Mechanical Misadventures

Well, I had it coming; I was going to have to get my bike serviced. I’ve been driving it around in Delhi for the last three or four months ever since I moved back to Delhi from Pune. After a particularly hard day of driving a few days ago, my bike pretty much gave in and it was all I could do to coax it back home without breaking down. Today being the only free day I have in my schedule for this week, I forced myself to get the required work done on my bike. Going to a mechanic is not a simple issue for me, while most just put their faith in the mechanic and leave their bikes to be worked on, I don’t trust them to do a good job without supervision, so to get a servicing, I require a full free day.
Since this was the first time I was getting my bike worked on in Delhi, I was going to have to look for a mechanic. Company authorised showrooms are no good (see Original Duplicates), so I found myself looking for a regular mechanic. The one I found and settled on was a small shop, in an area full of mechanics. Unfortunately his shop was downwind of a meat shop, as a result, when I first entered the shop, it was to the accompaniment of screaming chickens being slaughtered, in an atmosphere dense with the stench of chicken faeces and rotting blood. As the wind blew, it brought with it a storm of feathers and intensified the smell. Hardly an auspicious start.
Explaining to the mechanic what it was that I wanted done was typically complex. Indian mechanics have their own dialect, half of their vocabulary is bastardised English and the rest is unintelligible Hindi. For instance a worm gear is a garare, nose pliers are plas and the muffler becomes a pungli. You would think that their lingo would be easy to pick up but the problem is, their jargon varies from one place to the other. Pungli for example is used in Pune, in Delhi, no one knows what it means (and this suits me fine because, frankly it sounds a bit obscene), garare on the other hand is used exclusively in Delhi, Pune mechanics (thankfully) still call a gear a gear. Plas are more or less universal.
Mechanics are a wide and varied bunch, while most are inept to the point of seeming retarded; some in particular are really special. I found one such special mechanic in Pune. I was really far from my usual garage (pronounced gaa-ridge) and I found that my kick (kick starter) had stopped working. Since my bike has no electric start, I was pretty much stranded. Somehow with a friends help, I got my bike started, not willing to risk the long ride back home, I decided to drop my bike off at a nearby garage that my friend claimed was very good. Entering, his large compound, the first thing that I saw was Lambretta (a classic Italian scooter) in decent condition, this got me really excited, I was thinking to myself that the guy must be a great biking enthusiast to have a classic like the Lambretta in such good condition. Inside there were hundreds of photos of his father (a veteran bike racer), with Jawas, Thunderbirds, Nortons and dozens of other classics, I really thought I had died and gone to heaven. The man himself impressed me to no end, he spent the whole evening jawing about what a great guy he was, what he’d done and how much more he knew about bikes than anyone else while two friends and I sat enraptured, listening, worshipping; silently. He had made himself out to be such a superhuman that for a while I was under he impression that he was a character straight out of Ayn Rand, Howard Roark or Hank Rearden maybe. I was actually worried about how I was going to pay him, the way he talked, I half expected him to tell me that my money was worthless to him.
The problem with my bike as he discovered was that a small lock that had broken, however since it was late in the evening, I’d have to wait till the next day till the parts-shop opened. It was pouring with rain the next day as I made my way to his shop. Once I had bought the lock, it took him about an hour to fix and re-assemble my bike. With my bike fixed, I braved the rain and drove home. On my way home, I had stopped halfway to meet some friends, standing talking them in the rain, I noticed large purple blobs floating in the water under my bike. Intrigued, I investigated further only to found that it was engine oil dripping slowly out of my bike. The bastard for all his bragging couldn’t even seal my engine properly, something even a mechanics apprentice would be able to do in his sleep with one hand tied behind his back and both legs in plaster.
I filled the engine up with cheap recycled oil and drove back, my mind in a paranoid frenzy, imagining everything that could go wrong with my bike. I could almost see the bare metal gears eating into each other, in every false neutral, every gearshift, I could hear my bikes death rattle. Fortunately though nothing went wrong that day and I made it back to his garage before any serious damage occurred. The major problems that I have faced though have been the result of the bumbling ineptitude of other mechanics; I will leave those stories for another day and another post.

College Days

As always, when I am half drunk, I began to reminisce, today’s topic of reminiscence is college. The only thing I can remember right now of college is my final Animal Tissue Culture practical exam partly because it was almost the last thing I did in college and partly because during the exam I came ever so close to disaster.
ATC for the uninitiated basically involves growing cells from animal (we used human) tissue in the lab to further use in experiments or in industrial production of a lot of important drugs. The most important factor in your technique is in maintaining sterile conditions, without which, your experiment pretty much goes to shit. So to ensure sterility we don our lab-coats, masks and the lot, pretty much standard stuff. The only difference between us and a proper lab, being that we preferred to remain barefoot rather than buying a separate pair of slippers exclusively for lab use.
The ATC lab was divided into four 2 by 5 meter cubicles with a corridor outside. Each cubicle had a glass door through which we could be observed. The cubicles were equipped with a Laminar air flow hood, basically a box close on five sides, you sit at the open end and a stream of filtered, sterile air blows at you, this theoretically ensures that all work you carry out inside is in sterile conditions. We additionally used a Bunsen Burner inside the airflow to reduce chances of contamination.
So picture this, a tiny sealed room, no air-conditioning, no fresh air, in forty-degree heat and on top of that, there is a stream of air being blown at you across a hot flame while you are wearing a thick lab coat and a mask which renders breathing normally, near impossible. Now imagine working like this for almost two hours.
On top of that, the examiner was well known for being a bit of a bastard. He looked a bit like a mummified corpse too and that was enough to scare me shitless.
For the practical, we were assigned a set of procedures to carry out to demonstrate our ability to work in the lab, apart for being judged on the actual result of the experiments, the examiner would constantly watch us, peering malevolently through the glass panes as we worked, marking us on our skill.
To start off the day, the electricity in our labs kept going and even when they had rectified the problem by laying down miles of wiring across the floor (which I inevitably tripped over), for some reason the supply to my cubicle kept going on and off. Now when the electricity goes, the airflow stops working so you have to stop work, get up and pull down the cover of the hood to maintain sterility inside.
Wouldn’t you know it, whenever the electricity went, I’d get up to pull down the cover, then suddenly the airflow would come on again. As I would sit down to resume work, there would be the examiner, staring bug-eyed into the lab, licking his chops and writing down something in his note-book. I pretty much was under the impression that he thought I was a bit of an idiot, who kept getting up, pulling the cover half way and then shoving it back. This unnerved me to such an extent that for the first half an hour I gave up work and just sat in one corner doing calculations on a piece of paper till my teacher told me to get a move on and actually do the experiment.
Once I had started though I got caught up in the flow and worked pretty well but every time that gargoyle stuck his head against the glass, I’d lose my rhythm and come close to doing something stupid.
Now working to ensure sterility is not easy unless it’s something you do on a daily basis, the intricacies are... well… too intricate to describe completely. One thing that we were required to do was to wipe down the caps of all bottles handled with an alcohol swab and then set it alight in the flame of the burner to kill all bacteria that may have settled on it.
The undead examiner had just glanced in while I was swabbing a bottle, unnerved, I set it alight, being pure alcohol, it burnt with a clear flame. Not noticing that the thing was still alight, I began to swab it again. The swab caught fire between my fingers. I threw it into one corner of the airflow, somehow managing to stifle a scream. The damn thing wouldn’t go out. If mummy-man looked in now, I knew I’d be dead so with a flick of my fingers I sent the thing to the floor. No-good, it was still happily burning away, still in clear sight of the door. Maybe because of the heat or maybe it was because of the stress, who knows; but my mind just shut down. I sat staring at the flame with horror for what seemed like an hour. I had to act. I finally got up and put it out with my bare foot. Then picked it up and threw it into the trash. As I got back into my stool, I caught him looking at me again, he knew I was upto no good but he hadn’t caught me, which was the important thing.
The rest of the practical went (in my mind) from bad to worse, with a little help from my teacher who as always managed to confuse me. Fortunately though when I came back after four days, I had a near perfect result (I still don’t know how). If I hadn’t I wouldn’t be recollecting the whole episode so eagerly would I?

Going to the Movies

Och! I be tagged by Terra Shield.

1. The last movie you saw in a theater, and current-release movie you still want to see.

That would be Pirates of the Caribbean 2. Yes. It was a long time ago but watching movies in theaters is not really my favourite way to pass time.

2. The last movie you rented/purchased for home viewing.

Omkara, an Indian adaptation of Othello by Vishal Bharadwaj, despite all the hype, it wasn’t really such a great movie. The only saving grace was the script but we know who wrote that right?

3. A movie that made you laugh out loud.

The original Pink Panther movies with Peter Sellers, damn they were funny, Steve Martin, forget it you will never be that good. I want my ‘massage’. Ha!

4. A movie that made you cry.

Umm.. ok. Crash, the bit where the paranoid shopkeeper goes after the repair guy. I pretty much lost it when I thought that he’d shot the little girl.

5. A movie that was a darling of the critics, but you didn't think lived up to the hype.

Black. A daring experiment for Indian cinema, it received both critical and box-office success. In my opinion the movie was basically crap in giftwrapping.

6. A movie you thought was better than the critics.

Pitch Black – The prequel to Chronicals of Riddick. Yes I know it starred Vin Diesel but despite that, I love fantasy/ sci-fi flicks and this was really great. I don’t know how it fared with the critics but I don’t imagine they received it with open arms.

7. Favorite animated movie

The Simpsons, I know it isn’t a movie but I haven’t watched an animated movie in ages.

8. Favorite Disney Villain.

Like I said I haven’t watched an animated movie in ages so that pretty much means I have no idea about Disney villains.

9. Favorite movie musical.

Hehe. Indians have an unfair advantage here since all Indian movies are musicals. So that means that I have to chose my favourite Indain movie, which would probably be Sholay. An Indian- western, complete with guns, horses and steam locomotives.

10. Favorite movies of all time (up to five).

a) Robin Hood - Men in tights

b) American Beauty

c) Monsoon Wedding

d) Sholay

e) Taxidriver

In turn I tag.. hmm. Lets see, Yaseer, Confusion, Jill and Nothingman

Till Death

The death penalty has been outlawed in most of the world today, however we persist with it here in India, as punishment for the rarest of rare crimes or something like that. Whatever it is, it is a punishment given to those few who have been judged to commit crimes so great, our judiciary feels that this is the only suitable punishment.
The last convict to receive die at the hangmen’s noose (that’s right, no lethal injection here) was that Dhananjay Chatterjee. Convicted of killing and then raping a young schoolgirl, he was hung slightly more than a year ago. Now as the courts begin sentencing those involved those involved in the 93’ Bombay serial blasts, I fully expect at least a few more death penalties to be handed out.
My problem is that I have serious reservations against the concept of a death penalty. Looking at it from the perspective of the relatives of victims and all others affected by a particular crime, you may feel tempted to support the death penalty. However that’s not what it is, is it? Any punishment handed out in court is not merely a court verdict; rather I see it is more as a verdict handed out by society as a whole. Although the judiciary is supposed to be impartial and unmoved by public sentiment, in the end any sentence handed out is eventually sanctioned by society. The concept of the death penalty could not exist without public approval.
My question is that, do we fully understand the implications of handing out this penalty? Or do we see it as merely the ultimate form of punishment that an individual can be subjected to.
What disturbs me about the death penalty is that it requires us as a society to lower ourselves to the level of the criminal whom we are sentencing. It’s a bit like the video piracy ads we see on TV, where a solemn faced presenter asks us; “Would you steal a book? Would you steal a car? Or would you ever steal money? Well, video piracy is also a form of theft, are you a criminal?”
This is an analogous situation, for while many of us would never actually commit murder or be part of a plot to murder, that is exactly what the death penalty is, except on a much larger scale.
My main issue is with the fact that the death penalty involves death. Life other than our own is beyond what I consider acceptable limits of our control. We can’t decide on whether someone has the right to live or not, irrespective of the lack of disregard they show for the life of others. The right to live is in my opinion such a fundamental right for humans that it cannot ever be revoked for someone, no matter what the circumstances. If you are religious than you should not support the death penalty, simply because it involves judging others to a level we humans were never intended to. It involves taking away from an individual something that is not ours to take. For atheists, it is a simple issue of humanism, again taking away what is not ours to take, reducing ourselves to the level of the very criminals that we are trying to protect ourselves against.
Once while discussing the possibility of extra-terrestrial life with someone, it was pointed out to me that any extra-terrestrial civilisation, were it sufficiently advanced to make contact with humans would be a peaceful one, one in which concepts like war and killing would be outdated. Contrast this with our visions of violent aliens, hell-bent on a ‘war of the worlds’ and you see that our fantasies are very much a product of our own conflict-ridden times. Is it surprising that our judicial system then involves elements of that which is so intrinsically part of our nature, the urge to kill.
We as a society are just not advanced or mature enough to prescribe the death penalty and should we ever mature sufficiently; we would see immediately how wrong the whole issue is.

Apology

My last post basically contained the dumb, judgmental, hateful and over-generalised point of view that I spend a lot of time criticizing. I let my personal frustration and anger get the better of me and made a dumb comment on an issue that should have been treated in a more delicate manner. I did realise it at the time, but in retrospect, i should never have put up that last post.

So to all who were offended and to to those who weren't. I'm sorry for that, won't happen again. I'm taking down the content of the post but am leaving the comments for anyone to read if they are interested.

The Pope Takes on Islam (an Illustrated Story)

*deleted*

In Pursuit of the Almighty ‘ism’

Everybody likes a good ‘ism’, don’t they? That’s why we have so many of them; Objectivism, Sophism, Hinduism, Atheism, even Christianity and Islam could be technically categorised as Christianism and Muslimism. All of these are schools of thought, belief and ways of life so what do I mean when I call them ‘isms’? The fact is that for most of us now, they imply groups rather than philosophies. I find it hard to think of Hindus as those who follow the Hindu way of life, rather I see them as part of a large group of individuals, bonded by the label; Hindu. Maybe I’m just being a bigot but I think that people like to label themselves with various ‘isms’ just for the sense of belonging that comes with being associated with a particular label.
The fact is that in our increasingly urban world, it is getting progressively easier to be alone and lonely whilst in the midst of a crowd. Additionally, I have a theory (and I’m probably wrong about this) that humans are not exactly social animals as we like to describe ourselves but we are rather tribal beings. We aren’t exactly equipped to deal with social groups on a scale found in most modern cities, we would prefer much smaller groups. It may be a result of our inability to deal with a large number of people or just our fear of differences, something that is inevitable in a large population. In large cities with mixed populations, it is common for those with something in common to settle down close to each other. For instance in Delhi areas like CR Park are full of Bengalis and Jama Masjid and Nizamuddin exist for the Muslim population. Even where there are no external forces to cause this ghettoisation, people end up accomplishing it themselves.
That is what I mean by tribal, that even within seemingly cosmopolitan cities, there exist these tiny boundaries that people erect to separate ‘us’ from ‘them’. This is where the ‘isms’ come into the picture. As a simple suffix, ‘ism’ generally implies a whole philosophy based on a few fundamental tenets, however, now I find, that ‘isms’ are used more in differentiating between people who follow different philosophies, like between Hindu and Muslim.
Our tribal urge, forces us to seek out others who hold similar beliefs and to bond with them. People will join online communities and discussion groups, not just because they want to share ides but also because they want to belong. To belong to groups that think the way they do and who believe in what they believe.
Now, for real society (as opposed to online societies), the world is growing smaller, however an unfortunate by-product of the global shrinkage is an increase in bigotry. Most of us just can’t deal with different cultures and belief systems. India for instance is in the midst of an identity crisis as a result of culture shock. Our country and culture despite the periodic invasions remains resistant to change. This time, however there is no physical invasion, rather we are experiencing what we like to call cultural colonisation. Despite raving about the benefits of multiculturalism, we defiantly oppose any cultural change of our own. Unfortunately the more persistently western cultural influences batter down on our resistance, the deeper we shrink within the shell of our own ‘isms’.
This however is a problem around the world too, nobody it seems is too comfortable dealing with other peoples ‘isms’. What I can see is that every major philosophy is eventually broken down by people into smaller and smaller ‘isms’ till what we are left with are tribes. Islam for instance is divided into the Shia and Sunni factions each hell bent on wiping-out the other.
Maybe it’s genetic, maybe somewhere far back, shrouded in the impenetrable mists of time, there existed a world where the tribe was more important than the whole species (actually there is no maybe, this was probably the case) and our tribal instincts are thus an atavism, reflecting our humble origins. Our behaviour in this regard is too universal to be considered culture specific. All human cultures share at least one common thread, that of discriminating against others different from themselves. At some time, this instinct may have served to preserve our species; it could be directly responsible for our widespread success today.
If we travelled, far back in our history to that the time of our proto-human ancestors, when the first groups were formed, more for self-preservation than out of a shared belief. When our first ‘individual’ was born, our rebel-ancestor who wanted to do something differently, maybe he liked to eat babies. The rest of the tribe would have protested this aberrant behaviour strongly and he’d have probably been clubbed him over the head for behaving weirdly. Then as the rest of the tribe hungrily tore at his limbs, ripping flesh from bone, devouring the freak, they would mentally congratulate themselves (in their own limited capacity of course) for having saved themselves from this monster. If we managed to actually see all this, we would be witness to the birth of an institution, the birth of the Almighty ‘ism’.

Face it we treat all those different from us basically as baby-eaters too don’t we?

Institutional Myopia

Maybe two months ago, some top Indian scientist went public, claiming science was being neglected in India. He asserted that fewer Indian students were opting for science courses in school and college, preferring to stick to the now more lucrative commerce/ MBA path. In the Indian school system, once a student finishes 10th grade, he/she has to chose a particular stream for his/her last two years in school. The main streams are science (biology or engineering), commerce and humanities. Once, science was the most in-demand stream and students queued up to get a chance to join. It was the most difficult stream to get into and only those with the best grades would make it. Over the last few years though, there has been a marked shift in public opinion. Parents, who once would have pressured their kids to become doctors or engineers, now prefer to force their offspring into the commerce stream. Most of us (the youth) now walk around in a daze mouthing the sacred letters; M, B and A. Everyone from qualified engineers to doctors are getting on the MBA bandwagon, nobody is safe, nothing sacred anymore. Respected college courses such as Physics have been ousted from their top-spot by economics, BBA and even English. Over the last few years, people have realised the vastly greater earning power that managers in their power suits command over grotty scientists in their white lab-coats.
Now the top Indian scientist (I’ve forgotten his name) had a ready solution. He claimed that by providing higher salaries and perks like free housing, the government could help steal back some scientists from the private sector and lure more students to the field.
I’m sorry Mr top scientist but you have it all wrong. The problem is not in funding (though science could always do with more), it’s more a question of opportunity. Our wonderful government though making great efforts to increase the levels of primary education (rather unsuccessfully) in the country, really is not bothered with higher education. Colleges and universities across the country are in decline, their admission capacities stuck at levels not sufficient for a population half of our magnificent one billion. Stuck in the admissions rat-race, I know first hand what it feels like to compete against ten thousand others like me for a few hundred seats in government universities. Delhi University for instance has five (yes five) seats in their post-graduate genetics programme and another five in their plant biotechnology course. Add to this the five seats in AIIMS for medical biotechnology and the 15 in JNU for biotechnology and you get the grand total of 30 qualified biotechnologists a year for a city with a population of 10 million. The situation is much the same in the rest of the country, as a result the only people profiting from this are the private universities. With little regulation, minimal infrastructure and a lot of under-the-the-table nonsense, these places make a lot of money, producing students with questionable qualifications. To actually study in a private institute, is to commit professional suicide. Though a lot have made a name for themselves, there remain many that just don’t cut it. Their degrees have little to no value, they don’t conduct any actual research worth mentioning and their graduates are only really qualified to become managers.
Despite all of this, our decision makers still think students don’t want to pursue a career in science. The simple fact is that a vast majority of the students who want to do so never get an opportunity to do so, as a result, those who can afford to do so go abroad. Going abroad, that’s another of our pet gripes; Indians love to complain of the ‘brain drain’, of talented students who rather than study and work in India go abroad, particularly to the west. Naturally you fuck-wits, who in their right minds would stick around where there is no opportunity to pursue your chosen path.
There’s no problem as far as commitment to science, there are still enough people who actually want to study science, there are plenty who would love to work in India. There are just not enough opportunities available for us.
Knowing the government though, it would be expecting too much to from them to assume that they will eventually figure this out. No, they generally favour pursuing hare-brained schemes like paying scientists more. We are also awaiting the next round of admissions, when another of their cock-eyed ideas, reservation will come into effect. Basically what this entails is increasing the number of students without increasing financial aid to universities, it also involves reserving seats for certain communities based on a hopelessly outmoded system that serves the political interests of a few more than the general well-being of the nation.
You could consider this a dumb rant of one of a disillusioned youth, but hey, I just call it as I see it. What I see is a country going down the crapper because a few in power can’t se beyond their hairy fucking arses and while those few debate on how to increase the public perception of science in the country, millions wait, qualified and willing but unemployed.

Illustrated Reminiscence

Here’s a pictorial run-through of some mildly significant events of this week.

	FC Barcelona broke their tradition of sponsor-less jerseys when they revealed their new Unicef ‘sponsored’ jersey. However unlike other clubs that get paid for carrying their sponsors’ name (upto 22 million dollars I believe), Barcelona will pay Unicef 2-million for carrying their name.Good on you Barca!
	This is the police ‘sketch’ of one of the Malegaon blast suspects.Ha aha ahaha. Allegedly drawn by a professional police sketch artist, it looks more like it was drawn by a 2 year old kid.I’m sorry but I don’t really think they’re ever going to catch anyone based on this fabulous sketch.Besides, the portrait is evil to such a degree, that it looks contrived to me. I seriously doubt there’s actually someone who looks like that. If some poor unfortunate soul however does bear any resemblance to it, you can see why he turned to terrorism. I would too if I had two disproportionate eyes like him.He looks like he’s just woken up doesn’t he.
	A new species of bird, Liocichla bugunorum was discovered in the state of Arunachal Pradesh recently.Looks like any other bird to me, I could have sworn I saw something like it the other day outside my window or maybe that was a crow or a peacock, no definitely not a peacock, maybe a sparrow.
	I don’t particularly enjoy making fun of myself but this is way too funny to keep hidden away on my computer.Muahaha (notice, my eyes are still somewhat proportionate).No comments on this picture please.

100% Pure Self Indulgence

Expecting something serious or socially relevant or just plain boring? Check back tomorrow then, for now this is all I'm going to post. I'm so fucking happy, I just got the following Email today.

12 September 2006
Dear Candidate
The results of the entrance examination to IBAB courses have been declared. We are happy to inform that you have been short-listed for the final selection interview. Your interview will be based on the subjects you have taken in the recent most degree.
Please bring all the original degree / GATE / NET certificates and marksheets pertaining to your educational qualification.
Please note that the candidates will appear for the interview at their owncost. No TA/DA will be paid.
Course: Post graduate Diploma in Bioinformatics

Date: 12 October 2006

Time: 01:00 pm

Venue: Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology

G-05, Techpark Mall, ITPB Whitefield Road, Bangalore 560 066
(Directions to reach the institute are available at the link:http://www.ibab.ac.in/contact_us.htm)
No hard copy of this letter will be sent.
Best of luck!
Admissions Helpdesk

I'm not worthless, I still have hope! Oh joyous joy, happy days are here at last.

India, The Demise of a Dream

“We the people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a sovereign, socialist, secular Democratic Republic and to secure to all its citizens: Justice, social, economic and political; Liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; Equality of status and opportunity; and to promote among them fraternity assuring the dignity of the individual and unity and integrity of the nation; in our constituent assembly this twenty-sixth day of November 1949, do hereby adopt, enact and give ourselves this constitution.”
Preamble to the Indian Constitution

We studied this preamble in detail in school, about what all the words meant and their social implication. I remember at the time it was a source of immense pride to me that our constitution, a hallowed Indian institution, set down such noble ideals for us to follow. I imagined that whatever happened to the country, these tenets would always protect us from straying too far from becoming the great nation we were destined to be.
Today, we have drifted far from the ideals set down in the preamble, far from a secular utopia that was envisioned, we are rapidly descending into the depths of chaos, toward a fundamentalist, theocracy.
We were born into the conflagration of post-independence partition, when the country was divided into two independent nations; India and Pakistan (east Pakistan later became Bangladesh) based on religion. Since then the flames of the religious divide have resisted all attempts to extinguish them. Now fed by the rise of religious extremism across the world, the flames are ready to bring us down burning.
Indian history, recalls how it was the British who built a religious divide in the country to serve their divide and rule colonial policy. The fundamentalist fervour exhibited in the country however leads me to suspect that this may not necessarily be the case. The seeds of fundamentalism are too deeply ingrained in our mentality for them to be the result of a century old policy; we are merely making scapegoats of them, blaming them for our bigotry.
Even if you do blame the British for starting the problem, it was the 60 years of inept political leadership that maintained the divide and introduced further fractures in Indian society. Caste or religion based politics, communalism and regionalism are time-honoured methods employed by Indian politicians to ensure their ascendancy to power. Our society is no longer divided only into Hindus and Muslims; Hindus are at odds with each other based on caste and community (to the same effect as the Shia-Sunni divide in Islamic nations). The whole nation is further separated based on other factors like language. Again, blaming politicians (almost a national pastime) achieves nothing; they merely recognised and played on our suspicion, fears and bigotry.
If any conclusions can be drawn on human instinct from Indian society, it would be that we inherently fear anything different or strange. We are threatened by anything we don’t understand and feel the need to protect ourselves at any cost; including that of violence. The most deep-seated partition in Indian society is that between Hinduism and Islam. Both communities share a strong sense of mistrust of each other, mainly because neither understands or has ever tried to understand the other. Sixty years of mistrust has resulted in the ghettoisation (?) of a majority of the Indian Muslim population. Ghettos only serve to further reduce interaction between the communities and increase tension.
The Hindu community is not much better off, a vast majority view Muslim Indians as outsiders who are not to be trusted.
A friend of mine in college illustrated this view when he commented on the (then) recent Godhra riots. He basically believed that the Muslims being a minority community should ‘behave’ themselves in India, which according to him is basically a Hindu country and that, the Hindu response was justified accordingly.
That is where I believe that we have failed our constitution. There is no point in paying lip service to grand ideals, while our populace has other beliefs. What we are doing in essence involves believing that there is nothing really wrong with the country till the whole damn situation blows up in our collective faces.
That’s what happened on Thursday, when three bombs went off in Muslim dominated neighbourhoods in a small town in Maharashtra. It was clearly the handiwork of Hindu extremists, in retaliation for the (11/7) bombing of local trains in Bombay. All this will achieve is to further alienate the minorities and exacerbate the situation.
There is a clear chain of related events leading up to Thursdays’ blasts, leading from Godhra. It does not take an idiot to foresee where this is going to lead us, more bombs and more violence is all I can see in our future.The only solution I can see is in educating our future generations better than we have been educated. Instead of teaching them how the British divided and ruled, we need to teach them on how our politicians are doing the same, how over the last sixty years extremism has claimed innumerable lives. Instead of instilling in them a sense of pride for living in an independent country, we need to teach them to be ashamed of living in a country where religion means more than humanity. Only then will they emerge, receptive to change and ready to build a nation from the ashes we hand over.

On Original Duplicates

Jill of Honduras in her post, mentions some of the fake fashion labels found in Honduras, such as Tommi and Abrecromby. In India, the counterfeiting industry is an immense and highly complex one, something that a single comment to a post would never do justice to. Thus, for anyone who ever wondered how to shop on the subcontinent, here’s a primer.
Before I begin, it might prove worthwhile to translate some phrases into Indian English.

Branded: Manufactured by a well-recognised brand and sold at outrageous prices in posh show rooms.
Original: Can mean the same as branded, however is equally used to signify high quality knock-offs.
Duplicate: Can be used to refer either to all knock-offs in general or specifically to low-quality knock-offs.
Desi: Crap (never used by salespersons, only by disillusioned buyers)

Therefore an original duplicate refers to a high quality knock-off. Here original is used to describe superior quality, while duplicate is utilised to ensure you are not under the impression that you are buying branded stuff. Original duplicates are generally counterfeit, some use well known labels while others modify the brand names a bit (Calvin Kwan).
The largest market for cheap clothes in Delhi is Sarojini Nagar Market. It is famous for selling everything from high end branded clothes, high and low quality duplicates to just unbranded desi stuff. Here we encounter another category in Indian clothing, the export rejects. A lot of established brands outsource their manufacturing facilities to India and all their seconds (i.e. pieces that don’t conform to their exacting standards) are sold as export rejects and are generally of better quality than original duplicates.
The Indian shoe market is not strictly classified under this system of nomenclature; rather it mostly falls into either Branded or Desi. Desi shoes often use names like Adibas or Beebok and commonly modify well-known corporate logo’s as in an inverted Nike logo or four stripes from Adidas’ three).
For clothes it’s not much of an issue as a trained eye can generally differentiate between something that will disintegrate after one wash and something that will fade after two. In other things like automotive parts, it gets much harder.
Being the somewhat proud owner of a pretty old bike, I know first-hand, the problems associated with vehicle maintenance in India. To start with, in this field; counterfeit manufacturers go out of their way to imitate the packaging of branded spares, which are not easy to find in the first place. Then there are company authorised parts-dealers and garages that often stock only counterfeit parts (originals). Being as my bike is not manufactured any more, it is very difficult finding branded parts and I have to satisfy myself with original spares. Originals are never very good quality and consequently I find myself replacing brake pads and clutch plates with alarming regularity.
Despite being aware of the usage of this Indianised terminology, I often get confused by what the mechanic tells me. For instance after my most recent accident (Mr. Nose and Mr Truck) my headlight needed replacing. I stressed to my mechanic that I wanted original parts and he assured me that is exactly what he intended to use. Imagine my consternation when I came back and found not an original Yamaha headlight but one made by some other company (I can’t remember the name). Sensing my dismay, he pointed at the empty box and assured me that the company was an original one. On a more positive note though my headlight still throws a straight beam so I’m not too worried.

When Mr. Nose Met Mr. Truck

Gurgaon is Delhi’s swankiest new suburb. As Delhi has expanded, a lot of its populace and businesses have moved there. Despite the increasing burden of traffic on the roads connecting the two, there has been little in way of improving the connecting links. One of the two roads connecting Delhi and Gurgaon is MG road, a narrow potholed nightmare. Regardless of the state of the road, motorists love to speed on this five kilometre stretch, being traffic to the suburbs, it consists mostly of massive SUVs and luxury sedans. Which when speeding always scare the shit out of me, for I with my 60kg body astride a 100kg bike am miniscule in comparison to these two-ton leviathans. Now half way between Delhi and Gurgaon lies the village of Ghitorni. MG road, narrow at best, becomes anorexic at this point, additionally the numerous rows of parked cars further eat into available tarmac. Traffic through this stretch is positively constipated and pedestrians intent on playing chicken with oncoming traffic further worsen conditions. Then you have the cows that at regular intervals venture across the road from one garbage dump to another.
Thus the stage is set for a fateful encounter between the two protagonists of my tale, Mr. Nose and Mr. Truck. Their meeting was propitiated by one of the bovine regulars of the road, who throwing caution to the wind, decided to follow her nose across the road to a more pungent trash heap. Unfortunately her chosen path coincided with that of one of the aforementioned speeding SUVs. The hapless driver was forced to jam on his brakes and fortunately (for all animal lovers) stopped short of the nonchalant beast. Unfortunately a Tempo (half truck, half pick-up) was unable to do the same and rear-ended the SUV. Now Tempo’s like all other commercial vehicles in India do not believe in brake lights, though some eventually relent and ritualistically paint red squares on their rear fenders. Now this is rather disconcerting for those behind them, for their size obliterates any view of the road ahead of them and no brake lights means no warning.
This is exactly where I was, behind the tempo, as I had been for the last five minutes, waiting patiently for a chance to overtake. When he finally afforded me the opportunity to get ahead, I took it. Distracted as I glanced into my mirrors, I did not hear the squealing rubber.
SLAM
That the only way I can describe what I experienced. As my rear wheel passed neatly under his carrying board, Mr. Nose got acquainted with Mr. Tailboard through a mutual friend Mr. Helmet.
The next thing I remember was feeling my face to check if my glasses were okay. Oh I don’t wear them while driving, then why does the bridge of my nose feel funny?
I pulled my bike to the side of the road, balancing it between my thighs I wiped my moist chin. My hand came away dripping blood, oh crap.
Now being slightly paranoid, I’ve always imagined what I would do in case of such a serious accident. I’d imagined that I’d carefully park my bike, throw off my helmet, exposing my manly face with an air of grim determination. Then ignoring all bodily harm I’d lovingly caress my bike, assessing all the damage. After all that was taken care of, I’d deal with all those responsible. Either through sheer physical strength or alternately using superior wit and intellect I’d humiliate them in front of the crowd.
What I did was, to get off my bike, watch the blood drip, trying to keep it off my clothes. Someone grabbed my bike to keep it upright while I was dragged off the road. I pulled my helmet off and threw it to the ground. It landed in muck, but I was too busy trying to wipe the blood off my face to notice. I remember looking up at all the drivers slowing down as they passed me giving me the honour-stare, reserved for injured motorists. Some woman screamed “Thoda dheerey chalao” (Drive slowly), I gave her the finger Then went back to wiping the blood that continued to stream across my face. I was dragged (I was very confused at this point so there was a lot of dragging involved) to a makeshift bed under an asbestos awning used by taxi drivers and was made to lie down till the bleeding stopped. Once the flow had abated somewhat, I found a nearby roadside barber and washed my face and hands.
As I stood next to my bike surveying the damage, reflecting and trying to compose myself, I noticed all the blood I’d left on the damp ground. Were this a Hindi-movie, I would be instantly inspired by the sight of my blood on the soil of my motherland. Thus motivated, to the accompaniment of some truly bad music, I’d become a social worker by day, and vigilante by night. I’d help the old and infirm, whilst at the same time take down murders and rapists and anyone who dared to desecrate the sacred soil of the motherland.
This was not a movie so I lit up a cigarette and stared at my bike while a kid called Sunny recounted the whole incident to me, just in case I’d missed it. My nicotine craving taken care of, I got back on and drove back home. Slowly. (No animals were hurt in the typing of this post)

Rock star? I Think Not

Tyler and Perry	Axl Rose	Sanjay Dutt (?)

A couple of days ago, the newspaper I read, in the gossip pages, described Sanjay Dutt as the only true rock star left in the Indian film industry, I almost fainted from the shock. Sure the word ‘rock’ and all its derivatives are commonly misused today, but surely this was taking it a bit too far. Everyone at some time or the other has misused the word as in; “That party was rocking yaar” or “lets rock” and so on ad infinitum. But Sanjay Dutt, a rock star? Give me a fucking break. I know times are changing and with the passage of time, the definition of words does change, but for me and others like me (and there aren’t a few), rock is a hallowed word, something not to be used in vain.
There was once a beautiful era when rock meant rock, rock meant sex, drugs, booze and great music and rock stars were dangerous, untamed beasts to be worshiped. Rock stars made magic like Hendrix, they were dangerous like Alice Cooper, they were half crazy like Ozzy, they were androgynous like Mercury and they were worshipped like Axl Rose.
Rock never had a single definite positive or negative connotation, while rock starts could make magic with their music, they would at regular intervals, die ODing, from AIDS or from just doing something downright silly. I’m not trying to promote drink and drugs or promiscuous sex, but my point is that they came bundled under the tag of rock. Rock stars didn’t need to advertise their sexuality, yet in their androgyny there was something powerful that attracted legions of devoted fans. They weren’t beautiful and nobody really cared, it was their music and not their looks that mattered. Now when everyone is judged at face value, real rock stars are hard to come by.
Morrison, Hendrix, Jagger, Lennon and the rest were the gods. Axl in his tight shorts and bandana, Slash in a leather vest and a top hat, Tyler and Perry singing into a mike and Ozzy eating a bat were the rock stars. There was a definite image of what a rock star was, yet it didn’t end only at their appearance it was mainly defined by their music.
Today when the stars do the talking and music had taken a backseat, any two-bit metrosexual in an open silk shirt with stubble and who wears shades at night is a rock star. Partying hard, grooving to disco beats, snorting a few lines of coke and throwing back booze made from Mexican cacti is leading a ‘rock star’ lifestyle’. A good song ‘rocks’ and parties, if they are good are ‘rocking’. All this without a real rock star in sight is tantamount to blasphemy.
There was a time when rock was about rebellion, it was freedom, love and lots of sex. Now it’s about conformity, about seeing and being seen and it’s about money, lots and lots of money. Rock was about the music, raw, powerful and loud music. Now it’s about beautiful faces, lots of skin and bare flesh for sale. There are few rock stars left today, where a pretty face sells more than a good song, where Britney Spears tries to be Joan Jett and Paris Hilton uses her fame to sell her music. The helium voices have been replaced by monotonous homogenised singers and wailing guitars by synthesized beats.
Sanjay Dutt, though I hold no personal grudge against him is not a rock star. He looks like a goon or a thug-for-hire, a far cry from the rock stars of old. Rock today is a corrupted word, I cringe every time I hear it misused, but what can I really do I can’t change. I long for the glory days where women were really women, men really men and the gods, well the gods - they played rock.

The Beautiful People

Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without an orator
Shakespeare – The Rape of Lucrece

The beautiful people,
The beautiful people,
It’s all anatomic as the size of your steeple.
Marilyn Manson – The Beautiful People

Oh my beauty past compare,
These jewels bright I wear.
Bianca Castiafore – The Tintin Series by Hergé

Very few things today can survive commercialisation and once commercialised, they lose most of their intrinsic value. Diwali and Dusshera for instance are India’s answer to Christmas in the west. The October to November period has been transformed into one big shopping fest. Everyone puts off buying their consumer-durables, clothes and whole host of other shit till the Diwali discounts are announced. Even the monsoons are now an excuse to discount-shop. Beauty and sex though have suffered the most from our consumerist mindsets. I find it really hard to think of beauty without imagining waif-like, pouty-lipped French models selling anything from lipstick to washing machines.
It’s true; people respond favourably to beautiful faces, we will buy anything as a gorgeous face is peddling it. So the less-than-scrupulous advertising fraternity exploits our instincts to make us do what we do best; buy, buy and buy some more. What we are shown is beautiful men and stunning women selling us products, what we see is a chance at being that perfect ourselves; if you just buy that cell-phone, you’ll look like the model and you will get the chick who’s on his arm.

All those magazines that talk about weight loss,
If I buy those jeans I can look like Kate Moss.
Lily Allen – Everything’s Just Wonderful

Who are we kidding, no jeans can ever transform that beer gut into a six-pack and no washing machine is ever going to make your family picture perfect like in the ads. We are subconsciously aware of this, yet when we watch our telly, we can’t but help reaching for our credit card the moment the beautiful people begin to preach.
In India we have our own take on beauty, here, fair does not mean just or impartial, it is used to comment on the lack of pigmentation of an individuals skin. Through the ages, our movie industry had fed our fairness fetish, as a result we have had generations of fair heroes and heroines while the comic relief and villainy is left to the ‘darkies’. Our concept of female beauty has changed a little though, for while the actresses of old were buxom, today’s generation of stars follow in the hallowed footsteps of Twiggy. What’s worrying about all this is that the general populace is convinced of their shortcomings. So while women starve themselves into nothingness, men bloat themselves on diet supplements of dubious composition and everyone smothers themselves with bleach to weed out that evil melanin in their skin. Being proud of what you look like naturally is an utterly foreign concept, the current view is that we are all born imperfect and must spend our lives in the vain pursuit of physical perfection. Of course cosmetic manufacturers and weight-loss centres are happy to reinforce this view and are glad to flood the media with their ideas on physical perfection. Watch the Discovery Travel and Living channel; a large portion of their programming is devoted to weight-loss, image makeovers and grooming tips. Who advertises the most on these channels? Companies like Garnier and L’Oreal, feeding our collective inferiority complex.
Fair and Lovely (a fairness product) has done the most disservice to this country, continually subjecting us to a barrage of their racist crap, their success has spawned a whole industry, dedicated to keeping us fair. They teach us about dark women who after using the product for 4-8 weeks are suddenly noticed by movie producers and cast into new movies. About how only fair women can achieve their dreams. About how a man can only get so far on his hard work and only a fairness cream (specially formulated for thick male skin, of course) can get him to the top.
Ironically though, the companies and guys doing the advertising didn’t create the problem, they just used it to sell products and as a consequence reinforced it. Our insecurities are a result of our own sense of inadequacy, but now we have been drawn so deep into this web of self –improvement that extricating ourselves seems an impossible task.

Atheism

When I was in my mid teens, I devoted much energy to promoting the cause of atheism, I was young, enthusiastic and wanted to convert everyone. Then one day, I read the blog of a former atheist, one of her chief complaints was that she felt other atheists tended to be whiney and overly argumentative, trying to pick fights with theists wherever they could. No way, she was wrong, she couldn’t be right, could she? Sadly though It was true, atheists are a bunch of aggressive buggers. So I shut up, though I didn’t become religious, I didn’t begin to try to convert everyone I saw, I still argued for atheism, but only when the occasion warranted debate.
Atheism, I have found is a neglected phenomenon in India, people just don’t believe it exists. I mean we have a word for it in Hindi, nastik, but I have found that for some people the concept does not convey the same meaning as the English word. I remember in college I was called into the office to fill in some information missing on my form. The two categories I hadn’t filled were religion and caste. So I went and was confronted by the slightly dim-witted accountant/head-of-office.

“Tumne religion aur caste nahi bhara hai” (You’ve left religion and caste blank)
“Sir main nastik hoon aur mujhe apna caste nahi pata” (I’m an atheist and I don’t know my caste).
I wait while he digests this.
“Theek hai caste chhod do, lekin religion bharo” (Fine leave caste but fill-up religion at least)
“Sir main nastik hoon, mera koi religion nahi hai” (I’m an atheist I don’t have any religion)
“Par koi toh religion hoga” (You have to have some religion”)
“Haan, main nastik hoon, who likh loon kya?” (I’m an atheist, should I write that down then?)
Horrified, he replied, ”Nahi, nahi, who nahi, kuch toh religion hoga” (No, don’t write that, you have to have some religion”)
This went on for about five minutes till I finally gave in and angrily wrote Hindu on the form. I have a Hindu name, so he’d already figured I was going to write Hindu there, and didn’t expect any sort of resistance from me. I think my problem rose from the fact that he didn’t really understand the concept of atheism. That Atheism is not a transient way of thinking but a serious philosophy on its own.
Most dictionaries would define atheism as a lack of belief in god or something else along those lines. This definition as is frequently pointed out is fundamentally wrong. Atheism is a belief that there is not a god. There is a big difference between the two. For instance talking about a hypothetical lighter on my table, if I were to say “I don’t believe in the lighter on my table” it would imply that I don’t believe in some fundamental component of the lighter that contributes to is being a lighter, maybe I don’t believe it is capable of lighting a cigarette. As you see that statement doesn’t really dispute the presence of the lighter. Were I to say, “I believe there is not a lighter on the table,” it would clearly indicate my views on the subject. This is all there is to the philosophy of atheism, which lies not in any particular code, rather in a rejection of all religious codes. Atheists aren’t unified in their beliefs like theists are and neither are they unified in their disbelief, as one would be tempted to assume. As atheism has no unifying texts or codes unlike religion, there is no common thread of belief running between all atheists. Unlike religion, which lays down principles by which the faithful are to lead their lives, atheism does no such thing. Atheists have no epic texts, no deities and no places of worship. That’s why I say atheists are not unified in their disbelief, apart form a single common principle we have nothing else to hold us together.
It’s common for people to look for others who share their beliefs, we all want support and companionship, especially those who have recently abandoned their faith, however atheism is not particularly well suited to group discussions and suchlike. Just like you can’t have an atheist temple because there are no deities to worship, an atheist discussion quickly degenerates into a theist bashing session, that’s why atheists online sound whiney. I think atheism is a personal philosophy not really meant to be discussed, debated maybe with a theist, however these debates have fast grown clichéd and frankly they bore me. Douglas Adams, a genius writer and an atheist to boot, illustrated this rather well in an interview printed in American Atheist;

American Atheist: What message would you like to send to your atheist fans?
Douglas Adams: Hello how are you?

There is a common misconception among theists that atheists adopt their views as result of some tragedy in their lives that has shattered their faith in god, something I call the Deewar hypothesis after Amitabh in Deewar. Another myth is that atheism is a consequence of an individuals desire to rebel and that they will eventually grow out of it. Unfortunately both are wrong in the case of most atheists, for whom, atheism is an informed, deliberate and intellectual decision. In the case of the Deewar hypothesis, such an individual’s philosophy is better defined as a lack of belief in god and not a belief that there is not a god (see my previous arguments on this), not really atheism.
Personally I feel that religion is an atavism, something essential in early human history but which has outlived its utility. Religion helped early humans deal with a world they didn’t fully understand, so we invented fantastic gods with supernatural powers to comfort ourselves in the face of a cruel and often dangerous world. Later it developed into a tool wielded to politically unite people under a common god. Now it is an atavism, capable of causing more harm than good.
Though it may sound like I bear a serious grudge against religion, I really don’t have much of a problem if it is worshipped quietly. Spirituality is best developed alone, not in the middle of a rampaging mob. Religion is okay if you consider an individual country, sharing a single belief, however sadly its not possible in today’s world and unfortunately the moment you put two groups of people of different religious persuasion together, they cant help but to bicker amongst themselves, much worse than any group of atheists could.