tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67723283757027042122024-03-26T22:43:13.561-07:00Greyhairtalking ..... Varad's BlogP.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.comBlogger145125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-37807556869993514102024-03-23T06:56:00.000-07:002024-03-23T21:44:36.706-07:0020th Century Breakfast Experience!<p>A friend was visiting Bangalore from Bombay. A rather innocuous suggestion from my dear wife that he should grab a bite at one of the antedeluvian `hotels' (restaurant actually, but those days we did not consciously make that difference) was wholeheartedly endorsed all around. When I asked him if he wanted to immerse in a vignette from the past, he was indeed very exuberant! Of course, he would love to visit one of the old world restaurants which still doled out the classic idli, vadai, benne dosai, coffee routine to loads of craving people daily, with very little change in its menu or dishes from decades ago. That enthusiastic response meant a half-hour drive to Basavangudi, with a lot of expectations, for a peek into history with our stomachs. But what we did not factor in was that it was a Sunday and that a sizeable population of Bangalore would have converged on that particular 'hotel' to satiate its pangs for the traditional stuff. I encouraged the friend not to panic on our approach (he wanted to beat a hasty retreat) saying it was almost 1030, way past normal breakfast time and we should be ok. I was lamentably wrong - and there was a hungry mob milling around, at the entrance of the restaurant, as if free food was being distributed from a soup kitchen during a natural disaster or war.</p><p>No exaggeration - some 150-200 people were standing in assorted lines and that many hungry souls could never be kept quiet until something substantial went into their mouths. Most of the people did not even know which line led to what. Important to note, because they did lead to different destinations as we realised after some 15 minutes of queueing up. One line was for take-away (`parcels' as the restaurant had indicateed on a carefully concealed board, which can be seen only from 6 inches away); another one was to get a token with a number, which then gained some momentum for you by placing you in the main queue, waiting for entry through the golden gate. Many people stood in the wrong line for quite a while before realising they were literally misplaced. I felt very diffident now, because I did not anticipate such a deluge of people for the ubiquitous idli, dosa and multiple queues to contend with. The ultimate prize was entry into the famous, nearly 100-year old eatery, where the menu remained constant throughout the day - yes, one got the same items whatever be the time. People congregated just to savour the food and atmosphere from way back because there is no other logical explanation when the same stuff is available in some hundred other joints, with good quality to boot. </p><p>Fittingly, the gentleman guarding gate to the culinary heaven, keeping the ravenous mob in some semblance of control was a symbol of the bygone era. Seemed to have bypassed a few decades and generations and descended on this scene. A blue Gandhi-topee was perched on his top and he was dressed in loose-fitting trousers and shirt, with a generous splash of vermillion on his forehead! He growled whenever he announced a token number for the holder to make a hasty entry; hasty because people were convinced somehow that even a small delay might cause them to miss their slice of history. Frequently he was mixing up token numbers, thereby causing frustration and confusion among the already restless. He was moderately dictatorial in his own way, entrenched in his high stool with a modern walkie talkie in hand a-la a war chief, gently reprimanding people when wrong approaches were made. Due to some malfunction in his mouth/tongue, phonetically he was able to make very little distinction betwen his J and K when he bellowed the token numbers. So when people with K14 enthusiastically responded and tried to jostle through, he was derisively castigating them, with the clarification that he was calling J14. When we thought our turn was coming up, he took a toilet cum coffee break and extended our agony. In addition to the walkie talkie communication, he also resorted to hand signals and sheer vocal-cord power, to obtain prompt updates on vacancies available inside.</p><p>Like all Indian establishments, this also had its own ways of playing favourites. When people known to the management or the chef or even a waiter wanted to enter, even without a token, they were surreptitiously ushered into the restaurant, giving them priority over others and were secreted in a back-room without access to the public. And they justifiably gleamed very proudly at being able to bypass the commoners like us. Why wont they?? These were ushered in, ignoring token numbers and calling out names of the favourites, making it obvious that something devious and inequitious was happening and a grave crime was being perpetrated on the waiting mob. And as elsewhere in India, some people were trying to dodge their way inside, using cheatsheets - like one guy said he had left something inside and pleaded to go in. But when we were sitting there after one hour, he was still eating!! Again a very Indian trait - find a hole in the process and get the thrill of cheating the majority even if it is only for a regular breakfast.</p><p>Finally when our turn came and we entered triumphantly, without further ado we were reminded that rules prevailing still pertained to 1900s. We were two and the table was for four. We were pretty strictly warned not to sit opposite to each other but side by side on one side of the table so that one more party of two can be accommodated opposite. Saring a table with strangers is the norm like in days of yore; if you dont like it, too bad, you can foot it to some other forgiving place. The waiter who took our order was also half ancient and must have got the job on quota, as a descendant of an old staff member. Seemed dreamily distant and had to be reminded four times about our order. A smile was not in his portfolio and a permanent frown adorned his face, a reminder of the fact that this place is a no-nonsense old world establishment where nobody had time for pleasanty. I was almost expecting him to give us something available and ask us to take it or leave it. And when he miscounted and ordered one dosa extra from the kitchen, he was trying to cajole one of us to eat that extra dosa also!! I would have done it, if he was the friendly type, but not for a scowling one. And the autocratic environment was reinforced when we got the items we asked for, in an order unilaterally decided by the establishment. Apparently, the kitchen chose what to turn out in bulk and when, nobody else had a choice. So, we just gulped down our irritation and self respect along with the food.</p><p>Quality? Was good, but nothing I would travel one hour for and stand in three lines to reach. There are many restaurants in Bangalore which serve similar food with same or better quality. So, I personally felt a bit tepid after this experience and may not revisit this any time soon in a hurry. But the benne masala dosa we brought back for the others was a hit and vanished in no time. Some consolation, I guess. My dear wife made the final adjudicating comments - `surely you guys enjoyed the outing with this kind of food to go with'. We did not have the heart to contradict her, with the gory details of our venture. She has to be always right!! </p><p> </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-12817305115648264412023-12-30T05:19:00.000-08:002024-01-24T03:38:06.843-08:00Frustrating Airmiles<p>Show me one frequent flier (FF) who is not enamoured of the airline programmes (AFFP), has not been disillusioned by the deliberately quirky processes involved but still firmly attached to them as if bonded by fevicol. Such an individual would be a rarity because `who can walk away, leaving behind beckoning free trips on the table'? Every frequent flier gets hooked on to a couple or more AFFPs, lured by the justifiable desire to snare a few free flights or upgrades. I have been, too! To some extent, the free flights do materialise pretty easily. But, sometimes the experience of dealing with the airline miles can be frustrating, enervating and irritating, all at once. And to rub salt into the raw wound, that would transpire at the most inopportune moment, when you are least prepared for dealing with the googlies the airlines bowl at you.</p><p>It is a fact of life that most of the accruals of free miles happen during your working days - when you fly hither and thither like a headless chicken at your employer's cost. Since someone else is paying and booking, you dont have to worry about the cost and just demand that the secretary book the seat on the most expensive flight of the day of your favourite airline, possibly accruing the most miles possible. Nobody bothers when you use those miles to book tickets for personal use. Or almost, so. In the late eighhties, some organizations sought to find out the quantum of benefits employees were collectively enjoying from free miles `donated' by them, as an invisible perquisite. A feeble attempt was made to monetise that benefit and somehow get a share for the organization itself. Some oversmart Financial Whizkid dreamt of winning a fat paycheque for saving the organization a lot of money. But nothing came out of that because the entrenched group of beneficiary bandicoots included everyone from the top to bottom and everyone was most averse to let go. The free miles bonanza continued happily for the gleeful employees and AFFPs multiplied merrily over the years. </p><p>If you have multiple AFFP memberships, you always end up confused as to which one you should patronize when it is time to book tickets. You waste hours shuttling between various airline sites until you get vertigo - trying to analyse, compare and decide. By the time the fatigued mind gives up and a less than optimal decision is forcibly made, the prices would have ramped up significantly, thereby annulling the skimpy benefits of the miles you would get. After all this, when you want to avail of that elusive free flight, you will find that you have tantalizingly 2500 miles/points short of what a free flight to any destination would entail. To add some spice, when you are trying to book a new ticket, you invariably find that the airline offering you the cheapest and most convenient flight is not among your AFFPs; since that is the most attractive on offer, you snatch that and no miles accrue for that flight with any current AFFP for you, as a consequence. Unless, of course, you being the typical FF sucker who is a smart-alec, decide to add one more, new AFFP to your priceless collection, thereby further diminishing your chances of getting a free flight in the near future because you are not concentrating all your free miles in one AFFP!</p><p>When you are looking for the free flight, invariably you will find, initially to your astonishment until you get used to the idea, that the only available flights leave at some god-forsaken time like 3.30 am or 11.45 pm. If you opt for either, you would spend double the amount you saved with free miles for transportation to the airport at an unearthly hour. Add to that a sleepless night either way and the resultant groggy state the next day. Another spanner the machiavellian airlines throw into the machinery is to show you flights with more than 2 connections to your destination, hiding away all the direct flights. So, a flight which should take about 3 hours in all, will be completed in 11 hours, with multiple layovers in the boondocks. You will be so bushed when you are done, as if you had undertaken a trans continental flight. Why would one choose this? You won't. Since the average avaricious human being never learns any lesson, you fly a new airline, become member of another AFFP and further disperse your free miles as a disadvantaged flier, never to reap a benefit any time soon. </p><p>Fortunately, most of the airlines do not attach an expiry date for their miles (in USA and Europe), so your meagre miles continue to languish endlessly in the account without ever getting you a free flight. But, be warned, this is just a mirage. Out of the blue, some airlines surprise you with the threat that miles will expire in six months because they were accrued 3 years earlier. Ah, but they offer a marvellous solution. Now you are enticed to pay for more miles (yes, pay more money) in order to keep the old miles from expiring immediately and postpone the evil day by one more year. What one does not realise is one year later the ugly situation would repeat itself, given our sloth, with more miles expiring unused, including the ones you `bought' the previous year. Sometimes, when you receive the bad tidings from the arilines, you go and check their track record with miles and see that they threaten first and months later, unilaterally extend the expiry by six months to one year, with the grandiose declaration that they do so for the `benefit of the patrons'. So, the next time you receive the expiry notice, you are lulled into just ignoring it (at your own peril, of course), being cockily sure that the expiry would be extended as on previous occasions. But, alas, no - this time the airline actually carries out its threat and denies any further extension. The problem is you never can predict which way this will go and the airlines keep you guessing always. Now, you have to think of all possible, necessary and wasteful trips you might take in the next few months and book tickets on multiple-hop/red-eye flights, just to use the miles immediately. You derive that false satisfaction that you are getting some free flights after all!!</p><p>If the airlines offer a choice of an immediate discount on the ticket or accrual of miles, I know what I will opt for. With all this hindsight, I will happily take the immediate monetary benefit instead of the promised lala-land! Even if quantitatively the former is a lesser benefit. But, I think most fliers would find the thrill of a free flight irresistible, whatever the difficulties involved in getting that flight are! Human nature - a freebie attracts us like moths to a light. The airlines know this irrefutable fact and will never change their diabolical ways. Why would they, when they know the chimera of miles can be used to lure FF members until doomsday??</p><p>When we were discussing this, my dear wife, the contrarian that she is, asked sardonically `why would you look a gift horse in the mouth'? Fair point, but I am not even sure it is a gift horse. It is labelled that but I am sure we pay the packed-in cost through the higher ticket price every time we buy one!! </p><p><br /></p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-15637080350752197782023-09-25T23:59:00.010-07:002023-10-27T04:24:09.354-07:00Hobby, Dear Seniors??<p><br /></p><p>Seven years back, after I had relinquished all my part time consulting assignments and became truly unemployed and retired, a friend visited me to check on how I was faring. He figured that having been active for so long, without the crutch of some professional work I would be entirely out of depth in the new situation or at least suffering from severe sense of alienation. I told him I was doing fine and did not have so much spare time to be afflicted by withdrawal symptoms or to worry about depression. He looked at me disbelievingly as if I was sprouting a few horns on my chin even as he was looking. I could understand why, because he went through a terrible phase after his own retirement, trying to cope with all the time he had on hand and a relentlessly nagging spouse. He did not realise earlier that what he had to eventualy confront post-retirement, was that deadly cocktail; did not prepare for it and failed miserably to cope, culminating in intense depression for the first year, which got marginally better when he devised the solution of staying at home minimally until evening. Sad way to end up. The fundamental problem was that he was one of those workaholics, who did nothing but work in the office, work at home and work elsewhere; went into a tizzy when he had no office work to do. Could not speak a few sentences cogently about anything other than work, while he could wax eloquent on work related stuff. He did not foresee the need to develop some hobby/hobbies to bail him out when he would have no work to immerse in. He was nice enough to check on me when I retired and he was astonished to see that I was sane and happy. The major difference was that I had adequate cover in terms of multiple hobbies to take refuge in. </p><p>But then I have seen many friends attempting bravely to start developing hobbies after retirement. While this is commendable and necessary, at the ripe old age of sixty or so, boarding that ship is not easy. I am not saying it is impossible because many enterprising retirees have flourished in new hobbies, to live happily and guide others too. But, having to learn something completely different from life-time of work is, well, like Javed Jaffrey so masterfully said decades back, Maggi Sweet And Sour Sauce -- Different!! And quite a few could not handle the pitfalls and the effort involved. Given that, it is also very important to be judicious about the choice of the hobby one goes for, late in life.</p><p>One friend's choice was away from the beaten path - cooking. His wife had fed him most of his life with excellent fare since she was a great cook. He had inadvertently, despite himself, imbibed some of the skills during emergency situations which arose and handled things pretty well, to the satisfaction of the boss-at-home. So, after retirement, he asked his wife to give him some space in the kitchen to experiment with his own culinary skills and she gladly moved aside. He was himself surprised by the good quality of the stuff he was turning out and the wife did her bit tohelp him and augment the taste as well as presentation. What started as a hobby soon became a commercial propostion. He began supplying food to the neighbourhood and in no time at all, established himself and the wife as good chefs, delivering excellent quality. They are reasonably busy with the venture and make good profits too with their hobby, nay, new profession.</p><p>But the above is not the norm and not everybody is so fortunate. A couple of other friends who wandered into the cooking arena for passing time, got scalded literally and metophorically. Their scars showed for a long time to come. For, even a hobby requires certain amount of commitment and skills. Cooking is not for everyone, contrary to eating (which anyone can do well, generally), even though they are allied spheres. If one is the kind who cannot distinguish between sauteeing, shallow frying and deep frying or tell the difference between toor dal and chana dal, one is destined to be a non-starter in the cooking arena, even for a hobby. Some intense, belaboured trials by aspiring friends have tragically ended up with heart-breaking results, as in the case of top class brick-quality idlis which could have been used as deadly ammunition in a war; or a benumbingly salty and ferociously spicy curry unintentionally produced due to a sad mix-up in measurement of spices. Of course, one can learn and climb up the ladder but most people don't even get a footing on the second step. Funnily, it looks one basic qualification for a person to be a decent cook is that he should invariably enjoy what he eats. This comes from some veteran ladies, who have cooked for decades and enthralled multitudes with what they turn out impeccably. Despite this, a lot of us good eaters will never be decent cooks, I believe. The classic difference between consumers and producers.</p><p>Gardening is another favourite of retirees. Some have done wonderfully well in turning mud patches at home into green oases but not everyone is so lucky. One chap, over a period of 8 months, emptied half of his neighbourhood nurseries into his backyard and sizable bank balance into the nurserys' accounts in his fruitless attempts to grow something, anything, green. For some reason, anything he planted remained green precisely for 17-22 days and never beyond that. Most of them failed to co-operate and committed suicide very early. Plants, leaves, etc shrivelled relentlessly and breathed their last right under his nose. The half baked gardener of his encouraged him to buy more new plants as the solution to his ills (as is normal, he probably had a cut in the nursery's invoice value) without changing anything else in the process and our hobby-seeker was too desperate to be questioning. Someone told this chap he had a red thumb as against a green one and the suffering intern did not take that kindly. The explanation for the disastrous results was always that he had been too generous with water for the plants or there was not enough sunlight or the plants needed more or less fertilizer than was supplied. A precise and pointed reason was never given and the man's hobby died with the last set of plants when his fuming wife ran the riot act to him to cease and desist.</p><p>Photography could have been an attractive option ten years or so back but now every three year old kid shoots good photos with the mobile. Unless the effort is to become a professional photographer, there is little sense in moving away from a good mobile phone for photos. At least one is saved the agony of watching some unidentifiable lump turn up on the screen of the camera and one cannot explain what it could be. The serious cameras require a lot of understanding, tuning and syncronization before a good picture can be shot and the learning process can be quite arduous. When the mobile phone is looming as a ready alternative, very few go the other way and so, photography may not be a popular hobby any longer, Except when one is a mindless shooter of snaps on mobile phones for laods of sharing with the sole intent to persecute them daily. </p><p>Some people have gone into music. Either vocal or some instrument. `When I was young, I always wanted to be a musician' is their standard but eager tagline. Again, this is like cooking. One has to have some basic gift in terms of the sense of music as well as a good voice to be a reasonably good singer. For some inexplicable reason, what the whole world realises instantly on listening to their first attempt, our musician is just unable to see or hear -- that music is not his or her cuppa. Armed with videos of their attempts at amateur singing and the sharing apps, he/see enthusiastically sends the productions to friends and relatives, who suffer silently for fear of hurting the poor fellow with honest feedback. While some graduate to a higher level eventually, most of them stubbornly remain rooted to where they have been for years, but not giving up. God bless their perseverance and efforts.</p><p>All the above goes back to what I was saying earlier - that hobbies probably should be developed much early in life, when one has the time, energy and ability to overcome issues. Later in life, simple things become a struggle. </p><p>My dear wife is chipping in with her wisdom. According to her, the one thing that retirees can and should learn even late is to deal with small kids. Eventually this comes in handy when you are expected to baby-sit or otherwise deal with grandchildren. This may not be an enjoyable pastime for many but is practically useful as many would vouch and helps in developing harmony at home, pleasing the progeny and scoring brownie points overall. As usual, I am with her on this, one hundred percent!</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p><p><br /></p><p> </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-62594194875766489222023-05-18T07:01:00.001-07:002023-05-20T20:26:45.646-07:00Murphy's Law Is For Us All !<p>Murphy's Law (ML) - `Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong' is not some esoteric thunderclap that periodically affects only big-time, multi-million dollar projects, sparing ordinary mortals. Whether those projects have a few hurdles erected by ML or not, each individual would have experienced some ML pitfalls in his life surely. We have grown used to being confronted by ML so much that we placidly accept its inflictions on us without even a second thought or paying too much attention to the what or why. Here are a few of my own anecdotal experiences with ML and I am sure most of you can identify with the situations easily.</p><p>My first known tryst with ML was even before I knew that some such thing existed. My middle school days. My brother had a bout of pneumonia/dyphtheria and was just in the process of recovering. At such times, we know the victim is banished into a `virtual' dark room where he did not hear or see anything good, especially relating to food, lest he be tempted to partake of accompanying goodies. So was my brother. I was sternly and categorically instructed by both parents (and a few uncles, aunts, grandparents et al who were part of the scene) that he was not to be allowed so much as a sniff at anything half decent to eat or drink, especially if brought from outside. This coaching was imparted to me repeatedly because I was suspected to be the only possible potential violator of the edict. You will see, this was not without solid reasons. Out of boundless brotherly love, I had already smuggled a few assorted prohibited items like pieces of onion pakoda, vegetable puff, salt biscuits, jamun fruit etc (everything sourced from outside of home) into a mutually agreed foxhole, from which my dear brother retrieved them gleefully when he was not under surveillance. I took the risk because there was a very clear agreement about the expected quid pro quo in future, should the shoe unfortunately end up on the other foot. My father was very punctilious with his own and our lives and followed some hard-coded habits - like leaving for work at 9 am. My brother and I left for our school at 9.30 am and we never met our father on the way to school, even though all of us took the same path for the first 300 metres. One day during his convalescence and not attending school, dear brother developed this urge to have this `javvu mittai' (the vendor can shape the raw material of sugar and a stretchable dough into some shapes) or he graciously offered me an option, the stick ice cream. I was very aware of the fact that either of those obnoxious things could have actually caused his illness in the first place and refused to oblige at first. But the pathetic look on his face melted me and with a sense of adventure, I took him out with me for a walk, for some fresh air. Time 9.30. The stick ice cream was available on the way to school and we were both watching our home, not far off, to check on any snooping relative. The coast was clear and we were quickly devouring the delicacy when I felt a rather firm hand on my shoulder. I had a sickly feeling immediately in my gut and turned to look at our father, his face flushed with anger, glowering at both of us. Even in that delicate moment, my brother was happily licking the last of the ice cream, without realising the parental presence and this enraged the father more. Soon we were hauled back home, I got a severe thrashing while my brother got an earful (he was recuperating, so no beating for him and also being the elder I was supposed to be the beacon of light guiding him!). Our father was never in that spot at that time in the previous decade or more and never again in the future, but he made his only guest appearance on that fateful day to catch us in our act. That was the first application of ML in my life!</p><p>Context: Cricket Test, India vs England in Madras. After a lot of begging and cajoling, my father had arranged for tickets for himself, my brother and myself. Train tickets booked. Two days before departure, my brother unwittingly invited chicken-pox to hobnob with him. His ticket was instantly cancelled. My father and I left by train, after everyone at home subjected me to close checks under microscope to see if any symptom of chickenpox lurked on my physique too. After three hours of journey, a man who was sitting next to my father and opposite to me, was whispering something into my father's ears softly. Then I was scrutinized by 3-4 elders collectively and it was declared that I too had chicken-pox and expert opinion was I should not travel further. So, we got off the train to look for return passage, when my father's cousin came beaming to us, happy to have met. He was going to my town. So I got transferred and got back home without getting anywhere near a cricket test. After 7-8 years, ML played another nasty one on me when I tried my luck again when Australia played India in Chepauk. This time, two days before departure, some typhoid like pestilence took an immense liking to me and thwarted that trip. I had to wait another 3 years before making my debut at a cricket test venue. ML, indeed.</p><p>All of us have had trying times waiting at bus stops. Did you ever notice that if you are waiting for, say bus 27D going towards Mount Road, even as you waited for 45 minutes not one would come your way, 27D to Santhome came to the opposite bus stop about 5 times in those 45 minutes? And this would happen on a day when you are supposed to be present somewhere about an hour ago. So, what do you do? You jump into an autorickshaw, literally feeling the hole being burnt into your pocket. Two minutes into the ride, you turn back and see two 27Ds chasing you. You curse your luck (that was what you thought it was, without knowledge of ML) but worst was to come. One 27D turns a corner breezily and knocks your auto. Minor collision but major fracas - bus ceases to move, auto had been nudged to take a position in the middle of the road, blocking all traffic. Verbal abuse follows and then some fisticuffs. Great, free entertainment for the willing public, but you are stranded for longer. Story ends with you still being far away from your intended destination, wringing your hands and waiting for 27D all over again. No better example of ML.</p><p>I am sure each of you have had delayed flights in your travel life. Once my dear wife and I were at the airport 3 hours ahead of schedule for a flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo. Everything was hunky-dory till about 45 minutes to departure. Then came the blaring ML-induced announcement that our flight was delayed. I looked at the Departures board and out of some 60 flights shown there, only one was delayed. Ours. When finally we took off after 5 hours, we heaved a collective sigh of relief - prematurely it turned out. Just about an hour from Tokyo we were told a storm was brewing and we could not land. So, fly all the way back to Hong Kong we did, as if we were taking a non-geosyncronous circular orbital flight. Not without some more drama too. With one hour to go for landing in Hong Kong, we heard that the same weather system was creating havoc in Hong Kong too. With just about enough fuel to land and no mid-air-refuelling possibility and a very turbulent weather to contend with, our pilot was wondering whether he should divert to some other airport when he was ordered to head to a god-forsaken Chinese city in the interior, which had a shack for a terminal and nothing else. We had to spend a miserable half-day there - no food, no water, no toilet facility, nobody to tell you where you were - before we were mercifully flown back to Hong Kong and home, which were very, very wet with a deluge, caused by a typhoon. One helluva trip (can we call it that, since nothing was accomplished and we did not go to the intended place at all?), indeed. My dear wife talks very fondly of this trip because with that she deems to have visited China.</p><p>One of my friends, who is a movie buff, wanted to see Come September very badly, bunking college classes. I very wisely refused to be party to such a scheme. He went with a few others. Those days we could not afford anything other than the lowest class, within touching distance of the screen. So, there he was enjoying the movie from close quarters. During the interval, his uncle who was visiting from another town and was in the privileged balcony class, spotted him (and unfortunately my friend did not notice him). In the night, when the congregation was stuffing its mouth, the uncle blandly asked my friend `so how was the movie'? Shrinking like a chicken on which some ice-cold water was thrown, my friend tried to blabber his way out but his uncle had the ammunition ready to nail him - the names of all the other friends with whom he graced the movie. My dear friend did not know where to look and had to confess to his parents he bunked college and went for a movie - not the outcome he desired. All the time cursing that malevolent uncle who was not supposed to be there.</p><p>So far in life, ML has played truant with me many times, but without any disastrous consequences, thankfully. My dear wife says hopefully future ML inflictions will be as mild as we have had so far. </p><p>Thank God and Thathastu!! </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p><p> </p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-86588092318481211142023-02-27T06:30:00.003-08:002023-03-01T03:58:47.888-08:00This Mobile Phone Is A Pain In The .....<p>Recently some worthy-- his wife had presumably left him for good and he had joyfully married his cell phone instead without any fanfare -- was singing paens celebrating this versatile instrument of dubiously mixed value. He rightly pointed out that it has replaced multiple gadgets/props we use in our daily lives, ranging from alarm clock thru radio, tv, calendar, calculator, torch, banking assistant, payment gateway, dictionary, newspaper to its ultimate avator of information provider -- well one can go on ad infinitum. And he is right. What is more, I for one would not be surprised if the ubiquitous cell phone is also enabled to cool your drink, cook your meal and flush your toilet in the years to come. But not everyone thinks it has all been a joy ride without frequent bouts of pain. Literally. For instance, when you forget you are joined in the hip with this twin brother of yours, the phone in your hip pocket, and plonk down heavily collapsing into a seat, ouch, it hurts the bone there. But that is not all. A bum call goes out to someone you have been avoiding for years or worse, an awkward message is shot out to a friends' group instantly. Every member of the group would gleefully remember and recall this gem invariably in a group so that this embarassing information ripples out uncontrollably, ensuring that you remain the butt of jokes for a long time to come. </p><p>Some phones come with a plethora of proprietary apps and these make life miserable for you at unexpected moments. Having no interest in such apps, you ignore them completely. All of a sudden, when you are in the middle of a business exchange, there appears on the screen a totally unwanted casino game and throws you off. Try as you may, this leech of a game refuses to go away and exasperated, you perform that one panacea-act for all ills in a mobile phone, `reboot'. And lose whatever data or content you had been working on. With a painful explanation to follow to the counterpart who has been waiting for you to get back on line. Or some strange You Tube like app suddenly blares out an absolutely cringeworthy hiphop song featuring zombies of various denominations, which you cannot get rid of despite valiant effort. Again `reboot' is the only action you can resort to.</p><p>A month back, I was aghast when my dear wife asked me to clean up her phone. Being a hoarder par excellence, she keeps everything received and sent in the phone for years, as if all content is sacred and precious. Then it takes a month for me to bring it to some semblance of current state when I am tasked with cleaning up. This time, I found that she had apps for all kinds of things - one for ordering Avakkai pickle, one for paruppu podi, one for appalam, three for different fruit vendors (each one gives good banana, apple and oranges respectively, so three is the minimum required), some sixty seven undeleted groups which are no longer active and many members had already escaped from this world. This multiplicity of groups also meant some thousand messages were retained and approximately 75% just had a thumbs up or some other emoji. Earlier you could ignore these easily but recently, one messaging system has thought it wise and appropriate to draw your attention the emoticon with the message `Reacted to your message' as if that is a historic accomplishment! I carefully avoided shaking my head in frustration because her phone is so, so, sensitive that my simple nod might have resulted in unpalatable, mysterious gyrations which would eventually bring my intelligence into question when my dear wife reviews the phone after clean-up. </p><p>They make these phones ultra-sensitive nowadays to score some brownie points and deliberately programme some wrist or finger-tip movements to initiate specific actions, to satisfy some weird market segment. When one is warming up to some spirited argument and becomes all palms and fists, gesticulating feverishly to make one's point, all of a sudden the cell phone reacts, goes berserk and does something as if possessed, which you cannot decipher for the next few hours. If the all-purpose reboot option works fine, otherwise you have to visit a phone clinic, where a tehnician breezily pushes a few buttons and resurrects the phone. You end up looking very stupid and clueless. All because two shakes are programmed to mean the phone does one thing and one and a half clockwise jerks mean something else. You have to go through the phone manual in the smallest possible font before you figure out the various involuntary/deliberate actions and complicated results thereof. Older people would fine typing difficult because contrary to what they intend, the phone uses the senstitivty index to type out its own message, add the lottery aspect of auto-correct to complete the task. Most of the time, people do not check, assuming that what is going out is what they intended. Those people who have the habit of touching the screen all over instead of specific buttons, find that they have to do multiple iterations of the same exercise before they give up in frustration or succumb to the phone's dictat and send out whatever is there, hoping that the recipient would call to clarify. The problem is compounded if it goes out to the wrong recipient.</p><p>One of the most inconvenient things with the cell phones is you cannot evade any active seeker saying `I did not receive any call', or `I did not see any missed call' or any such inane lie because there is evidence in your phone that a call was indeed received and some people are not beyond checking your phone surreptitiously! They take the liberty to examine your phone and then you are discovered for what you are! Or worse still, all those not-so-charming faces which you have been happy avoiding for some time and have blissfully forgotten in the process, pop up suddenly in unannounced video calls to bring back all the nightmares of yore.</p><p>So, my take is the cell phone is not an unmixed blessing. It is great in many respects but there is significant downside too, like the hurt hip bone. Considering that, I would rather call this instrument an `anukoola chatru'! And to think that, some people carry two phones, each with two sim cards!! God cannot help them because they have gone beyond the pale!!</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p><p><br /></p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-7264117408718921552023-01-28T06:15:00.005-08:002023-01-29T05:40:39.029-08:00Opposites Attract! Do they?<p>How often have you admired Saurav Ganguly's cover drive? And thought that he executes that more exquisitely than Dravid and Tendulkar? I know I am not the only one to think that. Even though, technically there may not be any difference in the way the three greats played that shot and all of them were flawless with that. So, then why that feeling that Saurav did it better?? The simple truth is it is only because his was a left hander's cover drive and the other two were right handers. Am not being frivolous about it. We are so used to seeing right handed batsmen wading into their shots, once a good leftie steps in, we think he is much more delightful to watch, his shots are more fluid and he does it, well, better. It is just a case of the opposite attracting you. When the field is full of right handers, an occasional leftie seems more attractive. Plain and simple.</p><p>That was a good example of why opposites attract. When someone marches into the scene and seems very different, even odd, compared to the bunch one has always known or moved with, an immediate superficial interest is ignited, without too much personal effort from the new comer. Only because, like Maggi sweet and sour sauce, s/he is different. Curiosity is piqued by the `strangeness' factor and where it proceeds from curiosity depends entirely on the individuals involved.</p><p>Let us look at the physical aspects of such attraction. A tall person does not necessarily go looking for a short one to be the partner I think. A six-foot-two-inch man marrying (or dating) a five-foot-nothing woman is nothing outrageous or rare. You see such combinations frequently. Even if the woman has to whisper something to her partner, she will have to climb a few steps up the man to accomplish that feat. Similarly if the man wants to plant a peck on the cheek of his woman, he has to show considerable humility through a significant bend. The man can probably cover two and a half steps of the woman with his single stride and this inequality is not without its own problem. Left to their natural strides, the man might leave his lady way behind when he reaches the destination much faster and the lady is not going to be amused by that. Unless of course, one of them changes the normal stride - either the lady accelerates herself huffing and puffing; or the man drops his speed to a first gear waddle to be in line with his lady. Of course, the physical aspect alone would not have forged the connection initially in such cases, there would have been other personality traits which come into play. But, the fact remains that neither the man or the lady was wondering how s/he would cope with the above and other similar myriad issues that might crop up in their life together. Or, may be they did and thought nothing of these things because of instant attraction!</p><p>One of the primary reasons why Laurel and Hardy always scored in their hilarious shows is the physical size of the two in relation to each other. One instance of how the bulky and the reedy work well in a partnership. But is that workable in a marital scene? Not sure. There could be many reasons why such a marraige could come about, without either of them fancying the other one initially. Also, some people tend to `blossom' liberally in life and bloat whereas the other one can shrink despite being a glutton. What could have begun as a normal match-making decision could have gone out of shape literally due to extraneous reasons, like harmonal problems. So, most of such combinations would probably be due to people accepting the cards they have been dealt with rather than actively selecting `attractive' opposites.</p><p>How about a voluble, incessant talker of a wife and a silent, monk-like husband? We have come across many such. This works well probably because one is a talker and another is a listener (may be he does not pay attention at all, but is a pretender non-pareil). The garrulous and boisterous woman goes about filling the ears of all those present on every social occasion, whereas the reticent man, whose mouth may have to be forced open violently even for a morsel of food, seldom utters a syllable to anybody. While it is possible that the woman chose her partner calculatedly, paying attention to his being her opposite in this aspect, one cannot imagine a man willingly walking into a deadly trap like that. But there are men who like to be bossed over (one cannot imagine why, but there are) and it is highly likely that this man unconditionally surrendered to the booming lady in their first meeting! Opposites attracting each other?? Possible, but the marvel is that the relationship endures in many cases (typically the husband does not dare act even if he hates his plight) with the parties staying true to their characteristics. The guess is that the man gets so completely subjugated after some time he probably does not even care and develops complete indifference.</p><p>An-angry-man-and-a-submissive-woman template is something very common. Temperamentally the two people cannot be more antithetical and are yet together. Probably because their parents cynically decided they are good for each other for some strange reason. But there is no doubt that the lady who suffers through torrents of angry outbursts day in and day out would not have fallen for the `opposite' trait in the man. How can anybody?? Unless there is a strong streak of masochism in the lady and she liked being ridden roughshod all her life. This serves to tell us that all such `opposites' together are not attracted to each other, but many are compelled into partnerships and decide to just painfully tolerate the show. Truer of the previous generations than to-day's youngsters, who work with very different yard-sticks when they decide to marry.</p><p>If both partners are very alike in their appraoch to life, likes and dislikes how would existence be? Could be seen either as very peaceful or boring, depending on who you talk to. This combination is a rarity, I think. It could be the external manifestation or masking of the angry-and-the-submissive relationship, wherein one always is acquiecing so that friction is avoided at all costs and a display of false harmony is what others see. </p><p>So, in balance, I am not sure this theory of opposites attracting will hold good everywhere. My dear wife strongly agrees and believes that in every marriage one person tends to be a bit stronger such that firm decisions are taken as they should be without too much blood-spill and use of bulldozers. I refuse to say who takes the firm decisions in our home!! </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p><p><br /></p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-25701748174788015332022-11-30T01:44:00.009-08:002022-12-03T01:08:50.915-08:00 Conscientious Ruling Class<p>A friend of mine has been diligently sending to me one Kural daily, with succinct meaning included. Recently, one Kural got stuck in my mind for a few days and I just did not know why I was unable to get past that one. Then it dawned on me that this particular couplet was directly showing the torch on the behaviour of the contemporary politicians in our country. Who would have thought? That classic crown jewel of Thamizh literature, Thiruvalluvar's couplets, 'Thirukkural' being the guiding light for the current crop of political leaders in the country, in conducting their affairs? Yet, that seems to be so, going by how diligently Thiruvalluvar's edicts for rulers are being adhered to today. I know it is beyond belief and the interpretation of the ruling class today could be warped by their own crooked objectives, but they seem to try to abide by the teachings of Kural in their own weird way. Let us see how.</p><p>Kural 382 is one of the best examples. Thiruvalluvar lays down four fundamental tenets for rulers to follow for success in their endeavours - - fearlessness, giving/sharing generously, wisdom to prevent harm and relentless energy while facing problems. We know what Thiruvalluvar had in mind when he laid down the four guiding principles, but our politicians definitely know differently and have brazenly taken the contents out of context to completely twist the lines to their advantage. </p><p>Absolute fearlessness - once one is part of a leading political party, especially one of those which is likely to be ruling in some part, the politician does not need to fear anything. He contemptuously swats aside all those institutions one normally respects and fears - like justice, law and order, right and wrong etc and proceeds to loot public wealth with single minded dedication and commitment. He does not fear the courts or police because he knows they are all on the take, powerless against bull-headed political leaders and that he can buy his way out of any and all troubles that are likely hurdles in his way of amassing wealth for himself. By personal leadership, he also instills this fearlessness (and also lawlessness) in his minions and cronies as well as political and personal heirs. </p><p>Giving generously - taking off from the previous trait, this comes as a necessary corollary for successful politicians. All the loot they collect is shared with the contractors they select for all works; with the party seniors who can otherwise cause immense harm, if deprived of their rightful share of the booty; with all those ever-willing and sycophantic relatives and friends who become recipients of corrupt money as benami holders. The last tribe may not get to usurp all the wealth so ill-gotten, but will enjoy a decent share to ensure that they live well and perpetuate the terribly obnoxious practice. Helping in this devious enterprise are professionals like tax practitioners, lawyers, government officials, whose palms are all eagerly awaiting grease all the time.</p><p>Wisdom to prevent harm - This is where the ruling class excels in ingenuity and combine that with their ability to make undeserving people unduly rich. While Thiruvalluvar meant preventing harm to the general population through righteous rules, current crop of leaders gleefully focus on a few segments of the same population which are helpful to them in conducting their evil business fearlessly. They nurture hooligans and vicious gangs of all stripes in order to mercilessly pummel protesting people into submission, without compunction. In that sense they do protect the offending people from harm of all kinds including threats from opponents as well as action from law enforcing agencies. They are very clairvoyant in preventing harm to themselves by resorting to dubious and even outrageous techniques to escape jail and punishment. There seems to be enormous wisdom available to cook up new designs to violate all rules with impunity and still be free from punishment/action. Even before the affected party goes to court, the offending guys have got anticipatory bail for all kind of offences including capital crimes.</p><p>Relentless energy in dealing with problems - Politicians have a separate corporate set up for this essential feature in their industry, as we know, as mentioned earlier. Problems there will be since most of their entrprise is entwined in illegal and nefarious activities. But then they also have a regular, well-trained supply of ingenious professionals like lawyers, tax consultants, corrupt judges, public relations team, press people et al whose only responsibility is to subvert the system and keep the leaders out of trouble all of hues. They are ever ready to deny all accusations even before they are made and are ten steps ahead, like seasoned chess players are, of their opponents at all times. And once a well manufactured solution is cast for a specific problem, like a well oiled machine their system replicates it ad infinitum. Because it has all the same crooked web to work with.</p><p>Avaricious and warped men's interpretation of Thirukkural and their implementation of its edicts may be entirely different from the original intent, but our intrepid politicians will shamelssly cry from roof-tops that they follow the Kural diligently, if given a chance and a platform. Only God can tackle them!! If He wanted, he could have made short work of all these specimens in no time, so we have to conclude He does not want to touch them with even a barge-pole.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p><p> </p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-24359665433658050872022-08-25T01:41:00.001-07:002022-08-25T21:02:22.595-07:00Freebies For Parties To Consider<p>The Supreme Court in India is suddenly waking up and sounding the bugle against this reckless habit of political parties prior to elections - of declaring how they would enrich voters with freebies of various types and denominations, if they are voted to power. Reckless simply because basic financial wisdom dictates that such munificence at the expense of the exchequer should be curbed and wound back. Political parties are bristling at this brazen intervention of judiciary in legislature related issue. Because they staunchly believe it is their constitutional prerogative to make suckers out of voters whenever elections are announced and courts should not interfere, but just watch the sorry spectacle. Voters are offended because they do not mind those freebies and enjoy making the politicians look like idiots when they take all the goodies and vote according to their whim anyway, swiping the kickbacks away from the equation. Honest taxpayers are pricked since it is their hard earned money paid as taxes, which is used to fund the freebies when huge quantum of developmental work suffers for want of funds. But, to be fair, who does not mind freebies? Take the example of all the discounts, coupons and cash-backs that people gleefully accept from e-commerce platforms and the like. What are they? The saving grace is that this set is not funded by taxpayer's money but by mindlessly valuation-driven moneybags and that charade goes on all through the year, not only for a specific period. If you look askance at that one difference, the entire population is guilty of savouring the freebies doled out perennially. </p><p>With that preamble, let us see how innovative politicians can get with the freebies, assuming the supreme court is rendered powerless to stop this pestilence too, just as it has happened with many other malpractices in our country. Nobody is taken in by the righteous and shrill objections from parties that spending on health care, education etc cannot be seen as freebies, because these are not the prickly issues in this practice and there can be no objection to those. Problem is that genuine welfare expenses covering all the people as in the case of health and education can and do very easily, seamlessly merge with all kinds of flaky stuff like TVs, grinders, saris, shirts etc and here lies the rub. If free cycles for girls going to school are justified, why not scooters for the parents to ferry the children to school and back? With their well articulated mastery over specious arguments, political parties can rationalise any freebie, so long as some part of the public benefits. So, let us not look for any rationale or vindication in this article and just imagine what all can be included in freebies and how. All in good humour, so that no one takes serious umbrage.</p><p>Liquor is mammoth and serious business and most governments are involved in it - some even manufacturing and distributing the potions. Liquor sales are one of the biggest tax generators for state governments and all those people who cry foul about price rise do not bat an eye lid before jostling a crowd in sweltering heat to get their tipple, whatever the cost. So, how about providing free stored value cards for stated amounts, valid for a year from the date of issue (after a government takes charge), so that voting population can enjoy their favourite drink and pay using the card. The vends will collect taxes on the sales and channel that booty to the government. So, the shrewd and well-meaning government gets to recoup at least some of the investment in this freebie. Why is this a worthwhile benefit? The perpetually harassed housewives can be free from the uncouth and testy behaviour of half-drunk husbands who are frustrated because they cannot be fully inebriated, at least for a few days and the resultant relief is a good reason for them to vote for the party in elections. Winners all around; party gets to power, husbands get additional bottles of liquor free, wives are relieved somewhat and government gets to rake in tax. Of course, the liquor business is a GDP booster and employment creator, to boot.</p><p>Just to be even handed, the next freebie to be considered is free cable TV connections to the homes of voters. This could be a big welfare measure because it benefits the ladies at home, who diligently watch all the soaps and movies aired throughout the evening spellbound, ignoring the drunk husbands and pestering children. The husbands are also probably happy because they do not have to listen to the raves and rants of women at home, even as they are passing out. Older children are pleased to be left alone, able to indulge in their gadgets for a few hours without anyone looking over their shoulder. Something which makes for a relatively peaceful home environment with very few complaints - except from those who are not serious drinkers and those who are averse to TV and of course the angry tax payer.</p><p>Next is something for the young voter and older children. Another stored value card for fixed amount to be used for mobile phone recharges. Obviously this is supporting education in times of covid and allied maladies, since children are using mobile phones to attend classes. Of course this measure makes for addiction to mobiles and all the video games they offer, but then what is a bit of collateral damage when overall development of the child is being facilitated. Some political parties may even want to give free mobile phones to school and college children to let academics flourish in the states.</p><p>Subsidised subscriptions to specific newspapers which are party organs or at least friendly to the party/government could be another freebie. All those people who choose to successfully evade the propagandistic outpouring on the TV stations owned by the political parties, can be targeted through this medium. Of course, there will be accusations, rightly so, of such an arrangement benefiting the party directly, but then this will not be the first or last in that line. All the party has to do is to hold a massive protest on a working day, in a highly congested central business district, blocking all traffic and making outrageous counter complaints against all those accusers. People tend to forget these things easily.</p><p>The final recommendation my dear wife has is for free outpatient treatment in all major hospitals given to those who are involved in accidents caused by pot-holed roads and knee-high speed bumps. This will be a big hit, in places like Bangalore, where progressively there are more and more potholes and speed breakers and less of clear roads. If you thought you are an experienced and careful rider and could successfully negotiate all pot-holes, the next speed bump will get you. With traffic at about 15 kmph even in non-peak hours, why there is such a multiplicity of speed breakers in every stretch of road is a legitimate question, but then who is listening? With accidents increasing year on year in proportion to pot-holes and speed bumps, it looks like this is a genuine welfare measure and people would lap it up.</p><p>Not being a politician, this writer is not able to delve deep into the bag of freebies that parties might have already filled up. So, we shall await the turn of the experts to unleash their talents to snare the voters!</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p><p><br /></p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-17250222925001185772022-06-09T23:48:00.004-07:002022-08-23T02:25:41.312-07:00Senior Citizens' Discussions<p>With due apologies to the senior citizens group, let me submit this piece is not a derisive critique of their ways. Simply because I am myself an integral part of that group and indulge in this characteristic behaviour intermittently. While this may be amusing on the one hand, causing some mirth at the expense of the elders, it is an effort to clarify that it is but inevitable that one's mind and body expeirences have to form a substantive part of one's conversations and they do, for the seniors. So, if there are afflictions that bother elders - unfortunately, that is the way of life for most - naturally it follows that they tend to be expressive of that. This piece is to shine some light on this behaviour and see if some changes can be implemented to ensure that as a group, we do not put off others and make them shy away from our attempts at conversations. </p><p>When youngsters meet they raucuously discuss cricket or loud music or some new restuarant or yes, girls. But when elders congregate, especially on occasions like wedding or similar social occasions which do not demand their undivided attention (it is true that very few are gripping enough to do that), conversations invariably meander and end up in the domain of health issues. Why? Because those are much more real and present than any other thing in the current lives of most seniors. They might start with some old film song or playback singer, touch upon a recently deceased cricketer of the 1970s, progress to how life was easier during their youth which has receded inexorably back into the far corners of memory and then after a lull in the conversation, the question invariably pops up `by the way, how is your knee'or 'how is your diabetes' or `is the prostate okay'? That is like a match shown to a few pieces of camphor. </p><p>There are two types of responses to the above query, depending on the personality of the individual. If he/she is a somewhat private, taciturn person, the reply would be almost terse; like `oh, its okay, am carrying on with that God's gift'. Then they make it clear that they would rather not plunge further into that topic. Then there is the other type, the loquacious, starved-for-conversation, self indulgent person, who pounces on any such opening and seizes the opportunity like a seal snatching fish from the hands of the reluctant trainer. It is almost as if he/she has been waiting on the fringes, sniffing for something like this to pop up. He/she barges in to open the flood-gates and start `sharing' all that research he/she has done on knees in general and meniscus tear, wearing out of cartilage, orthoscopic surgery vs knee replacement and whatever else is published on related subjects. This person is so evolved on the subject and involved with such intensity, nobody else can get in edgeways even to say three words together. Such a person invariably is also a good story-teller and this combination in deadly in terms of attracting audience.</p><p>Everyone has knees and in old age knees also mean niggles to pain, so relating to what is being expounded is easy. This means all those in the vicinity, who were listlessly mumbling meaningless platitudes, tend to hear the high decibel exposition on 'knees' and are drawn to it like moths to the flame. Soon the number of participants increases and what you have are multi-layered circles of enthusiastic people, pretty much like the multiple ripples caused by a stone in water. Very soon, what is on the table is a cornucopia of medical information about knees and all problems related to them, including leading doctors who do this or that, all kinds of knee support systems like caps, braces and wheelchairs. Also thrown in are the most efficacious medication available. But generally it would be foolish to expect some agreement on anything regarding this, not the doctors, not the tablets, or anything else since for each problem there are about fifty `best' doctors and about seventy six `super' medicines. Of course, there are a couple of guys who have no problem with knees but have ulcers or migraine and they feel pathetically left out in the cold during this effusive display. They wince, start circulating more aggressively, wistfully looking out for another forum, where their ailment might be the hot topic. But `knees' as a topic of conversation is a big hit amongst seniors anywhere, one can wager a hefty amount.</p><p>Some sufferers would plunge into graphic description of all the issues they face and might make it impossible to even look at the wedding meal one has been waiting for. These people do not care about aesthetics or finesse and go on and on about the minutest details of the impairments they carry in their bodies and their impact. In their fervour, such people do not realise that others might be revulsed by their intimate exposition. Then experience says that one sensible octaogenarian will materialise from somewhere, to hobble in and shut the whole thing down with a few stern, choice utterances to the hyped up blabberer, to the relief of the listeners. It is easy to empathize with the elders and the tendency to talk about health issues amongst others. But my preference is for those who do this subtly, imparting knowledge, broadcasting useful titbits without taking a large ladle, plunging it into the mess and stirring violently. Not done, you will agree? My dear wife has her own strong views; she thinks all discussions on the subject of seniors' problems should be banned officially and eschewed consciously by everyone, in the interests of overall mental wellbeing of seniors themselves.</p><p>I hear from time to time of an eighty-five yeard old woman running a marathon and a ninety six year old man doing triathalon. I have not been blessed enough to see any such person, but I am sure there exists a sprinkling of such people in reality. It would be nice to have a formula to get to such a healthy mix of old age and fitness. But how many succeed, despite sustained efforts? I recall T S Eliot's `The Waste Land' and the sibyl. This sibyl desired to live for ever and prayed for that and some mischievous God granted her that wish. As years pass, she realised she was shrinking in size and had to be eventually put into a cage to protect her from being trampled by somebody. So, longevity in life is good, but what should be a necessary accompaniment is resonably good health. God has built our bodies for, say, sixty years and from the sixty first, He blesses us with minor, major malaises, watching from the sidelines with His inscrutable smile. I wish elders could make a collective, persuasive representation to God for a more even distribution - mix of longevity and good health for X years. </p><p>But then, if this boon is granted to us, what will the seniors discuss on future social occasions? Probably the disproportionate allocation of the two components for some of them?? </p><p><br /></p><p> </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-23264200508218139672022-04-29T22:00:00.004-07:002022-04-30T00:05:33.294-07:00The Neighbourhood Bully<p>When we were children, we were traumatized by the bullying of a neighbourhood thug, who was 4-5 years older than the rest and had the physique to show for that. That he was bigger and beefier than the rest of the boys had, in his mind, bestowed on him the unequivocal right to lord over the group. Being a dimwit, he knew the only way he could command a vague sense of respect from us was to literally beat the hell out of all opposition within the group by pouncing on some unfortunate, puny victim! He was never okay with any of us being on good terms with his enemies -- and he had many -- and he was mortally afraid of directly taking on his enemies, who were his own age and equally well built. He was mortally afraid that he might be beaten black and blue and his face could be scrubbed shapeless in the mud, which would make him lose all the dread and grudging respect he had carefully built within the group for so many years. So it was always the smaller kids who were the victims of his wrath because they deliberately or unwittingly chose to ignore his repeated warnings that they should not hobnob with any other senior, at any cost. Period. Frequently problems arose when some cheeky bigger boys came around to chat or play or whatever, with the intention of making the bully wring his hands in anger. After their departure, expectedly, some small kid got the rap badly from the bully. The funny thing was the bully did not have any great friend his own vintage; probably he did not want that and never made any effort in that direction, because he knew he could not sustain any meaningful relationship with an equal and wanted only trembling subservients around him. Made him feel like a potent force obviously.</p><p>Sounds familiar?? I reckoned so. Might have happened in your life too at some stage. When Russia decided to pommel Ukraine into submission with its military might in a patently unequal battle, some of our friends exchanged notes and reminisced about that neighbourhood thug of those days. We concluded that there is no difference, except that the setting was global geopolitics. Ukraine dared to have some aspirations of its own - like joining EU, Nato and generally cosying up to the West. As an indepndent nation, it mistakenly assumed that it had the right to align itself with whoever it liked. Like that young boy in our childhood group, who saw no harm in buying a colourful top from another neighbourhood boy, without realising that this action was posing a direct provocation to our own bully, who reacted violently. Having cocked a snook at Putin thus and almost daring him into thuggish behaviour, Ukraine did not exactly prepare itself for a full scale assault by Russia. It probably never occurred to Ukraine that in this 21st century, geopolitical fairness and international norms would allow a street-bully like Putin to trample a smaller country at will and that there will be no direct protection available to it from the so-called friends and also that retrograde organization called United Nations. </p><p>The specious argument used by Putin (not that it mattered) was `democracy and rights of a sovereign nation be damned, Ukraine cannot be friendly with those who are my enemies because that would endanger Russia. If it attempts to, Russia can view such a move as inimical to its security interests and act'. So, Russia's position is that if Ukraine has to improve its own security and trade interests and wants to be in pacts with USA and EU countries, it has to first get Russia's nod for that, which will never be forthcoming. It is almost like the repugnant veto some countries wield in the UN. One, why would an independent, sovereign country Ukraine, have to seek permission from anyone to do what it likes to do, so long as it does not involve violation of the rights of another sovereign country? Two, and why does Russia, which has this pathetic track record of aggression against smaller countries after the Soviet Union's break-up, get to dictate terms on this? Well, we may have those and thousand other legitimate questions, but Russia and Putin are not looking to satisfy our doubts in this regard. That is the way it is and a belligerent Russia invaded Ukraine with impunity, when the latter continued to make noises about joining Nato and EU. This is no different from our neighbourhood bully sternly warning all the smaller kids that we should not move out of the circle he has drawn for us and if we choose to, we would face the consequences.</p><p>Ukraine's friends did not jump into the already muddied waters, to help the country for the touted reason that they did not want this confrontation to flame out into a `world war'. Did USA and EU countries tell Ukraine beforehand that they would not `fight' with Ukraine against Russia for this and other reasons? Did Zelensky go ahead on his own and still send some toxic vapour up the nostril of Putin, as seen in Tom and Jerry cartoons?? Why would he risk the loss of lives and territory, if he was clear that meaty military support would not be forthcoming from the allies? If that was a dare he posed to Putin, without covering his flanks, is he irresponsible as a leader? Or did his so-called allies promise one thing and chicken out to do something less when push came to shove? In which case, the allies would not only be guilty of reneging on promises of support made, but also of directly causing immense losses to Ukraine. One thing is certain, manipulative Putin read the softness of the position of the allies better than Zelensky and walked into Ukraine. Reminds me of those couple of times when two-three more daring of the smaller kids in our group, on the provocation of a mischievously exploitative boy, started a small fire of rebellion and got thrashed by the bully. </p><p>It looks like what Putin imagined was easy fodder has turned out to be something more serious, he has not been able to ride roughshod over Ukraine and has been bitten on the backside quite a bit. The latter is resisting strongly and Russia is losing men, military assets and lots of face in the bargain. Probably because Ukraine's allies, feeling guilty that they are not actually entring the combat, are attempting to make up by supplying powerful arms and ammunitions, which are put to good use by Ukraine to dent the fortunes and confidence of Russia. Putin is retreating from some fronts, looking to make out to the weaker fringes bordering Russian territory (natural or acquired through illegitimate means and aggression earlier, like Crimea). There he can rely on pro-Russian rebel elements within Ukraine to bolster him up through uprising against the regime in Ukraine. Another tactic he has perfected over the decades as in Georgia and Crimea earlier. Now it is pretty clear that the Russia's whole game is to gobble up as much territory as possible all around Ukraine, even as the rest of the world and UN bleat out their well practised chorus - `Differences should be resolved through talks, not war'. We have all done that very expertly for decades in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen -- of course, without anyone bothering to even listen. </p><p>Now that Purin has realised this is going to be a tougher war than he had imagined and Ukraine is not going to curl up and roll over, he is imitating our bully and saying things like `no country should provide arms and ammunitions to Ukraine. That would amount to intervention in the war'. Russia also uttered the N word a few times in an attempt to put the lid on the help Ukraine is getting by warning that the whole war could spiral out into a nuclear war. Now hollering from top of the fort that it will be going nuclear, doesn't it realise that nothing will remain of Russia or all those deceitful acquisitions it has made over the years, if indeed nuclear arms are involved. How does that help Putin or Russia? They will unilaterally declare war, ride roughshod over innocent civilians in a less powerful, smaller country and the world should just watch without providing any help. How unfair can Russia be?</p><p>But as long as there is no strong global platform (UN cannot be that, by any stretch of imagination, unless completely revamped), which can rustle up robust persuasive or military support to oppose all transgressors meaningfully, this scene will repeat itself in some corner of the world. And most of us will be saying `tch, tch, what did the Ukrainians do wrong?? Russia cannot do this'. What Ukraine was trying to do, some other countries might go on the same road soon. Russia is trying to set up a precedent. Hope all angles will be covered by those daring to break a new path. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-69243900235643380522022-02-26T22:18:00.004-08:002022-03-08T04:58:56.866-08:00Wintry Trip To New York<p>Even when we were planning our Dec 2021 trip to USA, we felt that chill burrow through our bones and send tremors of anticipatory trepidation. Not that we were strangers to USA in winter. We have successfully negotiated the numbing cold of Chicago in Dec/January, accentuated by the freezing lake nearby, multiple times but that seemed eons back. Now we are that much older, with that much less tolerance of change from the balmy Bangalore weather, we were just anxious. Nevertheless, we had to go because we hadn't seen our boys and their families in two years. When we actually reached, we found ourselves in an apartment right on the bank of the Hudson river, which meant that we were fodder for all the concomitant forces of the elements. At first sight we were very excited about the prospect of looking into the vast expanse of the river all through the day (no doubt it was extremely serene and soothing), but later on when the weather asserted itself and got nasty, we realised that there was a pretty significant price to pay. The increased impact of the cold whenever we stepped out. The temperature tended to be some 3 to 4 degrees C colder than a bit more inland in Manhattan. With wind-chill we were usually walking around in -6 to -18 deg C temperature and that was not very enjoyable. We would have preferred to trundle along the length and breadth of the place in trousers/shorts and tees during summer, just as we wont to. Consequently this also meant we ventured out less, walked less and were disappointed that we could not indulge in our favourite Manhattan pastime, just walking!</p><p>If the cold weather was a problem, even worse was what we had to do to counter that - wearing multiple layers of warm clothing, even for the exposure of a very short walk around the corner to the supermarket. The process was akin to dressing up with all those props for a part in a historical drama like Ramayana or Mahabharatha. That ritual paraphernalia began with the addition of another layer under the trousers as the cold increased. A pair of woollen socks became mandatory and that meant struggling with our shoes because of the thickness of the socks. A sweater was an add-on below the jacket we were using and one felt like one had bulged in all directions for no reason at all. The long overcoat which was my permanent companion in New York during winter, seemed to weigh a ton all of a sudden and increased the discomfiture. Pulling on a pair of good gloves was essential to avoid having to pick up the fingers from the floor if they fall off at the end of the trip due to frosty cold. Yes, what one would have used to pick up those fingers from the ground is a pertinent question. Then a monkey cap to prevent the icy wind from drilling its way through the ears. A pair of heavier than normal shoes to prevent the toes from curling up even as we walk and a shawl/muffler around the neck to cover the last exposed part of the body, all became necessary weapons to fight the weather. As if all the above were not suffocating enough, our kindly friend Covid accentuated the oppressed feeling with the mask (our sons mandated N 90, nothing less). For someone walking in Bangalore with the barest necessary clothing, all these were layers of extraordinary distress obviously.</p><p>That cumbersome ritualistic dressing up made us wise enough to curtail trips out of the apartment and robustly question the need for getting out of the cocoon of its heated environs. There was a fair amount of discussion before stepping out and we got into the wholesome habit of choosing `required' outings over `wanted' ones. Still, we walked daily along the promenade by the river or in the river-side park. Cold itself was not the issue (not after the protection offered by all that stuff) but the weighty responsibility of carrying all those pieces of clothing made us groan. Our usual gentle pace was even further reduced by the strenuous effort and we found it difficult to keep pace with our two-year-old grandson, who was invariably our companion on such walks. That guy never walks, only runs and his velocity effortlessly outstripped ours and we ended up huffing and puffing to catch up. And he would never let up and goaded us to go along without a pause. Interesting that he only had a jacket and a cap for protection and seemed none the worse for that despite his tender age. Children have warmer blood, we have heard, but this one seems to be blessed with hotter blood for the winter!! Having said that, we enjoyed our two hours' outing each morning with him and were willing to wear additional layers of warm clothing to do that, if warranted. That's what grandchildren do to you, I suppose.</p><p>The daily essential trips were the above morning saunter with our grandson and the evening walk to my son's apartment, less than a km away for more family time. One night at about 8 pm when we said good bye to our son and left his apartment, there was a very slight drizzle. Unmindful of that we began ambling against the slanting rain and wind towards the river, to our apartment. Lo and behold, in a jiffy, the capricious weather metamorphosed so much; the slight drizzle gathered pace with a howling wind, which almost sounded like a gale to us unprepared Bangaloreans. We were struggling to hold our feet to the ground, as the wind made progress painfully slow. We had to hold on to some rods on the roadside to make even that snail paced headway. Our struggling movement against the wind was reminiscent of some disaster movies in which you see people heaving and panting as they fight the elements! At one point, our feet were lifted off the ground by the gusting wind; but for the fact that we were attached to the scaffolding of a building, we would have probably been deposited at some unintended destination, negating the precious little progress we had made in 10 minutes! We can assure you, dire situations like these kind tend to dim your wit and responses. When we reached our apartment eventually (that wind did not last very long, mercifully), we wondered why we did not use our sagacity to get into one of the buildings on the way, hiding from the raging wind. There were at least 20 tall buildings which could have offered refuge. That was a terrifying experience but we can now look back and say we have gone through that also! Ironically we found out from our son subsequently that there was a gale warning out for that time!! Being non-New Yorkers we did not check that before stepping out.</p><p>It snowed 3-4 times during our stay and usually one foot of snow accumulated on the ground and quite a bit on top of cars parked on the roadsides. Our grandson looked out from our apartment window and yelled `fonny' (his way of saying `funny') as he watched a parade of many vehicles with solidified snow on top, as if they were wearing a white canopy for the season. Outside our apartment, between the road and the river, there was a sizeable slope, going down about 150 yards or so. Every time it snowed, that slope was nicely laid out with snow and the whole area transformed into a skiing slope for adults and children. Teeming crowds gathered there, equipped with whatever they can find at home, from large, flat plates to coracle like contraptions and everything in between. They tirelessly screamed down the slopes on their backs or haunches and made the required tremendous effort to traverse the ascent back to the top, for the next trip down. It was hilarious to see some novices, with no knowledge of what to do or how to, starting with the intent of going perpendicularly downwards, but in their state of perfect imbalance switching to horizontal travel some way down. They struggled to control themselves and upset many other neighbouring skiers, who got scattered all around trying to avoid the errant skiers. It was fantastic and energising to watch youngsters ski all day long without a hint of fatigue.</p><p>While booking tickets to New York, we discovered that all those pronouncements about bubble flights and difficulty with connecting flights were just hogwash. For instance, middle eastern carriers were unabashedly carrying passengers from India beyond their shores through connecting flights. Even though flights between Qatar/UAE were under the bubble arrangement. At the same time, British Airways very scrupulously told us we cannot connect to a BA flight from London to New York. Then came the surprise that if you book with American Airlines (a partner of BA) a Bangalore-London-New York flight with a BA connection in London, it is a breeze, you are okay. One BA agent told me we will not be able to fly BA from London, come what may, because the airline's aircraft cannot carry Indian passport holders beyond London. But, if it is an American Airlines ticketed and BA operated code-share flight, all is well. I guess that small part of the aircraft is American's and not BA's!! Do you see any logic in this?? These rules just confuse you even more.</p><p>Another issue to compound the confusion is the Covid test requirement for the flights and countries you go to. Airlines have ensured that there is no clarity about the tests required for the transit points. Nobody would tell us for sure if we needed some test taken at a specific time for transiting through London. We diligently filled out some forms that seemed required for London transit and were prepared to be grilled about our vaccination status and test results to anyone who would want to be informed of such frightfully critical details, in London. But not a soul was concerned about what we were or what our Covid status was! There seemed to be perfect indifference about you, just as in normal times. Looked like they did not care so long as you stayed Airside and did not shove your nose into the rest of England beyond the airport. One line somewhere in the policy/rule book would have clarified this to harassed travellers but they did not think it was necessary.</p><p>Similar was the uncertainty on the return trip through Paris. We were disheartened by the fact that there is no uniform rule regarding when you had to take the test for travel. For India it was `not earlier than 72 hours' and for Paris `it was not earlier than 48 hours'. Logically, the latter test would have covered the former also, but then there were timing issues which could have screwed up our plan if the results do not appear in time for our travel. So, we were wondering if we had to do one test for India and another for Paris, because India test was far more critical and there was absolute lack of clarity about test for Paris as a transit point. I was ready to do two tests, like that genius of an individual who made two holes in his door for his cats to move about - one large hole for the bigger cat and another smaller one for the small ones. Fortuitously, at the last moment we chanced upon a Air France web site which clearly stated that no test is required for transit passengers, same as London. That released me from the horns of dilemma where I stayed on tenterhooks for a couple of days before departure.</p><p>Why can't all countries agree on tests 72 hours before travel and no tests for transit points as uniform rules and pronounce them prominently to help the hassled passengers? Too much to ask? </p><p>All said and done, we were okay with the wintry trip to New York, but will probably take any suggestion of a future winter trip under advisement, only to decline vigorously. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-79074566877982090102021-11-15T01:09:00.003-08:002021-12-24T17:50:06.704-08:00Sobering, But Hilarious Appraisal!!<p>Two days ago, I delivered this note - "Folks, don't shudder.....no blogpost is attached. I have been seeing a general diminishing of interest in reading during the pandemic (very surprising, I would think people would read more for want of other forms of entertainment). Readership of my blogposts is no different. So, I thought we should all take time off. I, from spewing out my kind of stuff and you from suffering through those pages. This is a temporary pause - sorry to disappoint those among my readers who would rather see a permanent closure. Shall regroup after the new year, whenever spirits look up. Till then, taken care and stay well. Thanks. Varad"</p><p>When I sent out that 'excuse-me-for-now' note to all those to whom I usually and dutifully send my blogposts, I expected to receive some neutral responses from a few friends, tut-tutting profusely. Please note, I am carefully avoiding saying `sent to all of my <b>readers</b>' because while I surely send them out, reading them is obviously a choice and many might choose to swipe left to banish the posts out of existence. Believe me I am not complaining, not at all; instead I am happy that I have retained a large part of my reader-base (I am not disclosing how big that is!!) even after some 12 years of what some merciless recipients would consider a monthly nuisance. But, I am overwhelmed by the deluge of messages received in response, ranging from a somewhat dejected `Oh, No' to a solicitous`Varad, stay well'. In between there were many other shades of feelings I deciphered in the messages received and then this thought struck me. Why not make an absolutely unscheduled and bonus blogpost of this event before all of us take a break. I hope you don't mind! </p><p>A few people wrote with emotion, to convince me that their lives seriously depended on reading my blog. That it provided the sustenance they require to wade through this existence without too much pain. That bereft of the `sahara' of my blog, they may struggle to make sense of their lives. I am, of course exaggerating, but there were quite a few like that. If I were a sucker for good words, I would have immediately felt the weight of my ego growing on me and would have readily imagined I have gained a halo too! </p><p>Then there were those who completely ignored what I said was the reason that prompted me to opt for the break - that readership has reduced somewhat and generally people seem to be reading less and less; I perceive some fatigue in the masses! They precipitously concluded that something is terribly wrong with my psychological or at least physical health and assembling a few decent sentences successfully as I used to, is for now beyond my capability. So those questions have come in a flurry - `Are you okay, please take care'; `Hope whatever is wrong does not affect you much, God bless'; `Praying for your recovery and return to blog-writing' and so on. So, I am gratified to see that some have at least read the `pausing' message even if they do not habitually read the blogs and what is more, responded too.</p><p>There is this group of `readers' (they do read the blogs, I know), who apologetically told me `Even though I might have missed a couple of blogs of yours, I promise I read all of them; so don't take the fall in readership to heart. Continue to strangle us with your words'. This group of friends was pointedly telling me not to place the guilt of diminishing readership at their doorsteps and they wanted to be absolved of that responsibility pronto. I am waiting for a few comments on some on old blogs from such people to reinforce this sentiment. That would definitely make me feel good.</p><p>Some others even went to the extent of questioning my judgement that less people were reading the blogs of late. They forcefully said that cannot be true - such reassuring darlings!! A few reasoned that just because people refrained from commenting, it does not mean that they were not interested in the blogs. They seemed more offended at the prospect of my losing readers than I myself would ever be! I am touched and with such a protective and massively encouraging group of people around me, I do not have to worry about ever becoming completely `reader-less'. And, if ever I want a trolling group from my readers to go after `non-readers' or anybody else, I know I can turn to this group of avid consumers to get the job done. Some small comfort.</p><p>One set of people advised me that even if many readers drop off, I should not bother about that and continue to write because others are going to be with me. They have taken the high moral ground, saying `you write - that is your karma, do not worry about who reads'. A couple even quoted Bhagavad Gita and readily assumed the role of Krishna to my Arjuna. I am truly humbled, friends. I am reproducing a message verbatim here - `Your writing does not need some dumb audience to justify its existence. Aap karm karte jao, phal ki chinta mat karo... Krishna says... also remember, ur writings will remain in ether for ever. There will always be a very long tail. Many great works got recognition many years of their creation..'. This writer has been a dear friend for a few years now and has just become dearer!!</p><p>A few sent emoticans like 😑,😒,😡,😢,😊 -- succinctly teaching me that one does not have to waste so many words in a blogpost to express something. I have made up my mind to one day write a blogpost with more emojis and less words. That day will also come, I am sure.</p><p>One well-wisher just asked `Are you travelling'? Many just said neutrally `Take care, Varad'. <span> This is the group which knows me well enough to have decided that nothing could be wrong with the chap, `he is just sparing us temporarily, God bless him and let us leave him alone'. A few said with glee that this short message was even funnier than a full blog, may be thereby obliquely suggesting that I should restrict myself to short messages! </span> </p><p>Net, net -- I am glad I sent out that excuse-me-for-now note. It has given me the rather unexpected opportunity to write a blogpost on next to nothing!! In the process, I got to know my readers better and also saw a groundswell of support for me (if not my writing), which is very comforting. I thank all my readers (and non-readers) for sustaining me for 12 years and reassure you I am not going away! And it is not that I cannot write a few more pages every month, but it is just that the author senses that the reading public needs some space and a break. I respect that a lot.</p><p>Au Revoir, not good-bye.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><br /></p><p> </p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-70667551310456040942021-09-29T00:09:00.001-07:002021-10-04T00:36:33.593-07:00This Obsession With Cinema<p>It is common knowledge that an average eight-year-old in Thamizh Nadu (for that matter, this is probably true of Andhra, Telengana and Karnataka also) would be better informed on movie matters than other fields of knowledge. This inherited and infectious wisdom is derived from being associated with front-running elders. These worthies are so steeply immersed in cinema and are exposed continuously to its concomitant effects in their daily lives, that most people within a radius of fifty kilometres cannot escape their ubiquitous influence. Thamizh Nadu politics has been dominated by film people -- heroes, heroines, writers, producers et al -- so much that invariably it has become difficult to distinguish between politics and cinema as they run concurrently in the state. The aspiration of any actor with a reasonable fan base is eventually to enter politics and hog the limelight for some more years, because such actors would rather continue to `act' in politics than lose their halo progressively and fade away. Acting is an inevitable, major ingredient in politics, as we know, since most of the politicians are just play-acting much of the time, whether it be delivering fake promises, hugging old men and women in a display of boundless affection, seemingly listening with all sympathy to the down-trodden people intently, even as they are planning the next scene somewhere else.</p><p>What is rather sad is that the gullible population (a good portion of that, anyway) also takes the bait more often than not, emotionally recalling a few flashy, socially relevant dialogues or lines from songs the actors had delivered in their various movies, with the specific objective of encashing the goodwill on some future poll date. Ageing actors in Tamil Nadu, during their last decade, start cultivating the audience to receive them as their future political leaders sooner or later. Their films are full of dialogues and scenes, which depict them as saviours of the common man, protectors of women and small children and generally the do-gooders for humanity at large. Modern actors believe that just because one MGR and one Jayalalitha successfully transformed himself/herself thru this process, they can all do that. Fact is, very few succeed to even scratch the surface, but this has not discouraged a succession of actors from trying. Some older heroes are testing the arena even as you read this and are getting scalded in the process. There are a few somewhat sensible actors, who desire the aura, but decide they may not be up to it. They dodge the issue by forever staying on the sidelines and rolling out justifications and excuses for not taking the final plunge. None of this knowledge seems to dampen the adulation of the movie-crazy populace, which fervently hopes that such actors hold the panacea for all their ills and see them as leaders who can wave their magic wand and solve all the problems. When elders in the population go this way, what chance do the impressionable young ones have? They dutifully pick up the signals early enough and follow all the way.</p><p>Thamizh TV stations are full of film stuff, you will know if you have surfed stations for just a few minutes. If it is not a segment of film songs or films themselves, (there are stations which do this 24/7), there are interviews with actors/directors interspersed with clips from their films or with playback singers/music composers, peppered with their abbreviated songs and so on. Otherwise there are these all-pervasive TV serials, which mimic films in all ways. Of late, in the name of innovations, they have progressed along cinema lines to include action and dance sequences too. While TV actors do not have the chutzpah to attract the same kind of viewership as movie actors, they manage to occupy people's mind space simply by appearing on TV every single day for a few years continuously, through those so-called mega serials. And then there are those panel discussions about something or the other, in which at least two film personalities appear, only because the subject matter has some streak of a connection to films. Even if there is no real or imagined relevance, it does not matter because movie people are always welcome, anytime, anywhere. When stations think people would have had enough of movies, TV stations 'innovatively' replace them with Super Singer programmes, which laudably aim to bring out young talent by making them sing all those memorable old and new film songs. And of course, they are judged by a fixed panel of erstwhile playback singers, complemented by a rolling stock of film stars. So cinema world does not give you a inch of space to breathe freely, but hustles you everywhere.</p><p>TV is so obsessed with cinema that even when some events worthy of reporting occur, such events get a passing mention and stations are back to their favourite pastime forthwith. I am sure, regretting the loss of those two minutes which they spent on the serious newsbreak! Even when the China-India border skirmish was on all national TV channels, Tamil TV stations seem to swat the subject aside to focus on what they prefer to do. On all holidays, including Sivarathri, Krishna Jayanthi, Mahatma Gandhi's birth day, Teachers' day, etc nothing changes and all the channels are full of movies, more movies and special screenings of movies. And, of course, the movies do not pretend to be recalling any specific occasion. </p><p>Take a look at all the Thamizh periodicals (weeklies, fortnightlies) and you will get sure-fire proof of the film craze that stalks Tamizh Nadu. And this burning fanaticism and the need to satisfy that as felt by the magazines is made starkly evident if you casually turn the pages. Even erstwhile cultured publications, famous for their quality output involving history, arts, poetry, tradition, values etc have now been forced to commit pages to filmy content. If you count the pages dedicated to cinema stuff, that invariably amounts to about 40-50 percent in most magazines. Including interviews with actresses who have just been signed up for their first movie and the shooting is yet to start. Now 'what can they say to edify any reasonably intelligent man or woman?' is a legitimate question, but then the publications do not make the mistake of assuming that all their readers are intelligent. You cannot blame them because that is how the herds have been behaving, I guess. Their take would be that this is what sells and they just pander to people's current tastes. Add to this, all those adverts which show film folks trying to sell various products, by doing everything from wielding brooms, chewing pan, walking in dhoties, selling dog food to plugging for new housing projects 'which are veritable heavens-on-earth' in god-forsaken locations, some 100 kms away from Chennai. It will definitely be a challenge for anyone to read the bulk of the magazines (it wont take too much time, given the triviality of the stuff published) for a few weeks and come out confidently and say that he/she learnt something useful, unless of course, it involves the tinsel town! Even quizzes are there, with readers' questions answered by, who else, some film director or actor. Given their expertise and domain knowledge, all the questions chosen are also about films, especially about film actresses. Sample this - `Which actress is the better dancer amongst A, B, C and D' (answer is - the type of dancing they have to do in films, anyone can do) or `Which actress delivers dialogues the best among X, Y and Z (answer is - none of them because they are not good at Thamizh and have others dub for them) and so on. If at all there is a news item about a scientist or sportsperson or classical musician, that only appears in a brief, single column short, after the person has achieved an Olympic medal or Nobel prize or something of that magnitude. Of course, occupying the rest of the spread is the photo of a starlet, trying to spread her wings.</p><p>Daily life in Chennai, as in other southern metros, is dominated by all those posters - small, medium, large and extra large - which are propped up by poles on the ground (which are stumbling blocks for walkers) or hoisted up on advertising platforms (which could fall apart and kill a few one day), in all nooks and corners. From where heroes and heroines strike all those popular postures enshrined in their respective movies. It is clear that filmdom won't leave people alone even after they step outside their homes. On the roads, there are gigantic cutouts of famous heroes, looking literally down upon people and smiling benevolently even as they are preparing for their political future. Poster culture is so strong there that anyone who wants a bit of mind space of people has to find literal public place to park his posters, with a massive dose of inappropriate and mostly fictional self-praise. This can all be done easily and is par for the course only because the funding comes from the subject himself. The truth is, not everyone who has erected cutouts - actor or otherwise - becomes an adulatory object of the people. Thank God for that.</p><p>So, inside homes or outside, if there is such an over-dose of cinema related pounding from multiple directions, how can a child or youngster escape the lopsided influence of that fictional world? The one thing that has changed for the better in movies now is that unlike yesteryears when only a fair and good looking person could usually become the hero or heroine, now anyone can assume the mantle, regardless of complexion, looks, ability to act etc. One only needs a financier to back you and mostly the parents take on that role avidly since no one would volunteer for that. People like me will have to just sit moping around, ruing the chances we never had!</p><p> </p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-27094763315481008592021-08-20T23:57:00.004-07:002021-08-21T03:30:27.275-07:00Where Has That Family Doctor Gone?<p><br /></p><p>(With due apologies to all the doctors in my own family as well as those who are good friends - no offence, please. Kindly take this as the usual random read for 5 minutes and do not abandon me as a patient when I come to consult you on my vulnerable days)</p><p>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</p><p>This is not a one-man-experience. This is the distilled wisdom gained from the nightmares of various friends and relatives, without any reference to specific hospitals or specialists. Instances are galore when we have heard of people going into a big city hospital with what seems to be a minor complaint to see a doctor, urged by wives like my own dear one, who is reading this piece now. Being forced to see ten other specialists in six hours and coming out wondering what serious malaises they have developed suddenly. Because nothing conclusive is disclosed and judgement passed by the end of the day and they have to be subjected to another battery of tests the next day. You enter the room of the General Practitioner (GP) for a solution to the nagging head/body ache you have lived with for the past two years with no major discomfort. You think you will be out in fifteen minutes with some reassuring words and a comforting prescription from the good doctor. But the whole proceedings spin entirely out of your control - not that you had much of that to begin with - during the next thirty minutes and soon you are left wondering if your days in the world are numbered due to some serious, unidentified malignance afflicting you, with no one making you wiser.</p><p>First up, you have grown up with such mild niggles bothering various body parts all your life, you should know when it is serious enough to warrant a visit to the doctor. Never to succumb to the badgering of that worthy who drives your life all the time. Secondly, if you have the option of visiting a doctor who practises in a small clinic of his own somewhere, be smart enough to choose that option. And avoid like the plague, that big hospital with all the specialists in all the disciplines and all the bells and whistles, required by the medical care experts and health insurance companies. If you ignore these warnings and enter a corporate hospital with a big brand name, then be prepared to be sucked into the following whirlwind of a routine in the next few hours. You go the GP to get rid of the mundane muscle spasm or sprain in your leg. There is a possibility that a junior doctor, who is learning the ropes from the senior, screens you first. Once you have answered all the questions multiple times and a fact sheet is filled up, your file is forwarded with you to the senior. When the senior asks the same or more questions, there is a chance that he discovers that the junior goofed up somewhere and insists on having an inquisition right then and there in your presence. All polite and seemingly harmless, of course, but nevertheless the junior goes through the extreme discomfiture of being grilled in the presence of the patient. But the overbearing senior has no qualms because he always does this in the presence of patients for that extra bit of satisfaction and fun derived. Once this process is over and the junior is suitably chastised for assuming he is the same as the senior in terms of prowess, the problematic location in the body is examined collectively by the junior, senior, a nursing assistant and a couple of even more junior interns, apart from any paying spectators if they are interested. Nobody gives a damn if you are feeling like a worm under a microscope and would rather shove all the attention away, so you put up with that circus with you serving as an object of instruction and edification. Just as you are hoping that a prescription will be given and you could be on your way, you realise that what is transpiring is only Act 1, Scene 1 and a whole lot is yet to follow - picture abhi bhaki hai dost!</p><p>After a rapid-fire exchange amongst them, the senior tells you that you should see a Physiatrist (read the spelling carefully, there is definitely no artist hiding here, but a muscle specialist) for further examination and opinion. Fortunately there is one just two cabins away for the convenience of sacrificial lambs like you and thus begins your grand tour of the various nooks and corners of the hospital facilities. Of course, the GP and the Physiatrist are good friends and this kind of mutual passing of the patient happens frequently for whatever reasons. Now, the same scene which played in the GP's cabin is replayed in the Physiatrist's domain. After fifteen minutes of talking and examination, the judgement is given that the problem is not with the muscle. Your file grows a bit fatter with a couple of more sheets, being the contribution of the Physiatrist and you return to the GP and wait for the file also to make the same journey through official channels. After listlessly waiting for half an hour for the busy GP to see you again, he beams looking at the file as if he has found the panacea for all your current and future ailments and declares `I knew it was not the muscle, that is why I sent you to the Physiatrist. Now, I recommend you meet the Orthopaedic who is on the first floor'. </p><p>The Ortho is even busier than the two previous doctors put together (it is obvious that bones are made a lot flimsier by God nowadays thereby making the ortho a flourishing line), so you wait for an hour more and watch the endless procession of people in casts, just plain limpers, some on wheel chairs and some really serious cases brought on stretchers. Your mind is whirring about, wondering which category you will soon be put into, without realising it is not so simple. The ortho looks at the body part and asks you if you have an x-ray. When the response is negative, he just brusquely nods to the nurse, who prepares a prescription to be signed him, asking for an x-ray of your leg in frontal and side views. The radiology department is on the 5th floor and you wait for the lift to avoid straining your leg even further. There are six lifts but all of them arrive full, you run jostling among the people to enter but for some strange reason, they depart without taking anybody in or ejecting anyone out. After a repetition of this tamasha for the next ten minutes, you get fed up and climb the stairs. Here is the nub. If your foot was okay to begin with and there was just a small swelling, this entire ordeal would have aggravated the problem quite a bit and provided some fodder for the ortho. In the X-ray room, you wait for another forty five minutes because all those limpers, wheel chair occupants, stretcher dwellers and other assorted people in casts have already camped here before you, gaining seniority over you in the order. When your turn comes, you undress partially and get your legs twisted in five different ways for four exposures to x-ray. They would examine the film and invariably find that one of them is not really the piece of art that they expect their work to be, so they will go through the rigour once again. X-ray personnel would tell you that the films and the report will be ready in the evening and can be picked up from the reception. When you dumbly stare at their faces and mumble that the Ortho is waiting for the films, they will hum and haw, stage a mini-conference of sorts and make a huge concession to say they will send the films and the report to the Ortho eventually (please don't try to fix a time) and you should go back to him and yes, wait longer.</p><p>The direct line from the radiology department to the Ortho's cabin would take four minutes to cover, if the lift blesses and accommodates you and ten if it does not. But the film would not arrive for another hour and a half, as if it was transiting through the International Space Station. Invariably, this means you would make at least one additional trip to and from the Radiology section to remind them, by now limping a bit and putting additional strain on the already doddering leg. When the film finally arrives and the Ortho takes a peek, he would shake his head dubiously such that you wonder if you require an amputation forthwith. But that head shake was indicative of the fact that the Ortho did not see much more scope for extracting anything from you, based on the x-rays. He declares suavely, pointing you in the direction of the x-rays on his well-lit screen, `I cannot see anything wrong with the leg in the x-ray'. So, if you thought of jumping in joy because your ordeal has come to an end and you can go home, you should hold your horses - he grimly says `it is better if you get a scan done. Sometimes we can see things in the scan which are not visible on x-rays'. Interestingly, if you were carrying an MRI film and no x-ray, there is one hundred percent chance that the Ortho would feel that x-rays would be more helpful than the MRI film. Either way, you are stuck without an immediate exit route, unless you are peeved enough to turn your back on the entire dog and pony show.</p><p>Now, Hamlet kind of decision time for you. `To do MRI or not to do that'. Apart from the fact that it costs a bomb, it is a very spooky experience, when you are completely cut off from the rest of the world, shoved into and incarcerated within a tomb like structure, which makes a hell of a lot of rattling noises of various types and decibel levels. Your initial apprehension as you are moved into the machine will soon grow to panic as you imagine that all the others leave you inside for incubation and go away for the day and there is no way for you to get out of the machine. And it is a thirty minute joy ride. The left side of the remnants of your brain will initially tell you `no need, go home, they are making a sucker out of you'; followed by `what if there is some serious problem in the leg which can be identified only through MRI, so do it', thereby creating a serious conflict you need to untangle. Not wanting to come to the hospital again, you go through the MRI, repeat the x-ray film experience and finally meet the Ortho with the MRI films. Now his well-lit screen is fully occupied by the films and he points out various segments, explaining something which you don't get any way. Finally, he says ` I will give you a prescription. You see me after 10 days'. Just like that. It is all over.</p><p>You numbly stare at the prescription, which says `Dolo 650 1-0-1 x 5 days, Any pain relieving spray - twice a day'!! You wonder whether to laugh in relief or cry in despair. The whole hospital experience involving 8 hours and 15,000 rupees for just that, you may wonder. Yes, you could have done that yourself without any GP or specialist looking at the problem. The situation would have been somewhat better if you had gone to a neighbourhood doctor practising in his own small cubicle. He would have, at the most, wanted an x-ray and the whole issue could have been resolved with that, hopefully. That too, only because the Physiatrist or Ortho or other specialists are not available in the vicinity and there is no MRI available on the premises for him to refer you to.</p><p>Either way, you would go home, do hot water fomentation twice a day, take Dolo twice a day and do the spray joyfully twice a day. Phew, what a tour of the hospital to get that pleasure!! When I describe the whole process with a healthy dose of scepticism to my dear wife, she looks at me with sympathy and says a big hospital is better any day - no explanation offered, but to be understood. </p><p><br /></p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-46192410782481852592021-06-29T21:05:00.355-07:002021-07-05T01:38:57.102-07:00Some Conundrums In Life<p>I learnt about serious conundrums in life quite early. My father was a pretty easy-going individual, who let his children be. We all studied well, got good marks and the parent and educationist in him was happy he did not have to intervene often. He played cricket with us (my brother, myself, a couple of his own friends and lots of our friends) and was more of a senior advisor cum friend than a typical parent. But even he had to behave differently in certain situations which, in his opinion, demanded a slightly different take for the sake of other elders in the family. In such contexts, he would rave and rant about our misdemeanours for a while and stop to look at us, as if he was expecting our response. And here lay the conundrum. A couple of times I earnestly tried to put forward our side of the story, thinking a very reasonable man like him would appreciate the why of it, even if the logic was a bit warped childishly. Then I was shut out brusquely with a reprimand `Why dont you accept your mistake? Instead you are talking back to me and other elders, trying to defend your lousy action'! </p><p>Having got that rap in the knuckles a few times, subsequently when the same scene was re-enacted for some other juvenile error, I used to clamp up and steadfastly look down on the floor, determined not to respond and invite chastisement. Now, a few times, this boomeranged too. My father or mother would get angry and say `I am raving like mad here, trying to seek an explanation, there you are standing like a statue and not opening your mouth'! The last thing one should do in these situations is to take the bait and aggravate emotions by pointing out one's dilemma whether to respond or not. So, I used to let it pass with stubborn silence and took the verbal slaps gracefully. When we all were grown up and there was no need for any shouting match or reprimand, we used to sit around with our parents and joke about such situations and have a good laugh, in which my parents joined heartily. My father used to laugh the loudest, probably he never took any of these seriously; he was indeed a theatre actor and a good one at that.</p><p>Such conundrums repeat themselves all through our lives. Whether to respond with this action or that or respond at all in a particular context, when there is something onerous in all options, is baffling most of the times. </p><p>Recently one of my apartments, rented to an expat company fell vacant. When I rented it a few years back, I was asked by my broker to put in some furniture pieces, some equipment etc. to be competitive while also being attractive to expatriate renters. My thinking being conditioned by all those years of expat living, when we had our own furniture and equipment, I gently turned him down. Knowing fully well that this is a situation when you are damned if you did and damned if you did not. I wanted to avoid this additional headache of worrying about the stuff I put in, every time there is a turnover. If you did not comply with such requests, it is likely that the apartment will not be rented for a while because as your luck would have it, all the expats streaming into Bangalore and looking for rental seem to want equipment and furniture to be included. It does not work even if you are willing to take lesser rent so that the renter can hire furniture etc. on his own. Simply not convenient for them, unless they have a single, all-in deal. This means loss of rental for a few more months, until someone after your own heart comes forward to rent the apartment only, because he has his own furniture and equipment. </p><p>My reluctance to include some furniture/equipment is not a bull-headed resistance to a fairly common request from renters. I had done this earlier for a tenant. Lo and behold, when he vacated the next chap who came along said `I like the apartment and pay the rental you are expecting, but please remove all the furniture and equipment you have in the apartment because I have my own stuff'. Now, I was not in the furniture rental business to shove all the redundant pieces into a warehouse and move on. If you put the items into storage, rental expense would be involved and after a few years when you take the things out, you will find that nothing is in the same shape or condition it went in. Probably more money would have to be spent in restoring them than in buying new ones. Which means a write-off of the remaining value of the stuff, taking a financial hit.</p><p>The other problem I encountered was that while the previous American tenant had demanded Whirlpool fridge and washing machine, the incoming Japanese expat wanted Mitsubishi or Panasonic equipment. Nothing else would do. So, it became my responsibility to cater to their nationalistic preferences, as if I was running a high end equipment store. No one was interested in dealing with the earlier equipment I had on hand. Having gone through this a couple of times, I made the Solomon-like decision that future rentals will be shorn of furniture and equipment, come what may, even though my dear wife made faces every time we lost a good deal due to my intransigence. So, in order to avoid more serious domestic discord, now I have an arrangement with my real estate broker that I give the apartment and if equipment is required, he rents or buys that for the renter and takes rental for that. There are issues with this rather convoluted arrangement obviously because the broker is not a just a good Samaritan to pander to such requests and extracts his pound of flesh by demanding a sizable refundable security deposit and one year advance rental for all the supplies. This financial cost erodes your rental income, but I still think this is preferable to being saddled with a sofa set, tables and chairs, fridge, washing machine etc every time one tenant moves out (and one never knows which company expels which expatriate when), while you await the next one with trepidation.</p><p>Another context in which one does not know which way to go is when you are confronted with an option to invest in a start-up. Especially, if the opportunity is brought to you by a good friend you consider financially savvy. Not that anyone compels you to invest, but one feels left out if such an opportunity passes one by. The tricky question is if such an investment will make any money any time soon, since most of these companies deal with untested ideas and have fierce competition in their domains. Again, no one can answer this since this is akin to intensely peering into the crystal glass and predicting if monsoon will arrive in Bombay on June 15th some five years later. If you are investing in the initial stages of a start-up, even if you know the promoters and are somewhat familiar with their idea or product, there is absolutely no guaranteeing the well being of the company a few years later. Which is why all such investments come from angel investors (angels do not worry about returns?) or venture capital companies (they have a greater risk appetite). Even evaluation of such ideas, products and companies is difficult because one is more comfortable with conventional companies and the new ones are all so heavily skewed towards new or evolving technology. So I have taken the easy way out generally by letting them pass, preserving my hard earned capital. But, after a few years, someone can rub it into you that there was an chance given on a platter to invest, you let it go and now the company is worth a hundred times. That is the nature of the beast and there is this inbuilt conundrum with these always. </p><p>My dear wife tells me that the best way to avoid all these is to sell all other holdings, invest in some bank FDs or Treasuries or tax free bonds and forget about all the hassles. She cautions that I should look for solvent, good banks and avoid co-operative banks which offer one percent extra interest but are very likely to put the principal at great risk. I thought may be she is right when yesterday my son called and asked me to look at cryptos to invest in. Another conundrum to grapple with for the next few months. That is life. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-69850256165853520372021-05-30T23:38:00.000-07:002021-06-02T01:55:43.901-07:00Hair Care<p> Over the years, I have been convinced that hair styling or hair care has become hugely critical for men and women. Probably because one can do pathetically little to patch up the face one is born with, but hair is fair game for changes from time to time. When we think that, we have to forget for a moment the `straight-out-of-the-bed' type men represented by the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. He has no qualms appearing with disshevelled, unbrushed hair on global TV and has a following too; he did the same for his wedding photo also - so supremely confident or arrogantly indifferent. Let us just talk of ordinary mortals who always labour under the belief that they can augment the appeal of their personality by tangling with their hair from time to time. Men, even those with just two strands of hair on their pate, carry a small comb in their hip pocket and use it to bolster their confidence from time to time. Women, of course, have to touch their hair a few times in a short span and do all kinds of assorted moves with their hair to feel comfortable in their space. </p><p>During my younger days, there was one time when a particular hair-style was the rage - medium crop with a buff in front, as if a provision has been made for a small sparrow to build a nest there. While we admired the Hindi film hero, Biswajit singing romantic songs to his heroines in the movies, not one of us had the courage to emulate the style in real life, for fear of retribution from the fathers. But one really intrepid friend did try and asked the barber to cut his hair accordingly. As he got back home, unfortunately the guardian angel was present near the gate with a keen desire to scrutinise the harvested head and decide if appropriate value for money has been achieved. Fathers those days would have probably preferred to get back the cut hair to be brought back home as evidence of a satisfactory job done, but they could never be sure of whose hair was being presented. The friend got down from the cycle and tried to move towards the entrance, when the father asked him with an impassive face `whom does sir want to see'? The tone was so terminal that there was no mistaking `the absolute refusal to recognise' in that. Without a word, my friend had to cycle back to the barber shop and convince the artist to do a repair job; and cajole him to do that without further compensation. The barber got a verbal thrashing for his share from the father and the friend lost his abysmally low pocket money for a few months as punitive actions. The friend and many of us could never `style' our hair as we wanted, because by the time we were independent enough to do what we wanted, the quantum of hair had dwindled rapidly. Now this friend is completely bald (so are all of us), but any time we get together, this episode is retold with gusto and mirth, to the merriment of the assembly.</p><p>Ladies tend to splurge a lot more time and money in salons to tend to their hair. My dear wife smilingly retorts that it is all in proportion to the hair people have. But she is easy enough to laugh at herself saying `ladies with curly hair want a straightening-up job done, at a great cost'. This actually involves nothing less than a dhobi's ironing machine among other things. `And those with straight hair want to get it somewhat curled up'. No wonder all the salons and beauty parlours are always busy because no one seems happy with the current state of hair for long and they keep changing their minds, keeping the salons blissfully occupied for ever. There is a splendid opportunity for a swap operation here, but no one has divined a way of doing that without the intervention of the salons.</p><p>But the real killer is when men and ladies go berserk trying to hide greying hair. Initially this is done by plucking the grey strands, when there a only a few. But as grey inexorably encroaches on black, colouring becomes the way of life. Some men tend to do this in-house, using easy to apply colouring material; it is cheaper and also not many outsiders, including friends who visit the same barber shop, need to know that behind the jet black hair lurk grey linings. But, ladies don't seem to like the in-house treatment because it is very messy. After the ritual is over, residual black stains are all over the bath room and the cleaning is not easy. So, ladies prefer to leave the grey hair as well as the stains in the salon. My dear wife argues there is no secret in sixty year old women having grey hair, right? Actually, it is almost jarring that a seventy year old woman sports jet black hair, they know. Older women do not hide the grey hair story from other older women, because they exchange salon stories all the time; I guess they do this camouflaging to convince themselves they still feel young.</p><p>Another intractable problem faced by 50+ men and women is hair fall, which is a universal affliction. Memory fades (we forget some very obvious names from time to time), brain fades (all of us do stupid things once in a while just because we did not think enough) etc don't matter and one does not run to a doctor for treatment. But hair fall is seriously damaging and scars your psyche badly. All kinds of dubious oils with unknown or unproven antecedents, are liberally used on the recommendation of friends to prevent or reduce hair fall. Some people soak halim seeds overnight and drink the water as if it is fertilizer to irrigate the hair. After bath, people try to count the number of hairs that have fallen and compare notes as well as maintain historical records, in case posterity is interested. Until the count becomes something difficult to absorb, then they cease and desist. Whatever they apply or consume, most people invariably find that hair fall is a relentless ongoing threat without a known cure, but the effort to apply extraneous solutions persist for long just to support the rather persuasive hair-growth-products industry.</p><p>Men gradually come to realise that they can stop all pretence when salt-and-pepper hair continues its stoical march towards all-salt-and-no-pepper hair. Then starts the stage in life when almost-bald men carefully arrange two or three strands of hair along the sides of the head and across the head. This is just a feeble attempt at displaying the bravado of men who used to have full crop of hair. This also would normally pass, when they decipher that their unshaven moustache sprouts more hair than what is seen on the head and then it is the end. Soon all they have is a bald pate and all of a sudden, there is nothing to worry about. They go around behaving as if they never had any hair ever and the best state of affairs is the current one. They even try to assure themselves that they look more handsome with a hairless head. No one else seems convinced though and they continue to sympathise for a few years that such a travesty of justice has come to pass for the man in question. </p><p>During covid times, all world has gone topsy turvy and so has hair care. Salons are closed, but being an essential service (who wants to see millions of Boris Johnsons on the road suddenly?) many are sending experts to homes to tend to the growth. The snag is a covid premium of about 50% over and above the normal tariff. If you wonder why would people spend more to look the same when they cannot even go out due to the restrictions, here is the answer. Zoom calls. It is not only hair that is on display, but what you wear is also under scrutiny. Men change shirts even if they may be wearing only a towel below. If there are multiple zoom calls on the same day and there certainly are, the scene at home is reminiscent of a Hindi movie song sequence. Different hair styles (one has to manage with whatever little is left at this stage) and multiple dress changes take place. Afterwards everyone, my dear wife says, complains that there is so much additional work when you are working from home -- obviously there was no intra day hair styling or dress changes in the office, or at least in most offices.</p><p>Nirvana for men is when people joke about their bald head and they respond that `what is inside the head is all in tact and that is more important'...something they never acknowledged in all the years. For ladies, it is when they get too tired and could not care less, let themselves age dramatically by 30 years one fine day and emerge from the bathroom with a plait of chalk white hair. With all the prior knowledge at their disposal, the husbands do get frightened out of their wits at the sight of the apparition and go around for a whole week speechless, afflicted by the spectre. I recommend that the ladies also have a heart and start `greying' gradually, much the same way men lose their hair gradually, instead of implementing an overnight unilateral decision and run the risk of a husband with a stroke or heart attack for the rest of their lives.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-12852460473097707332021-04-23T06:09:00.006-07:002021-04-23T06:23:26.527-07:00Taking Flight Again<p>The title is reminiscent of an incapacitated, stricken bird trying to fly again. Desperately. But I am talking about my dear wife and I boarding a plane almost after 16 months, during which time we had all developed a morbid fear of getting into a flight due to the raging pestilence. While we, like hordes of others, were immobilised by overwhelming paranoia, we did notice that many others were indeed flying around as if things were very normal - be it for work or a vacation. When we spoke to such people and wondered why they were being reckless, they looked at us in a very leering and mocking way to convey their contempt for lily-livered folks like us, for just being cautious. Just before the breakout of this Covid 2 menace, we decided to loosen up a bit and take a flight ourselves, even though our mindset was that of one negotiating a minefield.</p><p>Seemingly the precautions being taken by the airlines were thorough and impressive. But as usual they turned out to be only on paper, literally so. While booking tickets, we are made aware of the need for a E-pass for travel, to be printed and kept ready for verification while checking-in. Same was the case with a self declaration about flier's current relationship with Covid - to confirm that he or she does not suffer from the virus. We were even advised to register the plate number and name + phone number of the driver of the vehicle we would use to get away from the destination airport. Very pleased with the strict monitoring being done, we got everything ready and submitted the papers along with the single sheet boarding pass usually handed in. Got a rude shock when the airline representative almost threw all the papers out, taking only the boarding pass. She sweetly smiled and said she did not need anything else, since they were not asked to check them. For that matter, even at the destination airport nobody would have bothered even if one was carried out on a stretcher with a couple of oxygen cylinders attached to the nostrils. So lax was everything, we just breezed into the outside world and our car without a soul asking us for any shred of document to verify anything.</p><p>The check-in line, as usual, had the normal bunch of eager beavers, jostling because there was not enough space for social distancing - three sets of passengers standing in a 6-foot line. I guess the airline staff were jut focusing on the 6-foot-rule without worrying about how many people were being packed into that space. People were pretending to be aware of the requirement but simultaneously trying to push their way through check-in quickly. The chap directing people was very peeved when I refused to move closer to the counter, to stand two feet behind the previous passenger. He probably found my conduct extremely inimical to the interests of the airline and passengers. Some people behind us in the line were also expressing their discontent with my fussy behaviour in a well orchestrated chorus of murmurs. The security area was a better controlled because it was less crowded and the police khaki was omnipresent. </p><p>All the seats in the waiting areas near the boarding gates were fully occupied, without any concern for social distancing and we realised that this was just a trailer for the seating inside the plane. In the South Indian restaurant fliers were cramming idlis, dosas, assorted vadas etc into their mouths, as if they believed that meal to be the very last one of their lives. Boarding process was very normal, a congested line waiting on the jetway to get into the plane, people scrupulously avoiding to leave even one foot space between them. As we entered the plane, we saw the cabin crew clad in PPE gowns and they resembled personnel in a nuclear facility which has recently been decommissioned, but was rumbling to get rough again. They generally stayed away from the passengers as if every one of us was thoroughly infected, to be best kept at as good a distance as the plane's interiors would permit. I guess only they were trying to practise social distancing to the extent practical!</p><p>During the transfer from the terminal to the plane, somewhere along the line we all got face shields and PPEs for middle seaters. The quality of the face shields coupled with our own breathing ensured that within a minute, our entire outlook became very hazy and misty. Almost as if we were airborne with all doors and windows open. The middle seaters who got the PPEs early, wore them grimly before occupying their seats. Those who did not think too much about the process, tried to get away by waving the PPEs in the face of the cabin crew, without even opening the package. When told to wear them, they had to do some acrobatic wriggling at their seats, sitting or standing, to squeeze themselves into the gowns. With space being scarce for a dressing room, some thrashing about wildly was inevitable, guys inadvertently hitting (or may be deliberately) the neighbours on both sides a few times in the bargain. Some neighbours reacted angrily and the rest of the flight saw simmering tension throughout. To add further discomfiture to others, the middle seaters invariably had the knack of boarding late, forcing the aisle seaters make way for the moon-walkers in white gowns. </p><p>The cabin crew made the announcements much more rapidly than usual, being in a hurry to move away from the contaminating looks of passengers. Not even a gulp of water was served. And the flight itself was over quickly. The crew seemed to smile inside their PPEs for the first time, glad to be free of company.</p><p>My dear wife's assessment was that the only differences in a Covid flight were the face shield and white gowns. And both those features caused more strain to the passengers. We concluded we desired no more flights for a while. Safer and more comfortable on the ground. </p><p> </p><p> </p><p><br /></p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-88115684558441044252021-02-26T05:03:00.005-08:002021-02-26T05:20:29.157-08:00Healthy Eating<p> A month ago, when I met this recently-retired friend of mine, he had the glow of ultimate contentment on his face and a genuine `life is good' attitude about him, as he was enthusiastically humming an old film song in his own chaotic tune. He was clearly transmitting signals of all being well with the world and God was in His heaven - to borrow a line from Browning. I was very impressed and somewhat nonplussed because this man was perennially subjugated to pulp by a domineering wife, which made any sign of even casual exuberance absolutely unwarranted. The lady nonchalantly dictated the terms on which their lives should run without ever including his feelings or requirements as necessary ingredients for the way forward. She always treated all those peripheral things including the husband himself as unavoidable appendages to her own vision of life. Whenever her bullying image crosses my mind, with her arms akimbo and a stern glare on her furrowed face, intent on cowing own all opposition, I immediately remind myself I should build a temple for my own dear wife soon! But, the man, with unbelievably mature and complete wisdom of what was good for him, had fully surrendered and followed the grand dame in all matters like Mary's own little lamb. That was how I found him, in a supremely happy frame of mind, a month ago.</p><p>But, when I chanced upon him a couple of days back, there seemed to be something amiss; the happy glow was conspicuously absent; the man was distraught, agitated to the point of getting aggressive in his behaviour, a trait which he was never guilty of earlier. I offered him a cup of his favourite coffee and he reacted with violent horror, as if I was forcing hemlock down his throat. He continued to flail and look around wildly as if a disagreeable ghost, which was haunting him, had nudged him hard as a reminder of its presence. After a few minutes of small talk and then some persistent cajoling, to my simple question as to why he was behaving strangely, he just said `health food'. Some time passed and he nervously emptied all his agony on my coffee table and in summary, his disquiet has been brought about by the recently acquired penchant of his wife's -- an unrelenting obsession with health food of all hues, not only for herself but for him too. What compounded the matter, he confessed, was the fact that his wife was influenced by myriad opinions on health good, with an abundance of cheap advice and was unable to make up her mind as to the most desired items for consumption.</p><p>The first simple problem my friend encountered was that he was unable to consume everything that was shoved in his direction as wholesome food or good for health. It all began with a glass of warm water with honey and lemon at first, to be taken on empty stomach, which he gladly gulped down, least realising what he was in for. After a week, the wife received another input about the goodness of chia seeds/flax seeds with water on empty stomach. Now, this mix cannot be taken technically on empty stomach, which already was sloshing with honey and lemon water. This logical point was dismissed rudely by the wife who insisted that this second glass of water also went in forthwith in close pursuit. Now came solids -- a mix of six almonds, six pepper corns and six raisins, soaked overnight in water, to be taken on the same empty stomach, which was already half full with liquids. Once all these are pushed down the plumbing system, there was sadly no space for any breakfast after that, was the primary complaint of my friend.</p><p>The lady had also seen sponsored ads about the goodness of eggs. She, like a lot of us, was confused about the acceptable number, one or two daily. In her wisdom, augmented immeasurably by sustained discussions in social media with her friends (one realised that there was a widespread experimentation with guinea pigs of husbands, by the group), she decided to err on the side of surplus and stuck with two. All protestations on his hind legs by my friend that eggs (he hated them, he confessed) can cause cholesterol excess, in which area he was already super-rich and was under medication, were swatted away disdainfully. With the appearance of eggs on the menu, all his favourite breakfast items like idli, dosa, upma, vada etc were peremptorily banished without notice or any other consideration, causing immense agony to the true South Indian that my friend is. To help him wash down the eggs, the wife sweetly made fresh orange juice, sugarless obviously, too sour to some extent. That being the third or sometimes fourth glass of liquid before 8.30 in the morning, the man was beginning to feel like a barrel of liquid.</p><p>To my friend's horror, rice was summarily reduced to twice a week during lunch and that too measured originally in spoons for quantity but grudgingly amended to small bowls after unprecendented domestic warfare broke out on a few occasions. The vacated space was given to soups and salads of all sorts, some meant for horses, my friend felt. Even the fact that the uncooked salad ended up in food-poisoning of some sort for both of them a couple of times did not deter the lady and she just rode roughshod in her path with extreme zest, having no regard for the whining of our man. Someone planted the idea in her mind that olive oil was better than home grown oils. This meant that on the odd occasion when something was shallow fried at home, the end product did not taste as good. When it was pointed out that she was spending twice the money on olive oil as against sesame oil, she cleverly justified that by saying they were saving enough by not consuming rice daily. </p><p>Coffee was now with skimmed milk and the man, an avid South Indian filter coffee afficianado, was getting increasingly rebellious by the day, just wanted to skin the woman. The lady's relentless pursuit of her new found objective meant dinner was oats porridge or something lifelessly similar (with skimmed milk, of course) and my friend saw no relief or end to his daily privations, after one long month. By then, he had not only lost some three kilos but also most of the will to live such an abysmal existence. The savage woman took all the money off him, to deprive him of any chance of eating any interesting food outside the home. That was how I found out how health food was aggravating him no end - when he, bleating like a hungry lamb, asked me for some money, just enough to buy vada and sambar plus coffee in a restaurant. </p><p>Why can't the women have all the health food they want and leave the menfolk alone? Logically everyone would be happier with that kind of arrangement, right? But then, health food or otherwise, the higher objective always seems to be to make the man fall in line with what is judged to be good for him!! Since he cannot think of such things himself. God help him, poor chap. </p><p><br /></p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-8196458770959208202021-01-19T21:37:00.001-08:002021-01-20T06:06:44.458-08:00Nostalgia Afflicted Elders (NAEs)<p>Nostalgia is good, especially if the person indulging in it is a good raconteur. Many a time, such a gifted and acerbic story-teller can enthrall a group with rib tickling tales from the past, as a part of his nostalgic visits. Nostalgia is a balm too, especially for lonely elders, who physically cannot and do not want to grapple with the complexities of current lives. My take on nostalgia, especially when pining older people are involved, is that people resort to nostalgia not only because life `then' was nicer and they themselves were happier. But also because they just don't want to adapt to less appealing conditions, which they find unseemly. They have consciously erected this mental block of an aversion to make changes in their own attitude towards daily life and cope with simple but new demands. While everyone is entitled to a bit of nostalgia now and then, if people tend to take refuge in it and make it a permanent nest, it only means they would like to ignore reality and live elsewhere, in a space they were comfortable, long back. What such people fail to comprehend is that there is a definite limit to the quantum of their nostalgia others can digest. </p><p>Some elders have this compulsive habit of recollecting bits of their own lives about four/five decades ago, given any excuse or opening; this has youngsters around them invariably scurrying to all available exit routes. They disperse like marathon runners when the gunshot is heard - only that they scoot in any direction they can find, with the sole intention of avoiding the elder chewing his cud. Even grandchildren tend to make faces when an old man begins `You know, in our school days.....' and try to decamp. While this kind of recollections are eminently suitable for peer sessions in which all participants are known to each other and they share knowledge of the subject matter, they invariably repel other audiences.</p><p>Nostalgia Afflicted Elders (NAEs) have this tendency to screw up their noses at many things contemporary, including current movies. They would rather be watching some 1950s movie, where people stood rooted to one place and delivered long dialogues (actually monologues mostly); that is, when they get tired of singing a few songs at a stretch. Five minutes into the new movie on Netflix which the family sits down to watch together, the NAE would make appropriate noises and detach himself from the group rapidly and recede into nostalgia. Later on he would be kind enough to explain that he found the goings on in the movie too fast, too bizarre (he is probably right, I have no beef with this) and it was all beyond his comprehension. Truth is, the movie was not as slow as the old ones he likes, in which you could miss twenty minutes completely and come back to find that the two characters have just moved sideways about one inch each, while incessantly talking. Even if you take an NAE to a movie in a multiplex, chances are bright that fifteen minutes into the movie, you would receive some input like `you see, in our days we had only touring talkies and they were so much more enjoyable' as a preface before he passionately launches into the merits of old cinema halls, preventing others from enjoying the experience. </p><p>If you take an avid NAE to a restaurant, even one which serves all-time favourites which they too enjoy, as soon as a plate of idli and vadai makes its appearance on the table, the nostalgia bomb which had started ticking minutes ago goes `boom'. There will be a painful comparison of the idli and vadai - shape, size, colour, softness and other attributes - to those served in some restaurant which had ceased to exist some five decades back. There will be critical comments about the service, extolling the virtues of the server in that old restaurant which had passed into oblivion. Of course, prices of the dishes would be a constant issue on all such occasions, as if inflation is something irrelevant to life and should be totally ignored to keep prices frozen. Wonder if all NAEs would have accepted salaries paid to people in 1960s, even at their prime or before their retirement in 1990s or 2000s.</p><p>Once a friend, who had bought a new BMW too his visiting uncle for a ride. To the mortification of the friend who just wanted to give the old man some good time and also show off a bit, the NAE got hit with a serious bout of nostalgia, as soon as he settled in his seat. He looked at the all the dials, panels and gadgets inside the car and his sensibility rebelled immediately, preventing him from even understanding what is what. He promptly declared that in his days, life was very simple with only Ambassador and Premier Padmini as the cars available. You selected one or the other, if you wanted a car and that was uncomplicated. Nowadays, he lamented, there are fifty cars to select from; as if wider choice of cars is a negative factor. He just ignored the quality of the cars and the technological improvements that have been brought in. I thought this NAE was a classic example of someone who cannot come abreast of developments at least to the extent necessary.</p><p>Such an NAE is most likely to say, with an air of dismissiveness (a) Vijay Manjrekar's cover drive was more delightful to watch (when Virat Kholi has just done a majestic cover drive on TV); (b) Rod Laver had a fluidity in his strokes that is unmatched (looking at Roger Federer moving around the court and demonstrating his artistry with the tennis racquet); (c) Ashwin or Nathan Lyon cannot hold a candle to the off spinning abilities of Jim Laker. No doubt all those worthies from the past were brilliant performers in their own right and people have every right to recall their greatness. But, the problem lies in the fact that the NAE would just not recognize the virtues of contemporary sportsmen or life in general. That is the nub.</p><p>Don't get me wrong. Nostalgia is good as a release valve and works like one of the restoratives Jeeves makes for Wooster, so long as the time and context is right. But for anyone, nostalgia cannot become life. Surely, there are plenty of old people, who enjoy contemporary life as much as their nostalgic recollections and that is probably a much better state to be in. </p><p>When my dear wife finished reading this, with a sarcastic smile she told me `let me look out for the next time when you start ruminating about your school days in Tuticorin', Touche!!</p><p> </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-76195752992072490792020-12-17T21:44:00.003-08:002020-12-19T09:08:07.609-08:00Labour Of Love<p> As a writer, I must confess that I have reached a stage where finding a topic to write on has become a pain, a nightmare. Having been at it for over 10 years, with nearly 150 blog posts in that period, the landscape seems to have turned sterile in terms of subject matter. And then, I have very clear expectations from readers that serious writing is taboo - everybody and his uncle is doing just that. Multiple subjects which are topical today deselect themselves for one reason or the other - like Farmers' Protest (nothing to be joking about, even though it has the looks of a horror comedy); Covid (has been rehashed so much that one is more afraid of reading anything about Covid than Covid itself); Congress (the party is so good at making a mockery of itself, there is no scope left for others to compete); Indian Cricket team (I abhor the idea of writing about something on which there are billion experts shredding the subject to bits daily). Choosing a subject has always been a challenge, but earlier that task has never left me feeling like a moron , who cannot see ten feet around him. These days I spend more time raking my brains - whatever is left of that - about what to write than actually writing the blog once the title is nailed. </p><p>I wonder if this inability to latch on to something as a topic has something to do with the serious matter of ageing, with the faculties not taking cognizance of readily available opportunities. But, actually I have known some extraordinarily acidic, decrepit individuals become sharper and better entertainers with their trenchant cynicism and no-holds-barred assaults on anything within sight. Such people become so wonderfully unpredictable that they could turn on their best friends without provocation and reduce them to tears with their barbs. Such oldies never pause to scan the horizon for any subject, they just thrive on whatever comes into focus. Should one take a leaf out of such specimens and move like a bulldozer to overcome the perceived paucity of topics?? But unlike such cynics who are beyond the pale in most respects, I need friends and goodwill, so cannot just ride roughshod over my immediate periphery without worrying about consequences. Not yet. Anyway, my dear wife demurs that the current struggle of mine has anything to do with age because if she agrees that would mean she is ageing too.</p><p>If the subject and the treatment are not light hearted and breezy some readers are disappointed, with good reason. There is a multitude of writers who take upon themselves the role of gurus, to advise the world how to behave, chastising people for all types of errors of omission and commission. `Why do you want to join that horde' is the question they pose to me and I have no intention of wandering there because pontificating is not for me. So, even if it is an inviting subject laden with potent possibilities, unless one can treat it with humour, distilling any sign of seriousness out, it seems to fall outside my assigned domain and I eschew them automatically. Thus the pool of topics available to me is further shrunk.</p><p>I had to be abreast of times, perforce look at my supply side carefully and add WhatsApp to my channels, bowing to demands from a set of readers. This, I erroneously presumed, is an one time effort and it seemed so at first. But, as we went along, requests started coming, saying `I don't like WhatsApp, so send by email' or `I forward your blogs to other friends and this is easier done on WhatsApp, so send me the blogposts both by email and WhatsApp', This process involved some chipping and chopping until it settled to everyone's satisfaction. Thus the maintenance activity on the delivery channels has become an added dimension of work. Am waiting for someone to ask blogposts to be delivered by SMS or by courier - there are people with all kinds of preferences supported by their own sound logic, right?</p><p>During Covid, any logical person would conclude readership of anything reasonable will increase, due to the perception that people have additional time on hand at home. I thought so about my blogposts too, but surprisingly, it looks like somewhat fewer people seem to be reading the blogs. Is it possible that with WFH and a lot more time at their disposal, people have started reading other things they have identified recently and are ignoring old pests like me?? Or is it because people are so peeved with the distressing state of affairs, they don't want to read anything at all and just want to sulk?? Or there are other, more enjoyable activities to engage in, like spending time with kids, grandkids, so reading a blogpost is not priority? Hard to tell from my end. Is it likely that because of Covid many more writers have sprouted, for want of any other work, with diverse subjects and styles and readers' time is distributed among all of them?</p><p>One activity that has increased with the blog is readers providing feedback to the blogs. This is a conundrum I would like to sit and untangle - fewer readers but more feedback; I am trying to link this also to Covid, but logically am not able to.</p><p>I am glad I made a topic of this and got one more blogpost out. Now I will start squeezing my brain for the next topic for the blog. All said and done, for me it is a labour of love and I will have to find something to write on. I guess I will.</p><p><br /></p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-57554550047573421752020-11-14T21:53:00.003-08:002020-11-29T21:53:39.254-08:00Dog's Tail<p> One oft-repeated statement of despair family members have heard from our father during childhood days (we will refrain from getting into the circumstances which prompted that) was that `a dog's tail can never be straightened'. Obviously his angst came out in that form when the same stupid error was committed by some errant individual. He used to elucidate for the uninitiated that so long as a small stone is tied to any dog's tail, that part will stay politely down and the moment the stone is removed, the tail will resume status-quo-ante. Now, in the context of the current pandemic, his desperation-driven judgement appears to be justified and magnified, reminding us of dog's tail at every turn in daily life when people are involved in numbers. </p><p>On simple analysis, one can see that extensive violations of edicts occur because of (a) sheer lack of space for a family to spend a whole day cooped up together (b) the absence of avenues of pastime in a rather constricted atmosphere and (c) absolute impudence of pachyderm-like citizens who just do not care and want to callously execute their will regardless of the outcome staring us in the face. The best specimen in this last category is the eminently-gone, but mule-headed former president of USA. Come to think of it, there can be no better example of a dog's tail than this individual. Actually it may be even more difficult to attach a stone to this defiant tail.</p><p>We do not have to venture too far to get evidence of the reckless, dog's-tail crowd behaviour. Photos/videos in newspapers/TV news, of people shopping for festivals with gay abandon, would make us wonder if the somewhat careful among us are living in some bizarre world. While one section of the people ultra-carefully step out when the crowd is the least on the roads and in shops and only if unavoidable, others are seen milling around in narrow bazaars as if there is no tomorrow. There is no way any authority can monitor or control such wildness on such humongous scale and even jail cells would not have adequate space even if incarceration is the punishment for not wearing a mask or not maintaining social distancing. These perverse violators are perfectly aware of that and tend to use that knowledge `effectively' to some advantage - god knows what; hence the insolent disregard for all controls laid down with good intent . </p><p>But what is baffling is that such deliberate disregard of norms to indulge in recklessly negligent behaviour would primarily affect the same set of people. And they are the ones who can ill afford to get into a mess health-wise. Financially too, because with a single line decree, the government can decide that there should be a curfew for the next month, stopping all commercial activities and means of livelihood. </p><p>The government is also concerned about votes, so they are more interested in making noises and rules like even a family of four cannot travel in their own car together; or that even a single driver/passenger in a car should be wearing mask and maintain social distancing from himself/herself!! </p><p>So, when both the power-wielders and majority of the subjects prefer chaotic rule, we have a classic case of multitudes of dog's tails!!</p><p><br /></p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-32198230294779001892020-09-03T02:46:00.010-07:002020-11-29T21:53:39.261-08:00Where All The Deeds Are Done<p>My dear wife and I have been to quite a few of these offices in various cities. So, it is not as if we get surprised by what we find. For government offices, these are pretty clean without any sign of ageing files and musty, dusty documents piled up to the rafters; and they are efficient in their own way. With well-kept floors and decent, if not five-star working areas.That is thanks to the digitization that has prevailed for a decade or more, despite strident efforts by vested interests. The old bandicoots would have preferred to stay with loads of paper which were shoved into bottomless, black holes, never to be retrieved in future, even when needed. That was yet another convenient avenue, the ubiquitous missing document, to make some more money on the side from the suckers that the suffering public has become!!</p><p>Notwithstanding prior visits, my dear wife nose is instinctively screwed askew, as if it is a defence mechanism against some anticipated offensive odour, even though there isn't any. She says that it is something to do with the unctuous ambience of the place. She is on the coin, with that adjective, 'unctuous' it is. One feels the lurking presence of some unseen grease and oil and the consequent imaginary, accompanying smell that seems to be pervasive. But these are all just palpable manifestations of the way transactions are put through in that slippery place -- the Registrar's or Sub-Registrar's office where all deeds are registered.</p><p>Recently a friend narrated the story of his tribulations at the aforementioned venerable office, where he had gone to register his newly established charitable trust. This low grade transaction, simply because the stamp duty was pittance and the revenue potential was not significant enough to merit attention, took much longer than a property registration transaction, which involved crores and hefty stamp duty. Obviously, higher the value of the deal, greater the grease money that oiled the process!! On top of that, this `do-it-yourself ' specialist of a friend, intent to avoid paying any grease money, went without an agent bravely to negotiate the murky corridors of that office. That was a double whammy and he had an excruciating time, jumping through umpteen hoops before a seemingly innocuous deviation in one document put paid to his heroic efforts. Such `unprofitable' transactions are assigned the lowest priority and get queued for the last hour of the day despite the friend vehemently protesting while standing on his hind-legs. Only to be brutally rejected for the flimsiest of excuses in the climax. That he returned another day, with the same documents and an agent spearheading the deal and got the job done in half an hour is a testimony as well as tribute to the power of the grease money that flowed through the intermediary and made all the difference. </p><p>If one goes agent-less for a registration, the first contact person in the office earnestly does all the counselling and hand-holding until one is handed over to one of the `recognized' agents in-house. This facilitator of an agent not only examines your paper-work and fixes a comma here and a date there but also acts as a faithful conduit to the 'authorized' collector for the speed money you shell out. This collector invariably happens to be the trustworthy henchman of the office chief and is strategically located off-site, just in case there is a raid in the office to check corruption!! He is never in the same location for more than two hours at a time and follows a strict Standard Operating Procedure. He does not entertain anyone except known and `authorized' agents, to avoid any likely trap sadistically set by unknown individuals. This agent-collector-office staff nexus is so powerful and efficient that it could be a Harvard case study for Super Efficient Government Offices. If you hallucinate about the prospects of getting the job done without speed money and an agent, you should be resigned to suffering the same fate as the previously referenced friend. Once you are identified as an agent-less orphan, while the entire staff politely smiles at you and nicely tells you to just wait, you clearly realise you are getting the short shrift. The results generally indicate this.</p><p>The agent is very useful because he has the magic key which gives him access to all the rooms and staff members, which/who are so out of reach for you as an individual. He is helpful in moving the papers from one stage to the next as quickly as possible and there are about eight such stages to go through. Some desks require your presence along with the agent, for showing your mug or affixing your signature; but some stages are entirely managed by the agent, without you being any wiser for what is transpiring. Actually, your file may just be lying on one of the desks, to give you the impression that the process is that much more convoluted than you think. This serves two purposes - ensures that you never again venture into such an exercise without an agent; it also gives you full satisfaction and value for the cash stripped off you. In between the agent will hustle in and out few times, waving some paper vaguely in your face and this induces in your mind a illusory feeling of progress -- it may not be your file at all, for all you know. </p><p>The real test for you begins only when you reach the penultimate stage when you are asked to sign a few hundred times and if you do not have an agent as an accomplice, you are, ab initio, presumed to be an impersonator. Until you prove them wrong with your signature absolutely matching the evidentiary document you carry. If there is a discrepancy, you are bluntly told the deal is a no-go, you should scoot and get the signature right. But as in all matters bureaucratic, there is always an exit route -- you should just get an agent and pay the grease money. The same signature is good as gold and works like a charm. The staff actually admire you for signing so like the original, so consistently hundreds of times!! We actually saw someone whose right hand was in a sling and he was condescendingly asked to sign with the left hand and the same got accepted with appreciative nods and a bland explanation `we are seeing you in person, so this is okay'.</p><p>You start feverishly signing wherever the agent puts his index finger, sometimes on it if he does not nimbly withdraw in time. Obviously the signature varies a lot by the time you reach the last page of the deed because you have been labouring for some time. The agent and the assigned staff member look at each other and then at you, as if you are on a ventilator struggling to breath and they have no hope. They tut-tut or ch-ch-ch according their individual preference, to indicate their displeasure. If the deviation is more than minor, the grease money component goes up by a bit once more. Remember, this charge is nothing but a compounding penalty for all the minor or major holes that can be punched in the entire transaction process and keeps building up from a determined base amount, all through the 3-4 hours you spend in that office. The increase in the charge from the base is directly proportional to all the stupid mistakes you make out of tiredness, frustration or indifference.</p><p>The final authority, the regal presence so to say, of this place is the Registrar or sub-registrar and he makes it abundantly clear that he is above all and everything, by sitting on a platform; the purpose of that edifice is not otherwise clear. May be to let him view the assemblage with eagle eyes from a vantage point? Or just to ensure that his own staff does not indulge in any hanky-panky, of course, other than what is duly authorised by him as part of SOP. This is usually a very reticent individual, who counts the words he utters, as of he does not want to waste his edicts on common men. He invariably conducts all his interactions with the supplicants through his minions or the agent, seldom directly. Only in the final stages of the actual registration, this Supreme Leader deigns to mumble a couple of questions to the parties to the transaction. His whole demeanour betrays a sullen distrust in the legitimacy of the seller to own the property in question or of the right of the buyer to possess the funds required for the purchase. He seems only to be willing to condone all such shenanigans because philosophically he is above all such issues.</p><p>Then you go get your mug shot for a historical record the transaction. A bunch of people involved in other transactions are always milling around you and the person handling the camera. If she and you are not careful, the photo might emerge as having two heads or three faces, so it pays to be acutely aware of your position and who is around. The camera is usually at an angle which makes you look up and the photo comes out as if you are beseeching the heavens for mercy and a swift end to this sordid affair.</p><p>The finale involves you scurrying out of that hole as if somebody has lit a live cracker on your tail. But you cannot get too far because the agent stops you at a discreet distance away from the pell-mell and collects his fees plus the grease/speed money. And you are told the transaction is over. You are indeed glad it is. My wife definitely was and said she regretted owning any property in her name.</p>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-24855118131538533022020-07-29T06:19:00.002-07:002020-11-29T21:53:39.268-08:00Working From Home (WFH)<div>If some widespread pestilence had compelled me to work from home 25 years ago for a long duration, how would I have reacted? With immense happiness, no doubt; for one single, stupid reason. Simply because all those absolutely redundant and most unproductive conference calls would have vapourised. Those where one logged in with a sickening feeling, could say one's name to mark presence pretty much like a kid does in the class room and then hit the `mute' button forthwith. Only to un-mute it after an hour, without any guilty feeling of deprivation of knowledge. Actually, there was an even chance that one would have unwittingly avoided some impairment of knowledge because one meticulously shunned the proceedings. This benefit usually accrues if certain types of people participated in the call and they invariably did. And all those no-content, all-trash short meetings that surfaced every hour in the office would have vanished as well. </div><div><div><br /></div><div>Surprisingly many people whom I interviewed for this piece this week, expressed similar sentiments about the plethora of meetings, conference calls etc which prove to be routine impediments to a productive day at work. Nothing seems to have changed for the better despite the passage of time. Someone even told me that a few managers today keep the phone engaged for up to an hour at a stretch, just to get relief from annoying, unscheduled conference calls. It is another matter that Zoom and Skype have evolved to deny people a similar escape route. Perforce you have to make an appearance with a serious, thoughtful face on the screen and are obliged to pretend to listen to a truck load of bunkum, because you can be seen and are subject to scrutiny.</div><div><br /></div><div>Come to think of it, WFH has been in vogue for many jobs and households are used to this for many years. With all those professions where the primary work is in the field or duties involved working the phone or computer all the time and the practitioner goes to an office for a few hours once a week to file some reports, show the face to the boss and convince he is alive, therefore deserves the next pay cheque. Such households are probably silently smirking about the new WFH regime, wondering what the heck is new about all this. Women in such homes are probably the best candidates to mentor and provide psychological succour to all those clueless and harassed wives of today, who find themselves suddenly married to their husbands' jobs also besides their husbands, full time at home. As my dear wife says, such wives deserve all the empathy because not only have they lost their freedom to air themselves a bit for shopping, pow-wow with friends and kitty parties, but are also coerced to baby-sit the husbands apart from real kids. Multiple jeopardy, at one go!! House work increases manifold because everyone is at home with heartless and hefty demands while women folk lose whatever little leeway they had. </div><div><br /></div><div>Many respondents clearly preferred the current blissful state of affairs, WFH. No commute (big relief in almost all the cities), they said and lot more productive days because there are no disruptive meetings (mercifully, nobody to meet), no frequent chai-coffee breaks (one has to make one's own coffee or tea at home, so carefully avoided), no chit-chats and gossip (wives seldom entertain such trash). Even other folks at home tend to carefully side-step those who are staring into their computers all day with severely screwed up visages and have massive, forbidding head-phones attached in order to keep intruders away. Of course, it is entirely possible that the husbands are watching You-Tube clips or even a TV show, but then why fiddle with something if that can be left well alone for the common good? Other advantages are, there is no need to waste time in grooming yourself much, no pressure to dress up for office. Unkempt looks are fashionable now and also convey the message that you are working so hard from home, you do not have time for routine chores. </div><div><br /></div><div>There are some problems, of course. Not everyone is equipped to handle work from home. Space, presence of too many suffering and therefore, volatile family members, inappropriate home location etc become irritants and issues, which prevent a good day's work being executed. The WFH candidate ends up ruffling too many feathers, with major long term consequences. Some managers find it tiresome to co-ordinate meetings (one should assume they are the unavoidable and useful ones, otherwise why would you go seeking a meeting?) with all the constraints, real and imaginary, of the participants. A few people believe there is always the risk of getting immersed in work and losing track of time, thereby work-time encroaching family-time. This is disastrous on a normal day, but with the wife already bristling under pressure due to WFH, such an outcome is not in the interests of the well-being of the home-worker. </div><div><br /></div><div>Then there are the others who would not do WFH for a day more than dictated by the current stifling circumstances. They miss the workplace magic, the buzz in the ambience, the constant interaction with colleagues, the lunches and coffees with buddies etc. The extra perks that landed on their tables, like commute by Uber, dinners if you work beyond 8 pm and the like are powerful incentives to be at the work place, especially if you are a solitary reaper and no-one is waiting for you at home. For many such people, this working-inside-a-vacuum feeling is not very appetising. </div><div><br /></div><div>A technology wizard rightly points out the serious danger of home wi-fi networks being vulnerable to malware which can infect the corporate networks; and, privacy of customer data can also be compromised in an unsupervised WFH environment. How far can companies go to keep an eye on the employee working from home or monitor him otherwise without the rest of the household going up in arms against what they would see as terrible intrusion into their homes? </div><div><br /></div><div>In the midst of all this, I happen to stumble upon one curious case of an individual who was doing the reverse of WFH. She was cooking and sleeping in the office. Nothing to do with Covid. Her apartment was involved in a fire accident and she had to temporarily switch to some temporary residence to continue living. The organization was good enough to accommodate her needs and she was a Living At Work specimen for a few months. So, I realised that occasionally it works both ways. But imagine some hundred employees asking for accommodation and food at the office simultaneously for legitimate reasons. </div><div><br /></div><div>As usual, the bottom line is if people working from home are going to be compensated for all the additional expenses they incur as well as the hardships they impose on the other family members in this process. A few companies have already commenced sending some moolah their way, but I am not sure that practice is going to be universal. If the money is good and people are happy, would companies start getting out of rentals and sell their furniture and equipment to settle for WFH permanently?? Moot point, as my dear wife decrees and no further debate on that, since she usually tends to be right.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-75585670633327979362020-06-26T21:30:00.004-07:002020-11-29T21:53:39.276-08:00Back Being A Virtual Back-bencher<div>For some strange reason, I had deluded myself into believing that my epoch-making statement would be received with euphoric excitement by my audience of `one' - my dear wife. But it turned out to be the dampest of squibs and she betrayed no visible signs - of either euphoria or excitement. You see, for decades she valiantly tried to nudge me into upgrading myself academically and professionally by getting a good MBA, but I got nowhere with that. It turned out to be one more front on which yours truly failed her. There was this complete absence of motivation in me for, nay well-nurtured antipathy towards, anything that smacked of further structured academic effort. This thorny issue remained a constant source of chagrin for her. So, when I recently declared breezily, `I am a Harvard Alumnus now', she just glowered at me menacingly, with all the cumulative disdain she could muster. Forced into providing a meaningful explanation, I went on to clarify that I just completed an online course of Harvard (available for free, of course) on the subject of 'Humanitarian Response To Conflicts And Disasters'. A rather impressive choice, any impartial bystander would agree.</div><div><br /></div><div>Retired people who have managed their egos well in life would readily agree that the impact of the pandemic on their daily lives has not been anything phenomenal. Because most retired people were home-bound anyway with some routine outings for airing themselves. Some friends have snidely confided in me that the virus has just reinforced the well-entrenched dictum of most retirees' wives that retired males are meant for home, pottering around aimlessly for hours. The splendid rationale is that such people had whiled away their working days outside home, so now is the opportunity to make up. Whatever it is, I found that I had some more disposable time on hand, out of the total highly disposable time in a day and had to explore something to avoid being bored. When I chanced upon this website offering free online courses from various global universities, I fell hook, line and sinker and took the bait. Why did this commendable effort not impress my dear wife?? Because it was not real Harvard, there was no competitive jostle to get admission and it was free for any walk-in!! Doesn't cut it with academicians like her, with very high standards.</div><div> </div><div>The earliest realisation I had was that I had no patience for the video presentations of the professors and practitioners teaching the course. They seemed to take forever to say what they wanted to. Anyway, my preference for the written word over the spoken one was very clearly established historically. People look at me as if I have sprouted a few horns when I honestly confess that I enjoy reading Shakespeare's plays more than going to the theatre to watch them enacted. This may have something to do with the terrible acting, rotten acoustics and the worst possible ambience one had to suffer during most of the shows of my early days. So, I found it far easier to read the transcript of the course presentations (which was displayed alongside the videos very obligingly) and understood them better, in half the time of the videos. My dear wife mumbled in response, `once a weirdo always a weirdo'! Well, teachers justifiably would want the first go at the students to explain the stuff before the latter can resort to independent knowledge gathering from other material. But, given my penchant, I throttled the voice of the presenter by muting and read the stuff. If you are fast with reading, you don't have to be impeded by the slower pace of the presenters. Also, you don't have to lose the thread or content because the presenter's diction or delivery is not in tune. Anyway, with due respect to the professors in the videos, it is not Vyasa or Valmiki or Homer presenting; nor was I following Mahabharat or Ramayana or Iliad. There was no halo around the canopy of any presenter to dazzle, you see! So, I kept to reading instead of listening and was none the worse off.</div><div><br /></div><div>When the online system frequently insisted I provide comments on the segment completed, I felt like the veritable back-bencher of yore in college, nursing simmering discontent about the rigmarole of the examination routine. That, mingled with mild pique at being forced to take a test to prove you have grasped stuff. When I complied with the diktat, my views were dictated by barely concealed cynicism towards organizations which were established with the noble objective of protecting the innocents and vulnerable from marauding warlords, but have consistently failed abjectly for decades. Also by the disenchantment with many of the NGOs which tend to gobble up big chunks of the contributions/funds received for administrative expenses and spend the remaining pittance inefficiently for the needy. Consequently the tone of my comments varied from being critical to caustic from a pragmatic perspective, while recognizing the fact that all the aid organizations were involved in discharging an unenviable duty to tend to the millions of refugees from all the conflicts around the globe. A very tough ask, indeed. </div><div><br /></div><div>The course did also give one a great insight into the functioning of governments of the countries involved in sectarian wars, disasters and self inflicted conflicts when it comes to management of the aid funds. Especially, the irony of the perpetrators of all the violence and inequities as well as the originators of all the problems of the refugees being given a central role in the distribution of the aid!! And a peek into the role of the volunteer aid organizations, which always seem to lack expertise and become the training ground for novices. A clear case of too little being done too late, but without these interlopers, even the tiny bit of good being achieved would be lost.</div><div><br /></div><div>There were a few social media troll-types among the students, who harboured extreme opinions on various inputs from co-participants. They pounced on a solitary word, even if they were stripping it out of context, and went at the source hammer and tongs belligerently. For instance there was this chap who must have been an army veteran of sorts and took umbrage at any statement against any army unit, indulging in malpractices in the management of aid funds. To him it didn't matter what army it was, even a sectarian warlord's bunch of thugs, and he bristled as if his own colleagues were vilified. The whole thing was just amusing for its lack of maturity and balance.</div><div><br /></div><div>Because the whole exercise was informal all the way and nothing serious was at stake (for me, I mean), there was no compelling urge for one to master everything. It was easy to move quickly from one section to the other, without the need for completely absorbing minute facts and figures, so long as one digested the key material. Result, a ten-week course got completed in four and the teacher at home was not amused, when she heard that. She looked at me as if I were an erring infantile and tried to make me go back and do the `entire' course again, despite my swearing I had done that. I had to prove myself by answering a few questions and did feel like a kid, in the process.</div><div><br /></div><div>This type of learning is like any quiz. The early exercises are easy enough and keep your ego in tact and expectations inflated. Then they throw all the curved balls at you and try to take you apart with the tough ones, exposing your lack of understanding of the subject and preparedness. But such progress is par for any course and should not deter the determined ones. So I am soldiering on. The next course I have enrolled in is about Responsive Cities. Very soon I realized how far out of my depth I was. I was bamboozled in the third week by an exercise meant to redesign a sea-front area as a mixed use residential, commercial, official, cultural and entertainment centre. With all the permutations and combinations possible, it was a load of fun, but I had huge difficulty in moving the pieces around for lack of proficiency with such things. </div><div><br /></div><div>Having completed that redesign, I am not even interested in finding out how good the outcome was in relation to the rest of the class. Why go for self-inflicted wounds? I do have a good excuse, I am not an architect or engineer, so mine was dictated by common sense. And common sense is bound to fail!</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772328375702704212.post-50036907799552818382020-05-24T05:25:00.003-07:002020-11-29T21:53:39.285-08:00Ideally.......The word `ideally' is possibly one of the most absurdly abused and terribly ill-treated in the English lexicon. If it can express its anguish standing on its hind-legs, it would probably collapse in a pool of gut-wrenching emotion and tears, before it completes the heart-rending story. Story of being used very loosely, almost being bandied about, to describe various situations which don't even have nodding acquaintance with the ideal world. If one thinks about it, this comes about because things, people and even thoughts which populate the ideal world differ drastically from person to person. Meaning there are so many ideals and sometimes the spectrum is so woefully stretched. This is bad enough to confuse us but then the word is also used when people do not really mean `ideally' but something close to `preferably', thereby taking the downgrade a few levels further. Where is the ideal stuff and where is petty, personal preference??<div><br /></div><div>The other day, we were at a carnatic music concert and heard continuous chatter from the row behind. One gentleman was behaving so demonstratively in his interventions with his wife during the concert, as if he considered himself a connoisseur a few rungs above the rest of the audience. I suspect this attitude he reserves for dealings with the spouse exclusively, because he can not find many kindred souls, who are either so sympathetic or so tolerant to put up with his kind of bombast. After the singer concluded a song, this gasbag told the wife 'he should have ideally sung Devadi Deva instead of that one'. At another point he opined that the singer should have ideally done raga Arabhi instead of Thodi. It was clear he was stating a matter of his own personal, narrow preference, based on what he knew better, but forcibly made it part of the big ideal world. My dear wife, when we came out, said with a wicked grin `Ideally, I would not have married him even under severe duress; and if I was guilty of that grievous crime for reasons beyond my control, ideally I would have dumped him forthwith'! Agreed, completely. </div><div><div><br /></div><div>This word `ideally' will be repeated umpteen times on the day Indian cricket team is announced for a match. Probably about 1.3 billion times. We are all inborn pundits of the game, have very strong opinions on its every little aspect and are compulsively driven by a burning desire to spout opinions, to boot. So we hear so many 'ideal' combinations for the team tumbling out into public domain. `Ideally Jadeja should have played instead of Ashwin' or `Ideally Pant should have been the wicket keeper instead of Saha'. Given that there are eleven players in the team, about seven usually select themselves and for each of the other four slots there are at least multiple alternatives for each, one can imagine the permutations available. That many mind-boggling ideal selections would be talked about for the next few days. Then there would be expert comments like `Bumrah should have ideally started from the other end' (that would have been uttered just before he took three wickets on the trot in four overs to embarrass that expert) or Rahul should have ideally played in the middle order (again, he would have scored a century opening the innings).</div><div> </div><div>Contextually, nowadays you hear a lot about what the ideal government should have done ideally to stanch the Covid spread. This is a classic case of defective hindsight propping up dubious arguments. Nobody, absolutely none, had a clue as to how the contagion would spread and behave in India. Nor do we hear of any sizable country going that way in the quest to beat the virus. But now we hear seemingly intuitive guys, with `assumed' foresight (not one could have correctly divined where that one mosquito circling in the room would touch down even after it squats on his own nose!) venturing forth righteously thus. 'That is why I said long back ideally we should not have had any lock-down; we should have ideally let the contagion spread so that herd immunity would have resulted'. Now, there is no real data to shore-up this point of view, but proponents would still want to claim that ideally we should have done what Sweden did, no lock-down at all. That Sweden is obviously a far-cry from the ideally suited comparison here for a thousand reasons is nowhere in the zone of reckoning for these seers.</div><div><br /></div><div>Another of the government initiatives going through the churn nowadays is the ideal financial package. Ideally, govt should have put cash in the hands of every Indian who needed that. But the government has contradicted that by going with what they think is ideally the best way, to give part as cash/kind and the rest as a loan for the family or small business to have money at their disposal for a fresh start, without unduly straining the government finances. One thing we all know for a fact is the ideally people prefer cash to loans at any level, since only one of them involves what is called repayment. We have not heard the final ideal solution in this matter yet, the jury is still out. We will have to ideally wait awhile.</div><div><br /></div><div>Everyone and as Boycott would say, his mother-in-law are now saying ideally the migrants should have been allowed to travel back to their home states at the beginning of the lock-down. The troubling visuals of hordes of migrants walking on highways and train tracks, burdened by kids and luggage, should make all of us agree that this was not how it should be actually, forget about ideally. Rational individuals would believe that with the pestilence hovering over as a threatening cloud, ideally the migrants should have been kept in their shelters, properly cared for in terms of food and medical facilities in the cities because cities could handle the pressures better. This process was supposed to give precious time to the completely unprepared state governments to set up shelter, food arrangements, medical support etc to deal with the inevitable virus surge when the migrants return home. Apart from reducing exposure for everyone to higher risks if a lot of people were moving around earlier. Many parts of the ideal scenario did not work well in the cities for various reasons and due to the failures on multiple fronts. And the ugly results are out for everybody to see now. All of us need to ideally hang our heads in shame, but I know better; that won't happen.</div><div><br /></div><div>A very common sentiment one hears in the stock market is `Oh, shucks, I should have ideally picked stock X over stock Y.' I cannot tell where `ideally' comes into play in this gamble because one is expected to pick on the basis of facts and take the consequences, remembering this is not always a game of science. There are a lot of imponderables in this, which can skew the results away from expectations. If the idealist in you is tending to punt or speculate without basis, then this is ideally another case of cribbing in hindsight.</div><div><br /></div><div>Very recently I came across statements about ideally an aid project to operate in a disaster situation, running the entire operation on the pillars of neutrality, impartiality and independence. There is a lot said about how these principles, once adhered to, would ensure that the deserving people get the aid and funds were spent most usefully. But it is also very clear this has not fully worked in many aid projects. Actually we know it does not, even in a simple food distribution exercise involving some 200 people. So why would the principles work in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Balkans or Rwanda, Syria -- all complicated places riven by local conflicts, exacerbated by political meddling by other countries?? Ideally what we need to do is inject a good dose of pragmatism in the principles in dealing with such dire situations.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>So, we should ask what is meant when we loosely say `ideally' in very mundane contexts? It would be apparent that it means different things to different people in the same context, because comprehension levels as well as expectations are different. Actually there is no specific hint of anything ideal in such routine perceptions and statements and we find out -- surprise, surprise -- that`ideally' just translates directly to `actually what I like'.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>After this my dear wife and I have decided that philosophically we will not ideally use the word `ideally' anywhere, if we can help it!!</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>P.Varadarajan (Varad)http://www.blogger.com/profile/05415043609355398315noreply@blogger.com4