2010. That was the day I took charge as a Group A Officer in the income tax department. To begin with I had to sign in a specific form meant for people taking over a charge. It was just a single form, accompanied by 12 xerox copies of the same form! Initially there was a kick as it was the first time I was signing profusely with a green ink pen. Over the next 2-3 days I had already hit a century of autographs! Now I have married my childhood love of my autograph and I no more count the number of signatures I make in a day. Rather I have made a few amendments in my autograph systems and I only keep tab of the number of minutes I sign. For example, today I had to sign non-stop for close to 15 minutes. I recommend ADD Gel.
Old Colony
“Sir, before twenty five years I travelled for 18 hours by train and reached this place. I was doing the right thing at that time. Now my son travelled for 18 hours and got settled in a different continent. It was the right thing for him too.” One could feel pain in the voice of that intimidating, old gentleman who was explaining me about how he had started from scratch and made it big in real estate in Goa, why his son would not like to continue the ready-made, lucrative business here in India, and which ultimately made the old father quit all his projects and pass his sunset days without a sense of security; without his son nearby. He summed up his pain, anger and understanding, “Generation gap!”
The colony (I mean a kind of township, not to be confused with the Medieval times…British colony, French colony etc) where I come from, shares a similar episode. Essentially a middle-class, government servants’ area, the colony today is well-laid out with good roads, water supply, the long-route bus terminus nearby, and individual houses having dozens of coconut, mango and neem trees. The land was all but barren, lined by a metre-gauge railway track, dotted by a few palm trees and thorn bushes, in the outskirts of the city some three decades back. A cent was sold and bought for Rs.100. Today, to get that same one cent area you got to shell out more than Rs.1 Lakh! 1000-fold growth! But more importantly, in these thirty years all those government employees (mainly working with the state government, banks and the then glorious DoT) residing in the area had educated their children in one of those numerous good schools in the city, sent them to professional colleges, got their dreams of their kids working abroad fulfilled, and above all…crossed 58/60 years of age and got retired from their services.
Now most of their engineer sons and daughters are abroad, either they are working in some onsite projects or they have got settled there with their spouses and children. Most of the retired parents of the colony have PCs with a broadband connection and webcam to catch a glimpse of their grand children playing in one of the US coasts. All of them have quite comfortable bank balances, mainly due to the compensation received during retirement, including full leave encashment; also thanks to the remittances from their children. Not to mention they are sitting in lands worth a goldmine.
They plan out for a stay abroad for a couple of weeks, to help out their daughters set up a family, and are quickly back at the colony with loads of apparently jaw-dropping videshi stories for their neighbours, who in turn have their counter-stories, equally mesmerising, about their own abroad trips. Nobody here talks of “Generation gap”. All we get to hear is “Milk is very cheap in the US”, “The roads are very neat ”, “It is very cold there!” etc.
The broadband with the webcam does a fine work; their children give way to the US-born grandchildren; one generation gives way to the next generation; the stories and counter-stories continue incessantly in that colony hidden below the tall coconut trees dancing to the monsoon winds.
As per the MPI’s (Migration Policy Institute) ranking on remittances received by countries in the year 2009, China surprisingly (shockingly?) came only at the second place. No marks for guessing who topped the list.
Bye Bye NADT...
It is close to 4:00 AM and I have a train to catch in a short while...
By all probability this is my last post from D-42, Nalanda Hostel, National Academy of Direct Taxes, Nagpur.
Bye bye NADT...
Redemption
(This is the article I gave for the final issue of our in-house magazine during our training days here. I am not very much used to writing under time-pressures; but had to make this one)
My tryst with the National Academy of Direct Taxes, Nagpur dates back to December, 2007. That was the time of inauguration day of the 61st batch of IRS Officers. Very soon some thirty of us exercised an attractive option called EOL – Extra Ordinary Leave. We were called the EOL Mafia by the CD of the 61st batch. Cutting to the present, in a matter of just under three weeks, May 2010, my NADT time warp is heading for redemption. Do I like to be redeemed?
It is said that we don’t forget our first love; many of you would agree the same holds true in case of lectures too. If there was one single thing in most of the then young, raw probationers’ minds (well, it is a subtle way of projecting ourselves as mature, field-ready ACITs at this point of time) during the first month of our training, it ought to be – PL to BK. (Programmed Learning to Book Keeping) It was a great attempt to make all of us of the 62nd batch, irrespective of our educational backgrounds, sail smoothly through the deadly ocean of Debit & Credit. Being a module of much significance our Course Director sir retained the jurisdiction of PL to BK. After many waves of debit and credit, the cyclones of assets and liabilities, and the pirates of accounting conventions and rules, most of us were in a quite realised what was in store for us during the coming months of training.
From there things passed by us like the oncoming highway traffic; unending onslaught of Income Tax Act and Book Keeping, interspersed with home tests and workshops. They just happened; we just sat back and experienced the Acts happening around us. Suddenly I realised I knew the basics of the IT Act. There was also the highway special patrol in the form of the NALSAR team. Those erudite people came out of nowhere and before they left in a jiffy, our brains were loaded like in those sequences in The Matrix movie with – Indian Contract Act, Transfer of Property Act, Hindu Laws, Companies Act and Indian Partnership Act! It was fun!! In the second module we were enriched with The Indian Evidence Act, Civil Procedure Code, Indian Penal Code, General Clauses Act...wait it is not over yet...and the Information Technology Act – just in the same Matrix way. Wealth Tax also made its appearance from time to time. ALP, DTAA and ratios were the buzzwords now. Luckily, we had pleasant motels in the form of INTAX, Pongal-Lohri celebrations, cultural nights, NPL, audi movies, and of course the Mess elections spread over the year 2009. We continued our run on the highway. Probationer’s Talk stopped us from time to time and opened our eyes with concepts like learning to unlearning etc. Another major takeaway was Discipline = Self discipline + Imposed Discipline.
Of course, it is not possible to forget the great times at New Delhi, Dehradun and Mussourie. Those memories are still as fresh as the recent Malaysian/Singaporean memories. Personally, like many others, I too have dreamt of the international attachment ever since the day I got selected for the IRS! Sitting there at the tax academy of Malaysia, it was heart warming and ego boosting to hear from one of the Malaysians – probably India is the only country that sends its income tax officer trainees for an abroad study trip. Long live NADT.
“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is” – OJT made us appreciate that. The office stints threw us out of the safe harbour called NADT. We were moving closer towards taking independent charges. The OJT debriefing sessions and the presentations were full of hearings, raids, surveys, ARs, DRs, undisclosed crores, umpteen Sections...in short full of life! Due to our large batch size, more than the actual outdoor stint like OJT, Bharat Darshan or Mumbai module, the group-wise presentations mela that begin once we are back in campus, tests one’s endurance better. You are either waiting for your turn to be on stage and speak out about your earth shattering experiences or you are one among the hundred-plus helpless audience trying to be alert and grasp a point from here or there. In any case this mela adds to your overall personality. Needless to say, no one else in this world can claim to have glanced at 150-plus high quality books in such a short time as we did; the second module book review made this possible.
1-2-3-4-5 banana. Have you got a dog? Great big dog. Dance, dance I like to dance. Two dudes from Mumbai were making us learn Samba. That is how our third module aka Job Worthiness Module started a few weeks back. I guess Samba dance brings good fortune to our Department. JWM is full of action with the highlight, obviously being our posting orders. While most of us restlessly wait for them, the time passes in the form of INTAX 2010, moot courts, NALSAR reports, batch book, TA bills and the king of all – shramdhaan!
Well, having spent eight-odd years of post-graduation, training, job, coaching, waiting, wandering etc etc after graduating in the summer of 2002, topped up with a 16-month IRS training, I badly need to be redeemed now. It is time to have an office desk and see how that feels like!
April 11, 2010
On Marriage
Kahlil Gibran
You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.
Finally...I got married to Jayanthi, my batchmate here.
Probably this is a very boring post for such an occasion.. but our story is too long to be told in a post. And I can only think of these words of Gibran now.
:) :)
North Easterlies - 3
Kohima, Nagaland. March 6th 2010. After about a 3-hour bus journey from Dimapur we reached Hotel Japfu overlooking the imposing Nagaland Police HQ building. To be frank, right throughout the journey I was having a strange feeling that straddled around fear, curiosity, patriotism and anger. The islands of bright forest fires scattered over the Naga hillscape also played their role in creating my emotional collage. It took a good night’s sleep for the feelings to subside. Only the previous week I had read about the NSCN’s Muviah’s talks with the Government of India, in New Delhi. I also knew some basic stuff about a few Naga tribes. I have heard a couple of Nagaland administration and bureaucracy stories from some friends serving in this region. But being in Kohima and seeing and hearing things in first person is quite a different world.
Just like Kerala is God’s own country, Nagaland is The land of festivals. You will come across dozens of banners welcoming you to some festival or the other. We got a chance to be audience to a performance of a spring song by the troupe Three Sisters (as we were told). I was mesmerised. Just like the simple yet lively Arunachal dance we had seen in Bomdilla few days back, the Spring song too had very simple structure – no elaborate lyrics or strong music support or a complex tune. But the exquisite way in which those beautiful voices were blended ensured that you are transferred to a different world. A simple string instrument was used for music. I am sure A R Rahman is yet to come across such Naga songs. Else by now Three Sisters or some other Naga band would have been a common name in mainland India. By the way, I am not very comfortable using “mainland India”. But we are used to such a term. Though the innocuous nature of the term can be easily explained purely on a geographical basis, it is not possible to divorce the political, social and developmental undercurrents from the term. Probably more PHCs, power supply, bandwidth and ATMs, more colleges and universities, a dozen successful industrial complexes, and a tangible amount of private sector participation would have made the term “mainland India” extinct decades back. It is quite peculiar that we live in a “flat world” and yet within our country we have something called as “mainland” and some other thing called “Northeast”. Of course there are many other deeper issues that cannot be wiped off with PHCs and PCOs but a good beginning is the secret of getting ahead. On August 15th 2009 we celebrated our 63rd year of Independence.
Apart from the uniformed men the ubiquitous things in the parts of Arunachal we covered are – impressive BRO roads, BSNL and State Bank of India. I was quite happy to see those dinosaurs in the guise of machines trying to broaden the already-fine road leading to Tawang. Two years down the line, if you wish to peek into China across the international border here – just take a jolly drive in this freshly done double lane road. Its as simple as that. Hats off to BRO! When it comes to the ATMs, I had a rare sighting today. In fact this sighting was unimaginably more difficult than sighting a one-horned rhino. You just take a jeep safari or an early morning elephant safari in Kaziranga and you will surely come face to face with these giant animals. In fact herds of rhinos are visible even from the highway. At one place, to my utter surprise, I noticed a herd happily having their evening supper near a neatly sown and irrigated green field. Talk of man-animal conflict! Well, coming to today’s sighting. At last, on the eighth day of our non-stop travels in the region, I had the greatest moment of our trip. It happened in the Kohima market today after noon. I just could not believe my eyes when I spotted a branch of a private bank!! It was an ICICI Bank branch. I just hope that I had missed spotting hundreds of similar other private bank branches/ATMs. I am thoroughly bored of the blue-and-white “SBI Welcomes you” board in every tiny town.
North Easterlies - 2
Early diagnosis and proper medication can cure leprosy. Incentives to pregnant mothers who take Zidovudine(I guess I got the name right). These are some of the huge, high visibility banners that caught my eyes in Kohima. I have never come across such banners anywhere else in the country. These banners say a lot about the broad contours of the challenges in public health here. Looks like much work needs to be done. I am reminded of the Amartya Sen/Jean Dreze’s words in their book - India: Development and Participation. They resist us from jumping to the models in other developed nations and trying to implement them in our country. Rather, they say, within our country itself we have islands of excellence and the others can learn from them. For example there is a Madhya Pradesh that can teach Bihar how to go about improving its literacy; We have got a Himachal that can provide models for socio-economic progress in Orissa.
There was also a banner “Plant tree with your jhum cultivation”. Jhum or slash-and-burn or shifting cultivation is practised in the Nagaland region. Just as the term conveys, stretches of lands are burnt down and then farming is done on the land cleared this way. No modern implements are used for agriculture. After a few crops when the productivity of the land hits the rock bottom, the farming is shifted to another patch of land. Again, the new patch is cleared by setting the forest on fire. Naturally, this causes serious damage to the nature. But its taking really good efforts to stop such a practice as it is not just agricultural, but cultural.
We got another glimpse of the Naga culture when we were presented with a few Naga dances and songs. The first one was a group song by a dozen old women. The song related to the harvest season and was generally sung during the pounding of grains. This song by these dozen grannies too, just like that of Three Sisters (that's how the three young lady performers of the previous dinner were introduced to us) was very simple yet captivating. The overall technique and style is this – very simple tunes/lyrics, one sub-group starts the song and keeps singing, the other sub-group follows it with a time lag. The effect is astounding. Then came the group dance by the young folks, men and women with their cool moves. Along with the dance, there is a surprise bonus waiting for all those ethanol lovers in you.
The evening was topped with a satisfying dinner. The hosts had tried to make some rotis too. This was a significant relief for all those chappati-oriented-people, who had had a real tough time ever since we entered the Northeast a week back. The staple food here is rice. However, this region is a paradise for the non-vegetarians especially the fish-eaters and the pork-lovers. It was about 9PM when I got into my Naga cottage. We stayed in a tourist village called Tuofema about 40KMs from Kohima. Here they try to keep things the traditional way and every cottage was designed like a Naga hut. Interestingly each tribal group had their own style of huts. By the time I was ready to sublime into the world of sleep inside the cozy quilt the breeze outside had turned into a haunting wind. Good night Nagaland!
That feelings-confusion I had on my way up to Kohima had vanished. What remains is the apprehension if I will ever get a chance to be back to Nagaland. I do not know; probably I might not be lucky enough to be at Tuofema again. But given a chance you grab it without fail. This Land of Festivals is for sure going to make you a better person; a more matured Indian.
(Gangtok. March 11, 2010)
North Easterlies - 1
I had just a single point agenda at the start of our 20-day long tour of the Northeast – to sight a rhino in the wild. It would give me Nirvana. The Aircel “Save our tigers” campaign also intensified my ultimate desire to see this beast in the jungles of Kaziranga. I did not know whether it was 1411 or 1511 or whatever number of rhinos left in the wild; All I knew was we were quickly losing all our wild animals and the sooner you get to see them, the better. Along with the elephant, giraffe and hippo, rhino is also in the elite, four-member club of land animals weighing 1000kg plus. Even the grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) is excluded from this league of extra-heavy gentlemen.
Kaziranga was to be covered in the second circuit of our tour. We opened our tour with the Tawang lap. This place is up in the mountains, really up. Apart from the popular locations like Guwahati and Tezpur we also got to spend some nights or stopover for food in Thai menu-like places namely Bomdila, Dzongrila, Jang and Balukpong. But all throughout, the only thing that was in my mind was the Great One-horned Rhinoceros. Even the legendary Ceat-born tough ad was flashing in my mind from time to time.
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We were supposed to take some time out in a place called Sela pass. Tawang is in the valley beyond Sela pass that is at an altitude of close to 14,000ft. Apparently the Chinese had come near this point during their intrusion a few decades back. Our Innova was gasping and fuming as we got closer and closer to Sela. Gradually, to my utter surprise I could see patches of half-cooked snow on the both sides of the road. I had never seen snow in my life before. I had missed a great chance during my college days when I stayed back from my group’s trip to Manali. Ever since those days snow has been at the top zone of my to-see list. Our Innova was struggling more.
The surprise was turning into an excitement. The needle leaves of the trees around were sagging with snow. The dark earth was getting transformed into a white earth, snow-white earth, to be precise. The aroma of snow was filling our lungs. We took out our gloves from the backpacks. Upped the window glasses.
With no gender bias and male chauvinism in my heart and mind, I would like to humbly submit that I have observed more members of the female sex using “Wow!!” very liberally. (I hope I have succeeded in saying what I wanted to say without raising feminist eyebrows) Most of the times even the mundane, little things like – neatly laid out salad, a wall poster with a setting sun, aquarium with a few old gold fishes etc – attract this “Wow!!”. Webster's is yet to fit in this term in the “good” hierarchy. Is it good-better-best-wow or wow-good-better-best? The Webster's is as confused as anyone like me. The situation gets murkier when the word “Cuuute” is also thrown in. Anything from an orange-coloured hand kerchief to the modern robotic arms you find in the automobile factories has the potential to attract “Cuuute”. We almost reached Sela.
“Wooooow!!”. This time it was me. I realised there is no other word in the English language to express my excitement. Our Innova had stopped at Sela. We were in the midst of an ocean of white snow; the rocks and the bushes around had taken as much snow as they could; the countless, colourful flags radiating from all the poles around made the place look like heaven; only the chill wind reminded us that we were still very much on the harsh earth.
Sighting a rhino at Kaziranga was only going to be a bonus. Nirvana attained at Sela.
(Darjeeling, March 13, 2010)
Read/Write
I do not claim to be a voracious reader; nor you would accept that I am a good writer. Still, in this post, I am going to write about the books I have read last year. But don't worry, this is not going to be like the typical book reviews.
Blink. The White Tiger. Something Like An Autobiography. Imagining India, in parts. Outliers. A Short History Of Nearly Everything. In that order. Interspersed with a few other booklet-books.
The White Tiger was like an entertaining movie. I finished the book in three sittings. (Of course, I am not going to tell you how long each of my sittings were) The beauty of the book lies in its innovative narration and Adiga's lucid, simple writing. The story is presented as a series of letters by the protagonist, a successful entrepreneur, about his rags-to-riches story, to the Chinese premier. And unlike the autobiographies/biographies on the success stories of Ambani, Biyani etc, the fictional The White Tiger exposes the darker shades of a man who wants to make it big in life in India; and for whom any means could justify the ultimate end called - success. And success, for a man from a deprived circle, is only about money. If you are one of those who avoid Award-winning books presuming the awards are given only to those ones that have lots of abstract concepts and hundreds of Spell Bee-type words - please grab a copy of TWT. Your idea will change, just like it happened with me.
"I wish I had come across this book during my school days!". Not very frequently one has that kind of a feeling after reading a book. In fact I never ever had that feeling, until I came I came across A Short History Of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson, published by Black Swan) In one word this book is just a - classic.
As the name says it all, this 680-page book gives you very interesting insights about things ranging from the tiny atoms to the galaxies that are huge enough to be beyond our imagination. ABHONE is can be classified as a book on the history of science that also doubles up as a repository of wonderful facts, interesting stories behind great discoveries and inventions. This is book that tells us, in a remarkably captivating way, about the way we went about questioning things around us and attempted solving the world mysteries.
The book starts with a section on the creation of universe and goes to to talk about the omnipotent atoms, archeological studies and the size of the earth, cells and the origin of life, before finally ending with the chapter "Goodbye" that talks about the privilege we human beings have had in the planet and the responsibilities that are to be taken with it. The book is also loaded with facts and the facts are presented in a dramatic, yet, well... a factual way. For example while talking about the size of protons he says Protons are so small that a little dib of ink like that dot on this "i" can hold something in the region of 500,000,000,000 of them, or rather more than the number of seconds it takes to make a half a million years.
All I knew about Newton was that he had given us those three famous laws; and even when his pet dog Diamond spoiled his research papers involving sleepless nights of work, he did not get angry with that cute doggy. Had read that story in one of my school English prose books. Well Bryson's chapter on Newton (just like the portions on scores of other scientists/inventors) is a lot more interesting and insightful. Newton's curiosity knew no bounds and it is said he inserted a bodkin - a long needle of the sort used for sewing leather - into his eye socket and rubbed it around "betwixt my eye and the bone as near to [the] backside of my eye as I could" just to see what would happen.
Some of us curse Newton for his destructive invention called, the calculus. Even I have been a victim of this highly destructive device termed calculus; unlike other areas in Maths, calculus consumed an unimaginably huge portion of my memory during Class XII. The engineering days were a nightmare as in a course called AdCal (Advanced Calculus), we were introduced to an intimidating species named "triple integration". Actually that course took away even the tiny bit of reverance I had for Newton; his calculus made me spend sleepless nights. Now, having got to know what made Newton invent calculus, my animosity towards Newton is only increasing...it is said that Newton invented this new form of mathematics - as he was frustrated by the limitations of conventional mathematics (!!) But I am happy that in a way I share something with Newton - while he was frustrated by the limitations of conventional mathematics, I am frustrated by mathematics as a whole.
The book's bibliography/notes alone run for 100+ pages. In the true sense this book is an eye-opener. I really had not thought that science/history of science could be dealt in such a wonderful way, without compromising on facts.
I think our schools need such books; or at least a few lines from such books.
(PS: Continuing with the opening lines of this post, last year I even managed to write a book and get it published)
In Memory of Memory
What is your name?
...
What is your favourite colour?
Anandh
Where are you from?
Violet
Which animal you like the most?
Coimbatore
Who is your favourite hero?
Cheetah
What is the highest peak in the world?
Mt.Everest!... No!!...Rajnikanth.....Rajnikanth..
Your game over Anandh. Good try! Your score is twenty. Okay next is Meena's turn. Meena, where is Taj Mahal situated?...
Some of us might remember this game we used to play during our school days. The rules of the game are very simple. Someone keeps on asking you very simple questions one after the other, and you keep answering them. With a tiny modification - you are not supposed to answer the first question. You just let it go and the person poses you the next simple question. Now you give the correct answer of the first question asked. You score a point. Then the third question, and you give the correct answer of the second question. One more point and so on. You score till you end up giving the reply of the question being asked rather than that of the previous question asked. There is also a time limit within which you are supposed to give your answers.
Pretty simple, eh? Just try your hand at this game with your friend. To adjust for your advanced mental faculties compared to that of us during the school days, your friend may be asked to make questions a little complicated like - (Qn 1) Imagine yourself sitting playing in a crowded park across a road. You see a green Maruti Swift pass by. How many tyres does the car have?, (Qn 2) One fine morning you wake up and realise that you are alone in the middle of a huge monument. You take a walk and realise you are inside the Red Fort. In which city are you in?
Most of us might have seen Memento (C.Nolan/Eng/2000) or Ghajini (Murugadoss/Hin-Tam/2008-05). The lead character suffers from anterograde amnesia or also-popularly-known-as Short term memory loss. The hero often clicks with his Polaroid camera to remember even basic stuff like the location of his apartment. Further the walls in his room are fully covered with sketches, emergency phone numbers etc. In short, the person does not seem to remember anything...well, its not "anything", it is "anything new". He is aware of his past. But again, only till a point. He is totally incapable of forming new memories beyond that point. Given all this constraints, he relies purely on his Polaroid and countless sketches to avenge the death of his beloved! That is how the movie plot goes. The movies were a huge hit.
Coming back to our game. Why did you find it difficult to score more than four or five? The answer is in the way we store information; the way we remember things. Very broadly speaking, our "memory space" can be viewed as something made of two partitions. The bigger, robust one is called the Long term memory (LTM). It is like a computer hard disc with unlimited storage space. Also, whatever is there is there forever.The other smaller partition is, of course, Short term memory (STM). Something like your computer's RAM. It has a very limited capacity and things here are ephemeral.
The things that we try to remember go and sit in the STM first. They can comfortably be there for about 10 seconds (roughly), after which they begin to disappear. If one is interested in remembering the information for a longer time, it has to be necessarily sent to the hard disc of our memory. The movie's hero had a problem in doing this after his head injury in a scuffle with the villains. So whatever was there in his LTM, like the duets he had danced with Asin, was readily available to him. No LTM, No flashbacks! Events happening after that injury never went into his LTM and thats why he ends up using instant-photo cameras and Post-it Notes.
So why did Anandh find it difficult to score beyond four answers? To begin with, he hears and remembers the first question (What is your name?). This is in his STM. He does not try to move it to the LTM. Well, no problems there as the next question will be posed within the next 10 seconds and he can comfortably retrieve the first question sitting in his STM, and answer it. The next question. (What is your favourite colour?) There's a discomfort now. Unlike the unlimited capacity of the LTM, our RAM can not handle too many things at a time. Still Anandh somehow manages to store the second question in his RAM; process the first question sitting already in his RAM and give out the answer. By the time he reaches the third or the fourth question he is worn out and his STM shouts out "I can't!".
Wait...in a TV programme a few days back there was this little girl who went on and on, and finally the person who gave up was the one who had been asking her the questions! How is that possible? Is she an extraordinary specimen?
Somehow she knew there is something called as LTM. On hearing the first question she immediately processed it, got the answer and - stored the answer in her LTM. The second question asked. She got it and stored it in her STM. Gave out the answer to the first question from her LTM. Processed the second question sitting in her STM, moved the answer to the LTM. The next question asked. The same sequence followed. And finally, the person who was asking the questions shouts out "I can't!"
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