The Rebuff

He took a step back and beamed.

The leather shoes looked as good as new. Fifteen minutes of careful cleaning and polishing had paid off. He cleaned the last of the polish stains from his hands and prepared to leave.
Grabbed his laptop and strode carefully across the street avoiding the potholes filled with muddy water. An auto was hailed.
"Station?”.
"Chaliye".
Got off. Crossed the bridge. Jostled and pushed to get into the train compartment. Jostled and pushed to get out.
Another auto. Office. Washroom mirror.
Glanced at shoes-now muddy and with polish barely recognizable. From other feet that weren't as careful.
Wiped them clean with a tissue. Buffed them again on the back of his trouser legs.
Smiled.

"Always take pride in what you do son. And do the best that you can".

Thanks dad.

Marine Drive

Marine Drive in Bombay.
With the sky a gloomy grey.
With the wind blowing rain on your face.
With the waves crashing against the tetrapods.
With the bhutta and chanewalas.
With the occasional hawaldar.
With the moist air in your lungs.
With the boats ebbing in the distance.
With your feet over the edge.
And a friend.Or that special someone.
Perfection?

Policing Adults

Though I try and keep commentaries on political issues off my blog, there are times when amazing stupidity prevails in the universe despite there being plenty of sane people around. I’ll come around to that later in the post.

The latest case in point is that of TV channels being blocked in Maharashtra by a court ruling because of a PIL that accuses them of showing adult content that is termed as potentially damaging to kids. The said channels include HBO, Star Movies and AXN and these have been off the air for around a fortnight.

Which brings us to this minor point-how exactly do we define objectionable content?

By acceptability? Are the saans bahu soaps being widely screened across channels with their crazy plots of jealousy and scheming in families healthy food for thought for a kid? For that matter, are raunchy videos being aired on music channels okay too?

Indian channels today lack depth. With all channels striving to provide round the clock entertainment, it is no surprise that their quick fix solution to the programming shortage is to approve sub-standard content that gets the TRP’s up, however temporarily. And steamy content is the surest way to TRP heaven.

The court seems to say that this tendency is perfectly fine, as it seems to escape unpunished. But channels like HBO and Star that bring us ‘phoren’ content have, by default, no morality and thus should be blocked

If I remember correctly, Star stopped showing 18 rated movies after the mid-nineties. All the movies that are shown nowadays happen to be rated a max. rating of UA with a viewer discretion warning flashed at the start of the movie (To be fair HBO does not follow the same system).

If channels like Star movies could be banned, it would be for showing repetitive content. Because I don’t seem to find any objectionable content on channels like Star and HBO.Maybe that’s because that I’m an adult. And want to see movies depict adult issues. And adult issues do not mean smut.

I also seem to remember that most of the little ‘objectionable’ content I’d seen when I was a kid was beamed locally by the Cable guy. My parents reacted to objectionable content by changing the channel which seemed to work just fine then. And by teaching me to know the difference between good content and bad.

Which I guess is too much to expect from parents of today. They expect the government to make up for their inability to keep their kids from watching stuff on TV that they are not supposed to. They also cannot delete the objectionable channel from their TV or use the child lock feature that is available in many TV sets today. And they seem to be oblivious to the fact that to deny a kid anything is the surest way to get him interested.Or to the fact that every objectionable material is just a click away on the net or freely available at the friendly neighbourhood movie pirate.

But they do expect my tax money to help the government play benevolent nanny to parents who clearly aren’t doing their jobs right. Am I supposed to pay for diaper changes too?

Enforcing morality and ensuring that his or her child has the right influences while growing up is the respective parent’s job-not the government’s.

But as I pointed out at the beginning of my post, stupidity prevails. Mostly because the sane sorts are too busy getting on with their lives to act. A point that I have touched upon earlier in this blog.

Which is precisely why a litigant who has admitted in a newspaper interview that she thinks cartoons on TV are violent has succeeded getting the court to block channels instead of looking at saner alternatives.

But as they only affect India’s adult population of around a billion people, no one cares much.

Touché

Vande Mataram

Politicians and Indian politicians in particular seem to have a penchant for creating new issues for their moment in the spotlight.

It all began when the HRD ministry issued an order that Vande Mataram should be sung in all schools in the country on September 7, the supposed centenary of the song. While I did have Vande Mataram as a prayer everyday in school, I do understand that not everybody would be open to this suggestion. But the last thing that I expected was opposition from our Muslim leaders to the move on religious grounds. I understand the Islamic need to not salute anything other than Allah, but the prayer has a purely symbolic value in its current form where the ‘mother’ is the nation.

The entire issue has been blown out of proportion with Muslim leaders condemning the song as un-Islamic. It did have its roots in a Hindu prayer (to Durga, I think), but it is now a national symbol and needs to be viewed as such.

I don’t hear protests from other communities, or from Hindus who don’t pray to Durga (I don’t) about it being discriminating. Being diverse is very much a part of the Indian identity.

In a country that is predominantly Hindu, Christmas happens to be a holiday for everyone. Should I start coming to work on Christmas and demand another holiday as compensation just because I’m Hindu?

Interpretation of what has national significance is driven by common sense, a quality that is ironically missing in our politicos, the so called elected representatives of the Indian common man. And this has been the status quo for at least the last ten years, if not longer.

If this was always the case, I’m curious to know what Muslim freedom fighters chanted during the pre-independence struggle. Surely not Vande Mataram?

Today’s political leaders (and I mean leaders from all communities) have this strange need to drag out insignificant issues for debate and distort them because there have been no results on the other fronts that really matter.

National symbols are not intended to disrespect any community and they should be recognized for what they are-tokens of being a part of a diverse and dynamic nation.

Let them be.

There was a time when we celebrated our diversity.

Now we seem to be ashamed of it.

Mobile blogging

Somewhere down the line I sat up and realised that I wasn't blogging as often as I'd really like to.Not that hard to figure out why-can't sit down and edit a post in office and am not connected at home.

And so my blog gathered dust while I tried in vain to find time to blog.And managed instead to trek,catch a dozen or so movies,drink copious amounts of alcohol and change my job-the latter starting off an entirely new string of activities to distract me from posting stuff.

It was with this background that I read about the Sony Ericsson k610i on Cnet.

A phone?That blogs!!With pictures??-You've gotta be kidding me.

But I went out and bought it anyway.

And after the initial teething troubles with the blogging feature (the phone disconnected before I could agree to the terms and conditions) , I realised that this was brilliant.

I could capture any image and sit (not really necessary-the sitting part is optional) and compose a post almost anywhere (In a cab on the way back from a client meeting,awake in bed at night,during a boring product seminar..)The possibilities seemed endless.

And the phone compensated for my not being able to access my blog from work(Blogger isn't blocked but reality is a keyword that the system associates with something it should censor-porn maybe)

Yippee!!

To top it off the damn thing is light and extremely pocketable unlike the other cumbersome large Nokias I was considering.

As we Indians say-paisa vasool ;)

Go figure.