Men's Empowerment

Recently a couple of friends, who usually strut around like well-endowed peacocks - macho ones at that - came to this scribe, terribly downcast and simpered about the need for someone to be bold enough to stand up for the forgotten cause of men's empowerment.   I was disbelieving and therefore unimpressed, especially in the context of all the high decibel focus on crimes against women, women's education, women's rights etc.  My dear wife simultaneously rolled her eyes, suppressed a smirk and shrugged her shoulders to subtly express her reaction.  But then subsequently when I was not under the glare of my wife's eyes, I chewed the cud on this.  I could clearly see with my mind's eye, a disturbing and moving montage of all those friendly souls who had undergone, to borrow the language of the meteorological department,  heavy to very heavy, widespread persecution most of their lives.   The usually somewhat dormant Solomon in me got a hefty kick on his backside and was forced to perceive the unfairness of the whole situation.

Any actual or perceived injustice to women creates a huge public outcry, as it should - don't get me wrong - and unfailingly merits an eight-member panel discussion on all self-respecting TV channels.  But could any reader recall even the barest passing mention of heinous offences committed on various sections of the male of the species, who have suffered all iniquities in silence, just because the creator inserted spongy spinal columns in their backs?  You see?  That is the blatant unfairness this is about. The fact that the cumulatively thickened crust of all such grievous crimes against dithering men has remained absolutely unscratched, largely due to the callous indifference of our society, seared this author's heart.  That was the genesis of this outpouring.  Lest people misunderstand and for the sake of propriety and absolute clarity it is reiterated that this scribe is neither a misogynist nor is against women's empowerment, but only advances this soulful plea that a shining torch be shown on the hitherto ignored domain of men's empowerment too!  While at one level women are victimised horribly and deserve all the souped up empowerment they can acquire, at another level, other domineering and brutal women are guilty of riding roughshod and leaving battered and bruised men in their wake.  The pity is no contemporary chronicler has mustered adequate courage to record this fact for posterity (except for Ja Ra Sundaresan, also known as Bhagyam Ramaswamy through the hilarious stories of Appusamy and Seetha Patti in Thamizh; those of you who do not follow Thamizh, please forgive this aside).  This scribe has manfully chosen to pick up the gauntlet to right that wrong, unmindful of the consequences.

Stories are legion of sons who have been so thoroughly manipulated by well-meaning, loving but insecure mothers through childhood and adolescence in subtle and overt ways. Obviously such specimens never arrive in life as adult men with any will of their own.  While the mother's inherent defence mechanism is soundlessly triggered early on to protect herself and her son from one specific as-yet-unseen eventual aggressor (you know who, right?), the son ends up being putty in one pair of hands to begin with. Once this is accomplished, only the hands change - somewhat like the relay race - but putty he remains for life invariably! To be given various suitably non-threatening to submissive shapes by other women subsequently.  Being putty in warm hands initially must be very comforting for the unsuspecting son - something akin to the cocoon for the larva - but it becomes an unshakeable habit for life, very unlike the cocoon from which the larva can break free when ready. And, there lies the tragedy.  Males in this constituency should be effectively weaned from such mothers at an appropriate time and empowered to think for themselves, even knowing fully well that this process is highly flawed on its own and may have very harmful consequences anyway.

Let us cut through the hordes of women - childhood mates, school friends, teachers, aunts one never knew existed, grandmothers, house maids and zillion others, who love the look of the putty so expertly moulded by the mother and attempt to give their own shape to it.  Let us take a leap and arrive at the next crucial stage in the life of such a man - when he is ready to take on a  partner for life (well, that last part is clearly an exaggeration in the modern context, which you should concede to any author in the name of prosaic licence!).

What happens here is this:  the most sensitive of the already-puttied men may just fleetingly feel the coming into play of a fresh pair of hands and continue their blissfully subservient existence, as if nothing has changed.  The oracle generously doling out to them instruction for each step in life will change and this can be initially disconcerting, but the demands on them remain so comfortingly similar. You see, such people are specifically identified by their partners as the chosen ones, precisely based on the appeal of this malleable trait in them. Women can astutely perceive and appreciate all the labour the mother has lovingly invested in a man over the years and exclaim ` Voila, here is the guy off the shelf, fully trained and packaged'.  Some women may not like certain rough edges in the package and may make minor modifications here and there - just as they would ask the store to do minor alterations in the dress they buy.  Having said that, they can all recognize classy base material, when they see one.  But those `unputtied' men, who escaped the ordeal with their mothers because of their liberated ways, are now put through the wringer by other women, who may neither have the patience and warmth of the mothers nor the same forgiving nature.  This is very painful for the poor men, not only because it is a change for the worse, but also because they probably expected a very smooth sailing with their partners; based on the women they saw for five years on and off, not knowing that what they saw was really but one shade of a whole spectrum!  This group of men deserve more sympathy because the avalanche hits them without notice and they need all the empowerment to cope with the difficult times ahead.

But, undoubtedly the man who deserves the heaviest dose of empowerment is the one who finds himself painfully compressed in a cleft stick - sandwiched between the loving mother and the doting partner! I see many heads nodding animatedly in agreement and they are all male, obviously.  Having a single dedicated oracle running one's life is difficult enough but having to follow two forceful ones, invariably deliberately contradictory in tone and content, is humongously stressful.  Such a man is damned if he does anything and is more damned if he does not.  Given the fact that the the two rough sides of the cleft stick are only interested in compressing him between them and have no intention of reconciliation, he has no exit route. But then, empowerment alone is not going to help him because what can he do with that?  What he requires is exceptional cunning and wisdom to broker peace between the perennially warring parties.  One thing he can try to do is to get the mother and the partner to arraign themselves on the same side against himself - then he has only one adverse unit to deal with.  He may perpetually be the butt of all jokes at home, but at least life won't be as painful??

Usually this disclaimer appears upfront, but I forgot about this earlier, not knowing how this was going to pan out.  Whatever is written here is not based on personal experience.  The author's mother and wife are absolutely smashing individuals who have never caused the author to pause and think he needs any empowerment.  As such, the request to all those who are itching to comment on this piece is to ensure that the comments are moderated; not to stymie things for the author and vitiate the peaceful atmosphere that has prevailed at the author's home for decades.  And be notified that all such comments will be subject to careful scrutiny by people, who are obviously beyond the control of the author and will remain unnamed!!


 

Drinking past midnight

A few months back, going by the heated discussions and passionate outpourings appearing continuously in the public domain for a few days, one would have thought Bangalore stood in the cusp of something genuinely historic and path-breaking! An uninformed outsider, sniffing around the city for a few days, might have mistaken the pervading hoopla for some kind of a precursor to pioneering societal reforms in Indian cities. Like an all enveloping and seriously enforceable ban on spitting and urinating in public, jaywalking on roads, eve-teasing and encroachment of public spaces by street vendors - all at one go.  Something which no self respecting government in India would ever dream of implementing because that would have been immensely and directly helpful to the general populace and would therefore be against any government's mandate! Moreover, that would have gone against the grain of our character!

Social media was typically agog with exuberant and high-decibel expectations - of course, this author must confess that was based on hearsay, since he has chosen to remain ignorant of and alien to their workings.  Prime-time TV news correspondents aired reports from congested pubs and resto-bars (this was also only hearsay because one could not see much in the trendy and fashionable darkness inside those places of entertainment) to ensure that the viewers understood the seriousness of the issue at hand and how critical it was for the reputation of Bangalore as a premier city in India, to do the right thing, in the opinion of the effervescent youngsters! Even my dear wife, who seldom has any time for minor shenanigans, tried to remain awake for a week till about 10 pm in the hope that a decision would be announced and she would not miss the historic high!  Actually, she even got up on a couple of nights to wake me up (very considerate of her) to ask whether the decision had come, since I was still wide awake when she was slowly dissolving into her sleep.  Even before the-rudely-awakened-I could part my sleepy lips to provide the monosyllabic negative response, she had slid swiftly back to deep slumber, leaving the-fully-awake-me to wonder about the vicissitudes of life for the next four sleepless hours.

So, what was the bestirred youth clamouring about?  Well, you see, the city police officials (looks like some of them can be sensible if they so desire, god bless them) had stoically refused to relent against several earlier assaults mounted by the service providers (bars etc) and the consumers (the tipplers) to keep their routine confluence (of course at the bars etc) open till past midnight as against the current closing time of 11 pm.  The primary provocation for the demand was the highly injured pride of the tipplers who felt slighted by visitors from other cities and countries deriding seemingly progressive Bangalore for its archaic drinking deadline. Bangalore tipplers bristled that local authorities were conspiring to prevent the city from occupying its rightful place of pride in the drinking pantheon and from tippling  themselves more witless for a lot longer in the night.  The bar owners justifiably felt inhibited from plying their profitable trade for a few more hours legitimately, when drinkers - who really mattered - were willing, but interfering intermediaries were playing truant.  Those managing the government's treasury were also inclined to go along because extension of time would augment tax revenues for the government, which in turn meant more money to siphon off,  for the corrupt ministers.

What was the hitch, you ask, when such diverse sections of the society were going to benefit from a simple decision?  Primarily, some senior police officials felt that drunken driving and otherwise tipsy behaviour in public, which was already rampant, would get seriously out of hand.  They were throwing hard spanners into the machinery because they did not want to literally lose sleep and pile more agonising late-night work on themselves.  So, we had the tipplers with bruised pride on the one hand and some sensible and anxious police officials on the other, arraigned against each other on this earth-shaking issue of humungous importance to the city of Bangalore and the chief minister himself was apparently going to be the final arbiter.

Now, as is this scribe's wont, it is time for a disclosure - I am a teetotaler but have no prejudice against any drink or for that matter, any tippler - that is so long as the latter does not disgorge his entrails anywhere close-by.  Actually, I have spent immensely enjoyable evenings,  listening to the entertaining but sometimes damaging ramblings and rants of the beyond-the-pale-sloshed among friends.  Simply because I was probably the only one staying marginally sober on tonic water!  Even as a neutral individual, the no-holds-barred and belligerent enthusiasm of Bangalore tipplers to redeem the city's reputation as a drinker's paradise made me cringe for various reasons.  (1) Didn't these guys have anything more concrete to do?  Among all the ills of the society Bangalore was a witness to, the intelligent and socially active youth could not find a more meaningful issue to fight the authorities?   (2) How critical could drinking from 11 pm to 1 am in a bar be to any reasonable person's happiness?  If one did that between say, 8 and 11 pm, that was not adequate?  Couldn't later drinking be confined to private homes and party halls?  (3) How did youngsters who had fun in these bars till the revised closing time, that is 1 am, get to work the next morning and in what shape?  If this became habitual, how did it affect their software programming or other computing work at Google or Amex or wherever?  (4) If police data is projecting an increase of 40%, post extension,  in the number of cases of drunk driving and drunken behaviour in public places, isn't that good enough reason to maintain status quo?  Didn't the tipplers have any compunction?? (5) While people with suicidal tendencies may drink and kill themselves in accidents, should innocent by-standers become sacrificial goats in the altar of Bangalore regaining its drinking glory?  Had the drinkers become so soul-less that they wanted to look askance at this fact?

Youngsters obviously reacted negatively to the above questions.  Their take was that just because a handful of people have problem post-drinking, others should not be penalised - imagine, they thought the society was penalising them by sticking to an earlier deadline!  When they were told that law worked exactly that way in all aspects and it did not wait for the entire population to start indulging in crimes before making/enforcing the law, they were probably far gone into drunken stupor not to comprehend.  When asked why, if at all the extension was necessary, couldn't the deadline be stretched only for weekends, they snapped out of their reverie and logically explained that people worked on different schedules and there was no common week-end as such in the modern world!  There was an under-the-breath-muttered-response, more like a muffled expletive, when it was pointed out that daily people under the influence of drink were hurting and/or killing themselves and others.

What did the government do?  Come on, don't be so ingenuous!!  Obviously it extended the deadline, consequences be damned!  Ministers and mandarins did their job and promptly retired to their sleep, asking police to be more vigilant for a longer period late into the night to uphold law and order!!  The already over-worked police force had no choice at all and are sleep-walking through the extended hours of the revelry. Indeed, police has taken punitive action by cancelling the licences of riders/drivers under the influence of alcohol forthwith.  Whether the loss of licence and the possible temporary loss of the vehicle are punishment enough to change the way people think, is a moot point.  Doubtful, because the thought of losing one's life in an accident had not infused any good sense earlier.  It seems there is a specially designated late shift for the police called the `drink shift' - something similar to the graveyard shift, for the most obvious reasons - and the race is on amongst the police to be the top suspender/canceller of driving licences.  The poor souls have to keep themselves entertained during their nocturnal duty hours.

In the meantime, one hopes that the tipplers find the extra two hours' drinking very stimulating and rewarding and that they do not cause any bodily harm to anyone around except themselves, if at all!

Social Media (SM)

This scribe is not a member of that tribe which believes in holding the cards too close to the chest, so that others are kept guessing.  Experience has taught that some such cards have deadly, serrated edges they nick you painfully and I am so averse to seeing blood, especially my own.  My dear wife revels in ticking me off periodically for going over the top with an exaggerated play of openness and painting myself into some notoriously uncomfortable corners with unerring regularity! What? No, sorry -  historians have failed abysmally in their duty to quench the curiosity of readers, by not recording that periodicity of such rebukes.  True to this track record, ascribed by my dear wife to a serious `genetic disorder' (she contemptuously dismissed my bleating plea to use `character flaw' instead - it sounded better, nothing else - because she opined the latter imparted more dignity than deserved, to the personality and issue at hand), I would begin with a disclosure.

I am an ardent fan of all kinds of cynical non-disclosures that masquerade in the media nowadays in the name of disclosures.  Just for the sheer audacity and temerity of the marketers and programme producers in taking the audience as well as the regulators completely for granted. They are fun but seldom disclose anything useful or even comprehensible.  This is because (a) the diabolical print media chooses the smallest possible font to publish them, leaving you in dire need of a custom-built, dome magnifier so large that no one has thought of manufacturing it yet; (b) TV channels show the disclosures for part of a fleeting nanosecond so shoddily that the text is fully submerged in grey mass of grains even in HD channels; (c) radio ads fast forward the recorded disclosures so much that they sound like some seriously garbled mickey mouse stuff.  Against this background, my disclosure should stand out in its clarity and honesty - `I am not a fan of the various Social Media (SM) platforms at play today'!!

I have gleefully kept myself away from Facebook (FB), despite many friends and relatives trying to goad me into it, with tears welling up in their eyes.  Tears, not from any intense emotional experience involving FB or from the futile exercise undertaken with me, but induced by the irritation from the unremitting glare of and excessive exposure to FB screens.  What else does one expect when someone spends the better part of every single day, ogling at photos posted by various very remote associates of thrice-removed cousins of old acquaintances' wives one had not seen or heard from in decades!  I do have my quota of photos forcibly thrust under my nose by my wife, trilling excitedly `Oh, look, do you remember the lady standing at extreme right?  We met her at a new year party in Hong Kong in 1987.  She has bloated so much, I would not have recognized her on the street'.  If I had not seen my wife since 1987, I would have problem identifying her, so where is the question of recalling the rather vague mug of a complete stranger, with a face as undistinguished as my own (I concede I am exaggerating here, she looked a bit better - anyone would, I guess)?  But, life teaches intelligent and perceptive individuals, specifically writers, some valuable lessons, always with large-fonted, screaming, red warnings that they be ignored at one's own peril.  That learning kicks in reflexively in such times of need and I promptly say `Yes, yes, I know.  She has changed so much', hoping to ward off the looming ordeal of going through a slideshow of 186 more photos on the same subject.  Thus, even after assiduously avoiding FB like the plague, I am subjected to the painful ritual of resurrecting unknown ghosts from the past every single day.

The next day, I am put under the yoke and led to look at some other page on FB and I see that someone had posted an exuberant comment on the same photo that `shocked' us the previous day - `Oh, Suma, you know what.....you look as divine and lovely as you were thirty years back, not a change in you'.  And, this is the true blue reason for FB's popularity - its inherent and unfailing support for prevarication at various levels.  I realise I am suicidally wading into deep and murky waters because retribution is going to be swift and clinical closer at home. But honesty and integrity are of utmost importance to any scribe and and I will have to take the consequences!!   Here it is.  From the comfort of one's home, one can lie through the teeth all one wants on FB without being `embarrassed' or `discovered'.  Simply because that is truly par for the course. The grainiest of photos gets fulsome praise - `Wow, that is an awesome photo; such clarity and a beautiful angle' with the small but seemingly harmless barb at the end `but where are you in that and who are the others'??  The ubiquitous idli or parantha someone had made and posted pictures of, attains epicurean status based entirely on visuals and becomes the stuff Greek gods and goddesses should be fine-dining on.  This, even as folks at home are using chain-saws and other heavy-duty implements in tandem to break down the rock-hard idli into edible pieces or tear the rubbery parantha into bits!!  Why would anyone display such photos? Prior to FB, did you ever hear of anyone taking a photograph of a sandwich or chapatti and showing to friends visiting home?? When did such things become singularly photogenic all of a sudden?  Just because there is a platform and there is an audience - come on, give me a break!!   Every single dress, however tawdry and garish it is, worn by some friend is `lovely' if not `gorgeous', when the actually muttered-under-the-breath response is `why would anyone pay oodles of money to buy something like that'??

So, FB comes through as nothing if not a platform for narcissistic groups of relatively jobless friends and acquaintances who want to be scratching and massaging some their collective backs incessantly in the name of communicating.  Access is given selectively so that those who are likely to be honest, if not critical, in their opinion, are blocked or kept away. If you notice, no one has anything negative to say - it is almost like Utopia - because that would be like insulting someone in the midst of others.  Not done, terribly uncivil and impolite, we would rather do lip-service.  I wish people are really that nice to each other always.  And a lot of junk to go through, to boot, tirelessly.  You never know when and where you will miss one nice little juicy nugget of gossip or whatever, so sift through everything carefully!! Based on what I have seen so far with majority of users, FB is used to glorify the absolutely mundane, satisfy the urge to see oneself on the screen incessantly and glibly express shallow and blatantly false opinions to keep others happy, so that they can reciprocate.

I use Whatsapp, only because it helps me send messages to people overseas without a charge, for now.  I am also a member of a group of prankster friends, who used to email extensively earlier, to be communicating.  Since this group formed, there are less and less email messages, more and more videos and forwards of jokes.  And, throw in some 7 close friends who are in a perennially chatty mood and are looking for things to do, there are lots of messages flowing through, criss-crossing a few subjects at a time, since each participant begins something new, lest he not be left behind.  The result is unadulterated confusion that parallels Arnab Goswami's prime time shows with people bawling out from eight different square boxes on the TV screen - make it nine, I forgot the prime mover, who bawls the loudest!!  This can be injurious to health and reputation, as I found out recently.  One post showed a photo of a one group member's puja room on the Chittirai Vishu day.  I was doing parallel processing on the PC and the phone, so it took a bit of time to send an one-liner in response to that photo, saying `Nice one, I wish I am with you!'.  And I unsuspectingly went back to work on the PC.  After half an hour I checked the phone again and there were a flurry of messages, most of them jeering and leering in tone - having a hearty laugh at me for my response.  What had happened was, between that photo of the puja room and my response, someone had forwarded a D-grade photo of a F-grade semi nude actress, with the customary morphing and my comment appeared as a response to that.  The wives of friends in my whatsapp group have their own whatsapp group and they had their share of merriment when they came to know.  I survived my wife looking daggers at me and escaped further punitive action - bless her soul, she had an off-day I think! We continue to use Whatsapp for frivolous stuff and honestly, if it is yanked off, we will all go back to email without too much fuss.  And the quality of communication will probably improve!

Content-wise, tweets have the potential to be pithy, funny and engaging in the right hands, but that happens pretty unevenly, I am told - I do not use Twitter at all.  A friend with serious antipathy to Twitter says the quality of comments is rather low-grade overall and he insists on holding up a placard saying `Twitter is for Twits'. Going a bit too far, I think.

Professional networks superficially seem no different.  People who hated my guts while working together are now seeking me out to be `linked' and insisting on unilaterally endorsing me for the same skills/capabilities which caused them to take umbrage earlier.  I recall the days when they fiercely sought divine intervention for deliverance from me because they thought human intervention was not going to be adequate.  I would like to believe they have changed, but actually they are just trying to be nice now that they are out of reach, I guess.

Well, I am told SM platforms have uses beyond the frivolous in other spheres like business and commerce and their reach is obviously a humongous plus! I have also read that FB is ruining the lives of youngsters by exposing the vulnerable ones to exploitation at a tender age and by moving them away from real world contacts, thereby rendering them relatively reclusive in their dealings with others.  I confess I am not qualified to comment on these aspects of SM.  I wanted to share the impact of SM, as I have felt and have done that.  I also realize I could be way off the mark!!

Those of you who worship all the above SM platforms, engage with these robustly for the best part of your day and are hurt by my insensitive observations, please go ahead and stick a photo of mine you may have (if you dont, stick something and imagine it is me) and throw darts at that till your angst dissipates!!

Following Your Dream

A callow, young man was hyper-ventilating on the TV show.  Going blue in the face, exhorting other youngsters to be passionate in `following their dreams and reach for the skies', as he had himself done.  To `aim for the stars' and not become exemplary symbols of mediocrity by settling for something far short of their dreams.  He could afford to crow, because he had tasted success (he never mentions the few lucky breaks he got, but then that is part of the package!) and was on TV - one of the few who dream and also succeed, among the millions of defeated aspirants.  When he had exhausted all the catchy phrases, pressed all the hot buttons and triumphantly expanded his chest before taking questions, a sleepy voice from the back wanted to be heard.  The owner of the voice, slouching in the last row in a rather languid position - his dream would appropriately have been never to lift himself even partially from horizontality -  felled him with this innocuous missile: `That is all very well, but how do I know I am dreaming right'?  The gun that was booming till now seemed to be silenced because there was no immediate response and then only a feeble `I guess only you can tell'.  The exuberant young man did not bargain for something as fundamental as that.

This has always been the crux of the problem, as most of us would have seen in life.  While rhetorically we can say 'sky is the limit' and encourage someone to reach heavenwards, serious consideration ought to be given to the character and attributes of the individual involved and the chances of the dream being attained.  However desperate the seeker is to reach the destination, the mentor/advisor should match skills, capability, potential and staying power with the objective on hand.  Not to become a stumbling block in the path of a young aspirant, but for a simple and basic validation of the dream and to right-size it, so-to-say, so that the poor chap does not embark on a never-ending wild goose chase.  I hear some purist-dreamers tut-tutting because in their view, such attempts essentially clip the wings of dreamers, constrains them.  This is akin to asking dreamers to fly, while forcibly tethering them to earth, they sarcastically remark!  But that is only because they think of the dream as an end in itself whereas in reality, it is just the beginning of the travails for the youngsters.  All well-wishers should be concerned more about the arduous journey to be undertaken for the realization of dreams.  Otherwise, despite all the bluster, fire and brimstone about following dreams, unwittingly the seeds of a minor or major disaster may be sown right at the `dreaming' stage because of a fundamental goof-up by the mentor.  This could end up hurting the ward grievously.

A college mate of mine was a pretty good singer.  His passion for music and singing were indiscriminately fanned by those around him, with wildly exaggerated statements like `you should be singing for the movies', `you are as good as TMS and SPB' (famous playback singers in Thamizh movies).  This boy's music teacher, an utterly unsophisticated and humble man who had not stirred out of the small town we lived in, could not fathom the grind required to walk this raw talent to the threshold of stardom. He giddily got into the heady melee, swept by the accolades coming their way.  While his intention was good, as a mentor he got turned on by the `passion' part and completely ignored the fact that the boy and his family were just not equipped to sustain themselves through the long struggle. And also that there were thousands of such pretenders to the throne, thirsting for recognition and greater opportunities.   Result was that the boy really lived a hard life for the next thirty years, before reconciling to the fact that he would forever be an also-ran, having to eke out an existence by singing in third rate road-shows and the like.  He had no other qualification to speak of, having devoted his entire life to music, so had to rely on singing, however disgusted he was with what he loved passionately earlier!  If only he had someone to calibrate his dream with his capability and set realistic goals!!  He might have been enjoying his part-time singing, while earning his bread comfortably through some other means!  Hence my belief that dream-setting (however conflicting and contrived it sounds) is as critical as goal-setting in corporate life is!

Year 1987.  Thamizh movie, `Nayagan' was released - with Kamala Haasan as the hero, a rebellious kid who gutsily grows up to be an underworld don in Bombay and zealously protects his tribe from harm, wielding immense power derived from his shady business activities.   There was no dearth of young men who pretended to be Kamala Haasan those days, as they strutted theatrically everywhere.  I was visiting a friend's family and conversation veered towards the film.  Suddenly the handsome, adolescent younger brother of my friend made the rather grandiose declaration that Kamala Haasan had fired his imagination in the movie and had lit up his own path to the dream destination.  Contextually, it must be placed on record that this was a rather heavily fortified, conservative family and the patriarch ruled with a heavy hand to keep his clan in line.  He had a rather healthy distaste for show business and all its appendages.  When his younger son outed himself thus, he promptly went on an overdrive,  vehemently denouncing the rebellious effort by his son to become an actor and frothed at his mouth for some twenty minutes.  All of us watched this family tussle in stunned and embarrassed silence.  When the father finished the harangue, he looked sternly at the prodigal son expecting an abject apology, the latter haltingly said `You got me wrong; I dont want to be an actor'.  The parents seemed very relieved and almost smiled for a moment when the son dropped the bombshell, `I dream of becoming a powerful don, who can take care of his people'!  The father reacted with a paroxysmal exercise of opening and closing his mouth, with assorted sputtering noises emerging therefrom; finished by gaping like a fish, as a nutty character in a P.G.Wodehouse novel would.  And the mother had passed out (and probably had a couple of dreams of her own?) - it was too much for the tender soul to imagine her son as a goon-don!!  Mercifully, that lad did not inflict further agony on the family by lingering in his own la-la land, desisted from pursuing his 'dream' under duress and is now a happy and successful entrepreneur in life.

Without straining our memories too much, each one of us can recount horror stories of girls who dream of being film stars, get duped into a life of prostitution, ruthlessly exploited by the flesh trade and completely jettisoned by the family.  Many a good college cricketer, starry-eyed with reasonable success at lower levels, embark on a massive struggle to be the next Dhoni, without realizing that the mountain they are climbing is actually a huge pile of failed cricketers.  They invariably end up without a decent vocation to fall back on eventually, because it turns out they are not good enough when it comes to the crunch.  Not to mention hordes of young men fancying their hands in business and plunging headlong with borrowed finances, hoping to come out like Ambani, but ending up in ruins.  Not to forget the parents who ambitiously `dream' for their reluctant children, pile on unrealistic expectations and resultant pressure on them, the saga ending up in tragedies of Greek proportions for everyone.  All probably because the dramatis personae are only aiming for the stars literally, forgetting to look where they are going on the ground and walking into the landmines their paths are strewn with. 

My dear wife has a very valid query: `Does this mean youngsters should abandon dreaming about their future and timidly accept what comes along? If it is, you will make the world more boring and unadventurous than it already is'.  No, absolutely not. All they and their mentors should do is to balance their capabilities and aspirations to decide how far they should fly.  May be a bit boring, but at least one is alive - to try again!! After all, it is suicidal to fly into the stratosphere if your wings would be torn asunder in the attempt, right?

Eee-Flying II

The first question I had for eee was how long it had been flying around in planes.  You see, I was justifiably peeved by the superior attitude flaunted by eee, even though I grudgingly conceded that I had provided ample reason for it to conclude that my IQ was somewhat comparable to that of a low-level plant.  But using all my reserves, I was on a recovery mode and wanted to settle scores with eee quickly.  I had extracted nuggets of knowledge from my seemingly random reading habits but as my wife despaired from time to time, none of these nuggets had ever been of any real use till then. I knew an eee had all of about 25 days to live.  If this smart specimen of the species, assuming me to be a complete nincompoop, boasted of a few years' flying experience, I could gleefully nail the lie and retrieve a lost cause.  When eee began what seemed an interminable exercise in clearing its throat (anxiety or what?), I let my knowing smirk linger long enough to deliberately accentuate its discomfiture.  Eee evenly said "I wouldn't expect you to know that our lifespan is less than a month.  This flying is a hereditary vocation handed down by my ancestors, who have been doing this for years.  We observe humans when they are in near-captive state in flight and exchange notes weekly.  We observe the sabbath strictly, don't fly on Sundays and have our assembly then.  Actually, I have an apprentice too, somewhere around the 8th row in this flight - grooming the next generation, you know".  I would have fallen off the seat but for the way aircraft seats are constructed, I must confess.  I tucked my tail between my hind-legs and retreated - deciding to play it straight with this really intelligent eee.

How did eee select a flight which terminates back in Bombay at night, I was curious to know.  "Easy, we are trained to attach ourselves to one hostess.  We know all the stingy airlines prefer to get the cabin crew back to the place of origin for the night and if we keep an eye on one or two crew members, we would return to Bombay.  We just have to be reasonably unobtrusive, otherwise might be swatted away".  Simple but effective, I thought.  Then eee said something which warmed the cockles of my heart and I felt a kindred soul instantly.  It vehemently disapproved of people sleepwalking to catch pre-dawn flights as if a couple of hours' delay would mean an imminent collapse of their massive kingdoms!  "I hate groggy people in various states of sleep deprivation in those earliest flights; it is almost like looking at zombies for two hours, not very entertaining and it inhibits our study.  So I take later flights when the cabin tends to be a bit more lively, facilitating our task".

What did eee make of the Kingfisher airline debacle??  "The strategy was all wrong", eee said emphatically, as if it had hurriedly authored a couple of management bestsellers in the past two weeks!  "Running one airline, tying itself into knots, trying to be more premium than necessary, was bad enough.  But having another group airline pretending to be low-cost but forgetting its DNA, doing something different and providing near-normal services at that cost was a cumulative disaster.  How could they have sustained it any longer?", eee rhetorically asked as if it was a visiting professor at the Indian Business School.  I had read that Captain Gopinath, the founder of Deccan Airlines held that opinion and wondered how eee got hold of that.  Obviously it must have engaged him in a pow-wow too. I recounted the time when I initially felt embarrassed, then almost felt scared, flying alone in business class from Bombay to Madras - occupying one of the twelve seats there.  There were three hostesses to serve the cabin and they had a general paucity of people to take care of.  They decided to focus their aggregated attention on me.  They giggled and ceremoniously gave me a snack plate, heaped to the rafters with what four people could but should not eat and helpfully suggested replenishment was available. One took away my glasses to polish them clean, ignoring my violent protestation, thereby rendering me highly myopic for fifteen minutes.  It is an entirely different matter that the remaining two appeared to merge into a single entity befitting the occupancy level, during my temporarily myopic existence. Another evinced keen interest in my life story, as if I was a celebrity and wanted to be supplied with all the information for a proposed documentary beginning at the beginning with my childhood, about 50 years ago! I am sure their standard operating procedure did not allow them to leave an already lonely passenger in that cabin class more alone, so someone stayed with me right through the descent! That flight also provided me the opportunity to pop the one burning question I was dying to ask a Kingfisher hostess but was always hesitant - `Did Vijay Mallaya personally interview and hire you'?  Remember he boasted of this in the video they played on-board before take-off? All the three were clearly concerned that despite their best efforts I was showing a tendency to lapse into temporary insanity and wondered what I was blabbering about!

Then eee asked me if I had ever seen an absolutely petrified flier.  It asked me to take a walk and observe the gentleman on 15C for a few minutes.  I did and boy, was he nervous?  His deathly pale face twitched frequently and he mopped his forehead continuously to get rid of the generous flow of sweat (inside the air-conditioned cabin).  He was feverishly mumbling some prayer as his mouth frothed a bit on the edges and his wrist and knuckles were ashen as he held tightly to the armrests on both sides, as if he was on a roller coaster. I shuddered to imagine what his state would be if there was significant turbulence during the flight!  Eee helpfully clarified that he usually retches and disgorges violently if the plane wobbles a bit, poor guy and added that he was a frequent flier!! I wondered what official incentive would make him fly so often with that kind of a morbid fear of flying and eee agreed sombrely.  I prayed that man would always exit the aircraft on his own legs and never in a stretcher!

Eee then pointed out to a lady sitting in the previous row, cheerfully talking with her kid and said she made this pilgrimage of a trip every month on the same day, that is the 10th of the month, going by the inputs of eee's ancestors.  Why?  She was a single mom with a kid, having been divorced by a Bangalore based techie two years back.  Ever since she had had to make this monthly sojourn just to collect her alimony because otherwise the techie delayed the payment inordinately.  Eee wondered what kind of a man he was but then philosophically concluded that we did not know what the lady did to him during marriage! Very mature, I thought.  

As we were descending into Bangalore airport, eee warned me to brace myself for a hard landing and explained that it knew the pilot and his landing ways.  On that friendly note, it bade adios and flew towards the front galley.  A very smarteee alright, I averred and smiled when the thought hit me that the flight had been an Eee-Class ride!!  I hoped the Merc guys would make some marketing stuff of that to bolster their dwindling sales and stay ahead of BMW and Audi.  But for that, they have to read the right blog, correct?

Eee-Flying - I

I got you this time with the title, I can sense.  The couple of apparently superfluous 'e's have had the desired effect of foxing most people, my finely honed writer's instinct tells me.  E-flying, readers can pretend to relate to, even though the full import of what it is would remain in the realms of guess-work.  Images of some glitzy video game showing mutant characters in unlikely shapes and colours flying around would flash in the minds of the general populace, desperately trying to make an educated conjecture.  But Eee-flying?  Let me demystify the title without increasing anxiety levels further.  In some southern Indian languages, Eee refers to the common fly, that indefatigable six-legged insect which literally tends to fly in the face of people and all types of deterrents.  And there begins this tale.

The Bombay-Bangalore flight was reasonably full and I was feeling immensely pleased with myself for having successfully experimented with a new offer from the airline (meant only for hard-boiled suckers) to pay a small premium and `reserve' the adjacent seat also, which would probably have been empty anyway.  So, in short, I had adroitly managed to get two seats for myself and my overall world-view was in a smugness-induced lavender colour.  Just as I was heartily endorsing Browning's view that `all was well with the world and God was in his heaven' and buckling the seat belt, I had a rather funny feeling that someone was staring at me - you get that when the hair on your nape bristles a bit??  I was on a window-seat, so at best someone could have had a partial shot at my profile, but then that would have required a significantly strained neck and some gymnastic effort many would consider perfectly unjustified by the mug in question.  But when I looked around, as was usually the case, not a soul seemed the least interested in me or what I was doing.  But the vexatious feeling persisted as I turned to the window for diversion and I found the offending presence instantly.  This eee was sitting on the window-sill, about one foot from the tip of my nose, at a fortyfive degree angle (that would explain why I thought I was being stared at). It sported a carefully cultivated air of arrogant nonchalance that could only be born of enduring proximity to humans and a healthy mix of contempt and pity for their ways.  It should be pretty tough even for a physiognomist to interpret  the inscrutable face of an eee due to a general lack of visibility of the visage - especially the eyes and this task was further complicated by the fact that one didn't know whether it was a he-eee or a she-eee.  There is no need to be derisive about this poignant fact because my own gut feeling, though unsupported by any admissible research on the subject and my past discomfiture in similar circumstances have taught me that if it is a she-eee, in the aforementioned mix of contempt and pity, contempt prevails overwhelmingly by a hefty margin.  And that is more disconcerting, as everyone knows.

As we were preparing to take off,  eee got busy and flew away as if it had been assigned specific pre-flight chores, as an essential cog in the wheel of the cabin service team.  Some fifteen minutes into the flight, it returned to its perch and seemed to examine me critically for a few seconds before gingerly moving to the empty adjacent seat; but only after circling me twice and making a 360 degree review, as any HR specialist worth an increment would recommend.  When I exercised the option for an empty seat next to me, I did wonder what I would do if some belligerent and uncouth specimen insisted on occupying that space since the seat was empty and there was nothing to declare that it was an integral part of my domain for the duration of the flight.  Beseeching the air hostess for help in evacuation was the only path open to me.  But now, I summoned all my intelligence and good judgement to play to refrain from complaining about an eee to the authorities, lest I was hand-cuffed and evicted as a potential troublemaker in flight.  I bought a cuppa masala tea from the hostess and went about mixing the brew, deliberately ignoring eee.  As I deftly balanced the cup in my hand, preparatory to attaching the lip for the first sip of my masala tea, I heard a husky voice asking whether I flew a lot.

Whether my body jumped first or I choked first, there is no way of firmly establishing since there is an acute lack of scientifically recorded evidence of cause and effect in this context.  But there was no ambiguity about what happened to my hot tea! I certainly spilled half the cup on my somewhat white shirt (put it down to the exceptionally hard water of Bangalore, which mulishly refuses to let pristine white to be retained on any fabric after three washes), leaving a nice big brown patch on the exterior and a red scald mark on the chest, as if my heart had decided to involuntarily ooze masala tea.  The source of the voice was not my immediate concern because I had a nightmarish vision of having to explain to my dear wife `how I managed to get such a large stain on my shirt THIS TIME'! I must confess I have a tragic character flaw in my historically proven inability to drink or eat (my extremely prejudiced wife would desire inclusion of `even hold', but I humbly and vehemently beg to differ) in/on anything that is likely to move.  That is, without significantly damaging the immediate environment as well as my own clothing.  Consequently I was barred for life from eating or drinking on short-haul flights and other assorted modes of transport by an edict proclaimed by you know who!  I had stupidly violated that, tempted by a lowly cup of tea. If I told her an eee's husky voice was actually responsible for the tragic outcome, I would be inviting the `gone off the rocker' certification without further ado.  As I was dolefully contemplating the dire strait I was in,  the helpful husky voice continued,`Use the tissue you are holding and water from the bottle to clean up'.  The owner of the voice had evidently concluded - based on reflexes displayed thus far - that such an imbecile required all the help he could get!

While my already bruised ego took another painful salvo in the form of that piece of unsolicited advice as well as its origin, I was smart enough to understand that the advice was solid nevertheless and deserved following.  After five minutes of abulations, my chest and shirt felt and looked pointedly worse in that order,  than before and I promptly suspended my scrubbing activities.  All the while, eee seemed to be welling up with empathy and was providing some morale-boosting two liners to me, with the sole objective of shifting my attention away from the stained shirt.  In the process, we discussed what was uppermost on my mind - the eventful welcome that awaited me at home for violating a sacred oath.  Then eee told me a bit about itself and how it happened to be on the flight.  What followed was a series of spell-binding revelations from eee and I almost wished the flight would get diverted to Colombo or some such place, thereby enabling the conversation to last longer!

Unfortunately, my blogometer is somewhat angrily indicating to me that I have used up my quota of words for this one without saying much, as is customary.  I will have to defer the details of my heart-to-heart with eee to the next one! So, until then!  Stay tuned for Eee-Flying II !

Bharat Ratna!

I could see from the corner of my left eye that my wife, scurrying past, head bent and pretending (detecting this comes from cumulative experience, there is no substitute!) to be searching the floor for some long-lost bling.  She was actually trying to deftly slink from the spot in which I was in an intense argument with a couple of friends about Tendulkar's Bharat Ratna (BR).  She had her reasons; she had heard my impassioned (read `blathering') point of view in this matter before and had no doubt it was just a matter of time before I embarrassed her and my unknown and unnamed ancestors, our progeny and their own unborn broods and herself by propagating what she thought was a mulish muddle.  No, she never bothers about me embarrassing myself because she thinks I am suicidally adept at such self-flagellating initiatives and richly deserve all the resulting awkwardness and more.  She prefers to be miles away from the scenes of such harakiri. When a friend called out to her `You must listen to what your dear husband is saying',  she nonchalantly continued her effort at extrication from the scene with a vaguely mumbled response nobody comprehended.  You see, I was absolutely convinced that Tendulkar got his BR not for a century of centuries and other related achievements but for ultimately deciding to call it quits, definitely a couple of years unpardonably late.  It was conferred on him by the powers that be, more in immense relief than in appreciation, was my brief.  Tendulkar, the individual turned out to be an awfully poorer judge of the situation and worse timer of decisions compared to Tendulkar, the player!

But this piece is not about Tendulkar.  There is not even an iota of doubt that he deserves all the accolades that come his way.  So, let us get that out of the way.  This is about the process, or the dismal lack of it, in deciding the BR recipients.  There is no clarity, none at all, about how and why the recommendation of a name is made to the President, ignoring some other qualifying names.  So, there is no wonder there are huge controversies periodically and even litigation attempts when this award is announced.  Ours is a country which willfully and unabashedly infuses generous dollops of politics into every sphere - whether it be religion or motherhood or rocketry, thereby seeding every governmental action with plenty of scope for controversy.  So, when the political establishment is the penultimate arbiter for such awards (the Prime Minister makes the recommendations apparently on the basis of a governmental committee's selection inputs) and the final goal-keeper is the President,  one can imagine how apolitical the entire process will be.  In a nutshell, it is probably futile to try rationalizing the BR calls, especially against this background and we better let things be.  But then, nothing is more fun than in indulging in a task without any expectation of an outcome - just for the sake of it.  So, here we go.

If you look at the list, it is clear that one does not have to lay claim to the award from inside a tomb or an urn.  Being dead is not a necessary qualification and being alive will not be held against you for this purpose.  Lata Mangeshkar, Tendulkar, Amartya Sen and Abdul Kalam testify to that.  May be, I should not, therefore, say there is no clarity at all about the rules of the game.  Till Tendulkar's award came, no sportsperson was ever considered for BR and that was the reason for all the commotion witnessed when his award was announced.  Only achievements in art/literature, science, public service were recognized for over 60 years.  It is indeed a depressing fact that not a single writer has been conferred with BR till now (assuming Amartya Sen's Economics rather than literary skills got him the award), which have seen politicians of all shades being honoured in the name of public service.  One has to conclude that no Indian literary writer has so far merited the award - how convincing does that sound? 

Was a sportsperson ignored earlier because achievements in this area are primarily through physical exertion?  Could be, going by the strong national disinclination historically to unduly exert ourselves except when chased by a mad dog or pulling, shoving in queues to watch a movie or cricket match or gyrating to variants of `lungi dance'!  That was why Dhyan Chand was denied the award all this time, because all he did was physical?  Or was it something like only extraordinary individual achievements in team sports would be recognized (that makes immense good sense, right?) but crown jewels like Prakash Padukone would be rejected because his was an intensely personal accomplishment in an individual sport - very logical, don't you think?  But, Chess can qualify probably because it is not just about physical prowess but requires significant cerebral matter?  Vish Anand could have been an awardee as soon as he won the World title?  May be not - because Chess is not a widely popular sport/game?  But then how was Satyajit Ray given BR, when more popular mainstream Hindi film personalities like Raj Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan have languished?  Somebody in the selection committee got bitten by the `art cinema' bug?  It is indeed an irrefutable fact that one Raj Kapoor or Amitabh movie drew in an audience far bigger than all of Ray's movies put together.  So `being popular' is obviously not enough?  That would seem so because Lata Mangeshkar has got it, but not the equally popular Mohammed Rafi or Kishore Kumar, even though they all equally excelled at the same thing.  May be the number of songs they have rendered was the deciding criterion? Of course, a P.Susheela, who sang prolifically and mellifluously in all the southern regional languages and who many consider even better than Lata (put it down to flagrant parochialism!) could have been denied only on the basis of lack of popularity in non-southern states.

So, the absolutely unbiased amongst the readers can scream out now, if a discernible pattern in the decision making process has been identified.  No?  None?  I thought my predisposition is blinding me to the merits of the process.  But one thing is clear from the bulk of BRs which have been awarded to politicians and those who are associated with politics - almost 54% of the total.  That is one bright and clear beacon shining through - if you are a politician you stand a better chance of getting BR, more so if you have the strong support of the party in power.  But even here, the consistency is not all that good.  While many previous Prime Ministers of the country, including an interim one, have got BR - unsurprisingly all of them belonged to Congress - even a deserving candidate like Vajpayee has not got over the hurdle because BJP lost power at the end of Vajpayee's term.  Gujral and Deve Gowda would not pass muster anyway while Narasimha Rao queered his party's pitch in some ways to lose favour.  Interestingly many of our Presidents have got the nod, but those like Fakruddin Ali Ahmed, Zail Singh, Venkataraman and Sanjeeva Reddy have not - am sure because successive governments have concluded that their 'public service' was clearly inferior to that of V.V.Giri.

Unless something changes drastically, by extrapolation it is easy to visualise some potential BR recipients in the next one or two decades - Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee, Shard Pawar, Vajpayee, Advani.  Unless, of course, Aam Aadmi Party and the like seize power at the centre with the primary objective of setting right the BR process!   Karunanidhi would have made the list if he had not rocked the alliance boat at a critical juncture!!

The only outcome of a very shallow analysis is that political agenda probably drives the decisions more than anything else, when it comes to BR and all other civilian awards.  Exceptions could be there, but they are just that.  If you are in the good books of the ruling party, you have a chance, otherwise you don't.  Simple.  Should the recipients of the country's highest civilian award be determined unilaterally by a government playing favourites or by an independent panel of eminent, well-read and impartial people, which would make the choices without fear or favour - it is easy to see.  But who is going to implement what is right, with courage and vision?  That person would deserve the BR without doubt.