Grumble Grumble

Rant Rant
So as most of the universe may have heard, the Indian Ocean has been behaving very badly. One big burp and people spanning 7/8 countries die! Tragedy as this is, I love how anything related to a developing country can be filed as under ‘disaster-which-could-have-been-prevented’.

Apparently, according our standard overly-critical media, if we had installed ‘early-warning’ sensors, we would have been prepared for the Tsunami, or as one flowery TV News presenter put it – Shiv ki lehren – i.e. Shiva’s waves – a reference to Shiva being the God of Destruction…

Ummmm….no. This was the worst earthquake in the past 40 years. Second, it occured under the ocean. A Tsumani wave travels at around 700 Km/H on the ocean (but slows down as it approached land). 700 Km/H = Speed of a jet plane. Based on what the same overly critical media says this gave people in India (which is the farthest country from the epicentre of the quake, second to the Maldives) about 90 Minutes buffer. 90 Minutes is not enough to evacuate any place, by a long shot. This was a freak accident. We don’t have these waves every year. So anybody claiming that these death tolls were preventable can go to Hell. Despite all your technologies, your security checkpoints, some 15/20 men armed with nothing more than standard everday blades blew up 2 tall buildings. Surely SOMEBODY in the security setup could have foreseen something like that and prevented it? No? How is this any different?

Please, this occurence is a tragedy – but let’s not put the blame on government mismanagement.

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O Metro of Delhi, How I love Thee

Score: Optimists: 100, Pessimists: -500
On completion of listing India’s numerous problems, the concluding sentence is always: Kuch Nahin Ho Sakta, is desh ka – TRANSLATION: This Country is a lost cause, nothing will ever improve.

Circa 1994, the existing Central and Delhi government proposed the creation of an MRTS system – Mass Rail Transit System. I think they were inspired by a trip to Singapore. Of course, Delhi/India laughed it off as just another wild pipe dream. Then one day construction began. And then certain parts of it were completed. And I think most of Delhi, and all of India which is in the know, is awestruck.

I present to you a government-run project which is being completed AHEAD OF SCHEDULE. A project which has NO COST OVERRUNS. A project which did not get bogged down by local politics or CORRUPTION. The Delhi Metro.

The man responsible for the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation is a man called K. Sreedharan. He’s a vegetarian who goes to bed by 10.30 pm. And he’s most definitely one of the many unsung heroes responsbile for bringing the Metro to Delhi.

My one and only gripe with the metro is the poor East-West Coverage of South Delhi. Ah well, you can’t have it all. By the end of 2005, Phase-I will be complete. This will make a gigantic difference in the lives of people living in North-Central Delhi (the slighly lower-income part of Delhi, which also has the highest population density. Anybody who has been to Chandni Chowk knows what I mean..!!

Remember, when somebody says that X is not possible in India, just point them in this direction. The trains are brand-spanking new, Made in Korea, air-conditioned, and fully computerised (i.e. driverless).

When the first line opened up to the general public on the 25th of December 2002, there almost a stampede/riot/panic, as people from different parts of North India wanted to get a ride and a peek at the system. Of course, now the crowd control and stuff has been handled, and the metro has been running smoothly.

Of course, the Metro is most likely not even covered by any foreign Media. Within India, the BBC and CNN have not reported anything. The reason for this is obvious – a Metro system is a first-world object. And we all know India is a developing country. We couldn’t possibly show the outside world a different picture of India… which is of course why you need a Voice From a 2.5-World Country to point it out instead…

One final word to the cynics, who say: “give the Metro a year, and it will look like the rest of India – paan-stained and urine-smelling. We shall see, we shall see…

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Swades – A Review

Lagaan for the 21st Century – nice try..but..no

Cinematography? Excellent. I love the shot of of the outside of the Air India plane, with Shahrukh inside it. The scenery, a very nice shot of Delhi, for once, e.t.c Good stuff.

Music? It’s Rahman. Duh.

Parth – this is my blog – so I can say that for once SRK has actually put in a reasonable amount into his acting. More so than anything else of his that I have seen recently – last seen in Main Hoon Na – EWWWWWWW.

The woman, dammit I’ve forgotten her name, appears in lots of ads and side roles in movies or TV I think. She looks really good in this movie, and she can definitely act too.

This movie will be a failure, however – well the NRIs may like it, even of that I’m not sure. The one thing the bollywood audience despises is an attempt to show reality, and then show that there may actually be some hope to improve that reality. Bollywood is all about escaping your daily grind. You can’t go and tell that audience – hey let’s try and improve your life! Where are the naked dancing girls? Where are the villains which exist in comic books? Where is the dancing round the trees? Hello? Where are the subliminal messages telling us that socialism is good, capitalism is evil, poor people have golden hearts, and rich people are all superficial twats with loose morals, and have earned their money illegally?

Sorry none of that here. Just the idealistic story of an NRI/ABCD coming back, and trying to help his country. I have no objections to that. But it’s cheesy. And it drags at points. Some of the statements made throughout the movie are sensible, and commonly held views by all and sundry. But there are lots of parts I disagree with.
This NRI says that India has been left behind because of internal squabbling. I disagree. He says that India and America are two countries that are poles apart and that the thing holding India back is its traditions and its ancient, conservative ways. Firstly, I see a LOT more similarities between India and America than differences. I believe it is the failure of Indians to see those similarities that holds us back. Second, yes, tradition and conservative ways can be a hindrance, but as Japan will testify, some of those traditions can produce a World Power too.

Anyway, it’s slow and draggy, and its heart is in the right place. But that’s about it. You have your usual slew of village characters, and they all do a good supporting job, but this movie lectures a bit more than it should, and entertains a little less, despite some decent humour here and there. Audiences in India are attuned to detecting preaching in their movies – and they sumarrily reject it. So there u have it. Nice try, Ashutosh and Shahrukh. But no. Of course, I could be wrong and this movie may be a blazing hit, but I seriously doubt it. After all, I’m just one more voice from a 2.5-world country.

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MultiMedia Morons

The Sequel….
And then people say justice is never done in India. The schoolboy responsible for filming the MMS has an arrest warrant issued against him – he’s 17 years old, so he may be tried as an adult, depending on which way the court leans. The girl has apparently been packed off to America, as she can’t show her face in this country. Not the worst punishment her family could have come up with, if you ask me – this is effect of technology I guess. 2 days after the MMS was shot, my colleague at work received it in his e-mail (as did a bunch of other people..). I’m no angel, I’ll admit that i saw it…

Now the moronic part is that the owner of Baazee.com has also been arrested. Baazee is India’s equivalent of eBay.com (and is also owned by it as of last year). And some damn fool had put the MMS up for auction. The police claim that Baazee had not exercised due diligence in gettig rid of the MMS (it constitutes sale of pornography, which is still illegal in this country). Some 7 people had bought it. This is the part that makes me curious – this wouldn’t have happened in USA. eBay is not held liable for what it auctions. People have attempted to auction their virginity, their kidneys and other stuff (Soiled women’s underwear is apparently a legal top-seller…). But the police never arrested the owners of eBay. They just sent them a complaint and told them to cease and desist from having those things on its site, which eBay complied with. Now I don’t know the details of the case, but I’m thinking that it’s only been what? 2/3 weeks since the MMS was circulated? Baazee is not even a tenth the size of ebay, but they don’t really expect them to be able to monitor everything being auctioned on their site do they? Once somebody makes a complaint, then you can fault them if they don’t act to handle that complaint…let’s see how this pans out.

In Other News, I read a book called Mystic River (also a movie which released last year). It was a very gloomy book. I’m subscribe to everything must have a happy-ending philosophy, so after reading it, I was quite depressed (but not close what a fellow blogger must have felt after losing the Cricket league finals match – condolences, Parth!)

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MTV Desi?

Yet Another Music Channel….
One of the backgrounds behind this blog was the ridiculously-biased reporting that CNN conducts of India. Because I someday hoped to expose CNN by publishing all its reports on India, I went to their website, and specified in the ‘Alerts’ section that whenever there is any article containing the word ‘India’ send that article to my junk-mail email. Unfortunately, I was too lazy to read thru most of them, because India appears on the periphery of almost everything, so there were a lot of not-really-India-related articles that would show up in my inbox.

Anyhoo, 1/2 days ago, I got the link to this report.

…MTV Desi? Eww… It just seems like such a pointless dumb idea – why not just do one of the following: Have a show devoted only to Indian music on the regular MTV (which will be tough I know considering that these days everyone on MTV America is a blonde, white teen who doesn’t know how to sing…). This is what MTV Asia did, when it first setup shop in 1991 – of course eventually they realized that devoting only 1 show (called ‘Oye MTV!’) in their channel to a country representing 1/6th of Humanity was a little disproportionate, and then eventually launched MTV India.

But that’s Asia. Within America itself, there are already some shadier Indian channels trying to capture the ‘Desi’ market (yes, I’m not very politically correct, and am tempted to prefix ‘Desi’ with Confused, hee hee). So why try and ‘ghettoise’ things further. Why not put the Chinese and Indian shows on the mainstream MTV. Once upon a time, MTV was a trendsetter, and an alternative to the mainstream – this wasn’t as long ago as people think. But now it is just so heavily entrenched in the establishment, it’s shocking. I think a little multiculturalism will help revive it. I’m talking about MTV America here – MTV India has always been mostly pro-establishment and relatively politically neutral…

Another idea is to just carry the feed of the Asian MTVs over to USA. This would enable the ‘Desis’ to stay in touch with whatever’s happening in their respective home countries, as opposed to isolating themselves with their own bastardised channel…

Ok, in conclusion, it’s a slow news week, so I just picked this up and ran with it. :-p

Thoughts? Abuse?

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An Unoriginal Post

A Long Post
Ok this post was meant to intially be about the fact that the Delhi University’s solution to voyeurism-thru-Mobile Phones was the following: The Installation of CLOSED-CIRCUIT CAMERAS throughout campus to monitor people!@#!#@@@!. I read this in the morning Delhi TOI, but was unable to find a link to it in the online edition.

Then next, I wanted to point out, that there is some more history being made in the auto sector

Finally, here is a forward that I was sent at work today:

To the citizens of the United States of America :-
In the light of your failure to elect a proper President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchial duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy.
Your new prime minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections.
Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up “aluminium”. Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘favour’ and ‘neighbour’, skipping the letter ‘U’ is nothing more than laziness on your part. Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters. You will end your love affair with the letter ‘Z’ (pronounced ‘zed’ not ‘zee’ and the suffix “ize” will be replaced by the suffix “ise”. You will learn that the suffix ‘burgh is pronounced ‘burra’ e.g. Edinburgh. You are welcome to respell Pittsburgh as ‘Pittsberg’ if you can’t cope with correct pronunciation. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels.
Look up “vocabulary”.
Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as “like” and “you know” is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.
Look up “interspersed”.
There will be no more ‘bleeps’ in the Jerry Springer show. If you’re not old enough to cope with bad language then you shouldn’t have chat shows. When you learn to develop your vocabulary then you won’t have to use bad language as often.

2. There is no such thing as “US English” or “American”. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter ‘u’ and the elimination of “-ize”.

3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn’t that hard. English accents are not limited to Cockney, upper-class twit or Mancunian (Daphne in Frasier). You will also have to learn how to understand regional accents – Scottish dramas such as “Taggart” will no longer be broadcast with subtitles. While we’re talking about regions, you must learn that there is no such place as Devonshire in England. The name of the county is “Devon”. If you persist in calling it Devonshire, all American States will become “shires” e.g. Texasshire, Floridashire, Louisianashire.

4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys. Hollywood will be required to cast English actors to play English characters. British sit-coms such as “Men Behaving Badly” or “Red Dwarf” will not be re-cast and watered down for a wishy-washy American audience who can’t cope with the humour of occasional political incorrectness.

5. You should relearn your original national anthem, “God Save The Queen”, but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.

6. You should stop playing American “football”. There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American “football” is not a very good game. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays “American” football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American “football”, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens side by 2005. You should stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the ‘World Series’ for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.15% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. Instead of baseball, you will be allowed to play a girls’ game called “rounders” which is baseball without fancy team strip, oversized gloves, collector cards or hotdogs.

7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they give you any merde. The 97.85% of you who were not aware that there is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The Russians have never been the bad guys. “Merde” is French for “****”. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry guns. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous in public than a vegetable peeler. Because we don’t believe you are sensible enough to handle potentially dangerous items, you will require a permit if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 2nd will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called “How-The-Fuck-Did-That-Monkey-Win Day”.

9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean. All road ntersections will be replaced with roundabouts. You will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips. Fries aren’t even French, they are Belgian though 97.85% of you (including the guy who discovered fries while in Europe) are not aware of a country called Belgium. Those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called “crisps”. Real chips are thick cut and fried in animal fat. The traditional accompaniment to chips is beer which should be served warm and flat. Waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.

11. As a sign of penance 5 grams of sea salt per cup will be added to all tea made within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, this quantity to be doubled for tea made within the city of Boston itself.

12. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all, it is lager. From November 1st only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer”, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as “Lager”. The substances formerly known as “American Beer” will henceforth be referred to as “Near-Frozen Knat’s Urine”, with the exception of the product of the American Budweiser company whose product will be referred to as “Weak Near-Frozen Knat’s Urine”. This will allow true Budweiser (as manufactured for the last 1000 years in Pilsen, Czech Republic) to be sold without risk of confusion.

13. From December 1st the UK will harmonise petrol (or “Gasoline” as you will be permitted to keep calling it until April 1st 2005) prices with the former USA. The UK will harmonise its prices to those of the former USA and the Former USA will, in return, adopt UK petrol prices (roughly $6/US gallon – get used to it).

14. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you’re not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you’re not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you’re not grown up enough to handle a gun.

15. Please tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us crazy. Tax collectors from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all revenues due (backdated to 1776).

Thank you for your cooperation.

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Attempt to prevent a Spillover

 One small step for Delhi, one huge leap for Indians…So I was driving home from work today – twas a working saturday – YECH! Anyhoo, anybody familiar with New Delhi will have an idea about a place called ‘Dhaula Kuan’. This is basically a big-ass crossing where traffic all points of the world converge. 3 Years ago, this was an awful place where the traffic jams knew no end. 3 Years ago to recently this place was a nasty mess of construction (as is most of New Delhi today). Finally the darn crossing has been completed, and now it’s possible to travel in any of the directions without having to stop at a traffic light, whereas before this was just a crossroads with 4 traffic lights and chaos.

But being New Delhi/India, just having a signal free road is never enough to prevent traffic jams (I mean, if a cow is sleeping between two out of 3 lanes, the most well-planned roads and crossings will not help you).

Out of the other countless problems is what I like to call “Spillover”. In this specific context, it refers to the commuters waiting to get onto a bus. Instead of waiting in a line (Line? What be that, bhaisaab?) on the pavement/sidewalk in an orderly fashion, most people waiting for the bus tend to spill over onto the road…sometimes this spillover extends to the end of the first lane of a 3-lane road, thus causing the bus to stop in the middle of road so as to not flatten passengers (it doesn’t always succeed at that mind you). Anyway, in a city of 14 million people (This number is greater than the entire population of many European countries), Spillover can be a real problem.

So the spiffy-looking Delhi Traffic Police actually decided to something about this – to be fair to the Traffic Police of Delhi, they actually do their job more often than not, it’s just that there are so few of them to go around. They’re more courteous than their other brethren (could this be because you tend to be paying them traffic fines, by any chance?).

They were actually standing on the pavement/sidewalk with their nightsticks (about 4 of them I guess) blowing whistles loudly and actually preventing pedestrians and waiting commuters from spilling on to the pavement. It was an interesting scene. As all of us motorists drove by, it looked like some sort of welcoming parade to see a long line of people standing on the pavement, desperate to set foot on the sacred stretch of black tar they were so used to occupying till yesterday. It was actually funny. And it helped prevent a usual traffic jam. If the traffic police actually manage to keep this up, I’ll be forced to take a picture of this new phenomenon and post it to my website.

Here’s to more semi-revolutionary ideas like this one – what comes next I wonder? Lane Driving? Let’s see…

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