Business Of Competition!

If one wants to capsulize the most perturbing trend in contemporary life in two words, this author's vote is for `Unbridled Competition'.  Even if you are not looking out, what hits you in the face unfailingly whenever you step into public domain (even if that is a group of two including yourself) is the strident and naked aggression displayed by competing forces in all spheres of life.  Be it media/TV channels or e-tailers or political parties or educational institutions or your own family and friends.  Just look up and you will see Bajirao Mastani is head to head with Dilwale; Sharukh Khan is jostling with Amir Khan always; Arnab Goswamy is crying hoarse competing with himself and Rajdeep Sardesai simultaneously.  Ours is a society wherein parents and educational institutions bully children to compete ruthlessly, right from lemon and spoon race to IIT exams and torment youngsters if they do not live up to their (parents') own skewed expectations.  If a school is perceived not to be aggressively competitive enough in its ways, parents have no compunction in pulling out the kids, even if the latter are really enjoying the school time.  Very seldom does one get a reprieve from this onslaught and one cannot hide indoors from this menace since our belligerent TV channels compete to serve huge dollops of this during prime time at your own home and one's own kith and kin are avidly and unabashedly involved in this pursuit.  So, instead of peeking around the corner apprehensively, this scribe, fortunately blessed with a huge dose of pragmatism, decided to leverage the meta-data in his own possession to see who is competing with whom, for what etc.  Here goes.

Countries are competing heavily in the global arena, obviously.  Russia, for instance is perking up of late with Putin, being a man heavily shorn of subtleties and readily abrasive, rattling the sabre rather violently at USA and the West in Ukraine first and then in Syria.  While harking back to the pre-Gorbachev era when USSR was a super power could ostensibly be a reason, some collateral benefits might also be in the cross-hairs.  One, with oil prices going down convulsively, Putin might have decided wisely to use surplus unsold stocks for his own air force and navy instead of selling below cost to disrespectful renegades, who have joined NATO with unseemly haste in the past decade or so. Two, while in Syria, he may also decide to bomb a few oil fields (allegedly producing or selling oil for the benefit of ISIS and also a few guiltless others, to be explained as collateral damage) out of existence in the middle east - that will mean reduced competition in oil in future.  If, in the bargain, after the US led and Russia led groups cause adequate mutual destruction, they manage to scratch the offending ISIS ultimately, both competing sides can indulge in macho chest-thumping for having saved the world -- all those who suffered due to their own actions be damned!

India and China competed, till two decades ago, only in the area of exercising the loins of their men and women, resulting in  population explosions in both countries.  But the latter has since moved ahead in terms of economy, manufacturing etc thanks to its military-style do-or-die political structure (this is not referring to the spirit of the Chinese) embracing capitalistic communism (??) India, in the meantime, as the most lawlessly democratic of democracies, has been mired in its own native version of internecine squabbles, losing myriad opportunities to catch up on economic progress.  But now, interestingly India wants to compete with China in the area of Bullet Trains. Not in manufacturing them but in running them wherever it can.  True, India should logically focus on running all its ultra-slow trains without any accident for a decade before increasing the speed even marginally.  But logic be damned, for some inexplicable reason it wants to leapfrog to three times the current peak speed of trains at a massive cost and with fervent prayers, hopes to run the bullet train effectively, aided by the Japanese.  So, India's bullet train will compete (not literally) with China's and this competition will be born of the intense rivalry between Japan and China to set up the bullet train technology in India with the former winning the mandate.  So, now China will seek to set up Bullet Trains in Pakistan, where they are more critically needed!

PM Modi has India's competitive position globally in his mind all the time.  That is why he is competing with a lot of over-worked long-haul commercial pilots to log the most air miles in a year, in his attempt to make the world realise that India is seriously competing for global attention as well as a permanent seat in the UN Security Council.  So that it can really begin believing that it has started competing with China in the world fora.  Modi is also encouraging USA, Russia, Japan and European countries to compete fiercely in bringing those things to India which either they do not want in their own countries (like Nuclear Power Plants) or their military would rather manufacture at lower costs in other countries for re-export (like armaments, missiles etc).  But, our PM cannot be blamed since he has very little political wiggle-room to legislate in favour of local manufacture, so going global seems to be the most productive alternative in order to manufacture locally. Undoubtedly, he is doing better business with foreign governments than in India, thanks to the hugely disruptive, suicidally inclined and pathetically breast-beating Congress party.  That single reason is good enough to justify all his travels.  And at the end of it, our military import bills might come down significantly in the next few years, even if nothing else is achieved.  Which may mean we will not be in competition with Pakistan, but that should be fine.

What should baffle us in all this is this conundrum.  China did not develop all the technology for things on its own; it reverse engineered most of it, learning from products of Western or Japanese manufacturers, be it the nuclear power plant or bullet train.  Now, why cannot India compete with China by doing the same thing?  Are we suddenly shy of something? Or we cannot even copy?  But then we did complete a successful Mars mission. I get it, it is somewhat like Modi's travels.  We can do things well, so long as we take off and go somewhere else but not in our own place.

Who else is competing?  Flipcart, Snapdeal and the like.  They are fighting viscerally to dole out filthy discounts on everything they sell.  Such favours are not coming out of their own pockets but that is all the money investors have sunk, in the fond hope that they could see some profits a few centuries later.  But, then the primary lure for the fiercely competitive investors is not the immediate profitability of the companies itself, but the truly bloated valuations done in the minds of hotshot financial wizards, who are very good at playing with others' money. Who are they competing with?  Each other and all the brick-and-mortar retailers.  While many of us might still want to visit a store, touch and feel before buying whatever, there is a horde of people, who spend oodles of time online, whether at home or at work.  Actually, it is practically impossible to differentiate between this tribe's work time and shopping time because it is all done on the same device.  And these people are vying with each other to avail more cashbacks, coupons, freebies from the etailers, probably buying things which they may not need or would not actually buy at a brick-and-mortar store.

Then there comes the list of competitive businesses which have not managed to damage the rivals seriously but have not done badly themselves despite all the newfangled competition.  Take, for example, Cafe Coffee Day, Dominos, McDonalds and the like.  Their arrival on the scene and growth has not changed the turf for small and big Udupi joints. Actually Adyar Ananda Bhavan has flourished in the last twenty years, precisely the period of growth for the fast food giants.  All those grocery chains and supermarkets have not been able to obliterate the neighbourhood Kirana stores, which seem to be as determined and well-built for endurance, like the indomitable cockroach.  My mother still calls one of these stores for all her groceries, the same way it has been for over four decades and things get delivered better and faster (managed now by the next generation's youngsters) than any online grocery store.    This has transpired, principally because each segment has predominantly catered to its own clientele with the customers crisscrossing periodically from one to the other without any serious issue. Sure, some very small Kirana stores might have suffered, but the casualty may not have been humongous.  My dear wife is raising that questioning eyebrow again and asking `how do you know'?  I don't, am just guessing - that is my usual muffled answer, when the query comes from that particular incisive source!!

Driverless Cars

Even as Google and Tesla are racing towards proving the technology used in their Driverless Cars or Self-Driving Car (let us call it DC) and commence commercial production of these contraptions, this scribe has a few gnawing doubts.  While such cars may be more suitable to the driving conditions and roads of USA and some advanced countries, they are bound to compound the chaos on Indian roads, should they be introduced here too.  And, given the penchant of the moneyed and the class-conscious Indians to mindlessly mimic those countries, such cars will arrive on Indian roads sooner or later, regardless of their suitability to our conditions - just because we like to show off.

Imagine DC handling some unique challenges posed by Indian roads.  An officer, miffed with his wife after an especially trying session of viscerally verbal pyrotechnics, may retaliate and decide to unilaterally convert a two-way street into one-way, without any notice to anyone.  A traffic light which normally works well as it is programmed to, will get manually over-ridden at the busiest hour by an egotistical officer who entertains enormous aversion towards anything automatic evading his control, just to demonstrate to himself who the boss is.  A senior politician's visit to a member of his harem may trigger a sudden two-mile long traffic snarl on a usually somnolent road. Or a convoy of slow-moving cows with their numerous progeny in attendance, might deceive the unsuspecting system in DC and cause a malfunction. The intelligent and perceptive readers of this blog may undoubtedly bring up umpteen other similar India-manufactured intricacies in traffic conditions, which will bamboozle the best structured platforms of the expensive DC.

Then this scribe came across another article detailing how the DC will exercise its choice in case of an accident, resulting in danger to the occupants of the car or to those outside.  Simply stated, such a decision will be preordained by the car-maker and hard coded into the DNA of DC, of course following some logic.  Meaning, the occupants, in the absence of a driver, will be at the mercy of the algorithm built in, which may be coded to save the lives of people outside in the path of the DC rather than its own occupants for some `moral/ethical' reasons.  Well, one may argue that this is probably no different from a situation where the driver will have to decide quickly which way to go, but the fact remains that the driver will probably choose to save himself along with the others in the car, whereas the algorithm may have no such predilection!  In India, road accidents being an almost government sanctioned device of attrition to whittle down population to some extent (that explains why driving licences are given out indiscriminately, sometimes to even non-existent people, against bribes), such a feature may not alarm the public or discourage sale of DC.  So, the focus in the following sections are on rather non-serious aspects of DC in India, as and when that happens.

Those who buy DC in India would want it primarily for a trophy, but may not entirely go driver-less because of the depreciation dent that brings in their status.  For instance, when the owner gets down, the driver has to come around and open the door for him or his wife, since most owners would have, by now, forgotten how to open car doors.  While having a DC may enhance self-esteem in these people, being driver-less would peg them back a few notches, which would be unacceptable.  How would this conundrum be solved??  Simple.  The driver would metamorphose into `Transportation Manager' and would occupy the front passenger seat!  He cannot anyway be dispensed with, since the master would not deign to perform the menial function of punching in co-ordinates, trip data etc into the system.   The primary difference this would make to others on the road is that the door which the driver opens when the car is in motion and spews spit on the road will change!  Also, the status conscious DC owner would hate to park the car about hundred metres away and trundle to the destination, since that wound unnecessarily burn some flab in the carefully nurtured body of the owner.  One may argue that it is possible the car would be wired to probably automatically find a parking lot and settle down, if the owner so desires.  That may be so, but after dropping the owner, if it happens to be a ten-level parking lot in a mall, how would the owner know where the car is?  Can he summon it like he would summon his dog?  Dogs have exceptional sense of smell, through which they interpret their whole world, but DC will have such extraordinary connectivity to the owner??  Hopefully Google is thinking about that.

Can software glitches make the DC run amok??  Come to think of it, this is something akin to a driver having a heart attack and passing out while having to control the car on the road.  If something untoward results, who is responsible? Under usual circumstances, the driver cops the punishment, even if the boss was driving the normal car by using the proven-through-the-ages proxy rule, in exchange for some booty to set the driver up for life.  But in this context, there is no driver; the boss does not steer the car; car is self-driving, for god's sake.  So, the car goes to jail??  May be the software engineer, who is deemed culpable??  Or just the software?? This author's hope is that a case should be filed to determine this rather crucial matter before the government allows DC in India.  That should do for the next two decades, knowing how fast cases are concluded in our courts.

Some other sundry thoughts:

** DC will be made so sensitive (equipped with powerful sensors) that it probably would stop every time some other vehicle cuts into its path.  This will result in the ridiculous situation of the DC being stationary more often than mobile in our environment, since most drivers in India cannot move hundred yards without dangerously veering sideways.

**In the first few months, there would be numerous reports in the rural areas of ghosts driving expensive cars and a special police team would be required to assuage the anxieties of the folks.  Tantriks could smell an opportunity and make a pile doing the assuaging after the police team has finished.

**If a non-driver is tasked with ensuring that the DC follows the desired route and this person falls asleep, what happens?  A driver is less likely to doze off (at least theoretically so), but someone with not even a wheel to grip and turn around might easily fall prey to `innocent sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care', with some undesirable consequences.

**Is it likely that Uber would run some DCs as cabs?  This possibility opens up an entire vista of scenarios and this author has no intention of insulting the intelligence of the readers by dwelling on them.  Best left to imagination.  Having said that, driver-less auto-rickshaws would be very welcome, unless the crooked but ingenious owners manipulate the manufacturer to programme the vehicles to refuse to take passengers, charge multiples of metre fare and generally behave like their `driven' tribe. But any attempt to let the driver-less auto-rickshaws use the footpaths should be summarily rejected, to optimize the benefit to the populace.

** Some would rather enjoy the DC experience - those who are inveterate back-seat drivers (men and women) and those who constantly educate men how to improve their driving - as a force of habit - without having driven a car themselves in their lives (women only).

** It looks like the DC would not have a steering wheel or pedals for brake and accelerator.  In order to sell in India, the makers should take care to provide at least a horn somewhere in the car.  Without the toot, DC will not sell, market research would hopefully tell them.  Cars without brakes are okay, but without horns are a strict No, No, in India.

By now, one should be disoriented.  Just as this author's head started spinning uncontrollably at an `rpm' hitherto never experienced, the lady who brought light into his life, his dear wife came to the rescue one more time and shined a torch on an absolute gem of a redeeming line in the article about DC in general -- the technology in DC cannot yet recognize pot-holes on the roads.  Hurrah!!  Three cheers!!  India will not see DC for a few decades at the least, since a pot-hole-less Indian road is just unimaginable, against our tradition and Vedas, a stark violation of the order of creation; it might even be prohibited under the Constitution.  Who knows, the local government in Bangalore may unanimously decide not to fix any pot hole on the roads, just to keep the greater evil of DC at bay!!  Personally, given the general quality and skills of drivers, I prefer `car-less drivers'  to DCs!

Note:  The author's knowledge of DC is at best shallow.  So, those experts who are bristling to email expletive-laden comments may want to hold the horses and let this piece pass!! 

Wife, Husband and Contradictions!

There are those male chauvinistic husbands who relentlessly exploit their bread-winner status, even in this day and age and imperiously order their wives around to perform menial chores for them.  Such husbands do not hesitate to use their anger as an instrument from time to time or all the time to browbeat the wives even in public, completely ignoring the embarrassment their childish behaviour causes all around.  Then there are wives who masquerade as women but are actually cast in the same mould as the aforesaid husbands or worse.  They do not even pretend to mask the hardness of their personality for the sake of appearances.  There are those wives, more subtle in their nuanced approach, who can exercise enormous control over every breath and pulse of their husbands, without so much as displaying any effort.  This they do with a nod here, a nudge there, an arched eye-brow (I am sure the husband is trained to interpret based on which eye-brow it is) or a stare that goes through the offender like a spear through fish.  No one except the skilled practitioner may even notice these fine signals; because he has undergone the rigours over the years to look for, spot and respond to these patented signals faithfully.  He knows the price of ignoring the silent edicts (this happens when the husband is dumb enough to get sozzled unintentionally) and recoils from the thought of going through with the consequences.  This is not about any of these types.  This is about all those couples who are normal folks who have their quirks and preferences, who do not think of consistency or predictability as virtues, who tend to spring surprises on each other and create situations for squabbles, when the natural flow in that stream is stemmed due to seasonal warmth and good sense.  But there should be no denying that a major contributor to this entire process is an inherent mismatch in likes and dislikes.

There is this husband, who will remain unidentified for security reasons (his, obviously), who was confronted by the wife one evening with a couple of highly priced tickets for a Shakespearean play and a rather brusque order to get dressed and march.  This chap is a bit weird in this respect because he defies known logic and he says does not like `watching' plays.  He would rather read them.  This, despite the fact that he was a student of English Literature (he insists it is precisely because of that), which minor qualification almost seems to load him with the unenviable responsibility to see every play visiting town.  The inevitable argument ensued, with the lady's taunt as to how anyone in his right senses could prefer to 'read' a play!  But her coaxing skills yet again won over the demurring husband (bad mistake!), who reluctantly was led by the nose.  In the theatre, the man made such a nuisance of himself to the lady and all the other play-watchers, whining about the seating arrangement and the poor lighting, which prevented him from seeing the emotions expressed on the faces of the artists; about the terrible audio system, which had the bass very high and so on.   Back home after a few hours, the wife launched into a tirade and reduced the chap to jelly, but he managed the final word edgeways - `that is why I prefer to read  plays; because the lighting, the audio and the distance from the stage do not matter!'  That was happily the last play they went together to.

Connoisseurs of travel would agree with this author that while it is easier to plan a long trip to a place farther away, the shorter ones (upto 350 kms, about 6 hours by road/train or 1 hour by flight) are always dicey.  Such short trips come upon you suddenly, almost unannounced when you are least prepared to cope with them, because of  this rather unsubstantiated belief that shorter trips are easier to plan and execute.  And there is this lady who revels in surprising her husband with short-fused requests for frequent short trips.  Obviously the chap goes first into a flutter and then a tizzy, trying to look for non-existent tickets, while the lady nonchalantly pirouettes and shimmers away, humming with satisfaction.  The husband has his reasons for feeling overwhelmed with frustration - the wife does not like travelling by car, which would have been the easiest and most logical alternative, given the short notice.  He suspects this is so because then he will not have to do any wasteful searching for tickets - which, the wife probably thinks is an undeservedly easy way out.  So, after spending the punishment period looking at trains, flights and whatever other means of transport, the husband formally arrives at the anticipated conclusion - that tickets are not available for trains and flight tickets are prohibitively expensive.  When these facts are communicated to the wife with the obvious remaining option of travel by car staring at her, she chooses to ask him if overnight bus service is available!!  For god's sake, why would somebody refuse the comfort of own car with your known exceptionally skilled and very well known driver and choose to travel in an overnight bus on the same road, knowing the latter's tendency end up in all sorts of crevices?   But experience has taught the husband not to seek logic in this situation, but to look for an overnight bus!!

What is good for the goose is never good for the gander between husbands and wives and any such assumption on the part of the husband will definitely be detrimental to his mental and, sometimes, physical well-being.  This middle aged man the author knows, is a hard-hitting snorer ( would have won any competition hands down, if based on consistently high decibel levels for longer periods without interruption) and is fully aware of his unique strength in this area.  So, he plots his sleeping (and snoring) time such that he commences after his wife is fast asleep.  Just so that she is not awake when his concert of guttural symphony gets under way.  Very honourable of him, I would think, to be charitable to the lady and to be applauded unstintingly.  But on the odd night when he hits the bed early and enters the blissful stage wherein `he that sleeps feels not the tooth-ache' (that state must be pretty close to being moribund?) as the bard goes, firing on all cylinders with his snore, his otherwise considerate behaviour does not help him.  The wife just cannot muffle the roar that assaults her in continuous waves and cannot help waking the thundering machine up and evict him from the room till she herself sleeps.  When the poor chap returns stealthily to take his rightful place in bed, what is the scene??  The female version of the same roaring snore, admittedly somewhat weaker (he triumphantly claims) than his fills the room.  But he knows that if he protests he would have to listen to a discourse for twenty minutes on the difference between good snoring and bad snoring (pretty much like the good and bad Taliban!).  He knows there is no scope for even a marginal victory there, so he maintains the dignified silence of a tolerant man!

Ever since the Fitbit mania has taken hold, another area of serious contradiction has opened up between some younger couples.  Earlier, during daily walks, if the sprightly wife pleaded for a ten minute extension of the walk to make up for some shortfall somewhere - real or imagined, the rather withered husband flatly refused, citing the distance already covered.  Now, the same husband looks at the Fitbit counter at the end of the walk and demands that they go for another 367 steps to meet his quota for the day.  It is a different matter that when done, he is that far away from home and has to retrace all those steps!!  Even if the daily walk is along the same roads within a gated community (and therefore the distance walked is public knowledge), the oracle inside Fitbit has to speak before the couples can retire with that smug satisfaction.  Hail, Fitbit!

Let us wind up with this story of a wife who makes fun of the husband for visiting the same restaurant for the past 25 years to have his idli-vada-pongal fix, with what he holds to be the best sambar in the world.  His take that the high quality of food in that restaurant has been unfalteringly maintained all through the years is always swatted aside by the wife.  He continues to be perpetually ribbed on this point, despite what seems to be reasonably sound justification.  When this couple visits another city, the wife forcibly drags the husband along some 30 kms, to a specific joint serving what she considers the best gol-gappa/paani-poori anywhere.  No quarters given for any argument or for innocuous teasing.

Now, this scribe knows what the  fall-out of this post will be.  Some friends and their wives are going to bristle and promptly call my dear wife (after reading this, assuming they do) and seek clarification on the identities of the couples written about.  There may even be subtle attempts to accuse this author of unauthorised disclosures and insinuate that the wife in some anecdotes is his own, just to introduce some tension in an otherwise blissfully happy family!!  All I ask is `Would I dare'?  She knows!!  For my part, let me only say that all the persons mentioned in this post are real and any resemblance my astute and knowledgeable readers may see to anyone they know, is probably true.

    

  

Where Are All Those Epistles??

Letter-writing, even as a casual exercise has long been forgotten and as an art form has faded from memories eons ago.  But it was not always like this. Times were, when even the most self-serving of that unfathomable species called Poet, would not have dreamt of entering for league-table honours without one qualification.  That of having written at least a few epistles!  For all the preening-like-peacocks they indulged in, poets took to epistles as avidly as modern-day-politicians to corruption. Be it besotted love, visceral hatred, snooty indifference or rib-tickling hilarity, all emotions and subject matters were couched in epistles by poets from time to time, just to prove that they have been there and done that.  This was de rigueur even if some of the stuff was deeply personal and need not have been for public consumption.  Just to demonstrate that they could excel in that ubiquitous medium called `epistle'.

Take, for example, `Epistle to Dr.Arbuthnot' by Alexander Pope.  That king of satire was looking to ambush all his opponents who were hyper-critical of his satirical ways.  He could have elected to hire a podium, get a megaphone and berate heartily all those indulging in hostilities.  But shrewd as he was, he was not going to let a great opportunity pass.  He chose to write this epistle to his dear friend Dr.Arbuthnot, who was so seriously ill and was so delicately poised on the precipice that even a minor gasp could have nudged him on his way, leave alone an emotionally charged epistle!  Still, an epistle it was, for Pope.  Why?  This author realises that his readers are also getting impatient as to why this epistle bit is being belaboured so much, so here we go.  Because, 'epistle' as a literary form had a special aura of romance, elegance and grace, depending on the writer, even when the contents were bordering on the vitriolic or foul-mouthed.  John Keats could have walked across to his brother's home, patted him on his back and poured out his heart for ten minutes; instead, he chose to write `Epistle to my brother George' and God knows that it was a more arduous task!! Robert Burns and George Byron  were also guilty of repeatedly using this art form, primarily because of its compelling stylistic charm.  You will be surprised to hear that P.G.Wodehouse wrote epistles to his friends, co-authors like Agatha Christie. Whether or not these were all meant for the public domain, eventually they did show up and generations of readers were the beneficiaries.  Even Jack the Ripper paused between murders to write letters (the so-called Dear-Boss letters) to the head of a news agency, very appropriately in red-ink, graphically describing his last kill and cruelly contemplating the next target.  To be precise, the authorship of such letters was never clearly established and one does not know who the author was. Nasty they were, not nearly epistles, but still, letters.

Till around three decades back, letter was still mass-medium, for lack of other channels of communication. Some of my contemporaries who could not put pen to paper without suffering birth pangs (somebody had once famously said that such boys would more easily deliver children than a decently-written letter -- don't ask me who) regardless of the language involved, were forced to write letters to express their puppy-love as students.  This author had the hilarious experience of translating verbatim, that immortal song from the blockbuster Hindi movie, Sangam - `Yeh mera prem pathra padhkar' - that classic love letter in epistle form, for the benefit of a friend in need.  Obviously the latter had no capacity for a good sentence, nor respect for copyright.  He was the type whose idea of a letter always began with `As I was suffering from', but fancied his chances with a blatantly plagiarised flowery letter to a girl in his neighbourhood, with whom he thought he was desperately in love - never mind what the girl thought.  But, I am digressing.  That iconic song as well as the Thamizh song from the movie `Kuzhandaiyum Dheivamum' - `Anbulla Maan Vizhiye' - represent the best of love-letter-songs that have enthralled posterity.  Apart from love-lettering, leave-lettering and job-seeking-lettering, people had gradually been conveniently weaned away from the epistle form over the years.

Upto this point in time, people never complained of snail-mail, simply because there was no other alternative in sight and an`Express Delivery' sticker on a letter, with a hefty incremental charge paid to the Post Office comforted senders that the missive would eventually shimmy across fifty miles in one week or so.  And people were delirious because it worked almost always.  Then lightning struck - email happened.  For all the convenience it brought to us, email killed the concept of letter-writing.  I would just make one point to settle any argument in this context - has anyone ever seen anything like `An Anthology of Great E-mail Messages' by any author in the last twenty years??   I have not.  It is not impossible to use the medium of email and still write good letters or even epistles because what has changed is the means of delivery not the form, artistic or otherwise.  Notwithstanding this, there is barely any desire left for epistling today.  Logically all those lovers of epistles should be penning more often because delivery, turn-around-time etc have tremendously improved.  But no, the majority of us have lost touch with the art-form so badly that we do not even remember it existed.  And the bulk of us do not have it in us to make that extra effort which is essential to produce something that wholesome.

But, wait a minute.  This is not to denigrate the present generation about their writing abilities.  I will be prevaricating if I do not acknowledge the fact that there is a lot more interest in writing amongst youngsters today.  Simply because the media and platforms for expressing themselves are much more readily available, easy to access and use.  One just has to look at the plethora of blogs being written on all subjects under and over the sun, with much less inhibition and much more openness than ever before.  So, the beef here is not with youngsters' getting into writing, but specifically pertains to the moribund art form of `epistling'.  Obviously the querulous question will surface from some quarter - `why should we be writing letters, when we can communicate in other ways'?  Just because the movie industry today is technologically way better and very appealing, we have not jettisoned theatre completely, have we?   Just because new songs arrive on the scene, we have not forgotten the old melodies, have we?  Just because pizzas and empenadas are available aplenty today, have we given up on our dal, roti, idli, dosa?  So, why cant we preserve something beautiful and elegant from the past, even as we employ newer and slicker media to facilitate that?

So, where are we heading?  Further degeneration in this context, seemingly irrepressible, has gained serious momentum with all the short messaging platforms (SMS, Whatsapp, Messenger etc) going berserk.  Some very bright nephews and nieces of mine almost  believe that `the' has always been spelt `da' and I am not surprised because they are all engineers writing codes, not sentences!  Language is being brutalized so badly that the mangled version is beyond recognition for the bulk from the older generations. Youngsters from this generation are immersing themselves more deeply in abbreviations and acronyms, not even wanting to write full words, forget sentences.  A typical conversation goes like this:

-- R u k? (Are you okay)
-- CTN (Cant talk now)
-- Y (Why)
-- PAW (Parents are watching), POS (Parent over the shoulder)
-- NTIM (Not that it matters)
-- TTYL (Talk to you later)
-- CUS (See you soon) 

No, I am neither conversant nor comfortable with this language, but used the internet to collate a few gems for edification, ably assisted by my dear wife, who is way ahead of me in this game (I can see many of you who know us both nodding appreciatively and asking why only this game!).  If effective communication today has come to this, what are the chances of revival for epistles?? RIP, Epistle, is all this author can think of. 

I have a bad feeling that I will get a few belligerent emoticons for this and the crowning glory could be a fist with one finger sticking up, definitely not the thumb!!  Mercifully, that emoticon does not seem to be around; must be under construction!

Some Apps We Badly Need

Whenever you visit an old friend, especially if his family had been blessed with a longish respite from you, one scene plays out without fail.  The patriarch would demand that all the hapless youngsters in the family line up to apprise you of personal developments and answer your inane questions. Just like the military parades held for visiting Presidents, who go about the job with a crick-in-the-neck bearing, trying to look for curry stains on the uniforms or a random unzipped fly!  Even the rebels amongst the children decide to co-operate, out of pity for the entreating father, on the condition that no such parade is held for another dignitary for one year.  This scribe was the beneficiary of such an honour recently.  During the informal pow-wow that ensued, one felt empathy welling up for the Duke of Kent coerced annually into having significantly meaningful exchanges with ball-boys/girls at Wimbledon.  It always looks like the Duke has been warned to keep his hands to himself and not pat any boy or girl on the back, the Royals' reputation being what it is.  So, the Duke's already strained demeanour is further stressed as he mouths banalities like `grass is green eh?', `Slazenger balls are good, right?' etc.  I felt I was in a similar plight. The friend's offspring seemed gainfully employed, but fashionably unhappy about their jobs - as every youngster nowadays is.  One kid, however, caught my attention when he said he worked for a company making apps for mobiles.  Ah, the neo-normal!  It looks like every lane in Bangalore has an app-making start-up, with every family in the neighbourhood contributing to the manpower required for the ubiquitous endeavour.

My dear wife recently admitted to me that in her work-place, populated mostly by boys and girls in their early 20s, she felt a bit odd primarily for one reason.  This is an earth-shaking admission coming from an individual who is seldom willing to be outdone in anything reasonable.  This major oddity tending to make her feel an outcast, was the number of apps she had on her mobile, which was a single digit number, whereas the other kids averaged a few thousands.  She elaborated that there were some sixty apps per head for ordering breakfast (different apps sourced bulls-eye and scrambled eggs), one hundred and fifty for lunch and some two hundred for dinner.  Obviously every commercial establishment feels the floor-boards slipping under its organizational feet, if it did not have an app at the minimum.  The youngsters happily labour under the wrong impression that they are milking the mobile phone for all they can, while the truth is that the mobile phone is quietly running all their lives, more so, with all the apps.   What struck this author was that in all this bedlam, there should be some really useful apps the industry could conjure up and offer to the society for overall betterment.  So, he has made an attempt at thinking up a few.  May not be the best, but here goes.

The most useful app, as traffic-harried city-dwellers would vouch, would be the one which helps untangle the Gordian knot of jumbled up vehicles at chaotic junctions.  The chaos is compounded by the infinitely wise authorities, who strategically leave such junctions unmanned and without traffic signals, just so the general populace can indulge in some gas-fume-filled-fun, as a token of gratitude from a government collecting huge amounts as Road Tax from the citizens. We Indians have this irresistible urge to unifocally wade into any traffic tangle where vehicles from all directions inexorably converge and stop only when physical contact becomes unavoidable thereafter, the point of no-return having been reached.  The idea is never to let anyone get out easily, so every inch of available road space is taken, the last bits by the leanest of two-wheelers.  Now that there is no wiggle-room for anyone,  all the satisfied participants smugly sit back and start gazing around, waiting for a messiah to emerge.  Some villains in the piece spoil the fun by shouting generally or by honking repeatedly.  Now, the app screaming to be developed, should be able to use the strategically placed cameras on the nearest tree-top or light-pole top, analyze the confusing mass of vehicles below, identify which one should move first, by how many inches in which direction and communicate this via a public address system, so that people can start wriggling out of the mess of their own malevolently willful creation.  It is entirely possible that people, with their inexhaustible penchant for fun on the roads, will jostle and the wrong vehicles might move in the wrong direction, further complicating the mess, but that is a chance we have to take, you cannot blame the app for that.

A couple of other useful apps relate to the food-delivery mechanism, involving the restaurants and the seemingly permanently-starved segment of the population.  One app should be able to track the delivery-boy on his vehicle, using GPS, right from the time he departs from the restaurant, through the maze of bye-lanes he has to traverse, till delivery.  This ensures that the hungry customer does even less work than before (because some thirty minutes are spent in looking at the mobile phone, deriving immense vicarious pleasure from the sight of the delivery boy in a real-life race situation, racing against time and, for good measure, violating a few traffic rules like riding on the pedestrian side-walk if not a few pedestrians), while all the time he or she has the food in sight and mind. And salivates.  A truly satisfied customer in all respects, in the end.  A related app could be that which a pedestrian, who would otherwise end up being a fatal statistic in the above cathartic meeting of the food supply and demand sides, could use.  This app will keep him out of harm's way, warning him to stay in-doors until all the menacing delivery boys move elsewhere, leaving the erstwhile killing fields safe for navigation on foot.

Two other apps are mentioned here; neither of them probably can avoid loss of some kind to the user, but is of immense informational value and could also bring the balm of solace in times of stress.  One should use all available historical data relating to delays in Air India flights taking off and predict what could be the next three possible hilarious reasons for delay.  We have to accept a wider choice here, since narrowing down to one single reason might be too difficult even for the most intelligent computer.  Who could have guessed accurately that one flight would be delayed because the engineer and the pilot were fighting a pitched battle inside the cockpit??  Another somewhat similar app could be for telling investors why the stock market really went down suddenly, immediately after they invested.  Otherwise, these poor sods not only lose money and sleep, but suffer the ignominy of remaining clueless as to why.  Currently all kinds of reasons are bandied about - from Euro zone crisis to ISIS taking Palmyra to a bunch of people urinating in the Himalayas thereby melting the snow a bit.  Losers, there will always be in stock markets because otherwise the less gullible cannot make money; but clueless losers suffer a double whammy and they deserve somewhat better!  Another app could try to predict which of our eminently bright politicos would come out with a gem to hugely embarrass the party, the country - well everyone, except the `gemmer'.  This will be very useful to the party managers as well as family members, to either start building up defenses or to seek hiding places.

If you thought all these apps mentioned above are disappointingly frivolous, what about this one?  An app, which could use past behaviour of a spouse and indicate the possible reaction to yet another stupid situation of one's making??  This could help prepare the erring party to either stand bravely up and smartly deflect the attack or scurry into a rat-hole for the next few days.  What?  You are saying past behaviour can never be the basis for prognosis, when it comes to an angry spouse??  That rings true. That would mean this will probably be the most sought after app, if it could be rigged because the application for this app is universal, no??

FM Radio Music Channels

All the private TV news channels, one by one, have succumbed to mindless temptation and got infected by this menacing pestilence this author calls `the Tower of Babel spectacle'.  So named, because various members of a horde are trying to outshout each other in the programme, without the viewer being any wiser for all the commotion.  Sadly, in all this, the channels have chosen to ignore the fundamental fact that the average viewer also possesses some intelligence to absorb and analyse news, which is mostly drivel from the political arena.  Doubtless, many disgruntled viewers have been driven to look for alternatives where they can get just news without having to resort to masochism and subjecting themselves to the new 'value-added', jarring service.  In this context, as this distressed author was surfing news channels desperately, he found a very pleasant niche - Doordarshan (DD), the sensible old dame amongst all those sexy vampish sirens!  Simple, old-fashioned delivery of news without a multitude of offending faces and offensive voices jostling for space; no yelling and pontificating but sedate delivery of information.  A painless shift to DD for news was easy.

While the smug satisfaction of having bested the villainous TV news channels suffused one, another thought struck - what about the new FM radio music channels (FMCs) - how are they faring?  There are plenty of channels crowding the airwaves, playing film songs virtually non-stop, with enthusiastic music jockeys (MJs) managing the delivery.  While there is no doubt that they provide a continuous flow of songs at home or during a long drive in your car, how comfortable is the average listener with the content as well as the form of the programmes?  This scribe spent a few days switching among the various FM channels to equip himself for an analysis and eventual arrival at semblance of a conclusion.  Clearly, the idea was to identify the irritants and shortcomings since the overall benefits of these channels are easy to glean.

The first thing that smites you in the face with the private FMCs is the volume of chatter that goes on.  Since they are entertaining you with music for free, they may be excused for being presumptuous enough to arrogate to themselves the right to keep talking at you all the time.  Almost like saying, `Hey you are almost my captive, you know? I am going to bak-bak, where can you hide'?!  It is absolutely futile trying to move to another channel because the same bombardment vigorously pursues you there, just the voice is different, nicer or less pleasant.  You may as well stick with the best of the bad bargains, since the music doled out seldom differs, entertaining as it is.  One must admit that some of those MJs are very good at their jabber, extremely facile in delivery with a certain addictive tonal quality to their voices which is difficult to describe but easy to feel good about.  Especially the girls, obviously.  So, the guess is that channels go pointedly casting their nets far and wide for girls with a few requisite qualifications. First, tremendous amount of energy/stamina as well as patience, because the job is to tirelessly talk for a few hours at a stretch (of course, between songs and ads), that too being blissfully bereft of this somewhat essential knowledge as to who is listening or paying attention - a very tough ask, one must admit. Second, the voice must have that essential allure that will make the listeners forget about all the mundane things being said but still keep them engaged.  Third, the ability to hold the line on a non-existent conversation, because the listener who wandered in could be a classic, monosyllabic wonder.  Fourth, the special gift of making even small-time-pass chats sound like knowledge peaks the listeners are scaling.  With such difficult attributes being pre-requisites, such girls are probably born with headsets and not made!

There are a few male MJs around, who may be found woefully wanting when it comes to that blessed tonal quality and allure we talked about earlier.  However, they seem to be strangely gifted in attracting female listeners with their charm and can boast of a sizable fan following - male and female.  This they manage with their boyish banter, sometimes bordering on flirting and innuendos.  That they mostly hunt in twos tells us something, right?  While girls can manage this job singly, boys require support! Something to do with their ability to hold the listener for the longer duration?

Just to avoid the delivery degenerating into a boring (to the MJ) soliloquy, the programme structure cleverly brings in eager listeners, wielding mobile phones, for very meaningful conversations on esoteric subjects like their breakfast or what they are wearing or the weather in the neighbourhood .  Also in play periodically are very incisive questions inviting sizzling and intelligent answers, with their own instant gratification in the form of shopping and dining coupons.  If one does not follow these programmes, one would forever remain impervious to that immense exhilaration experienced by the chosen listener, being blessed with a Rs.500 coupon or a couple of movie tickets!!

If you think you have to contend only with the MJs' verbal barrage between songs, you are in for further jolt.  Of course, what they say about ads being the fuel for the media, while admonishing the viewer not to touch the TV remote when an ad is running, is very true.  Ads are the nourishment which make the channels bring us our favourite programmes and all that jazz.  One should agree but sometimes, between two songs, they have some fifteen, so-fast-that-they-are-unintelligible commercials strung together, which is a bit thick.  The beef is that radio channels badly miss the critical advantage of visual impact that TV has, so one does not even realise that some four commercials (on underwears which will obviate the need for any other clothing, on online tuitions which will get even a dummy or a piece of wood into IIT, on a new apartment complex in the centre of the city at the price prevailing in a village and on divinely tasting biryani even your mother cannot cook)  have breezed by even as one is still trying to grasp the full import of the first ad about a furniture store.  There is one channel which prides itself in letting the listeners enjoy eight songs without a commercial break.  It does and this author salutes it on behalf of the listeners.  But, they repeat this virtue of theirs with such irritating frequency during the programmes that they may as well boost their finances fractionally with a few more ads instead of numbing us with the same slogan.

After the experiment with private FM channels for a week, this author ended up with a debilitating physical and nervous disorder.  However, the panacea for this ailment appeared from unexpected quarters.  Suddenly all ills lifted like mist or melted away, depending upon whether you swear by gas or liquid! What brought about this transformation was that this author, who has never explored FM stations beyond 101, by sheer serendipity landed on 102.9FM and presto, Vividh Bharti (VB) was beaming a soothing romantic number from the 1970s.  It was like magic to the ears, which had suffered some more-than-marginal impairment from the continuous bombardment during the week and were on the verge of plotting a rebellion. This may sound like the feverished declaration of an infirm mind, prompted by nostalgia but I will stand by this - the best thing Indian government has done in 67 years is keeping VB going strong and that too, without too many ad breaks and free from the tentacles of garrulous MJs.   All those fantastic programmes - Bhule Bisre Geeth, Chhayaa Geeth, Aap ki Pasand, Aaj ke Fankar as well as the special programme to broadcast film songs requested by soldiers of the Indian Army are still vibrantly alive, being delivered in the same unhurried, measured way as in that bygone era.  There are no hustling MJs pouring forth wisdom and there are no rapid-fire-delivered ads, but song after song is played with the same old-world charm.  And the old is generously mingled with the new at VB, whereas in the new FM channels vintage songs are mostly methodically consigned to the graveyard shift, when not many are alive to such music.

Does this mean VB stood frozen in time?  Clearly, no.  They are using SMS requests for listeners' choice instead of opening inland letters one by one!  While this was a matter of satisfaction, as a dampener, the reader stumbled and struggled through messages, as if he was frequently wracked by doubt, clearly demonstrating some problem with the process.  And it could only be that even the personnel at VB have not changed and they in turn, have not upgraded their spectacles to suit their age!!
One would think they would have the SMSs streaming through to a teleprompter for facile reading.  With all the fumbling, probably time good enough for a few additional songs are being wasted.  And then, the station went blank - dead - for about three minutes.  Could it be some emergency in the broadcasting room or was it some old equipment playing truant? 

Whatever it is, now we do have a choice, don't we??  Just like we found DD for news without headache, we have VB for music without chatter and too many ads!  Given the chinks in the armour of typically government-run stations, these may not be the perfect solutions one is looking for.  Unless, of course, they embark on make-overs to match the private channels in all respects.  Many will agree with the hurried response - that is not desirable.  Or,  like my dear wife, one may be completely indifferent to anything coming out of the radio, so long as it is some noise - in which case, some channels dedicated to mostly banter interspersed sporadically with songs are the imperative.

Ninety Minutes Inside An MRI Machine!

If that title sounds like and conjures up images of `Around the World in Eighty Days', this author begs to (a) violently differ and (b) be forgiven.  That is not the intention, since the aftermath of taking temporary residence inside an MRI machine for any length of time cannot be pleasant, period.  Especially if the specimen subjected to the vicious experience is usually stricken by the sight of a doctor and the all-enveloping antiseptic smell hanging like an unseen dome inside a hospital or clinic.

You have heard of `White Coat Syndrome' (WCS)? Simply stated, it is that churning feeling you get when you think someone has inserted a hand directly into your innards and started squeezing, just as you are entertaining thoughts of an encounter with a doctor.  What it does is this - if you are going for a blood pressure check, it shoots your BP rocketing up; if the issue is something to do with the heart, your palpitations increase dramatically; if your lungs are causing problem, your breathing becomes shallow and erratic; if it is diabetes, your system has suddenly upped the quantum of sugar manufactured internally.  In short, WCS unfailingly exacerbates the symptoms, if not the problems themselves, you are approaching the doctor to mitigate.  This author assumes that his readers are not such naive softies as to believe that anything can be cured - so, mitigate it is!  Then the wise doctor, who has known you for twenty years and has done nothing at all otherwise to cause fright in you, examines while you apprehensively watch his furrowed brows and creased face.  And wait for him to either tut-tut or cluck-cluck (all doctors are not predictably uniform in their reaction and each one has his staunch preference - not that two of them agree on anything else) condescendingly, by way of prefacing his remarks.  Then, with a pitying look on his face and a vague smile (he has perfected the art of being always pleasant to the patients) he finally delivers his cheerful judgement `So, what have you been doing, it has gotten worse'!  Result is another half a kilo of tablets per month.  Remember, this is not because the problem has gotten more acute, but WCS has sabotaged things for you.

Why that detailed rendering of what WCS is?  Just to provide the essential background, as any half-decent author will do, so that his audience gets full value for time committed, in understanding and appreciating the story.   What do you think happens when someone, suffering acutely from WCS as well as claustrophobia, is forcibly inserted into an MRI machine, ashen-faced with fright and shuddering from uncontrollable emotions?  Read on and you will find out.  Disclosure time.  The temptation was to write this in third person and get away with that.  But an honest author does not economize with truth nor does he attempt to misrepresent.  So here goes (there is no dignified way of saying this, I guess) - the WCS infused patient who gets into the MRI machine in this story is the author himself!  The context was the need for an MRI to inspect the plumbing in the nose, to see how bad the deviated septum was.  Knowing the highly perceptive and intelligent readers following this blog, they would have guessed facts anyway, given that such clarity and attention to detail can emerge only from a life-changing and intimate personal experience!

Just to frighten me a bit more and make me feel less than normal, they forced me to change into the hospital attire, as if I was going in for a complicated surgery.  The prepping process included a short list of do's and dont's, delivered in a monotone by a bored technician - Do not shift the body (I wondered how one did that, since there was not even wiggling space inside).  Do not shake your head or neck, lest the picture scrambles.  Breathe, only if you have to. Already petrified, I tentatively asked what happened if the picture quality was patchy.  I should have known.  `You have to go back for another hour again, and that is chargeable', as if they were giving me a pleasure-ride!   My dear wife hissed `Don't behave like a kid, get on with it'.  Already the doctor, who happened to be a cousin of hers and she had mirthfully discussed this scene and giggled heartily, while all I could do was frown in silence because I had more sinister things gnawing at me.

I was launched into the capsule head first and my dear wife robustly waved me off as if I was on a Mars mission.  Very helpfully the technician told me it would take forty five minutes and gave me a calling bell.  He asked me to press the button, if I wanted the process to stop for some reason.  Now, I was all the more worried as to why that would happen, but before I could ask for elucidation, somebody said `okay, go'.  As soon as the machine commenced operations, it let out a high-pitched whine to let everyone know who would be in control.  Then started the vibrations, which were abnormally high in the estimate of the technician and the doctor attending.  They hastily concluded that the patient's own involuntary body tremors were adding to the machine's.  So, the patient was peremptorily pulled out and told in uncertain terms that unless he co-operates, they would have to sedate him and the readings would be sub-optimal in that case.  Which meant, the lease period for occupancy of the machine for the patient would have to increase, if required, along with the charges.  That promptly eased the tremors somewhat and the process re-started. 

The inside of the machine was obviously built strictly for utility, not for entertainment.  There were many contraptions all around,  making the same whirring sound following some algorithm as they kept moving about busily.  Just to jazz things up a bit, there were disco-like lights overhead, angrily flashing here and there, as if they were upset and disappointed at what they found inside my head.  In five minutes, I have had enough and pressed the calling bell button.  It worked and I was overjoyed to realise that someone was indeed outside and the machine was stopped.  The technician impatiently asked me what was wrong and was downright annoyed when I said I was just testing to see if the calling process works - only for emergency purposes.   He threatened not to stop during the process even if I had a problem since I was abusing the facility.

I decided to grit my teeth and go through with the hellish experience, despite being rattled by many doubts and questions:
-- What if everyone outside went for collective lunch or tea and there was no one to respond to the calling bell?
-- What if there was an earthquake or fire and everyone scooted, leaving me inside, blissfully ignorant of reality?  I did not see any way of scrambling out on my own.
-- What if the process is finished but the technician could not retrieve me because he had a heart-attack or was otherwise disabled?

I also made mental note of all the very practical enhancements that I figured were necessary to the MRI machine, in order to make it a more wholesome experience:
-- Fit the inside with TV Screens (HD, if possible) with a few channels and provide ear phones to the patient (Time-pass, if not entertainment).
--For those who do not appreciate TV, provide a teleprompter kind of screen and e-book to read.
-- Make glass windows on both sides so that the patient can see he has not been left unattended (Reduction of anxiety in the patient, helps control fear).
-- Have a hole through which the patient can put out his hand and this can be held by a pretty and gentle nurse throughout the process (Reduces stress and makes the expeirence somewhat acceptable)
-- Enhance the machine to accept brief breaks, without punitive levies, so that the patient can take a walk around the room for fresh air, when claustrophobia overwhelms him.

May be, I was being unacceptably busy with my hyper-active imagination as well as analytical bent of mind.  The picture quality was way below normal level and I had to go through the same process again for another forty five minutes.  When I finally emerged at the end, there was resounding applause from all those present, fit for returning astronauts.  When I gave the list of my questions/doubts as well as the suggested improvements, the doctor glowered and wanted to send me back for another MRI of my scattered brain!  I have never been back there, but I hear they have framed those notes and displayed inside the MRI room; of course, without disclosing the name of the patient, out of sheer pity!  Very considerate of them!

 

Chaar log kya bolenge? ('What will four people say?' in Hindi)

Old Indian films and literature in any of the multitude of languages in which they were created, were replete with scenes of distraught people, especially the elderly in the family, wringing their hands and moaning "Now, what will four people say?".  Invariably the context would be a rather embarrassing predicament in which some juvenile or devious black sheep of a family member had landed the elders through 'his'  umpteenth nincompoopish act. This author vehemently protests being labelled sexist, but a superficial research effort has yielded reasonably convincing statistics that the overwhelming majority of the perpetrators of such acts were from the male of the species even those days.  Anyway, men tend to protest such allegations far less, because they guess they could be guilty!!  And of course, dear wife will go through this like a hawk, so why create an opening for a debate one cannot win? The affected parties, who valued their family's standing in the society more than their own lives (this literally translated to seeking quick redemption via wholesale suicides in some cases), tended to behave like deer in the headlights, not knowing which way to go.  Such headlights were deliberately shined in hi-beam by the viler elements of the community (yes, the villains), who enjoyed any discomfiture accruing to the honourable families and had a full-time job of actively creating and exploiting such opportunities gleefully.  Such people - who revelled in schadenfreude - were critical components of the `chaar log' the title refers to.

One has heard so many heart-wrenching real life stories from those days, of parents being unduly harsh on the children just because they saw the situation and the aftermath entirely through the prism of family honour, in deference to those ubiquitous `four people'.  Some rational elders might have been broad-minded enough to empathize with the youngsters, whose actions militated against their own old-fashioned ideas.  Some might have been sensitive and understanding enough to place the youngsters' happiness above all else.  Still, they were ultimately so heavily swayed by the unbearable potential stigma that society would slap on them and succumbed to that pressure, ending up shredding some lives and peace at home.   Children were forced into wrong lines of education only to sustain the pride of the parents and the legacy of the family.  Youngsters were denied the pleasure of pursuing new and challenging fields of work which appealed to them but perceived as inferior by the seniors.  Men and women were brutally separated and prevented from wedlock in the name of lineage and status.  All these were done to satisfy those four people who were never gun-shy to malign a family. But the consequences were disastrous, leaving the family feeling sad, broken and guilty - yet, with their false sense of pride in tact.  A genuinely pyrrhic victory, if there was one!

Where are those four people now?  Are they still part of our lives?  The answer is an emphatic yes; however, it is true that within a couple of generations, the old order has undergone some form of  metamorphosis and things have been turned on their heads somewhat.  While people at various levels of society are still fixated on what four people would say and the latter have retained their preeminent position in tormenting  others, the underlying issues have changed in terms of substance and trajectory.  Family honour and personal standing in society are probably still driving the behaviour of people, albeit in very different ways.  Here are some vignettes, based on the observations of this scribe.

Forty years back, only those celebrities, who imagined that their personal features formed the fulcrum of their careers, went under the knife periodically for cosmetic work on their bodies.  Now, the only requisite qualifications seem to be the availability of money, one's own or borrowed and a overweening sense of vanity.  Even the decrepit, the aging, the pot-bellied businessmen and rotund housewives avidly seek botox treatment and bariatric surgery without batting an eyelid.  The motivation is to wow those four people with superbly concocted stories of their own supposed dedication and commitment in going through yoga-based therapy sessions and stringent dietary control  - that is what they tout as the reasons for their rejuvenated looks.  The audience may not be naive enough to believe them because all the weight is very quickly regained, thanks to terrible eating habits and the complete absence of yoga or any semblance of exercise from their lives.  Nevertheless, all this is grist for the mills of the those four people, who are omnipresent.   This author has come across men and women with egos the size of a football and brains the size of a pea - if that big - who would rather hobble along with torturous pain in their knees and create additional problems for everyone around them by collapsing and fracturing bones no one knew existed.  They would obstinately refuse to use the support of walking sticks or wheel chairs, for fear of being labelled `old' (which they unquestionably are) by four people, who are for ever ready with their derogatory comments.  

There have been instances of BMW owning busybodies visiting other cities and missing flights because they sent back the `ordinary' car that showed up for their airport ride and insisted on a BMW - "what will four people say if we travel in anything less"??  One senior bureaucrat, a genuinely good and wise man, who cared two hoots for public or private opinion, used to travel in auto rickshaws and buses, completely shorn of all trappings.  Until he was threatened with divorce by his domineering wife, for whom those four people were akin to Oracle, especially if they were from her own family.

There was this couple, so completely made for each other in their obsession with living the high life just to impress society.  The family wealth has been accumulated in a very short span, using highly suspect and very often openly corrupt business ways.  The heir to this wealth was their daughter, a bright young lady of immense good sense, who hated the trumped up and blatantly fake lives the parents lived.  Her problem was that she was forced to be a reluctant participant in their parents' charade more often than not and she was bristling with resentment at this.  When her own wedding was being finalised, she insisted that it be a quiet affair with a few friends and close family.  But the parents, with their heads swollen with moneyed arrogance and false pride, ignored her pleas and staged a grandiose event, attracting massive attention.  The bride and groom were a very unhappy couple and expressed their anger in many ways during the ceremony.  While  people were suitably impressed by the dog and pony show, the glitz associated with the wedding unfortunately invited the probing attention of the authorities, who eventually succeeded in putting both the parents behind bars, because they were running the business jointly.  Now while those four people gleefully savaged the guilty who landed in jail, the daughter seems to be at peace, though!!  And some are criticising her for being indifferent to her parents' lot.  It happens!

But one thing this author cannot figure out is - why four??  Why not three or five?  Because, in many languages this number seems sacrosanct.  It is always `what would four people say', never some other number??  Wonder why.  May be, this is one explanation - when one departs from this life, one needs four people to carry one on the final journey.  Metaphorically, it is those four people's approval we seek all through our lives??  May be.



   

Caveat Emptor!!

Those of us who have developed the virtuous and well-honed habit of reading multiple newspapers for at least two hours daily (yes, this presupposes that you are either fashionably semi-retired or pathetically over-the-top-retired!), might have recently seen a report screaming out to the filthy rich that a Greek island was for sale.  In terms of moolah, one required a measly sum of  USD6MM to own that piece of real estate.  But being part of a decidedly dishonest environment in which the same parcel of land is earnestly sold multiple times to many gullible investors, with the connivance of government officials, this author felt one had to be of really solid timbre, besides rolling in money, to go after such genuinely distant dreams.  Such an investor cannot ignore the wise Latin dictum `Caveat Emptor', which simply means `Let the buyer beware'.   All through the ages, this principle has been avidly held up by the wise men of the society as the essential bedrock of all commercial transactions; but men and women have willfully ignored this splendid, sage-like advice, to the utter detriment of their own treasury balances.

This scribe first came abreast of the above term, loaded with wisdom distilled from the experience of  ancestors ruthlessly conned for centuries,  during a Mercantile Law class, as part of the Cost Accountancy course.  The professor with palpably far-leftist leanings began with the mistaken assumption that a seller was always economically better placed than the buyer and  bellowed that anyone who had something to sell, had a clear agenda without even a pretend-veil, to cheat potential buyers.  The logic was and is impeccable - the seller knows a lot more about the item on the block than the buyer and unless the latter exercises extreme caution, this dangerous mismatch in knowledge is bound to result in the buyer getting burnt somewhere in the bargain.  This precept is incontrovertible generally, but people tend to swat it aside because they have neither the patience to look carefully nor the ability to digest the truth.  Until one is taken for a huge ride resulting in a significant dent in his or her finances.

Recently a friend went to Mangalore and had booked a room with a well known budget hotel chain for two nights, paying in advance with his credit card.  It looked like half the eligible bachelors in that place were getting forcibly engaged during those two days while the other half were getting hitched after the satisfactory waiting period.  There was a huge influx of good men and women who were hell-bent on being part of the above festivities, rendering all types of hotel rooms mighty scarce.  Into this reveller-infested city,  rode the aforesaid friend and rightfully demanded the reserved room at the hotel, while many lesser individuals without such a reservation were hanging out at the Reception, desperately praying for a miracle.  After the room-boy had ushered the visitor into the rather modest lodging and made a big show of switching on the TV and the AC, he collected a tip and left in a hurry as if a few more seconds there would have cost him an arm and a leg.  The friend did not have to wait very long to discover why.  The AC showed 29 deg Celsius and stubbornly refused to budge from there even after half an hour, that `cooling' period he had generously given the machine to do its job.  It would have been an interminable wait for any cooling because the AC was dispensing only hot air - there was no gas in the compressor.  Visits by two technicians and a manager to cajole the machine to relent did not yield any result.  Anyway, the perceptive friend had concluded that the hotel staff were just playing dumb-charade with him, being fully aware of the fact that the AC had no gas.  By this time, it was midnight and the room, without any other form of air circulation or any opening on the walls, had started resembling a cauldron.  All that the expletive-laced rants of the friend could elicit from the staff was an assurance that they would change the room the next day.  They did and the second night in the hotel was a breeze, literally.  When the friend returned to base, he furiously wrote a complaint to the hotel, asking for refund of one night's charges and is still waiting for a response.  That he asked his bank to block the payment to the hotel on his card and the bank demanded to know if he had anything in writing to show that the hotel said they would give an AC room is another matter.  None of us checks that kind of stuff on the booking confirmation, do we??

A family friend of ours recently went to a well known diamond jewellery shop to do valuation of her solitaires and was blithely told that they do not evaluate diamonds bought from another source.  It sounds pretty innocuous at first and this friend realized the diabolical game being played only after she got the same answer from four other shops.  That meant she had to go back to the jeweller who sold the solitaires to her and how do you think they would value what they sold?  So, unless one knows a jeweller personally, it is difficult to get such a valuation done and all jewellers live happily ever after, having sold at their own price to their unsuspecting clients.  And the generally accepted practice of a second opinion always showing a lower value, if one can get such a valuation, goes a long way in keeping the original sellers warm and glowing!

This is the story of a body-slimming vest someone bought online in the US.  Advertisement spiel had it that if one used the tight vest daily for four hours or so, weight loss would happen and the body will slim down.  After a month of diligent adherence to the instructions in the manual that came with the purchase and going around in the vest, with the extremely uncomfortable feeling that the body was being tightly squeezed from all directions, there was no evidence of any real loss of weight or slimming of the body.  However, the owner was so seriously bothered by the odour that started emanating from the vest, he decided to put it through the rigours of the washing machine - just once.  Lo and behold, when it came out washed, the vest had shrunk to half its size and could no longer be forced down the torso of even a child!!  May be that is what the seller meant - there is no guarantee that the body would slim but the vest definitely would, after one wash!!

Recently in Bangalore, the Development Authority, the government agency in charge of allotting land for building residential and commercial spaces, decreed that some 100 houses built on a piece of land have to be demolished.  Why?  Because the houses were illegally built on a dry lake bed.  Fair enough, serves people right if they encroached on a lake bed, falling into the trap laid by avaricious private builders, who had no right to that land to begin with - people thought as they read the news item.  They even nodded in appreciation that some government agency was finally doing its job.  But they were rendered speechless when they found out that the land was sold to the house owners by the same Development Agency twenty years back!!

When I discussed this subject for the blog with my dear wife, she wholeheartedly and readily agreed.  What bothered me was the quizzical look she had in her eyes - as if she wished someone had drawn her attention to the tenet of Caveat Emptor some 32 years ago when she thought she was making the most important 'bargain' purchase of her life!!