A friend recently, while narrating his trysts with the good ol’ arranged-marriage-beast, ended with - I like a little bit of passion, energy. It’s not that I want her to agree with me all the time or say only nice things. In fact, even when she says - You are an asshole, it should compel me to think - Am I really?
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
A tale of many cities - A tale of just one city
You know you are in Kanpur when
1. You go to a mall, the city’s best and biggest, itching to spend some money and the only stuff you find to spend it on is some really oily dosa and half-boiled corn
2. A walk on the main road at 2 in the afternoon is punctuated by vulgar comments and some really vulgar comments
3. There is no transport that looks palatable, except if you want to make your journey with some suspicious looking characters in ten-seater tempo-vans. I dare you, especially after having had a sufficient dosage of the afore-mentioned vulgar comments
4. Every T,D and H (and by that I do not mean Tall, Dark and Handsome) dons a leather jacket
5. On the subject of leather, you see carts and trucks piled with leather shavings. You see towering tanneries dotting the landscape fortress-like
6. There are more educational institutes and coaching classes than tanneries
7. There are more chemists and angrezi dawakhane than educational institutes and coaching classes
8. There are more angrezi sharab ke theke than chemists
Like my Senior from Savories, I too fall in love with cities. I fall in love with the time having spent there, with the people.
That special Kanpuri accent, actually central-UP accent. Enunciate every word. Not like your Dilli-rajdhani that eats up half its words and blurs the edges of the remaining.
Nahi Bhaiiiyaa. Har ek shabd ko dabake boliye. Haan. Bilkul aiise hi. Kya samjhe?
For the first time in my life, I don’t feel I will be taken to be an outsider because I speak with the newspaper-wala and the dukaandaar and the traffic cop and the thanedaar in Hindi. Hindi is the local language here. (In Delhi, you don’t speak to anybody. I don’t know if they have devised an advanced technique of robbing you just by speaking to you).
Then there are the paan-walas of Kanpur. I saw a board which said - Ladies Paan Center. Go figure.
Oh, the milk-trains. UP and Bihar are not called the cow-belt for nothing. So everyday thousands of men from villages make their way to the towns and cities with their pitchers of milk. I saw a train the other day and the entire length of it had milk cans hanging from outside its windows.
Yes, I have lived in many cities and each one has a place, in my mind, in my memories.
I do feel like an outsider though.
I always will. In any place in the world. Except one.
These others, they mean nothing. I keep coming back to you and you draw me into your steely embrace. You make me feel like I belong. I admire your sensibilities - your ability to absorb, your ability to bear, your temperance, your infinite aspiration, your tendency to flatten everybody into nameless entities - the great leveller that you are, your resourcefulness - you never disappoint, your devilish dual nature - you want to crush people into oblivion and yet and yet, you want them to crush you, you want them to prove their mettle to you so that you can elevate them to the dizzying heights of achievement.
You know you complete me.
1. You go to a mall, the city’s best and biggest, itching to spend some money and the only stuff you find to spend it on is some really oily dosa and half-boiled corn
2. A walk on the main road at 2 in the afternoon is punctuated by vulgar comments and some really vulgar comments
3. There is no transport that looks palatable, except if you want to make your journey with some suspicious looking characters in ten-seater tempo-vans. I dare you, especially after having had a sufficient dosage of the afore-mentioned vulgar comments
4. Every T,D and H (and by that I do not mean Tall, Dark and Handsome) dons a leather jacket
5. On the subject of leather, you see carts and trucks piled with leather shavings. You see towering tanneries dotting the landscape fortress-like
6. There are more educational institutes and coaching classes than tanneries
7. There are more chemists and angrezi dawakhane than educational institutes and coaching classes
8. There are more angrezi sharab ke theke than chemists
Like my Senior from Savories, I too fall in love with cities. I fall in love with the time having spent there, with the people.
That special Kanpuri accent, actually central-UP accent. Enunciate every word. Not like your Dilli-rajdhani that eats up half its words and blurs the edges of the remaining.
Nahi Bhaiiiyaa. Har ek shabd ko dabake boliye. Haan. Bilkul aiise hi. Kya samjhe?
For the first time in my life, I don’t feel I will be taken to be an outsider because I speak with the newspaper-wala and the dukaandaar and the traffic cop and the thanedaar in Hindi. Hindi is the local language here. (In Delhi, you don’t speak to anybody. I don’t know if they have devised an advanced technique of robbing you just by speaking to you).
Then there are the paan-walas of Kanpur. I saw a board which said - Ladies Paan Center. Go figure.
Oh, the milk-trains. UP and Bihar are not called the cow-belt for nothing. So everyday thousands of men from villages make their way to the towns and cities with their pitchers of milk. I saw a train the other day and the entire length of it had milk cans hanging from outside its windows.
Yes, I have lived in many cities and each one has a place, in my mind, in my memories.
I do feel like an outsider though.
I always will. In any place in the world. Except one.
These others, they mean nothing. I keep coming back to you and you draw me into your steely embrace. You make me feel like I belong. I admire your sensibilities - your ability to absorb, your ability to bear, your temperance, your infinite aspiration, your tendency to flatten everybody into nameless entities - the great leveller that you are, your resourcefulness - you never disappoint, your devilish dual nature - you want to crush people into oblivion and yet and yet, you want them to crush you, you want them to prove their mettle to you so that you can elevate them to the dizzying heights of achievement.
You know you complete me.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Just the Bees
Today I got some dope on bee-keeping. It is quite a profitable business apparently.
What got me thinking and I am wondering why I haven’t thought about it before, is how the bee colony behaves.
So there is one and only one queen, The Queen Bee and all she has to do is reproduce. The male bees, also known as the drone bees, they, well, assist. The worker bees, tens of thousands of them, as the moniker suggests are the ones that do all the work - they go out and get the nectar, they make it into honey by ingesting and regurgitating that nectar a thousand times and they look after the young larvae. They also protect the hive since they possess the sting.
What is strange are the group dynamics. So there can’t be two queen bees in a hive. If such a situation does develop, it will result in fighting and wide-spread destruction. While jealousy, ego-clashes and the like are quite the norm among humans, imagine bees behaving like such divas.
What is even more interesting is that the bee society is a matriarchal one. They worship the queen, because she gives birth. It is the highest calling. If she goes amiss, the hive disintegrates. They all pack-up and leave.
As an aside, the flowers give their nectar freely in exchange for some pollination.
This post has taken on a life of its own. Ideas are flying as I write. I am thinking, every other creature on earth is quite blatant and unashamed about the fact that the prime motive of their lives is to procreate, to spread the seeds of their species as far and as wide as possible. Humans are the only ones that look to the arts, philosophy, intellectual stimulation and love as being central to their existence. Humans are the only ones who search for a purpose and a calling and some higher plane. Then again, humans are the only ones that desecrate the process of procreation and dishonor the provenance of creation - the woman.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
The Dark Edge
You like the wistfulness
Of blurred memories
They are like sweet nectar
To your rotten soul
You plant the seeds
Of fear in my belly
Fear of moving outside safe havens
Safe, or so you tell me
But your swan song is past
So be gone with grace
And when I look in the mirror
I don’t want to see your hideous face
Of blurred memories
They are like sweet nectar
To your rotten soul
You plant the seeds
Of fear in my belly
Fear of moving outside safe havens
Safe, or so you tell me
But your swan song is past
So be gone with grace
And when I look in the mirror
I don’t want to see your hideous face
Monday, January 05, 2009
Interesting Times
I am seeing a lot of unconventional advertising nowadays. Maybe because I have started noticing more, or maybe because the agencies are getting more creative, the companies/organizations are getting more risk-loving and the consumers are getting bored - the need of the hour is clutter-breaking advertising.
Let me start by saying I am not talking about television media.
So what have we? The newspaper that you read everyday for one. Boring, you say. Advertising in newspapers is old hat. Even the shady neighborhood gymkhana does it. Then picture this. You pick up your TOI and it’s as if half the front page has been wiped out. So you get to read only half the sentences and headlines, see half the pictures. It’s not a 100%. What is? Only Tropicana.
Look out for more such creative print ads. I have spotted a couple of others, but there is no way I will be able to describe the impact here. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Then there is Viral. Usually these are quite humorous since you are not paying through your nose for every second that the ad runs. So there is this IDBI Fortis Wealthsurance one which makes ample use of the fact that Rajanikanth is baap of all and no one, I repeat, no one has that kind of fan-following.
This is only the tip of the ice-berg. Digital marketing is exploding in ways unimaginable. Whether it is about catching surfers in a cyber-café, or having voice alerts that talk about giving you a pizza free if not delivered within 30 minutes when you type in ‘Pizza’ into Google search - there are myriad ways of catching attention.
And now, one of my favorites - OOH - Out of Home. The ‘Red Ribbon Express’ was an initiative undertaken in 2007 wherein a train would travel the length and breadth of India for 180 days, housing in it - exhibitions, counseling and medical centers, auditoriums and carrying with it people who would disembark at the stations and cycle into the towns and villages to stage skits and plays on Aids awareness. I hear that this concept has been used by companies as well.
And I end with this. Brand - Hobby Ideas.
Let me start by saying I am not talking about television media.
So what have we? The newspaper that you read everyday for one. Boring, you say. Advertising in newspapers is old hat. Even the shady neighborhood gymkhana does it. Then picture this. You pick up your TOI and it’s as if half the front page has been wiped out. So you get to read only half the sentences and headlines, see half the pictures. It’s not a 100%. What is? Only Tropicana.
Look out for more such creative print ads. I have spotted a couple of others, but there is no way I will be able to describe the impact here. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Then there is Viral. Usually these are quite humorous since you are not paying through your nose for every second that the ad runs. So there is this IDBI Fortis Wealthsurance one which makes ample use of the fact that Rajanikanth is baap of all and no one, I repeat, no one has that kind of fan-following.
This is only the tip of the ice-berg. Digital marketing is exploding in ways unimaginable. Whether it is about catching surfers in a cyber-café, or having voice alerts that talk about giving you a pizza free if not delivered within 30 minutes when you type in ‘Pizza’ into Google search - there are myriad ways of catching attention.
And now, one of my favorites - OOH - Out of Home. The ‘Red Ribbon Express’ was an initiative undertaken in 2007 wherein a train would travel the length and breadth of India for 180 days, housing in it - exhibitions, counseling and medical centers, auditoriums and carrying with it people who would disembark at the stations and cycle into the towns and villages to stage skits and plays on Aids awareness. I hear that this concept has been used by companies as well.
And I end with this. Brand - Hobby Ideas.
Friday, January 02, 2009
Flower Power
I met a couple of NGOs today. It’s fascinating how the system works. There are innumerable such people who start these NGOs. Say, one is named - Jagrut Mahila Samiti. They can be working for infinite number of causes - nutrition during pregnancy, fight against domestic abuse, education etc. They sometimes also set up ‘Self Help Groups’ - SHGs or ‘Swaym Seva Samoohs’ as they are called in Hindi. They are the intermediaries between women who want to get involved in some enterprise and the banks that lend them money. They get targets from the government authorities and get paid a sum as per performance.
An SHG is a collection of 10-20 women. They get an account in one of the nationalized or Grameen banks. These Grameen banks have their offices in shabby little rickety buildings, but they do amazing work. They are usually affiliated to some nationalized bank.
When a group is set up, the women all pool in a fixed amount of money every month. The bank also loans them some amount of money after a period of time, if it sees that the women have been depositing money regularly and their bank balance is healthy. After a while, it loans them a bigger sum of money and waives-off one-third of it.
The women also charge each other an interest internally in case one of them wants to borrow money for something urgent from their joint deposit.
The problem is not the lack of governmental initiative. That is firing on all cylinders as I see it. There are two other major problems. One, when the money is loaned out, there are enough people in the system to demand a commission. Around 20% of the hand-out gets dissipated through that channel. The second problem is that the women don’t use the money for business i.e. they don’t invest in ventures that will give them a steady income for years to come. They use the money for short-term gains, at most, buffaloes.
On a lighter note, this NGO woman I met today had set up a Mahila Forum in some village in UP which would go and beat up the men who perpetrated domestic abuse on their women. Apparently they became extremely powerful in the village; the men would quake in their boots at the thought of them.
By the way, Happy New Year to all who are reading this. May you find all your answers.
An SHG is a collection of 10-20 women. They get an account in one of the nationalized or Grameen banks. These Grameen banks have their offices in shabby little rickety buildings, but they do amazing work. They are usually affiliated to some nationalized bank.
When a group is set up, the women all pool in a fixed amount of money every month. The bank also loans them some amount of money after a period of time, if it sees that the women have been depositing money regularly and their bank balance is healthy. After a while, it loans them a bigger sum of money and waives-off one-third of it.
The women also charge each other an interest internally in case one of them wants to borrow money for something urgent from their joint deposit.
The problem is not the lack of governmental initiative. That is firing on all cylinders as I see it. There are two other major problems. One, when the money is loaned out, there are enough people in the system to demand a commission. Around 20% of the hand-out gets dissipated through that channel. The second problem is that the women don’t use the money for business i.e. they don’t invest in ventures that will give them a steady income for years to come. They use the money for short-term gains, at most, buffaloes.
On a lighter note, this NGO woman I met today had set up a Mahila Forum in some village in UP which would go and beat up the men who perpetrated domestic abuse on their women. Apparently they became extremely powerful in the village; the men would quake in their boots at the thought of them.
By the way, Happy New Year to all who are reading this. May you find all your answers.
The Cow Belt
I was in Pondicherry last week and am in Kanpur now. Every day, I go to a couple of villages and see how rural sales happen. More importantly, I see what the rural way of life is. Strangely I feel at home. But that’s another story.
Villages are no longer what they used to be. Lives have improved in the past few years, is my first impression. Roads have been built, they are being built. Places that used to be inaccessible in the monsoons due to huge tracts of muck, are now not so. There are schools - private schools and government schools and there are colleges on the highways. Although a person would have to travel around 20 kms to study in one of them. There are organizations that provide teachers to schools on a contractual basis. There are hand-pumps, which have made the bore-wells obsolete in many places.
There is easier access to loans. Quite a few banks around to lend money and waive off some part of it too. The disadvantage here is that, while earlier stringent checks would happen before the money was released; now sometimes, due to reduced red-tape, the Presidents and Secretaries of the Panchaayats pocket it.
Don’t get me wrong. There is huge scope for improvement. There need to be more schools, colleges, more awareness of what these children can do with their lives after that. Better sanitation facilities, more exposure for women, better reach to towns around. Pukka houses, better farm equipment, more emphasis on health and hygiene. The list is endless.
But in the heartland of Uttar Pradesh, as I zip across the many many lovely dancing-in-the-sun-daffodillian mustard stalks, the cabbage patches and the pumpkins on the roof-tops, I think to myself - these people aren’t woe-begone and destitute, I have seen worse. I have seen worse expressions on the faces on those kids who lunge at every car at the traffic signals - to sell something or wash windows or simply beg. That haggard look of malnutritioned-grief or cunning which comes from living and surviving on the streets. Children with injection marks on their arms, children with broken bodies - possibly broken by the local gundas who push them into begging, children who scavenge in the dumps for their daily meal.
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die" - a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
Villages are no longer what they used to be. Lives have improved in the past few years, is my first impression. Roads have been built, they are being built. Places that used to be inaccessible in the monsoons due to huge tracts of muck, are now not so. There are schools - private schools and government schools and there are colleges on the highways. Although a person would have to travel around 20 kms to study in one of them. There are organizations that provide teachers to schools on a contractual basis. There are hand-pumps, which have made the bore-wells obsolete in many places.
There is easier access to loans. Quite a few banks around to lend money and waive off some part of it too. The disadvantage here is that, while earlier stringent checks would happen before the money was released; now sometimes, due to reduced red-tape, the Presidents and Secretaries of the Panchaayats pocket it.
Don’t get me wrong. There is huge scope for improvement. There need to be more schools, colleges, more awareness of what these children can do with their lives after that. Better sanitation facilities, more exposure for women, better reach to towns around. Pukka houses, better farm equipment, more emphasis on health and hygiene. The list is endless.
But in the heartland of Uttar Pradesh, as I zip across the many many lovely dancing-in-the-sun-daffodillian mustard stalks, the cabbage patches and the pumpkins on the roof-tops, I think to myself - these people aren’t woe-begone and destitute, I have seen worse. I have seen worse expressions on the faces on those kids who lunge at every car at the traffic signals - to sell something or wash windows or simply beg. That haggard look of malnutritioned-grief or cunning which comes from living and surviving on the streets. Children with injection marks on their arms, children with broken bodies - possibly broken by the local gundas who push them into begging, children who scavenge in the dumps for their daily meal.
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die" - a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
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