Radio Bihar

Raghav Mahato

Once in way you come across a really interesting piece of news in the daily press. Like the story I read a few days ago about a young man who set up a radio station in a small town in Bihar. Bihar as everyone knows is best known for its chaos and corruption and dacoity and other terrible goings on, so something as enterprising as a guy of really modest means and modest education setting up an FM station is nothing short of a miracle.

This young man, Raghav Mahato climbs up to the third floor of a hospital building in Mansoorpur, with his box of tools and sender and antennae and other stuff he requires and gets this station going. Raghav Entertainment FM 1 is what he calls it which he runs for about ten hours a day with the help of friends. The station plays Hindi and devotional and all kinds of music and disseminates information on various happenings in the town and nearby areas, including things like the dates and timings of polio vaccination camps.

In the couple of years that he has been working on the station, Raghav has acquired a large fan following. People who listen to his station – which is the only one they get on their receivers! - come to meet him from ten kms away. None of it has earned him hard cash though. He continues to run his electrical shop “Priya Electronics” which earns him roughly Rs. 2000 a month (in case my American and European friends are wondering how much that is, it translates into roughly $50).

I loved reading about Raghav Mahato. It somehow made me feel good, just to know how enterprising people can get and that not everyone puts their heart and soul only into money spinning projects. I wonder sometimes why these kind of stories don’t make the front page and why they don’t relegate Bush and Tony Blair and our own politicians to the back pages so that another kind of reality can come to the forefront and be seen and recognised by - and bring hope - to people.

www.basicindia.net

I Want Your Brain!

If you ask me, Hitler was not the scariest person on earth. I don’t mean to make fun of his crimes at all – or of the fact that over six million Jews met a gruesome end at the hands of his deranged crew. But those crimes were so obvious, that it is relatively easy to see what was wrong about the whole movement and for those of us who have any conscience at all, to vow not to allow ourselves to be misled by madmen.

Aberrations occur however, that are not easy to pin point or even see as such. Some days ago, flipping through the channels on TV I accidentally came across this bizarre scene of one of India’s most popular gurus taking part in some mega celebration, of I am not sure what. Maybe it was his birthday or maybe it was just some happy occasion but what it involved was thousands of people gathering together while the guru sat on a podium along with his henchmen, all of them listening to one speech after the other by a string of the most boring looking, boring sounding devotees.

The first devotee was an elderly bloke in a safari suit who droned on and on about the goodness of the guru, while reading from a sheet of paper on the lectern in front. He was followed by a fat, black man in a white shirt (Indian white as my friend Gisela used to refer to it in the days when she used to live in Bombay. This means it is a sort of white, but not quite the dazzling shade you would expect, when you think of “white” – because it is usually tinged with a bit of grey without actually being grey, if you know what I mean).

A white woman in the audience watching the proceedings with utmost fascination broke into smiles and waved a flag as the black guy gabbled on in Telegu. Why should I say anything about her – maybe she really could follow every word of whatever language that guy was speaking, which I couldn’t. All the while that these important looking men babbled into the mike, other important looking men in orange walked up and down the aisles and across the podium, carrying boxes of what looked like mithai which they handed over to the guru with obsequious smiles.

The guru himself, dressed in chaste white, sat on a sofa, with his legs folded under him looking alternately bored, constipated and condescending. The camera switched from showing close ups of his face to views of the millions gathered to see him. Entire groups of overseas visitors like the Japanese or Americans had assembled together, each group clad in the colours of their particular team. There were blue groups and red groups and groups clad in green and they were all waving little flags and big flags and cheering and smiling wildly. All in celebration of a guy whom I have heard say some peculiar things in the past (at least according to press reports). For example, that we are all brothers and sisters on earth and therefore not supposed to take a sexual interest in each other. Which in effect means we are all products of incest.

Watching those millions with a fixed robotic beam on their faces made my skin crawl, to be honest. Men like Hitler pale in comparison because what is happening here, in case you haven’t yet caught on, is a very subtle form of mind control, a kind of mass hypnosis of the kind that can spread like an infection among people who are insecure and need somebody else to tell them what is right. Among people who are looking for someone to solve their problems. At the point when the whole crowd began to resemble a forest full of indoctrinated chimpanzees I decided to switch off the TV set. The guru smiled. Maybe he was wishing me goodnight.

www.basicindia.net

Last Rites

Banganga

Monday morning, almost seven months to the day that my grandmother (Nalinima) died, we went to immerse her ashes and to carry out the last rites. The reason we waited this long was that my brother Vishnu wanted to be present for the immersion. Since we are a really uneducated family in terms of religion and rituals, we depended largely on Saru, the younger of my grandmother’s two maids and on Tukaram, our Man Friday, to inform us on the procedure.

We were supposed to get a priest (they hired one for us) and the ritual was carried out at Banganga. Not at Chowpatty beach as I had thought. So I once again visited this picturesque district of Bombay, the houses set around the ancient tank which was supposed to have been created by Lord Ram when his arrow struck the earth and gave rise to a stream.

Father trying hard to be holy in his yellow towel

Our priest was a sixty-ish fellow in a dhoti with stubby grey hair and a bugs bunny smile. He chanted away at the speed of an express train and my father who was supposed to do the last rites had to follow suit, which he managed to do with relative agility – which impressed the priest because he guessed (quite correctly) we were just a bunch of poor westernised sods who didn’t know the first thing about our religion.

The chanting and pouring of ghee into the fire and onto banana leaves went on for what seemed like decades but finally it came to an end, after which my mother, accompanied by the priest walked around the tank to the side and left an offering on behalf of my grandmother, for the crows. I must say I was impressed because a dozen of them swooped down immediately, to finish off the ladoo in the earthenware bowl which resembled a large egg cup. Saru was mighty thrilled at this, and let out her shrill giggle and triumphant laugh. That meant the old lady was happy wherever she was, she informed us.



Mother, followed by Peg, Vishnu and Saru, off to leave the offering for the crows at Banganga

Dad, who didn’t come prepared as he should have, with the ceremonial dhoti, had to wrap a yellow towel round his waist for the ritual ( which Tukaram had thoughtfully brought with him, in case they needed to dip their feet in the holy waters). And to make up for the sacred thread which my father never wears, the priest threw a tattered strip of cloth over his neck and shoulder and began to chant.

Parvati and I watched from a distance because the steps were steep and the alcove where the rites were undertaken was a bit difficult for me to access. To our left, men, young and old, who had lost some close relative, were having their heads shaved by the local barber, according to the custom. But modern attitudes have forced the priests to alter the requirements. For those who are not keen to lose their locks, a token bit of hair is snipped off – merely as a gesture. Which my dad agreed to, without a problem.

This morning the priest came over for a last bit of cleansing, and we had smoke pouring out of Nalinima’s bedroom as the house was purified and my father had to once again go through the various mantras like yesterday. Luckily the ritual was over in less than an hour.

Website: www.basicindia.net

Ready for some chicken?

The news (at least in Bombay) these last few days has been monopolised, not by terrorists or tycoons making big time business deals or not even movie star scandals, but by… chickens. So the pages have been full of stories about chicken accompanied by life sized portraits of poultry. Live chickens, dead chickens, chickens hanging upside down, chicken legs popping out of gunny sacks.

Many of us hit with patriotic fervour are going to be forced into gluttony. Egged on by the government, which assures us that it is perfectly safe to eat poultry, we will soon start to look like those mad people in eating contests whom I wrote about, a couple of weeks back, who keep stuffing themselves with mountains of pizza or hotdogs (65 pizzas in twelve minutes or 49 grilled sandwiches in ten minutes twenty eight seconds) to get their names into the Guinness Book. But the cause of our gorging will not be a claim to fame. It will be all on account of bird flu.

Bird flu has resulted in huge losses for poultry farmers in India, to make up for which the union agriculture minister (who denies that there has been any flu around these parts) has been persuading us to eat chicken "with a vengeance." (His words). Sharad Pawar, has actually said (and I am quoting directly from the yesterday’s DNA) that as far as he is concerned, “vegetarians can eat vegetables or grass.” (Grass? Oh, grass! Yum yum!) But human beings (ok, my words) should start consuming chicken “with full fervour so that the backlog of the past fortnight … be completed.” 20 lakh eggs are at stake, and if we don’t consume them at express speed, they’re likely to end up just rotting.

In Tamil Nadu they had a chicken and egg mela in which 500 kg of chicken and 5000 eggs were cooked for a feast in which some 2500 people participated. This morning’s papers carried a huge photograph of the chief secretary of Maharashtra stuffing his face with chicken wings.

So far the public doesn’t seem to have responded and it looks like it is going to take a while for them to be reassured that chickens are not dangerous to eat any more. And it is apparently going to take more than Sharad Pawar to convince them about that.

The Anchorage

"The gang " - L to R: Mannan, Meghna, Dinyar, Shahnaz, Deven. Meghna and Shahnaz have been helping out at the Anchorage for several years.

Last Friday I had my first taste of the group at "Anchorage" where Nirupa works these days. Nirupa and I were colleagues some years back, in the days when we were involved in organisational development work. Since June 2005, N. has been with this organisation where mentally retarded adults are trained to be productive and where they actually do some assembly line work. They have a lot of fun as well as far as I can see.

Every Friday afternoon the lot of them gather in the hall on the ground floor of Nirupa and Vijay’s apartment block where a professional dancer called Mahesh gives them lessons. So I watched them spin and twirl away as they mimed various actions like gathering oranges from trees and putting them into baskets. Mahesh also makes them meditate at the start and end, which some of them attempt to do though - most of them tend to stare at everything around them with a lot of interest.

Dinyar striking a Cleopatra pose in the art gallery

When dance class was over we walked over to the art gallery run by one of the building residents, around the corner from the hall. I had originally thought we could get the members of the Anchorage to maybe comment on the paintings – for us get a different perspective on art.

The gallery is very swish, with black marble steps leading into a series of regal looking rooms stacked with canvases. As I discovered, the guys were not particularly interested in exercising their brains about the paintings but were far more engrossed in the coca cola and chocolate cake served by the gallery owner. And in having their photographs taken! “Me, me me!” they went as I tried to oblige.

The Anchorage has been around for (I think) over fifteen years and caters to around twenty five adults. A swinging cheerful group of women assist in the administration of the place and if you ask me it is picnic time every day at this workshop.


Cyrus and Nikita













Group Website: www.basicindia.net

Where's the Real Strength?

First this cartoon in a Danish magazine about a revered Mohammedan leader, (let’s not mention names, for fear of offending the sentiments of a certain segment of organized religion in the world) gets entire communities worked up. To the extent that two people were actually killed in a stampede in Pakistan a day or two ago, and entire crowds were yelling “Off with their heads” in the manner of the mad queen in “Alice in Wonderland.” Now it is Durga’s turn. A poster in Athens, showing this venerable old deity waving a bottle of whisky with each of her four arms, has had the Hindus all over, screaming blue murder. Sacrilege! How could anyone think of it, blah blah blah they went on until the proprietors of the bar responsible for exhibiting this advertisement at their doorstep apparently tendered an apology.

Makes you wonder about religion, about prophets and gods all over the world eh? That if they are so weak as to get blemished by a bit of harmless fun, how they could possibly hope to hold up an entire community or (as the Hindus claim their gods do) – the entire world. Truly. And more than that, if that reveller Shiva can indulge in all kinds of stuff from liquor to dope and still have millions of followers dancing around him, why cant Durga afford to be seen downing a peg of whisky now and then without hundreds of her followers jumping to her rescue?

Hindus of the world unite! Screamed some religious organisation a few days back, concerning this “dastardly” attack on the holy goddess. “Let yourselves be counted.” OK so I guess I am not one after all. I was born into a community of that name but seem to identify myself like all slightly barmy people, with something called the human race. Not with Christianity, not with Islam, nor with the Jewish religion or Hinduism. Not even Buddhism. But rather, with a spirit that is incapable of taking offence at what people “think” about it or the way they depict it. Because the true spirit underlying the human race is strong in its own right and doesn’t need any images or fanatical bolstering to prop it up.

Group website:
www.basicindia.net

Evening entertainment

Another evening at the club. We went to watch the Wednesday movie which was “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” this time. The usual contingent of old geezers turned up. Mainly old Parsees, chattering nineteen to the dozen and gorging on plates of bhel puri. A row of women behind us were nattering about a meditation class one of them was attending. Someone else had attended a lecture in spirituality. What was the theme? One of the women asked. “It was on esoteric things” was the reply. Silence for a while. Then the woman who had posed the question says, in a puzzled tone, “What does that mean?”

About fifteen minutes into the movie, and I was ready to walk out. Brad Pitt was awful and Angelina Jolie can’t act for nuts. Maybe this was supposed to be a kind of metaphor for what marriage has come to be these days. For those who haven’t seen the movie as yet, well, it concerns an apparently staid and ordinary couple, both of whom are working, except neither knows exactly what the other person does. It SO happens that they are both secret agents and after it is all out in the open, they openly go after each other since of course, they belong to rival organizations and most of the movie just becomes very very noisy and full of the rat-a-tat’s of gun fire. OK. OK. Feel free to enjoy that kind of stuff but count me out.

My parents and I walked out during the interval and decided to go to the restaurant upstairs for a drink and for dinner. That was much more entertaining than the movie and we returned home quite happy.

group website:
www.basicindia.net

A View From the Wrong End

Criticism and negativity comes so easily to all of us. Ever noticed it? Especially the kind that has no productive value and which we often indulge in when the person concerned is not present. Somehow the “wrongs” done us, the offences and the insults seem to remain with us longer than all that is good about us and others. Human beings seem to have a vast capacity for anger, bitterness and revengeful feelings.

Much of our attraction for the darker side of life is reflected in the media – TV news, the newspapers and so on, in which you find a concentration of the world’s disasters. Murders, rapes, bombings, lootings, grandmothers being killed by their grandchildren and like we saw recently in Bombay, a boy being (I forget) either killed or beaten up by his grandmother. Cheerful world aint it!

Here and there between the stories of violence and those that are downright inane you salvage a piece or two that gives you hope for the world. I am not referring to those hospital rounds by film stars to cheer up children with cancer and the like – but more to normal citizens fighting back the bureaucracy and administration. Cleaning up their part of the city. Fighting stupid laws. Coming to each other’s aid in times of distress.

I sometimes wish stories like that would make the headlines on the front page and our fat politicians could be pushed back a bit. To do that I guess we would have to take ourselves as individuals at least as seriously as we take the people we choose to represent us on the world stage. As it happens it looks like we give all the importance and authority to our chosen reps and allow them to handle us like puppets.

website:
www.basicindia.net

Boxers and Beauty Queens

Ash – just in case you didn’t know it - has a boxer called Sunshine. The Ash I am referring to – also in case you didn’t know - is the first lady of India’s beauty business and queen of wooden acting in Bollywood. Aishwarya Rai of course. Chap called Daboo wants to marry off his boxer Flash to Ash’s boxer Sunshine but Ash hasn’t yet indicated whether it’s to be yes or no.

This is only one among several similar golden nuggets of info filling eight pages of DNA’s supplement “After Hours” along with mountains of ads for silly and sillier films. Of course there is not much to differentiate it from the Bombay Times which goes along with the main Times which as everyone knows is the queen of crap. Mmmmmm. Delicious. Pages and pages of photographs of celebrities grinning over glasses of wine and grinning at each other and filled with details of who eats what for breakfast and who wore what at whose wedding.

Why do I even bother to glance at it? Because the “news” items are accompanied by photographs. And photographs of human beings somehow interest me far more than drab print. Of course the truth is that the person in the photo doesn’t have to be a celebrity to attract my attention. I am equally happy to look at and read about, say a housewife with a green thumb, or about gentlemen who feed pigeons in the park. But all newspaper supplements seem to presume that filling their pages day after day with the photographs of the same old famous bores is what creativity and human interest is all about.

I mean I would have far preferred it if DNA had interviewed Ash’s boxer, Sunshine, and asked her her opinion of life – without bothering to mention who her pearly toothed mistress happened to be. Most dogs are anyway much cuter than most movie stars.

Website
www.basicindia.net

New Ideas

Group in Hampi
pic by Chandran


Had a good meeting with Charmayne yesterday who turned up in the evening. Following our session on Monday evening on the topic of “community” and responsibility she felt it would be good for us to do something together. I was game too and we talked quite a while about various possibilities. Well one idea is to start a ten week “Saturday group” based on the theme of “Communication”. Because this is something most of us are so bad at. Bad at listening and bad at expressing ourselves too so that we often misunderstand others and we ourselves never feel understood.

Another fun idea was to invite people to “Soirees” based on a theme. Not more than a handful of people to an evening of music, poetry and discussion, for example around the theme of “parents and children” or “love” or “the quality of our lives.” It’s a way, we figured, to bring people together but to dispense with the usual superficial chatter and to use our time together more meaningfully.

Those of you in Bombay, keep in touch for further developments!

website:
www.basicindia.net

Our hunger for more

There is this woman I read about in the papers recently, who won an eating contest. I think she’s from Malaysia or thereabouts. You have these eating competitions all the time, everywhere, and hear about men and women drinking two or three gallons of milk in a minute and a half or throwing in one lamb chop after another into their mouth and well, this woman I read about, ate 46 grilled chicken sandwiches in eleven minutes. In order for those sandwiches to go down her throat easily and quickly she had to soak them in water. This same woman has taken part in umpteen such contests and bolted tons of other kinds of food in a similar time frame. Wolfing down kilos of sweets, steak, hamburgers and the like to be able to get her name in the Guinness or some other book of records. Can you believe it?

Just shows you how desperate people are for attention. And also the fact that this is what our culture is based on. The acme of greed and consumerism. I mean in a way this kind of competition goes beyond both, and needs to be mentioned in a class of its own – stupidity maybe?

News items like this somehow simultaneously amuse and horrify me. It is good shock value in a way, it gives you something to talk about. But then again, when you look at how depraved the whole business is, it gives you rather a jolt. To see that human beings want more, more and yet more of everything. That “more” is supposed to be good. More cars, more fridges, more money (of course, goes without saying), more lovers, more sex (nothing bad about that except when it becomes part of the “more game” anything loses its meaning altogether).

Wee…eeelll, coming back to that chicken sandwich. I personally love a good grilled chicken sandwich. Mostly I can’t even finish the one I order at the snack bar and have to ask for it to be packed up so I can eat it at home the next day. Maybe the Guiness Book could include me in as the person who needs the maximum length of time to eat the smallest portion of grilled chicken sandwich?

website: www.basicindia.net

Last thoughts on Hampi

Hampi recedes into the background every day as the Bombay fog and noise takes over. I didn’t get to visit the old temple town though those who did swear that it was the most impressive thing. For me those ancient hillsides were enough, the gigantic rocks piled on other rocks, which when you stared at them revealed faces of monsters and kings and whales and all kinds of creatures leaving you gaping open mouthed as you kept staring.

Workshop hut

Hampi, the site of the ancient kingdom of Vijaynagara seems imbued with awesome energy. A whole lot of people I know had really weird dreams, most of them violent. At least three people told me they dreamt of murders. One said she had dreamt of war. Peter woke up suddenly one night and woke me up too in the bargain, shouting, “Shit!” I held him for a while and comforted him until he went back to sleep. Next morning he told me that he had dreamt he saw me on the edge of an abyss and was attempting to save me from falling over it! I too had my share of visions of violence, both during the meditation we took part in in the second workshop and at times, at night. Phew!!

Rock carving in Hampi

Peter and Franziska’s place was really beautiful – surrounded by hills. They have greened it too, and planted many flowering bushes and trees in the vicinity of the houses. It was ideal for the workshop – remote, quiet and somehow intense. Hope to carry some of the strangeness and wonder of that experience with me through the next months, if not years Samuel and Daniele who conducted the workshop in Hampi

All photos here by Uma L

group website: www.basicindia.net

OW!

Ow ow ow. Stomach cramps are horrid. Probably some kind of infection, picked up either during the travel or after getting back. India, after all, is home to myriads of versatile microbes which can land you with anything from belly ache, sores, itchy eyes or worse. When you're in perfect health you forget what it's like to be sick. Maybe this is life's way of remind one, to be grateful for good health.

group website: www.basicindia.net

Getting back to so-called normal life

Ulrike and Fenena in Hampi. (Ulrike, Peter and Fenena live in Switzerland).


What the hell is so difficult about getting back to "normal life"? What is it about normal life that makes it sometimes difficult to get back to, after a holiday? Specially the kind of holiday we had together - our gang from Bombay together with friends from Europe, including Suhail and Shasha from Paris, Joerg and Sabine from Switzerland and Gursel and Aysegul from Turkey?

The last of my nostalgic memories of Goa and Hampi are taking their time going out the back door, but I am sure that in a day or two I will be all set for the next phase.

Endings are a bit painful but then I guess if they didn't take place there would be no room for new beginnings.

Group website: www.basicindia.net

Back in Bombay!

Sunrise in Hampi


Just about getting back to normal after quite an adventurous and circuitous trip down south. For more info check out: www.basicindia.net

Back soon though!

Till we meet again...

The last two days of the year. There will be time to reflect on all that only when I get back from my trip to Neredu 2, Goa etc. where I am headed on Thursday. It has been one jolly merry go round the last several weeks and I am looking forward to a longish spell of not having to think too much.

All the best guys, for the coming year and see you when I am back in Bombay, which is around 21st January 2006.

Merry Christmas!

It’s the season of good will, time for cheerful thoughts, we’re turning the corner, a brand new year awaits us, we are going to be walking a brand new road in life. Indeed. The municipality along with the state government, police department and various other bodies involved, have just offloaded their Christmas gifts on us: giant STONES.

The entire length of pavement in front of my grandma’s house has been dug up - for what purpose god alone knows, but it is currently filled with HUGE stone slabs and towering piles of rubble and garbage. There is not ONE INCH left there for you to navigate your way through. You HAVE to step on to the road to be able to get anywhere at all. When you do finally step onto the road you are assaulted by cars screeching at you from all directions and skidding to a halt as you shudder and tremble your way to your destination. Wherever that might be.

Maybe the Bombay Brihanmrihangrihandadoomda what have you (unpronounceable name for the Mumbai municipality) thinks that life is too easy for us folk living on Warden Road and decided to gift us some excitement and dig up the pavements which they are going to leave that way for the next nine months. After which they will dig up the other side – unless they think of doing that in the next few days itself. It will be soooo exciting to land up in hospital with a broken leg/broken arm/broken hip/broken head….Merry Xmas guys!

So anyway, here we are one evening, trying to edge our way out of the compound onto the main road in the car, but the way is blocked because the traffic lights are presumably not working, there is no policeman around to regulate the flow and not a single car bothers to stop and let someone waiting on the side, get out. My mom’s at the wheel and dad and I are sitting patiently - that is patiently twiddling our thumbs. De dum de dah. De dum de doo.

I am personally reconciled to waiting where I am for the next eight months but long before the eight months are up, this bloke strolling down the street with his wife, sees us struggling in the wings, and decides to help us. He stops walking, holds up a hand firmly, and blocks the oncoming stream of cars which, faced with such supreme poise and confidence in a human being – that too, one without a uniform! - come to an uncomplaining halt. Then this guy, politely waves us through while his wife smiles at us benignly.

Nice guy, heart warming act. Great Xmas Gift. Merry Xmas again to all of you!!!

www.basicindia.net

The Monster: Self Pity

Several days ago I accidentally came across yet another review of my book (this time, on the Amazon site) which was somewhat mixed in tone. On the plus side, the reviewer said he found the book “easy reading.” (Goes down “easy as beer on a Sunday afternoon”, he says, although on second thoughts I don’t know if I am meant to take that as a compliment!) On the minus side he felt there was “not enough information about India” and that the attitude I displayed towards “Sarla” (the cook) was one of pity rather than understanding etc. (Don’t know how he could have thought that, since apart from being the cook, “Sarla” happens to be one of my best friends, and one really does not pity a friend!) Anyway, the reviewer had given the book three stars out of a possible five star rating.

The reason I introduced this bit of information, was not to defend myself or the book but to discuss quite another topic – that of feeling sorry for oneself. As usual the criticism made me feel a bit gloomy but less than an hour after I read it, a client arrived for a session. We spoke about a lot of things which surfaced in his sharing. Funnily, it was all about “feedback”, and the way we are so intolerant about what others say about us Ironically, talking to this guy made me see my own reaction to feedback as well.

During the discussion Satish began to realise how aversion to feedback or critical opinion restricted one, because it often led one to withdraw from whoever happened to have said “rude” or “mean” things. What one lost in the process quite often, was not only a relationship, but also an opportunity to transform oneself.

When the session ended I sat down with my folks on the balcony. Over a drink, I suddenly became aware of the fact that the slight pit in my stomach created by the critical review I had come across earlier, had not only faded altogether but had been replaced by a feeling of joy, bordering on elation. I had not even thought about that review in the last hour and a half! Not for the first time I became aware of the fact that so much of our suffering arises from a sort of self centredness, a feeling of self importance. Which means that every time our sense of importance is threatened or damaged we feel depressed or angry. There is absolutely nothing new in this bit of wisdom, except, I notice, that when any insight comes from your own experience it becomes so much more meaningful than when you read about it in a book.

How to stop being self centred? Yes, well, it doesn’t help to tell oneself not to be that way and to force oneself to be artificially interested in other people. Doesn’t work. What works for me, is to become intensely aware at any given point, of my own selfishness and ego. Being truly conscious of egoistic feelings when they do arise, helps you to see the results of such feelings and seems to somehow also help to dissolve them.

The difficulty is that most of us don’t want to do that. We don’t like to see ourselves as we are and even less, the way others see us. We have these images of ourselves in our minds of being “beyond all that” maybe. We feel it is other people who are mean or egoistic. Mean? Nasty? Who me???

(I am reminded of Alfed E.Nuemann grinning at the reader in his moronic fashion at this point. Mad Magazine readers get it?)

“Greedy? Egoistic? I live for other people, I do everything I can for my kids, my parents, my mother-in-law, for society.”

Ha ha.

I have often seen people wallowing in self pity because they imagine they are doing such good work and not getting any recognition for it. In fact people who suffer most from this disease are the very ones who imagine they are doing their best for the world, and not getting any pats on the back. Maybe it is time to wake up to the fact that self pity is the worst form of indulgence. As far as I’m concerned it’s a lot worse than smoking, drinking, manic depression, bad breath etc. etc.

If I show any signs of it, people go ahead and smack me! I will try really hard, not to smack you back.

Group website: www.basicindia.net

City Life

City life can drain you. There is something incredibly hard and frenetic about the energy of so-called thriving cities like Bombay, where I live. To be honest I would call it the energy of madness. It has the quality of arrows, pins, needles and all kinds of sharp objects darting out all over the place and striking you, and each other as well, randomly and so fast that you are just not able to keep pace with them or make sense of their movements.

I am lucky enough to be living in a place from where a view of the open sea and sky is framed by the swaying branches of palm trees outside my window and I am spared the hustle bustle on a daily basis. But the down side of it is that I am slowly turning into a hermit of sorts. I almost can’t bear to step out of the house to face not only broken down pavements waiting to trip me up and chuckle over a twisted ankle or broken bone, but the throngs of people who are likely to crush you as they blindly race across the streets and narrow sidewalks.

Cars screech, taxis honk, people dart impudently across the road just where they are NOT supposed to be crossing. Drivers curse because you are going too slow/too fast/you turned when they didn’t expect you to/ some kid ran across the street and they had to brake all of a sudden.

I curse myself that in all these years I never took up some truly relaaaaxing hobby like pottery or knitting to combat the stress. On the contrary when I did have the chance to do some of that, way back in about the fourth or fifth class in school, I would give my sewing and knitting assignments to other pals to finish for me, and return their favours with a piece of chocolate or some other item from my lunch box. Talk about bribery and corruption! You could say in India, it starts early.

Well I am glad that at the end of this month I shall be able to trade the city hulchul for a couple of weeks when a few of us take off for Bangalore  to visit Lallu's project and later on to the beaches of Goa. And meantime to ensure that I stay sane while in the city I must remember to enroll for some classes in knitting when I get back.
Group Website: www.basicindia.net

The Learning Process

There is always scope to get wiser. I thought that at the age of 55 I had reached as far as I’m going to get in this lifetime (lots left over for the next life of course!) but what I have discovered in the past few days is, that I’ve become even more mature than I thought I could possibly get! This became apparent to me when I realised out of the blue, that I don’t get excited any more (polite word for hysterical) when faced with an electronic crisis.

I had put together a special MP3 CD for my meditation session yesterday evening which a couple of new people were going to attend. New people means potential nail biters, guys with nervous twinges, individuals who are busy hypnotising themselves silently or aloud with the slogan “I CAN’T MEDITATE” before they've even bothered to find out what the heck meditation is, and are all set to prove to you that meditation doesn’t really work.

So I go through all this trouble to organize a collection of music for the newcomers and when the CD is ready I put it in my MP3 walkman to test it out and guess what. The walkman tells me there is no disc inside. So I take the CD out and put it in again and this time the player tells me, after an even longer interval than the first time that there is no disc. So now I take out the CD lens cleaner and give the inside a good drubbing and put in the new CD a third time. Now the player shows nothing. It is blank. After repeated attempts to get it to play I give up. But in the middle of these attempts I notice something puzzling. For once I am actually feeling quite cool - not merely thinking I am being cool. (You know the difference?!) I'm not even vaguely angry. Not the slightest bit of irritation in me. I just tell myself I will have to get a new walkman and since I cannot do it today, well, I’ll just have to use something else for the meditation and I get out the minidisk player with some of the old stuff on it and forego the choice music I’d lined up.

The meditation went well except that right in the middle of it the cat started yowling. Yowling like she was being murdered or as if she herself was getting ready to murder somebody. This is not an unusual thing to happen. Our cat for some mysterious reason has started reacting very strangely to meditations. I just have to get a handful of people together to listen quietly to music in the house and after about twenty minutes she starts going “Meeeeaaaaaaow! Mrrreeeeaaaaowwwwrrrrgh! MRRRREEEEEOOOOOWWWGGGHHHH!” and so on and so forth. This is incidentally a much worse habit as far as I’m concerned, than turning over the dustbin to look for chicken bones.

A couple of people (luckily not the newcomers, but the old timers) told me after the session, that the sounds had terrified them and they had prepared themselves to deal with a lunatic feline jumping onto their chest while they were deep in the land of bliss. Eventually it seems they had decided to take it all in their stride – a major learning for them on keeping their cool in the here and now. As for me, I did wish the old cat (she is almost 18) would shut up and quietly go away but my irritation was nowhere near its usual explosive level and on the whole the session was a success.

Yup. It feels like I’ve grown about an inch taller since yesterday, in the spiritual sense. Nice surprise!

Group website: www.basicindia.net

Will the Real Bag Lady Please Stand Up?

Well okay, I have to confess it. If there was one thing I really “identified with” or one label that people have given me which I think is at least sort of true, it is that of “bag lady”. I am the original bag lady, no doubt about it. But every time I say that, my friend Sushama from Delhi contests it, saying she is the original bag lady, because she is far more crazy about bags than I am.

What being a “bag lady” means in effect, is that every time I go shopping for anything – and I mean anything - clothes, stationary, food, CD’s - I somehow end up buying bags. Small bags, big bags, pouches, haversacks, party bags, one-strap bags, wallets. You name it. Sometimes I buy the other things I need, as well. Most often I end up buying two or three bags each time I shop for bread or soft drinks or things like that, which over the years has amounted to an entire cupboard full of bags, some of which I use, most of which I don’t use but none of which I want to throw away.

The other day Sushama, who is visiting from Delhi, came over and we went to Flora Fountain on a shopping spree. I actually wanted to buy a sleeping bag and Sushama didn’t want to buy any bags. We hunted high and low for this shop which we had been to about a year back, amidst dozens of similar hole in the wall shops and not being able to spot it at all, were on the verge of giving up, thinking they had folded up or moved house or something when Sushama suddenly went "There it is!"

We tumbled out of the car and headed straight for the little den crammed with backpacks, purses, shoulder bags, all kinds of bags. The shopkeeper’s son, a guy called Ali served us and in minutes was able to give me what I was looking for. A neat, light weight, cheap sleeping bag to take with me on my trip down south in January. This time, I have to confess I was satisfied with buying a sleeping bag, though Sushama who had not wanted to buy any bags hung around and looked and looked and sifted through immense piles of haversacks and cabin luggage and vanity cases and at the end of an hour, had collected four items which she ended up buying. Ali was so moved by her interest and her propensity for spending so much money in his shop that he got hold of a huge sack full of the latest small bags he had picked up from China and said we could each pick up one for free.

Well, we fell on it like a pack of starving wolves and each of us came out of this treasure hunt clutching three pieces and fixing Ali with entreating looks – which made him squirm a bit, because after all he had meant like ONE piece – but eventually we settled for two free bags each. I got a waist pouch for my mother and a small mobile pouch for my dad. Ali was happy, we were happy and I conceded Sushama first place. She is indeed the original bag lady. I come a poor second in comparison.

Group website: www.basicindia.net

The Centre of the Universe

“When they discover the centre of the universe many people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.”


I found that quote in the Sunday Times here and thought it described most people so well, I tried to find out more about this intelligent guy behind it. Bernard Bailey was the name but there was no further information, so I went to Google for help. Well I didn’t get too far because the Google search threw up about twenty Bernard Baileys some of whom were authors, one of whom was a cartoonist and one of whom was a Beagle. So now I am sure it was the Beagle who thought up that clever line. I can just imagine Snoopy sitting on top of his doghouse with his diary, those silly birds twittering around him, while he glares at Lucy busy poking her nose into everything. And this brilliant line floats into his mind.

Well Lucy, in the Charlie Brown comic strip is so real it isn’t funny. We all know at least half a dozen like her I’m sure, if not more. Maybe we all have a bit of Lucy in us. Self centered, bossy, know it all attitude. I catch myself in that phase sometimes but get out of it soon enough these days. (I hope I’m seeing myself right!) But I guess in a more serious fashion I identify with Charlie Brown. Old Klutz, bumbling, shy, getting it mostly wrong. The only good thing about that is I have more hair than Charlie Brown. At least at the moment!

Group website: www.basicindia.net

Visiting Cards!

Reshma, my latest client (whose name I have obviously changed) has been going on at me to get visiting cards made. Visiting cards! The last time I had any made I wasn't even a psychotherapist. I was a photojournalist. Several moons have waxed and waned since then and my hair has grown a whole lot more grey and my visiting cards have almost sprouted a beard.

This particular bunch of cards (they are still sitting on my shelf) have a neat logo, designed by the son of a friend of mine who happened to be venturing out as a printer and whose first client I think I was. It has a camera materialising out of nowhere, from out of whose lens like a larva, emerges the long fat nib of a pen. The first couple of friends I handed it to actually sniggered because they claimed it looked rather like something it wasn’t supposed to look like! Don’t ask me what or why because it isn’t me that has a devious mind.

I was happy enough with those cards but the same way that I have a couple of exotic perfumes sitting on my dresser which I keep forgetting to dab on after a shower or even when I go out, I forget to give out my visiting cards. They have been collecting dust for the last ten years and meanwhile whatever telephone numbers they mention are outdated and we’ve been given new ones. (Telephone numbers in Bombay seem to be constantly on the move. We’ve had ours change at least six times in the seventeen years we’ve lived in this flat.) And now Reshma says. “What about visiting cards?” Her husband has been asking her to bring one home. Maybe he doesn’t quite believe I’m professional enough although Reshma who has taken to therapy like a duck to water, now wants to bring her whole family along for sessions.

Why did I bring all this up? I believe because what I’m actually thinking about is the labels that people find so necessary to give themselves and other people. Reshma confessed that she was both puzzled and even upset that there was no nice plaque on the door calling out “Dr. Uma” to the world to confirm that here was a lady with the credentials required to treat people who were "emotionally sick". (I told her I do have them but don’t need to advertise them).

Labels have been the bane of my life. A couple of days back I spoke about how much I dislike using the phone and now I have to say if there is anything I dislike even more than the phone it is labels. I have always been allergic to being thought of as any particular “thing.” (Brown skinned/Hindu/Feminist/Liberal/Disabled/Writer/Teacher of the deaf/Psychotherapist etc etc etc ad nauseum).

Do we really need those labels for our identity? Isn’t it enough somehow to know that you’re a human being? That like others you have possibly picked up skills along the way in a certain field which people might find useful, and that is that. Isn’t it possible to work towards an equitable society without having a whole lot of labels fixed to one’s name like a long tail?

Well, I am going to make those visiting cards made anyway. I don’t feel particularly defiant about any of this, only questioning. And of course maybe they will serve a purpose after all. Apart from my name and address and my “designation in life” and telephone numbers they will carry my website address and maybe some other info. I’ll be looking out for a nice logo as well. And I guess that along the way it will make Reshma and her husband happy.

Group website: www.basicindia.net

Yikes! There Goes The Phone!!

I hate chatting on the phone. I have an almost pathological distaste for it which friends or acquaintances don’t seem to quie believe, deep down. So they keep calling at the most unfavourable times, and then wonder why I sound distant or a bit absent, not knowing perhaps that at the very moment they have buzzed me to fill me in on their life history I am surfing the net or writing something or talking to someone else or even just plain meditating on the sea and sky which my bedroom window looks on to.

Once a guy trying to relieve the tedium of his own life happened to call when my computer engineer was busy explaining to me how to synchronise my palmtop with the desktop and was miffed when I actually forgot that he was on the line and even forgot to make the rudimentary “uh-huh, uh-huh” noises on the phone you usually indulge in, to persuade the person at the other end of the line that you are listening with great interest though you are most likely falling asleep and trying not to snore.

It wasn’t always like that of course. There was a time when I used to be obsessed with the phone and was known (much to my mother's disgust) to chat for ages, at least with a handful of bosom pals with whom I never seemed to run out of conversation. One night I broke my own record by yapping on the phone for over two hours until my ear actually began to hurt from prolongued contact with the receiver. Those were the times of course, when regardless for how long you spoke you were charged for just one call. Now I sometimes ask myself if I’m the same person.

Something possibly changed in me the day the phone rang and I rushed to get it. That was incidentally over twenty years ago. I had just come out of the shower, my feet were wet and before I reached the shrieking instrument and before I knew it I’d landed on my ass and cracked my tail bone. Four weeks in bed cured me of any fondness for phones in general.

I love meeting people and I like mailing them or writing to them. Generally I enjoy being in contact with human beings. But NOT ON THE PHONE. Which I use strictly for information purposes. To confirm appointments, to cancel appointments, to communicate good tidings, to communicate bad news and so on, to plan something or other

This, I believe is what a telephone was originally intended for, in the old days. So in those good old fashioned days is no doubt where I still belong!

Group website: www.basicindia.net

Time, Space and a little Beer

If you're lucky, the ride from central Bombay to Marve (one of the dirty beaches around the city) takes a little over an hour. Rush hour prolongues your travel time by a good hour. Vijay and I, who drove down on Friday evening itself, to get the place ready for the workshop participants who were to arrive on Saturday morning, had average luck. We took a little over an hour and a half to get there, not counting the stops to pick up nourishment for the weekend ranging from bread and tomatoes to tea, sugar, milk and beer.

The best part of the evenings is of course sitting down to watch the night sky, sipping cold beer. As luck would have it the first bottle was flat and we had to pour it down the sink. The second bottle, since we had not stuck it in the freezer, was not cold enough but what the hell. Once we started on it, it drew us into our favourite topics - time, space, reality and the universe.

Away from the cacophony of city life, under a clear black sky filled with stars it becomes easier to plunge into the depths. We talked about how weird it felt to have known each other for ten years. Sometimes it felt like a hundred years and sometimes it felt like we had met yesterday. So what is time, really! And what is reality? And do we really know anything at all about life really, or is it that our need to feel secure persuades us that we have everything in control?

At some point V and I decided that life was a total mystery. All one could do was sit and watch it unfolding. The trick is, that to do that, one needs to feel at least materially and physically secure. One needs a roof over one's head. One' s stomach needs to be be filled. Otherwise, one's attention is concentrated on these basics rather than on anything else. So it is to help each other go deeper into the process of life, that we need to support each other, to take care of each other, to ensure an environment that will make it possible for each of us to enjoy the miracle of life.

The beer helped. The stillness helped. Our understanding and acceptance of each other helped, to bring us a mite closer to something quite indefinable that you could only sense, if you happened to be in a state of alertness. It was one of those moments when I had the feeling: so this is what friendship is really about! Simply, this being together, this watching of life together, this implicit support of each other.

Group website: http://basicindia.typepad.com/basicindia/

A Winters Day in Bombay

View of Haji Ali from my bedroom

In terms of the weather Bombay is generally one of the most pleasant places I have lived in. Except for a few weeks in May preceding the monsoon and a few weeks in October following it, it is neither too hot nor too cold. (Of course some people might say that that is so because we live right on the sea and not inland!)

Just now is of course the best time of year as we are getting into “winter” – friends from Europe crack up when I use this word to describe the climate here in the months from December to February. The temperatures drop to a really pleasant 20-25 degrees C and as I sit here at my desk, there is this heavenly breeze blowing in through the window. For a city this is as quiet as it can get, just the purr of a car rolling into or out of the compound and the distant sound of voices.

The sound of the palms swaying in the breeze. The Haji Ali mosque, which my window looks on to, stands bright and clear in the sunshine, like an ornate slab of wedding cake surrounded by sea and grey black rocks. It is one of those times you forget about the city racket, the chaos, the aggression and allow yourself to be almost lulled to sleep by the idyllic temperature and mood of the environment.

The next couple of days I am most likely to be away conducting a workshop for a friend and former colleague. Back Sunday night. Till then adios.

Group website: http://basicindia.typepad.com/basicindia/

Exotic foods

It was probably natural that Devika and I should end up watching the TV programme we did after dinner last night. Devika is my friend Jyotsna’s daughter (and my goddaughter – I must be the worst godmother in the history of godmothers!) She happens to be spending a few days with us in Bombay to attend a course in Eurythmics. (If you want to know more about that you’ll have to ask her!)

Well all through the meal Devika was describing these mindboggling ice creams and all kinds of exotic food one can get these days in Bombay. I am a glutton for info like this since I rarely eat out except for those age old colonial clubs where everything mostly tastes like socks stewed in mothball gravy. Anyway throughout dinner we discussed things like “chocolate avalanche” and “chilli ice cream” (“It’s cold but also really hot as it goes down your throat” says Devika) and “pepper chocolate” and the next thing I know is we’re sprawled in front of the TV watching National Geographic reveal the delights of peppery insect curries and other outlandish fare.

There was one scrumptious looking dish, with veggies and noodles and fried onions – that is, it looked scrumptious except for one thing – a something sticking out like a cherry on top of the heap of goodies. It looked like a cockroach. It WAS a cockroach. It was meant to be a Thai delicacy as far as I remember. I can’t remember too well because my brain froze at the very sight, at the very moment that a woman sitting next to the man in the TV show, happened to SCREAM with disgust as her husband bit into and crunched up the roach.

This was one of the funnier or you could call it more wacky aspects of food. There was stuff that was truly shocking. And that is the way creatures are treated before they are killed. How snakes (cobras) are hung up with their mouths tied up. How lambs are slaughtered. And the next part – after the break – was supposed to be on roast dog.

“I DON’T WANT TO SEE THAT!” screeched Devika. I agreed with her and we decided to switch to another channel. It is not for nothing I suppose that in the last few years I have been on a slow journey to vegetarianism much as I miss the taste of a variety of mouth watering meats.

For group website check out: http://basicindia.typepad.com/basicindia/

Ooops my hand slipped

I don’t know if anyone else has this problem – but my handwriting is a bit chameleon like. That means, it tends to vary according to my mood, the time of day, what I want to say etc. In a way I guess it is not unusual, I’ve heard that to some extent it happens to everybody. (Stardust, you mentioned something about having forty pen pals! Each of whom gets a handwritten letter from you. Wow!)

The varying slant or whatever is not the problem. What gets you into a soup is when the bank refuses to recognise your signature! Recently, a cheque which I had written to the travel agency which managed our Goa trip, bounced. Now that means paying a Five Hundred Rupee fine! If I get fined every time the bank thinks my own signature is forged, I’ll soon go broke. My dad says maybe I should stop signing and switch to giving thumb impressions.

I haven’t yet been struck by Alzheimers (though if I were I suppose I wouldn’t know it!) or palsy or anything like that. It is just that my writing is terribly quirky and I can never get it to behave. Any solutions?

Goa Holiday

A view of the palms


Rodrigues" Bungalow

“John’s Seagull” is where you will probably find me most evenings, when I am in Goa. The restaurant is right on the beach and sitting at one of the open air tables under an inky blue sky, you watch the frothy phosphorescent waves come and go, all through the garlic chilly squid which you invariably end up ordering, no matter what else you are having as a main course. It’s not only a great view but also good food, the fish being the main attraction.

+++

I wouldn’t say Bogmalo had one of the best beaches in Goa – the beach itself is rather small and tends to be a bit crowded in the evenings - but what I like about the place is its village atmosphere and the fact that it is a lot less commercial than the beaches around Candolim in the north or Palolem down south, where every other night is disco night and your ears are blasted out by techno nonsense. (When I was twenty I never imagined I’d be saying things like this but now mid way through my fifties here I am acting like an ancient Auntie!)

After Bombay, Goa seems so incredibly restful! You wake up to the sound of cocks crowing and a multitude of birds whistling and tweeting away in the trees outside your window. All day long squirrels run up and down the trees chattering to themselves. The Rodrigues’ bungalow where I normally stay (this time my friend Jyotsna and cousin Shiv were there too) overlooks the main road, beyond which lies an expansive grove of palm trees bordering the sea.

At the back is a thicket, where a movie is usually in progress, the main roles being taken up by pigs, dogs, chickens and cats who sleep, play, or quarrel with each other. Once Shiv and I actually saw something like an animal conference take place and I’m not joking. There were a dog, a cat, two pigs, and a goat all sitting together solemnly in a kind of semi circle in the neighbour’s compound. After a round of silent communication they got up and each went his own way. The cutest though, are the piglets which scamper, squealing all day long after their mamas.

Early mornings and late evenings you see toddy tappers shin up the towering palm trees to collect the sap that will eventually be distilled into Feni, which is drunk with limejuice and sometimes with soda with a pinch of salt. Except for the music which occasionally blares from the neighbour’s stereo, or the horrendously noisy air exercises undertaken by the naval establishment in Bogmalo (how I wish they would go and do their stuff elsewhere!) Bogmalo is peaceful. I was amazed at the fact that I hardly thought about Bombay or about work or anything for that matter.

That was a real holiday and now that I’m back I can’t wait to pack my bags and set off for Goa again!


Uma and Jyotsna at John's

Group website: www.basicindia.net

Airports!

I used to often think of airports as having an exotic atmosphere, as being a door to the mysterious, the unknown. A single step into that great silvery bird known as a plane would transport you thousands of miles away into strange and wonderful lands you had never even dreamt of.

I think differently now and am beginning to be aware of how very dull and soulless an airport can be. On our way to Goa for example, I watch the people around me in the departure lounge. There is something earthshakingly blank about their expressions. Men and women slump back in upholstered chairs, reading, listlessly playing with their mobiles. I watch a couple - he taking big bites out of a dry looking (typical airport) hamburger, she tucking into a packet of potato chips while their two kids run around the lounge, involved in some sort of chasing game.

A man holds a monologue on his cell phone, another out of sheer boredom toys with his. A foreign woman frowning over a magazine, nibbles at a chocolate bar while her friend, peers over her shoulder and tries to read alongside. An Indian woman deep into a novel by Jeffrey Archer smiles as she reads. An elderly woman, in a blue sari, crinkly white hair and a sensible looking face (whom Jyotsna and I both think looks familiar), settles down on the chair opposite mine, fishes out a paperback from her capacious and sensible looking bag and pores over it. The kids tearing around are the only ones to show any signs of life.

The two foreign women turn out to be German. One of them takes out a couple of foreign looking bottles of some orange drink from her rucksack and they both sip at it. Jyotsna says to me, “Doesn't she (the one on the right) look horrid?” Well I don’t know. I tell Jyotsna that she just looks terribly disapproving and at the same time foxed by her surroundings, as indeed many visitors from abroad tend to do.

+++

As usual there is a stampede to get on and off the aircraft. As if the plane might take off the way a bus does, the moment it is full. Seconds after the aircraft has landed the aisle is crammed with passengers reaching for their bags on the overhead racks and twisting and turning their heads to see if they can spot the quickest way out. The man next to me seeing me lean back impassively in my seat waiting for the rest of the passengers to clear off, impatiently taps his fingers on the back of his seat as if telling me to get off my ass and get going. I continue to sit and watch the rest of the crowd and just wait.

Finally we’re at the baggage section, we collect our luggage and it is a relief to step into the open and to recognise the office driver who has come to meet us, who goes and fetches the car as soon as he sees us trundling our trolley full of bags down the ramp. Our holiday is about to begin!

Group website: www.basicindia.net

Bogmalo Days

Hi Guys,

Greetings from Bogmalo, where we are busy tucking into fish and cheese garlic naan and all the specialities of John's restaurant by the sea, in Bogmalo. Too much into relaxing to write more than this but for some details about our stay here look up www.thecookscottage.typepad.com

More later!

“1984” has maybe not quite arrived but we’re getting there. George Orwell’s vision of Big Brother watching the world is a bit off the mark in terms of time, but the idea seems eerily true. I’m still thinking about all those goings on in the suburban cyber cafes. About modern technology. About web cams and the invasiveness of all this junk in our lives.

When web cams first made an appearance I felt the first uneasy nibbles of discomfort just to think of the manner in which they might be used. It looks like those fears were justified. Today it is not hard to see the uses to which modern technology can be put, to simply spy on others, to control the people in our lives, our neighbours, people at work.

A computer specialist I know, who is helping the police to set up new systems, proudly tells me that with the latest device - some kind of extra terrestrial mobile from the sound of it - you can listen to what people are saying within some hundred metres of where you’re sitting. This is supposed to be especially useful in your place of work. How horrible. What all this is leading to, is that you can’t speak, you can’t do anything and soon you wont be able to even think without everyone knowing what is in your mind and exactly what you have been up to.

Sometimes I think, maybe this is what we are meant to learn from the horrors of technology – even if in a rather grotesque fashion. To be more open to each other, to understand each other, not to judge, not to ridicule or control. In short, not to be afraid. In fact to aim for a society in which it wont matter terribly what other people think of us, because we will be able to say what we want to, to anyone, which will make “spying” redundant. If we could live like that, openly and with deep affection for each other there would be nothing to hide, and we would live the truth. We would live in the light of our connectedness, in the light of oneness. We would live, knowing that everything we do and say, has an impact on every other thing - not as we do now, in our own separate boxes in which you simply dont care what happens to anyone outside your box.

If some (or even none!) of this is making sense, maybe it is because a discussion on a subject like this can't be one sided (well a "discussion" by its very nature needs more than one person!!) and anyway, the topic itself can't be adequately dealt with, in a few sentences. There has to be a general sharing of insights and opinions – not of opinions arising from anger and indignation but rather of opinions resulting from really wanting the best for us all. After all, it is only possible to say this much and not more in a short post on a blog.

And now bye for the time being, I am off to Goa for a week with Jyotsna and we are going to be enjoying the sea, sun, and fish there. Not to mention beer and just plain chilling out! If I can get an internet connection I might be able to put in a few words now and then.

Cyber love space

This morning’s papers carried a report on a new trend in cyber cafes in suburban Bombay: to offer “private rooms” to teenagers or young adults who lacked the space to be on their own. These rooms are apparently fitted out with tiny cameras, which record all the goings on in the cubicle (where a couple go ostensibly to surf the net but in fact for “other reasons”). The upshot is, that if you’ve been indulging in any kind of lovemaking or sexual activities it is all recorded, the various shots are put together on a CD and the CD is then circulated among or sold to customers of the cyber café or friends of the café owner, for approximately Rs. 100.

Yes it is shocking. No doubt about that. Infringement of human rights and all that. Translating into a loss of respect for the clients who happen to have had the misfortune of hiring the booth for an hour, or couple of hours. Totally damaging to one’s ego. Loss of face. I would personally not like to be in that position. Aaaarrrrrgggggh!

But then I forced myself to look at the whole thing at a deeper level and this is what I also saw. That one of the reasons that this kind of thing even takes place is that human beings in most parts of the world make such a big deal about sex. Such a big deal about a perfectly human activity, which makes anything to do with sex seem criminal or ridiculous or both. What this story further shows up is the totally screwed up usage of space in cities. The fact that young people who do need privacy don’t get it. What the hell are they supposed to do when nature whistles and hormones start to gush out in an unmanageable fashion!

Also if we could start looking at the whole topic of sex a bit more rationally, a bit more sanely, if the subject began to shake off its current red flag status and to be accepted for what it is, people would generally lose their interest in the kind of voyeurism in which they tend to indulge today. Porn would lose its significance. Maybe you have never noticed this or not thought about it. But men and women who lead genuinely fulfilling sexual lives (you perhaps?) are really not interested any more in the kind cheap thrills that today’s newspaper reported on the front page. I am not suggesting free sex. I am not suggesting the kind of mindless sexual culture which brings with it, its own hard morality and lack of sensitivity and its own pressures which are not much less difficult to cope with than the pressures of a Victorian mentality.

All I think, is that the kind of incident reported in today's papers, gets its shock value from the narrow mindedness of the society we live in. And this in turn suggests that we take the topic of sex from out of the closet and give it a good airing, to begin with! Once that happens each individual will find it easier to decide what he/she wants or is good for him/ herself. We need to rope young people and old people, rich and poor and just about everyone into a really honest dialogue on sex. Because ultimately it is a question that concerns all of society and not just a few “westernised” or “forward” folk.

Group website: www.basicindia.net

Diary of a laidback Rebel

New Wine in Old Bottle

We’re a family of wine drinkers. Anyone who really knows us, and the fact that we are absolutely not corruptible (ahem!) will also know that at a pinch, they might be able to bribe us with a good red wine. So when guests come in from abroad among the other things they stagger in with, is the usual quota of bottles - without which they are afraid they might not be accommodated in the Ranganathan household. Like vultures we fall on the bounty but then unlike vultures and more like squirrels, we proceed to hoard it, and hoard it and hoard it and once in a while (actually in the “winter” months) we decide to open a bottle and enjoy it sitting on the balcony, watching the sea.

Yesterday was one of those days. My mother decided it was “time” so she brought out this bottle of French wine from our stock which looked so good you would be forgiven for ending up with a shirt front soaking with dribble. So then dad gets out the bottle opener and sticks it into the cork and twists the handle and twists and twists and twists and ... nothing happens. (If you’re getting the feeling by now that this is the story of my life, you might be forgiven – the phrase just seems to describe me and my life so well).

So Dad twists the handle of the bottle opener some more and I watch him with bated breath and cross my fingers and continue to watch and ... nothing happens. He twists some more, some more, some more and ... the cork begins to crumble.

Disaster! A French wine about to go down the drain before our eyes? I scold my dad for using the Rs. 25 bottle opener he bought in Goa, on an expensive bottle of imported wine. “You should have used a proper French bottle opener,” I tell him crossly.

Dad says sadly, “There are two lying in the drawer.” But it is too late. Anyway, Dad is so used to my furious glares, he has learnt to cope with them in an expert fashion (the same way he does with my mother’s constant reprimands about his untidiness, his absent mindedness, his inability to listen and about 687 other major faults) by choosing to ignore it all.

To get back to the bottle. Mum assures us that there is nothing wrong with the Goan bottle opener, she used it on a bottle of Indian red wine recently and it worked just fine. So yes, in fact we do notice now, that the problem has to do with the cork - and conclude that even seemingly good French wines can occasionally be plugged with rotten corks.

By now half the cork is lying in little bits on the table and the rest of it is slowly crumbling into the bottle. It seems most unlikely that we will be able to pull this one out at all, at least not with the conventional method. We are finally forced to somehow wrench out the opener and to use a sharp knife to get at the remnants of the cork. You can guess the rest. The moth-eaten bit of cork which remains in the neck of the bottle quietly disintegrates and sinks in ... And we do the only thing that is possible for us to do. Strain the wine through a square of muslin and store it in an empty bottle of “Old Monk.”

Dad fills up our glasses and a few minutes after this heart rending struggle has come to an end, we sit on the balcony with our wine and take a sip. And we sip on contentedly. Don’t know if it is just that we are tired from our efforts. But the wine tastes good!

Group website: www.basicindia.net

Memoirs of a laidback Rebel

Another story about technology

I’ve said this before and I don’t mind saying it again. There are times when I am convinced that technology, which is supposed to help us put our lives in order, confuses us far more than it straightens out our crooked little minds.

I became aware of this for the millionth time yesterday when my computer engineer came over to help me synchronise a new gadget with my desktop. (A hand held PC). He took one look at the mess of wires sticking out from behind the computer table and offered to straighten it all out for me. I thought why not, it wont take more than about fifteen minutes. Believe me, the clean up operation took Jamshed more than one and a half hours and Jamshed is QUICK and organised, himself!

When he pulled out the work table and I actually SAW the tangle of black wires I almost fainted. You know how it is. There is what they call the CPU, and various things like the mother board (why not father or Uncle board, actually?) and there is the monitor, and the UPS and the modem and the stereo speakers and and and ... Each of those separate objects comes with its own heap of wires which get tangled up in each other so in the end you have no clue as to where one begins and the other ends, and it all somehow looks like the messed up thoughts in a giant messed up human head.

Well J. began sorting out the wires very patiently, to do which he had to unplug each device, one by one. While he was doing this, I had the eerie and totally mad fantasy (hello paranoia!) of the bloke taking advantage of my dazed status and blinking eyes to quietly and smilingly walk away with the whole damn equipment, leaving me feeling like Dr. Livingstone being caught and dragged off to its den, by a stately lion (though, Dr. L. did manage to shake himself free from the beast’s mouth and crawl off to safety.) I imagined my entire computer and the associated paraphernalia being walked out like an obedient dog, and me sitting there sucking my thumb and robbed of the source of my primary addiction.

Then I went on to more practical things and asked myself the inevitable question – which I have asked myself at least a thousand times before: if something like this impossible scenario were to really unfold, if my comp and all that was associated with it were to disappear overnight due to whatever ... earthquake, floods, theft, what would happen? The answer was – nothing. Nothing would happen. Or then again, left without ANY source of diversion (I have given up the usual people associated diversions for a long time now) maybe I would become truly enlightened.

Well, I didn’t get enlightened yesterday evening. J. finished his work like a good boy and three hours after he had arrived, packed his bag and got ready to go, leaving my work table looking spic and span. Not before wishing me Happy Diwali with a firm handshake, though, and offering to bring me home cooked Biryani in the coming week when his family would be celebrating Id.

Group Website: www.basicindia.net

For those with slightly offbeat views on life check out: Bombay to Eternity, Memoirs of a laidback Rebel

Why do I write this blog

Keeping this blog has been an interesting experience. At times it feels pretty much like talking to yourself because there is so little response from anyone. So of course one has no clue as to whether others are reading what you write or you are the only one reading your blog (I mean really reading, let's not go by the number of "hits") and finally you get the whole point of keeping the journal. You do it for yourself. Primarily that is. But also with the barely perceptible hope of making contact with “someone out there” in outer space perhaps, who will both, benefit from what you communicate and also help enrich the communication, in whatever way. You write a bit, with the feeling of some extra terrestrial creature looking for its soul mates on a bizarre planet where nobody is listening to anybody else.

So I was glad to see Suresh’s comment on the last piece and I got the feeling that if there is even one person around to look at (not necessarily to agree with or appreciate) what I express, I’m happy. And I guess Suresh must be feeling the same about his blog. (Golden Boy).


It sometimes saddens me to see people so little interested in truly communicating with each other. We get bored very fast with things. Maybe, again, it has to do with the culture we live in, the fast paced “throw away” lives we lead. In a sense, in the same way that we keep throwing away everything - our phones and fax machines and stereos at the drop of a hat - we seem to throw away our lives. People so often talk about “re-making” or “re-inventing” themselves, making a human life sound like some designer product. Like come, let’s get Manish Malhotra to design our spare time a bit. Or decide what frills to put in, into those fifteen minutes we have between meeting Mr. Blab and Ms. Blah.

But finally you get the point. A human life is not about how many other people appreciate what you are doing or how you look. It is about whether you have the intelligence and energy to do what is right for you to do. Regardless of who’s looking and who turns away.

Every now and then (like at this moment) I sit up with a start, with the sober realisation (which invariably hits me like a jet of cold but fresh water). I am the only one responsible for the way I lead my life and for all that I say. That goes for this blog!


Group website: www.basicindia.net

What does noise communicate?

November 2005. Diwali is a bit more silent than usual this year. Maybe it is those explosions that rocked Delhi three days back. Maybe it is the bomb threats that so many of our public places and temples and mosques have been receiving from a lot of crazy terrorist organisations.

A friend who dropped by on Sunday evening, remarked how at the Siddhi Vinayak temple, there were more policemen around than devotees. Policemen presumably with rifles and sten guns and all the rest. Of course, this lady told us, (we are not temple goers so all this information is interesting for us) that even under normal circumstances, a visit to a temple like Siddhi Vinayak where the main shrine is down some steep steps, is quite an adventure. If there are no policemen to give you a sense of thrill there are always aggressive bulky women in the queue to push you aside, who in their attempt to advance forward themselves, almost succeed in knocking you down the stairs – presumably all the way to heaven.

Or maybe Diwali is more quiet this year because people no longer want to splurge on fireworks. I don’t know. I certainly DO NOT find the thought of the bomb threats very pleasant - but the thought of a quiet Diwali is soooo welcoming. Is this the price one pays for a quiet celebration?

Festivals and celebrations seem to have lost their significance altogether, in the past decades. Ganesh Chaturti, Dassehra or Diwali. They seem to give rise to a certain frequency of madness which you have to tune into yourself, in order to even vaguely enjoy the celebration, whatever it might be, even something as simple as a birthday party.

Noise. Why are Indians so fond of it? Or is it the world? I hate parties for this very reason. Most parties make me feel the madness of our world very intensely. The music (when there is music) is so deafening that all I manage to see the whole evening is the way in which human beings cover up their basic loneliness. Not being able to genuinely face one another, not being able to communicate. And so, having nothing to say to each other, we hide the fact with deafening sounds that blare from huge loudspeakers. And that is supposed to be fun. Ok. It is only my opinion, that this is NOT fun. Maybe plenty of others who have succeeded in tuning in to the general spirit of fun (my euphemism for madness) will tell me at this point how enjoyable such noisy evenings are, and I will keep my mouth shut. Because as I said in my last post, I don’t wish to argue any more!

But if there is anyone apart from me – anyone who appreciates a little silence and wants to, and is able to communicate without the aid of loudspeakers or inane chatter, please please get in touch! Let’s see what comes of our acquaintance!

Group website: www.basicindia.net