More Fuel on the Mommyblog Fire

January 8, 2008

Two points:

First, Falstaff is a cheap guy. He talks about Coase and childfree-airline tickets without referencing me.

Second, a more important point about mommyblogs in general.

I’ve been discussing this point with junta, and the consensus seems to be that kids will become irritating when they are given too much attention. The more attention a kid gets from its parents, the more it thinks of itself. It becomes spoilt, throws tantrums, and eventually the Kansa Society has to be called in.

This is also probably the reason why kids in Delhi and Chennai are the worst behaved. They’re brought up in environments full of doting female relatives. Jobless doting female relatives, who do nothing but stay at home. In the case of Chennai, because they actually are unemployed, and in the case of Delhi, because employment for Delhi women usually means fraud stay-at-home stuff like garment designing. With non-stop attention lavished upon it, the kid becomes a monster. While in Bombay, both the parents are off at work, the kid has to fend for itself, and grows up a clean and sober Goregaon type personality, with excellent social skills, and a bindaas attitude. In my months in Bombay, I saw Gujew aunties abusing Landmark for stocking books. I saw people expectorating with enthusiasm. I saw Jain monks in a fistfight. But I never saw kids throwing tantrums.

I have seen this with my own nephews and nieces also. The one who curls up with a Roald Dahl and generally doesn’t talk is the one whose parents are a doctor and a physiotherapist, and who therefore hardly see him. On the other hand, the Nephew Who Bites has lived his entire life with a stay-at-home mother, a stay-at-home grandmother, a drop-in-practically-ceaselessly grandmother, and a father who is an ameer-baap-ki-bigdi-aulaad, and so doesn’t need to work. Between these extremes, I have a soft-spoken and well-behaved niece whose parents run the nine-to-five gamut. And where I’m concerned, Ma and Papa used to just leave me alone and whack me every once in a while, and I am now a model of manners, rectitude, decency and sobriety. So much so, that people refuse to believe that I’m Punjabi.

Anyway, the point of all this is that a surplus of attention turns kids into monsters, fit only for slaughter by the Kansa Society.

And when it comes to giving kids too much attention, mommyblogging is the pinnacle. Think about it. You devote an entire blog to the kid, and nothing but the kid. And while in the normal course of things, the kid forgets the attention it gets as an infant, here the attention is public, archived, and up to be accessed at will. The Little Emperor generation created by the Chinese one-child policy will be as nothing compared to the generation created by mommyblogging. Legions of spoilt brats will stalk the nation, thinking too much of themselves.

Mommybloggers have a lot to answer for.

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Posted by Aadisht

Meme too

January 7, 2008

Chandru tags me with a meme:

All you have to do is select and upload one photo that you have clicked this year that is special to you. Could be anything…aesthetic, technical or personal. Also, put in a short note why it is special.

Right. Photo(s) below the jump, then:

Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted by Aadisht

2008 in Preview

January 6, 2008

Once again, I have decided to follow in Vindi‘s footsteps, and make my look ahead at the year to come an annual tradition. Here it is:

January:The Danish band Legödeâth inserts heavy-metal umlauts into its name. Band frontsman Nils explains with a Goth poem: ‘For too long/ sterile letters/ now we add/ pointless symbols/ like all religion/ bringing us closer/ to Sweet Mother Death.’ Rahul Raguram blogs excitedly about the implications for this on the hitherto neglected genre of Scandinavian circumflex death metal.
The Indian cricket team is humiliated in Australia. The BCCI sacks Gary Kirsten and announces it will search for a better coach.
Laloo Prasad Yadav announces the Railway Ministry’s intention of getting railways stations modernised by private players. P Sainath abuses him for talking about railway stations modernised when farmers are dying in Vidarbha.
George Lucas holds a press conference where he announces that Obi-Wan Kenobi is gay. When astonished reporters ask him why he is revealing this now, he shrugs and says ‘It worked for JK Rowling.’.
Star TV announces that it will launch a new channel called Star Dial Karein that will show nothing but SMS-voting reality shows. Rakhi Sawant alleges that the voting procedures on the new channel are rigged.
The Department of Telecom decides to award spectrum on a rotational basis, with spectrum going to CDMA operators for three months of the year, GSM operators for another three months, new entrants for another three, and to local cable operators for the remaining.
It now takes cars in Bangalore one hour to travel down M G Road from Trinity Circle to Anil Kumble Circle. Shashi Tharoor writes an article on how autorickshaws clogging Bangalore traffic represents a triumph of Indian democracy.

February:

The BCCI invites Steve Bucknor to coach the Indian team. Bucknor shakes his head. The BCCI starts hunting again.
Three new books which are fictionalised accounts of corporate life by B-School alumni are published. All retail for Rs. 150 or less. Rakhi Sawant alleges that the prices of these books are rigged.
Anbumani Ramadoss claims that Lėgodeâth has inserted heavy metal umlauts into their name because they are opposed to the lower castes. He responds by sacking the AIIMS director.
The Wachowski brothers hold a press conference in which they announce that Morpheus is gay.
Wasim Khan of Bombay files a case against the RBI under section 295A as offering interest on CRR and SLR deposits hurts the religious sentiments of Muslims.
The Department of Telecom decides to award spectrum only to new telecom operators. All telecom companies rush to set up new brands.
Baba Ramdev submits a bid to modernise the Allahbad railway station, with yoga halls in the terminals. The Communist parties threaten to withdraw support to the UPA government.
Pankaj Mishra writes an article on how modernised railway terminals are not authentically Indian.

March:

Jignesh Shah of Ahmedabad files a complaint against Italy for insulting the national flag as the Italian flag is the Indian flag shown without the Ashoka Chakra. In the ensuing violence, all restaurants in Gujewland which serve pizza are burnt down.
The technical bids for the modernisation for New Delhi Railway Station are submitted. The Communist parties warn the UPA government that they cannot take their support for granted and that the bids should not be opened. Rakhi Sawant announces that the bidding process for railway station modernisation is rigged.
Five new sub-Rs. 150 books by B-School alumni are published. Star Dial Karein starts a show devoted to voting for the best such book.
Vijay Mallya says that he will buy the Blackburn Rovers and rename it Team India.
Outlook Magazine runs a cover story on how Chennai is a conservative city and demeans young people. It is angrily criticised on Chennai Metblogs. Chennai Metblogs then attracts fifty commentors complaining that Chennai is not conservative enough.
Quentin Tarantino holds a press conference in which he announces that Pai Mei was gay.
The BCCI invites Javed Miandad to coach the Indian cricket team. Miandad refuses.
The CBSE board exams begin. Shashi Tharoor writes an article on how for every statement that can be marked wrong by the CBSE, the opposite statement can also be marked wrong.

April:

The travel time from Trinity Circle to Anil Kumble Circle is now longer than the time taken to cross from Andheri East to Andheri West. Bombayites are angry that their claim to having the worst traffic jam in India is displaced.
The Department of Telecom announces that spectrum will be awarded to telecom companies in order of their market capitalisation. Telecom companies rush to file follow-on public offers.
Satyanath Prakash Tripathi files a case against the students of Tiny Tots preschool for insulting the national flag by not drawing it in proportion.
Simon Tolkien holds a press conference in which he announces that Gandalf was gay.
Prakash Karat says that the Communist parties will not withdraw support to the government, but that the UPA must listen to their concerns on railway station modernisation. He warns of unspeakable consequences if the government proceeds with financial bids.
Musharraf declares a state of emergency in Pakistan again. The US Presidential Candidates all criticise this. Later on it turns out that they think Musharraf is the President of Burma.
The Bangalore International Airport at Devanahalli finally starts operations. The passengers who land here discover that there is no road to the city itself. They catch onwards flights to Mangalore and take a Volvo bus from there.
The BCCI invites Saurav Ganguly to coach the Indian team, which will also accomplish the prime objective of getting him out of the team. Ganguly refuses. The BCCI keeps looking.
The annual result season starts. Corporate profit growth has slowed. Pankaj Mishra writes on how this reflects the dangers of moving away from Nehruvian economics and a society led by intellectuals.

May:

The DoT announces that it will allocate spectrum on the basis of telecom companies’ CEOs’ Class XII CBSE marks.
Jasbir Singh Bagga of Malout files a case under Section 295A against Navjot Singh Sidhu for hurting the religious sentiments of Sikhs by acting like a stereotypical sardar.
After pressure from Bush, Musharraf lifts the state of Emergency. Nobody in India is aware of this because the 24 hour news channels are doing nothing but talking about Delhi University admissions.
Stan Lee holds a press conference in which he announces that Professor Charles Xavier is gay.
The Communist parties agree to let the UPA government invite financial bids for railway station modernisation, provided that these are rejected.
Baba Ramdev speaks out against mommyblogging, as it is against Indian culture. He advocates doing yoga instead of writing about your babies online.
Shivraj Patil insists that there is no way the Home Ministry can act on intelligence reports about possible terrorist threats. P Sainath abuses Patil for talking about terrorism when farmers are dying in Vidarbha.
The BCCI invites Subhash Chandra to coach the Indian cricket team, with the hope that this will lead to the Indian Cricket League being shut down. However Subhash Chandra refuses. The BCCI hunts on valiantly.
The Meteorological Office forecasts a normal monsoon. Rakhi Sawant alleges that the Met Office’s climate model is rigged.
ICICI Bank gets into trouble for sending hijras to collect money from defaulters. Shashi Tharoor writes an article bemoaning the fact that only hijras wear saris any more.

June:

The monsoon does not match the Met Office forecasts. Al Gore blames this on global warming.
The BCCI asks Napoleon Einstein to coach the Indian team. Einstein refuses, citing the example of the other Einstein who refused to become President of Israel.
The price of crude oil hits $150 a barrel. It is discovered that this is because it takes two full tanks of petrol to get from Trinity Circle to Anil Kumble Circle.
Bombay is flooded yet again. The Times of India publishes a forty-eight page special edition explaining how the fact that it still runs the presses symbolises the spirit of Bombay. Simultaneously, Outlook magazine runs a cover story on how Bambaiyya Hindi is vulgar and not a real language. It is angrily criticised by Bombay bloggers for attacking Bombay when the city is down.
Sheila Dixit announces a plan to have a flyover over every traffic intersection in Delhi before the Commonwealth Games begin. Star Dial Karein launches a show in which people can vote for the flyover they think will be completed first.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar holds a press conference in which he tries to reassure everyone that religion is contemporary and relevant by announcing that Dronacharya was gay.
Manmohan Singh announces that poor Muslims should have the first share of national resources, and so the financial bids for railway station modernisation should be opened by a committee of Muslims. The Communist parties warn the government that they should not form the committee without the consent of parliament.
The Karnataka Legislative Assembly is elected and is hung again. Nandan Nilekani says that he hopes President’s Rule will lead to better infrastructure for Karnataka. U R Ananthamurthy files a complaint against Nilekani for disrespecting the national anthem by not singing it when talking about the President.
The Department of Telecom announces that it will allocate spectrum to cellphone operators based on the total volume of calls from the ICICI Bank Personal Loans telesales team received on their network. Pankaj Mishra writes an article in which he criticises equating modernity with personal loans.

July:

Legødėath announces plans to record a concept album about cheese. Rahul Raguram goes orgasmic about the creation of the new genre of Scandinavian Operatic Gouda Goth.
Verghese Kurien accuses Legødėath of trying to sabotage the dairy co-operative movement by violating the GCMMF’s trademark rights. He gives interviews to anyone who will listen. These interviews are ignored by everyone except Rediff messageboard commentors, who complain about the Government of India refusing to acknowledge Kurien’s greatness.
Vijay Mallya announces that to commemorate the Bombay floods, Whyte and Mackay will distill a new whiskey called The Spirit of Bombay. Hiten Gandhi of Kandivili immediately files a case under Section 295A against Mallya for hurting the religious sentiments of teetotal Mumbaikars.
The Department of Telecom announces that it will allocate spectrum to cellphone operators in proportion to the number of landlines they run. Spice and Vodafone give up in life.
Not to be outdone by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the Pope holds a press conference in which he announces that St. Peter was gay.
Sonia Gandhi gives a speech in which she calls people who oppose railway station modernisation the enemies of progress. Brinda Karat says that this speech violates the principles of modern democracy.
The road from Devanahalli Airport to Bangalore city is finally completed. It gets washed away after two days of heavy downpour.
After ‘I Bought the Monk’s Ferrari’, Ravi Subramanian goes for gold by writing ‘Nine point someone at God’s KPO unit’. Shashi Tharoor reviews it, and praises it, as bad writing about corporate life is a testament to both the democratisation of Indian literature as also  showcasing modern India’s achievements.

August:

Vasu Seth of Chennai accuses Dr. Naveen Jayakumar of disrespecting the national anthem by not playing it during the Landmark Quiz.
The rupee collapses to 35 against the dollar. P Chidambaram reassures exporters that they will continue to get sops. P Sainath abuses Chidambaram for talking about the value of the rupee when farmers are dying in Vidarbha.
The railway ministry finally opens the financial bids for railway station modernisation. The Communist Parties warn the nation that going ahead with this plan will spell doom for the Railways’ independent business strategy.
A cyclone inundates Bangladesh. This is not as bad as it sounds, as all the Bangladeshis are in West Bengal anyway.
Tata’s one lakh rupee car finally goes on full-fledged sale after years of hype and concept displays.  It sells well everywhere except Bangalore, where the MG Road traffic jam has spilled over into the city to an extent where it is no longer possible to drive cars out of the showroom.
The BCCI invites Ratan Tata to become the Indian coach in a last bid effort. Ratan Tata refuses.
Star Dial Karein comes up with a recursive concept, and invites viewers to vote for which voting-based reality show they want to keep voting for. It flops, because none of the cellphone operators have enough spectrum to allow the smooth sending of SMSs.
Faced with the rising popularity of Star Dial Karein, religious TV channels also adopt the SMS route. Baba Ramdev allows viewers to vote for yoga demonstrations through SMS.
Pankaj Mishra writes an article on how only articles by intellectuals are authentically Indian, while SMS is unsuited to the Indian milieu.

September:

Łegoděaŧh releases their cheese concept album, Moũld. Rahul Raguram praises them for coming up with a big hunk of cheesy goodness. The album screams up the charts. Rakhi Sawant alleges that the sales of the album are rigged.
Vijay Mallya announces his intention to come up with a Samvat calendar version of the Kingfisher swimsuit calendar. Sunil Mukhopadhyay of Burdwan files a case against him under section 295A for hurting the religious sentiments of Hindus.
Baba Ramdev speaks out against modern retail, as it is against Indian culture. He advocates doing yoga instead of shopping in air-conditioned buildings.
Outlook magazine runs a cover story on the levels of dowry for IIT engineers. Nobody protests, because nobody at IIT reads Outlook anyway.
The railway ministry announces the final shortlist of bidders. The Communist parties demand a combined sitting of the house to debate this.
The DoT decides to allocate spectrum on the basis of outgoing SMSs sent to Star Dial Karein. P Sainath abuses A Raja for talking about spectrum when farmers are dying in Vidarbha.
Shashi Tharoor writes an article lamenting that Teacher’s Day is the only opportunity girls across India will ever get to wear sarees.

October:

The summer placement season at IIM campuses begins. Despite the subprime meltdown, internship stipends still hit new highs. However, Rakhi Sawant alleges that the placement process is rigged.
The railway ministry signs MoUs with the winning bidders. The Communist parties call for a nationwide bandh. This is opposed by Baba Ramdev, who says that bandhs are against Indian culture. He advocates doing yoga and opening up the body’s passages instead.
The BCCI invites Jose Mourinho to coach the Indian cricket team, on the grounds that any coach from any sport will be acceptable at this point. Tragically he refuses.
The DoT suggests awarding spectrum on the basis of the proportion of postpaid subscribers. Telecom company CEOs take up yoga under Baba Ramdev to cope.
Vasu Seth of Chennai now hauls IITM up for insulting the national flag by showing the tricolour as splashes instead of in proportion during the IITM Open Quiz.
Pankaj Mishra warns against accepting quizzing as a sign of modernity.

November:

The summer placement process at IIM Bangalore finishes a month after all the other IIMs. This is because the recruiters were stuck in traffic.
Interact Club members from all of Delhi’s schools go around persuading people not to burst firecrackers at Diwali and getting pledges signed. The members then go home and burst ten thousand rupees’ worth of crackers each. Delhi Met Office figures show that pollution has risen threefold in one week. Baba Ramdev suggests doing yoga to cope.
Work on railway station modernisation begins. The communist parties hold demonstrations at all major train stations. They successfully disrupt railway traffic everywhere, except at  Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, where the few communists in Bombay are trampled underfoot once commuters from the 9.47 fast get off the train. Noam Chomsky writes a letter to them, urging them not to lose heart, and reminding them that maintaining status quo in Indian railway terminals is vital in order to prevent the US invading Iran. The Hindu prints this letter on the front page.
Ramesh Sippy holds a press conference where he announces that Thakur in Sholay was gay.
The US Presidential elections are conducted and Obama wins a landslide victory. People all across the world are disappointed for two reasons: they were looking forward to recount-related entertainment again, and because they are now denied the opportunity to see Chuck Norris in the US cabinet. Leģŏdeǻtĥ sums up Rahul Raguram’s disappointment with the following Goth poem: ‘So much effort/ one small fact/ up to the top ten/ now never to see/ Chuck Norris/ as Secretary of Defense/ roundhouse kicking/ Iran in the face/ all is despair/ embrace me now/ Sweet Mother Death.’
The BCCI invites Vijay Mallya to coach the Indian cricket team. He declines, claiming pressing responsibilities, but suggests Deepika Padukone’s name. To everyone’s great disappointment, the BCCI does not agree to this.
The DoT proposes allotting spectrum to companies on the basis of the votes they receive on Star Dial Karein.
Shashi Tharoor writes that Deepika Padukone coaching the Indian team in a saree would have represented the coming together of tradition and modernity in a way that typified the triumph of Indian democracy.

December:

The Department of Telecom finally agrees to auction spectrum. The Communist parties promptly protest and warn the UPA government that it should not continue on this track. Rakhi Sawant alleges that the auction process is rigged.
The BCCI asks Baba Ramdev to become the Indian coach. Baba Ramdev accepts, and puts the team on a regimen of yoga. Sharad Pawar subsequently holds a press conference where he announces that Baba Ramdev is gay.
The Government of Karnataka decides to solve the MG Road traffic crisis by asking the engineers of the Bandra-Worli Sea Link to take over the Bangalore Metro construction.
Anthony da Costa of Silvassa files a case under Section 295A against the national flag, as a flag with saffron and green elevates the religious feeling of Hindus and Muslims, and so hurts the religious sentiments of Christians. Simultaneously, PGSVK Reddy of Vijaywada files a case against Anthony da Costa for disrespecting the flag.
P Sainath abuses Ŀēģőđěǽťĥ for releasing chart-topping metal albums when farmers are dying in Vidarbha.
Pankaj Mishra writes an article on how Shashi Tharoor is a true intellectual. Shashi Tharoor writes an article on how Pankaj Mishra represents the triumph of Indian democracy, and requests him to start wearing sarees.
Ŀēģőđěǽťĥ wishes everyone a happy new year.

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Update Your Blogrolls!

December 30, 2007

The annual renaming of this blog has taken place. Sleisha Cuppax Fundaes (w)Only is now the easily-acronymised Givvup Only Are There. Also, the tagline has been changed to “Country are the new pseud.”

The next post will be another annual ritual (at least, I plan to make it an annual ritual): the next year in preview.

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Lebensraum

December 18, 2007

My flatmate has moved out and I now have the entire flat to myself. This means that I now have an empty bedroom to play with. What exactly to do with this is an interesting problem. A number of alternatives have emerged:

  1. My father has suggested supplementing my salary by going into the flesh love hotel trade, and renting the spare room out by the hour to young and amorous couples. This would incur investment on a new bed, and some manner of decoration, but would eventually pay for itself.
    The question is how long the payback period would actually be. When I was in Shanghai in spring 2006, my utter lack of Mandarin meant I ended up checking in at the Motel 186 on Zhoujiazui Road instead of the one on Dalian Road. The Zhoujiazui Road Motel 186 was very much in the love hotel category. The biggest customer segment was university students who would take a room for an afternoon.
    The problem is that university students pinch their pennies. So two or three couples would take a single room. If Bangalore customers are as bottom-of-pyramid as Shanghai customers, the internal rate of return would be far too low. Better to put the money into a fixed deposit instead of buying the bed.
  2. More practically, I could just shift furniture so that one room becomes a bedroom and the other becomes a study. This sounds good, but it would make carrying the laptop to bed more difficult. Right now all I have to do is remove the USB cables for the printer, the hard disk, and the mouse, and pull it two feet to the bed. So this must be considered carefully.
  3. I could convert it into a storeroom, except that I don’t have anything to store.
  4. Religion. Old time religion. Construct an altar in the empty room in which I can sacrifice small furry animals and infants. I would have to give my maid a salary hike to deal with the extra mess, though.
  5. Or, I could go with the nuclear option. If I sell all my mutual funds, and take on an insane level of debt through personal loans, I could generate enough cash to fill the room with playpen balls.

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Word Power Made Easy

December 17, 2007

Junta like Jabberwock and Hurree Babu have cornered the market on reviewing good books. It’s futile to compete on their terms. No, I shall instead target an untapped niche – one I have already established some expertise in, what with abusing Ravi Subramanian and Chetan Bhagat – and review bad books. And the particular bad book we shall focus on today is that thing called LOVE (yes, that is how the capital letters are used in the title) by Tuhin Sinha.

There isn’t any one thing wrong with ttlC. It’s more of a museum of all the different forms of bad writing. Almost every rule of good writing is violated, but rarely to excess. The one rule which is violated to excess is: Thou Shalt Not Use Big Words, Unless Thou Art PG Wodehouse and Canst Pull It Off.

One Night @ The Call Center was like a steaming pile of manure. If God Was a Banker was like an 80s movie, but with lecherous and evil bankers instead of lecherous and evil generic industrialists. Tarbela Damned, Pakistan Tamed was like a collection of Indian National Interest blogposts converted to fiction by throwing in sex, paan and Irish whiskey. that thing called LOVE, however, is like the Barron’s GRE Word List with stupid people. The back-cover blurb itself says it all:

Mayank thus lives in disillusionment, aspiring, with diminishing hope, to fall in love with Utopian earnestness and with his ‘perfect woman’. … That Mayank’s relationship with Revathi unfolds during the course of one Mumbai monsoon, the first that an anticipating Mayank, experiences of the city, only makes this Utopia an even more surreal experience. Will Mayank’s romance ever strike a balance between Chimera and Actuality?

but there are equally unmitigated bits in the book itself:

There was universal talk that marriages were not holding. India was passing through a phase of massive changes in all spheres and there was no way it could have possibly remained immune to western societal influences. The urban Indian populace had begun to show the same symptoms of dysfunction that was once the domain of the prurient west.

and

Mayank … almost instantly thought that there could be either love or longing in a married woman’s life. If there were both, it reeked of a fluid situation in one’s marriage.

and

The Ganapati festivities, being innately imbued in the culture of the city; the residents, irrespective of the different regions of their origin, celebrated the festival with rare, infectious bonhomie.

And this just scratches the surface. The only other thing that manages to come close to the obsession with vocabulary is the obsession with brand placement. So characters never have coffee, they have Costa Rica Tarrazu at Mocha. They go out for dinner at Pop Tates1 and Tendulkars, and make sure that the ‘funkier of their apparels belong to accepted, up market brands like Provogue and Tuscan Verve’. On average, there’s one brand name dropped every chapter.

Also, all the characters are idiots. They do things like buy Pomeranians because they feel lonely2. There are onlookers who do nothing but watch people pray for an hour. And all the characters have a touching faith in some form of astrology or the other.

But even after this, it’s impossible to hate the book. Even when Tuhin Sinha abuses Punjews and Goregaon types for not speaking correct Hindi3. Or when he keeps quoting ghazals4. Hate is aroused only by the condescending attitude Chetan Bhagat takes towards his readers in One Night @ The Call Center. Tuhin Sinha takes the whole thing so seriously, that at worst you’ll end up mocking the book, doubled over in helpless laughter (which is what the girlfriend and me did when we read it, much to the consternation of the Barista staff).

If you don’t want to make the effort of actually buying the book, Tuhin Sinha’s website provides equally excellent opportunities for unintended humour, especially the About the Author and Author Speak sections. Still, I recommend buying the book, because, let’s face it, no other book will give you as many big words for only a hundred rupees.

1: To be fair, the Chicken Africano at Pop Tate’s are hajaar strong.
2: And this isn’t even a Gujew character.
3: Because we all know that only UP-Hindi is authentic. Pah!
4: The ghazal is the most despicable form of literature known to man. Along with the destruction of North Indian temples and the introduction of the purdah system, the introduction of the ghazal is one of the major wounds inflicted upon Indian culture by Moslem invasions.

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Nationalising Rivers

December 13, 2007

This is brilliant… not:

With several hydro-power projects stuck due to disputes among states over water-sharing and related issues, the Ministry for Water Resources plans to bring some rivers under Central ambit by identifying them as “national rivers” to tap their potential for hydro-power and irrigation.

Speaking to The Indian Express today, Union Minister for Water Resources Saifuddin Soz said: “The country has failed to properly harness the hydro-power and irrigation potential of several rivers due to inter-state disputes. Even conservation of rivers has fallen victim to ownership. For better conservation, better utilisation of irrigation and hydro-power potential and to maintain better flow across states, I plan to get some rivers adopted as national rivers.”

(Indian Express)

Oh joy. So the solution to a tragedy-of-the-commons problem is… to enforce the commons status of the resource in question through the force of law. And instead of removing the scope for disputes, to give the Central government the power to resolve disputes, stakeholders be damned.

Hey, I have an idea! Why don’t we try this for telecom spectrum? Oh, wait…

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Infy Public School

December 12, 2007

Raiders Lost the Arc, the idiotically titled and idiotically written Outlook cover story on how IT is ruining Bangalore, has been debunked and fisked enough elsewhere on the blogosphere (Churumuri rebuts CNR Rao here, Nitin points out what the Outlook story missed here). Sugata Srinivasraju doesn’t ever blame IT junta for ruining infrastructure himself, but he conveniently forgets that infrastructure is the government’s responsibility, not the IT industry’s. When developers try to make infrastructure their own responsibility, as in the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor, the government has gone after them with a hatchet.

However, it’s undeniable that there is an influx of immigrants into Bangalore (me included), and that this is leading to new cultural forms (which still does not translate to a destruction of the old culture and values of the city).  But there’s something interesting about this wave of migration.

Uptil now, whenever there’s been internal migration in India, the migrants have alsways carried their culture along with them and ghettoised themselves. So Gujrati Jains and Marwaris used to set up their own schools and colleges wherever they went. Mumbai has DG Ruparel College and lots of other Gujew colleges (which are mocked regularly in JAM), and even more Gujrati dominated schools. Even Bangalore has a Gujrati medium school near City Market. Other communities don’t migrate as prodigiously as the Gujratis and Marwaris, but they still cluster. So you have Bongs coalescing in Chittaranjan Park in Delhi, Punjews sending their kids to DAV schools all across UP, and Tams setting up Sangam associations in Delhi and Mumbai. And this is before they extend the ghettoization by marrying somebody from the homelands.

But the IT migration to Bangalore (and Pune and other hotspots) is different. The migrants are united by profession, not by community. And while within the overall migrant community they’ll still form sub-clusters based on language and community affiliations, the ghettoisation is not as extreme as it was when Marwari traders flocked to Chikpet and created their own temples and schools there.

So what I’m eagerly waiting to see is what happens when the IT professionals’ kids go to school – and where they go to school. If migrants’ kids and ‘old-Bangaloreans” kids grow up together, the clash of cultures is probably not going to be as acute.

This could of course go all pear shaped if:

  1. New schools don’t come up fast enough to cater to the Bengalooru baby boomlet – this worries me the most.
  2. New schools which do come up price themselves out of reach of the old middle class. Even so, if they do, they’ll price themselves out of reach of a substantial number of IT workers as well, so cultural intermingling would still happen, just in old, cheap schools instead of new, expensive ones. I somewhat doubt this will happen. This is India. People will find the money to educate their kids.
  3. Cultural factors mean schools end up as IT/ non-IT kids ghettos also. I greatly doubt this will happen. Schools compete for students, just as students compete for schools. If the kid is smart, the school isn’t going to care about the parents (at least at the post Class-10 level). And if the school is really good, the parents aren’t going to care much about who the other parents are.

How this plays out is going to be interesting.

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Posted by Aadisht

Carless in Kodihalli

December 12, 2007

Manipal Motors doesn’t have a free slot for Palio servicing until December 20. Bah. Rocinante hasn’t been running properly since the middle of November, and I’m now into my fourth week of taking autos to work (and everywhere else for that matter).

This comes with the following disadvantages:

  1. Before 0830, autos refuse to go to MG Road because they don’t get fares back. After 0830, autos refuse to go to MG Road because the traffic is too heavy and they waste time.
  2. Autos are not fun at the best of times. Being stuck in Bangalore traffic for forty minutes in a vibrating and noisy auto while inhaling fumes from traffic all around you is even worse.
  3. I can no longer listen to RJ Malavika in the mornings. I suspect this is making it more difficult for me to face the trials and tribulations of work.
  4. Without a car, I can no longer go to the gym in the early morning. Work prevents me from going to the gym afterwards. Lack of gymming causes huge guilt while passing Nike/ Reebok/ Adidas outlets (and there’s one of each on 100 ft. Road). No gymming also means no outlet for work-induced stress.

In summary, not having a car means I face additional stress in the form of auto-rides, and that I no longer have outlets for stress (gym and Radio Indigo). And this will go on until 2008.

Death are there.

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Posted by Aadisht

Bharatnatyam

December 12, 2007

I realise that the cost of doing one particular thing is that you can’t do another thing. And honestly, I loved computer symposiums and quizzing, and would regret never having done them in favour of something else. But I really wish I had learnt Bharatnatyam at some point in life.

This is not because of any newfound love of dance. It’s more because while I was researching fundaes for last month’s quiz, I realised that Bharatnatyam is not so much a dance form as a language which uses gestures, facial expressions, and body movements as its basic units. Compare this with Sanskrit, where the basic unit is a sound (or phoneme); Mandarin, where the basic unit is a character (or lexeme), and English, where there are really no atomic units – meaning is concentrated at the level of the word or even phrase thanks to English borrowing from other languages so relentlessly.

And right now I find that so totally cool. The whole idea that I can communicate a message without having to rely on words (spoken or written) is mindblowing. It’s a conceptual leap similar to understanding – grokking really – how for loops or function calls work for the first time.

Of course, the problem is that even if someone had pitched Bharatnatyam to me as a language instead of a dance back in school, I probably wouldn’t have been all that enthused. My fascination with languages didn’t really get ignited until after probably first or second year in college, where I learnt the joy of C++ and object oriented programming.

This is kind of tragic, considering learning Bharatnatyam is a tough ask now. It’s a three year commitment at least, and I have no idea if I’ll even be in the same city six months from now. As for other languages, my Mandarin lessons have been on hiatus for the past two months thanks to preoccupation with work and quizzes.

Sigh. Such are the things I miss out on.

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Posted by Aadisht

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