Rail’wayward’

If you wish to escape to Bangalore from the “unbearable” Chennai heat in the air-conditioned comfort of Shatabdi Express, think again.

The Indian railways’ recent decision to “upgrade” the coaches of that train by installing television screens in them, has, in effect, downgraded the sensibilities of passengers having to travel amid the cacophony of pure, unadulterated film music.

A travel by Shatabdi to Bangalore is anyway irritatingly punctuated by the catering department, from the sinful snack tray that ushers in the journey to the overloaded and overflowing dinner platter for that climactic ending.

But the torture is now magnified by the continuous cacophony of “fresh from the oven” raunchy film songs that comes packaged with provocative movements. What is very disturbing is that the railway ticket does not carry a U, UA or A certification. The coaches are indeed full of children, running up and down the aisle. Now, they have a distasteful baby-sitter, blaring raucous songs accompanied by gyrating pelvises and heaving bosoms.

The point is: Is film dance and music the only entertainment for us? Television channels observe even Gandhi Jayanti with “superhit” films, sponsored by videshi colas.
But why did the glorious Indian Railways succumb to this lewd temptation? The old and prestigious institution can surely sense aesthetics and introduce a low-volume, high-interest package on television. It could be a circus show, a gymnastic presentation, an animal channel, anything but these suggestive visuals. Is the Indian Railways listening?

Chaos or custom-made cities?

A river cruise takes me till the area where the sea takes over. The port is Malaca. The river is dotted on both sides with beautiful, old quaint buildings. Portuguese architecture vies for attention with stunning Dutch and English buildings along the way, as old-style bridges connect the opposite sides.  There is a connect, after all. The connect of the ancient and modern; of an antiquated post office building and an internet café; of the gastronomic excellence of a Nasi lemak and the ever-present pizza-burger; of ancient churches and the new temples of worship: malls.

The first Dutch ship to have landed in Malaca has been redesigned as a museum for the younger generation to understand the dynamics of a nation, born out of maritime trade relations between East and West. This southern Malaysian port is sleepy, but it had once been a hub of active trade, and one of the inspirations of European colonial ambition. Today, it stands as a mere reminder of the past. The aggressive sophistication of the present has conveniently swept those memories under gorgeous Persian carpets, desperately being preserved by standalone connoisseurs.

But this was one of the small pieces of Malaysia one can taste. The rest of the cities are like any other. The buildings, the flyovers, the malls, the brands, the food: there is no sense of heterogeneity. They all look alike. Probably they would in any city in the world, what with its indistinguishable flavours of burgers, pizza and mall “getaways” stocking identical brands . Is there anything native about a place today? I doubt it.

At least, the countryside in Malaysia has some pockets of pleasant distractions in the form of stray landforms and stuctures. But its neighbour, Singapore, was built, it seemed, in an assembly-line factory. The residential buildings and spaces look alike, the parks are mirror images; their cafeteria-food line-up almost clinically exact. It was as if a template was created and the city built on that. This clinical and too perfect a city can evoke a sense of boredom. Its lack of authenticity and the absence of nativity reflect an identity crisis, a personality disorder. Are all cities going this way?

Pockets of Indian cities, for sure, look the same with their malls, pizza-coffee-burger outlets and brands. But there are still native elements preserved in its chaotic nerve structure. Give me the chaos; I will choose it any day to the clinical precision of modern cities.

Water bomb's ticking

We pack our children’s school bag, doubly ensuring that they do not leave behind the two essentials: the lunch bag and the water bottle. But do we carry a water bottle when we leave the house?  Why bother. All we have to do is part with Rs 12 or Rs 15, depending on the “brand” of pure water, and we get to quench our thirst in “convenient” plastic bottles, stocked in every corner shop in the country. Right? Wrong!

We need to bother as the bottles we use and throw are all out in its bio-non degradable form, choking our planet’s dump yard. Recently, my friend had sent a picture of a heritage site buried under a mound of plastic water bottles. That was just a fragment of the bigger time bomb merrily ticking away in our planet.

Will it be simpler to just fill up a bottle whenever we step out? Just our little bit. I have heard people say, what difference does it make if one person does it? What about the rest? Someone has to start somewhere.

This sounds pedagogical? Sorry, cannot help it.

Today, drinking water flow freely at large conclaves and conferences, small gatherings, fat weddings and  family functions through mini packaged plastic bottles. What is even more frustrating is when even quarter-used bottles are binned. This is double whammy: drinking water flows into the drain and more plastic is added to the planet.

Our fitness freaks run marathons, well-advertised and sponsored by corporates, and leave behind a monstrous clutter of plastic water sachets, making our planet that much more unfit.

The world water day is on March 22 to remind us of the resource that is getting scarily scarce. But we do not seem to just get it. We start rationing water when there is a red alert on scarcity. Once the dark cloud passes, we resume scrubbing vessels leaving the tap on. We do not tell our children not to turn on the tap during the process of brushing their teeth, but only to rinse. Our children have enough and more of television and ipods; they can do without the water music as they wake up or before they slip into slumber. We indulge in the Jacuzzi-type shower (like we see those jaw-dropping men and women in ads). We scrub and wash our cars like they are hitting a night club. We water the pathway like there was a storm the previous night. We mercilessly throw the water filled up in our buckets two days back when there would have been a water crisis warning, saying it is “old”.

The water bomb’s ticking;tick, tick, tick. It is time to wake up to this alarm.

Green drain

Will our cities ever allow us to go green?

I have been thinking about this question over and over again as I walk to my College as a green initiative at least three days a week. First, there is no road as I come out of my house, so to speak. It is gravel, sand and stones just put together on undulating patches and the rest of what is there or not there is in pits, literally. Patches have been dug up in the name of storm water drainage and it has been like that for months.

This challenging stretch leads to the chaotic four-point crossing with a narrows fifth lane pushing itself for attention.

The Chennai transport corporation buses charge menacingly, disregarding the red light. The threatened pedestrians are then forced to retract apologetically despite the signal post flashing green over the walk sign.

The SUVs and Sedans along with the two- and three-wheelers complete the chakravyuh (the circled trap), frustrating the poor pedestrians’ attempts. And, senior citizens are in for a rude, insensitive shock as they are unable to importune their way across the ominous crossing to reach their nationalised banks to update their passbooks or collect their pensions.

Once I manage to go to the other side, as a person and not as a corpse, I am forced to manoeuvre around piles of garbage, left unattended by corporation officials. The trash strays into streets after flowing out of unkempt bins. If I am not careful, I might just about squash a plastic bag of smelly, discarded sambhar or assorted plastic rubbish or used poopy nappies or even used sanitary napkins.

We want to go green. We want to walk, we want to cycle; we want to take the public transport. We want to save fuel for the next generation. We want to reduce ravaging our planet. We want our next generation to breathe easy.

There is enormous temptation to take out the car to avoid the bad roads, the disrespect of vehicles to pedestrians and cyclists and walking on trash. We will fight that. But wouldn’t it be helpful if there was some cooperation from corporation and the government and a little compassion and show of concern by our motorists?

Coming back to the question: Will our cities allow us in our green endeavour?

Salaam, Kalam

Thank you, Mr Kalam!

For maintaining a dignified silence throughout the drama staged outside the gates of Rashtrapati Bhavan;

For watching the chequered games of our political parties who are using the presidential election to checkmate one another;

For being the uninterested bystander as Mamata Banerjee performed her street plays in Delhi;

For being nonchalant when the West Bengal chief minister dragged Mulayam Singh Yadav to pledge his Samajwadi Party’s support for her choice: by the way, it was You, Mr Kalam;

For remaining oblivious to THE Congresswoman and her sycophants playing games in our democratic field and finally zeroing in on Pranab Mukherjee, who is desperate to come out of the sinking ship, also called the Indian economy;

For being non-committal from the beginning when the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance proposed your name to score a point against the UPA-nominated Pranab;

Thank you, Mr Kalam, for standing by the people of this country;

For not budging from the pedestal, where you had placed yourself simply by being you;

For snubbing all those political clowns who claim to represent us.

Thank you, once again, Mr Kalam.

Post Script: I hope Mamata does not read this. I have called her tribe clowns. She may call me a Maoist and order my arrest.

Mobile revulsion

“Don’t lie,” a girl, sitting next to me in the public bus, snarled.

I looked at her, rather startled, my expression soon changing to that of amusement: I detected a wired device connected to her mobile phone that was peeping out of her bag.

A quick survey threw up an amazing answer: most of the passengers in the bus were talking into their mobiles. This was not a stand-alone phenomenon. Being a public transport user, I found this mass walkie-talkie spectacle in every bus, every train.

This mobile revolution has made all of us look like morons on the road, enslaving us all, reducing us to the lowest levels of insanity.

When we walk on the road, we see most of them talking aloud into their wired devices; most of them gesticulating with great intensity, totally unaware of everything around them. Without a dunce cap or those “mental inside” T-shirts, they would still qualify as deranged. So, passing cyclists now have the added responsibility of negotiating their way past these walkie-talkies apart from those impatient and rash two-three-four-wheelers.

We see bikers craning their neck to one side talking into their phones that precariously rest on their shoulders even as they flout all traffic rules. We see people talking on their phones while on the wheels, in blatant disregard to safety norms. We see pedestrians sauntering across busy zebra crossings as if they were in a park, their mobile conversation dictating their pace.

What we have got ourselves into is mobile insanity, mobile indiscipline, mobile helplessness; in short we have all become portable carriers of unruliness, chaos in their 2G and 3G versions.

The wise claim that technology has shrunk this world. Yes, it has blurred geographical distances. But hasn’t it increased distances among us? We prefer talking to people far and away, but do not feel it necessary to interact with those we rub shoulders with.

In a restaurant, very few tables will witness family time well spent. Most families look fragmented, with spouses on the phone, texting or talking. I recently saw two families sitting on a table together, apparently to celebrate someone’s birthday. But they were all talking into their respective phones. When the chef approached one of them to check when the cake would have to be delivered, he had to wait there for a good 5 minutes for the instructions because the guests and the hosts were all busy interacting with the world outside.

What is this mobile revolution getting us into? Is this a good idea sirjee?

I call this a mobile revulsion.

Mamata’s Knight out

Eden Gardens was packed, inside and outside; but there was no match being played there. It was an ecstatic Mamata Banerjee and her team who led a victory lap for the Kolkata Knight Riders after a felicitation ceremony outside Writers Buildings that included flowers, shawls and shondesh for the players and glitzy team owners. And, in the stadium, the West Bengal chief minister actually shouted into the mike, goading the crowd to chant the korbo-lorbo-jeetbo war cry. News channels went live to capture the moment. The crowd, too, went berserk outside the VIP gates and had to be pushed out with police batons. It was as if the entire city, specially its glitterati, had converged to participate in the celebrations. What’s more: the West Bengal Governor was present during this post-IPL tamasha. It was indeed a tamasha. The Bengali film fraternity was present to full strength, desperately trying to snatch the attention from the victorious team members. They refused to budge an inch from the front row, even as players disembarked from their bus towards a smiling Mamata outside. The chief minister took it upon herself to even control the crowds. She was all over the place, mike in hand, giving orders to people, press, policemen, and Shah Rukh Khan. “Shah Rukh, ekhane esho (Shah Rukh, come here)”, she said, delegating some chore for him. And, the obedient Shah Rukh Khan gave an award-winning performance of that gracious, humble Bengal brand ambassador, occasionally showering affection on his fiery didi. Or was that act to avoid him being labelled a Maoist? Poor guy is already barred from Wankhede stadium. He has been sued for smoking in Rajasthan stadium. The US is always asking why his name is Khan. Keeping didi in good humour is probably the wisest decision. Television viewers across the country were treated to some news reporting fun too, when channel reporters screamed into their mikes over the Bengali film brigade’s attitude. “They have no right to be there. These players have sweated it out and won for the city. These actors have no right to be at the centre-stage,” shouted the Times Now correspondent. These high-decibel sound-bites, though an ear-sore for viewers, showed another angle of the tamasha. So why were these IPL winners given a state welcome as never seen in the earlier four editions? True, KKR won after a five-year-wait. But was it really a victory befitting a state honour? There can be arguments for and against. The fans will obviously agree that their heroes made their city proud. That the city is marked bold on the IPL map after those four years of poor showing. The critics will call it a waste of time, energy and money. I would like it see it this way. Mamata showed a lot of promise when she was sworn in. But she has not been able to evolve from being a street-fighter to an administrator. She has been berated for continuing to be a stormy petrel, rather than managing a debt-riddled state. She has been a trouble-maker rather than a trouble-shooter most of the time. Her weakness comes across with her Maoist paranoia and the subsequent intolerance to uneasy cartoons and debates. In this mood, Mamata’s goading the crowd to sing the KKR’s korbo-lorbo-jeetbo anthem was parochialism at its best. But it seemed like her desperate attempt to prove a point through the IPL victory. After all, IPL is a corporatized sport. And it really need not be made into such a big, proud moment. All those who have been associated in the event have laughed loudly all the way to the bank, ruining for others all those precious and productive man/woman hours spent in front of the television set and stadia from April 4 to May 27. I see this entire exercise not as a routine felicitation event, but as an emotional appeal to the people of Bengal to support her and her endeavours. She is trying to give her message to the youth of Bengal to work, fight and win (that is what Korbo-lorbo-jeetbo stands for). And, to be fair to her, she needs the youth to wake up and fight to get Bengal onto the political and economic map of the country.