Three open letters and a video

Open letter # 1

A letter to PM Modi from 'Anti-National Sickular Presstitute' Barkha Dutt

Open letter # 2

Open letter to Barkha Dutt from a Social Media Sanghi communal troll by Unsubtledesi

Open letter # 3

A Letter to Barkha Dutt from a Nationalist by Rahul Sharma

And the video

The famous slap scene from vedam pudhidhu (non-Tamil speakers excuse but watch from 2:37)

The return journey: My bags travel first class, I blog from economy class and religious intolerance

Here is the final part of my jottings from my trip to Israel. You can now heave a sigh of relief that this torture by prose comes to a grinding halt. Regular service should resume soon. Parts one, two and three of this series go before this post. 

-----------------------

There are late meetings at office on the day of departure. Which works perfectly with my routine: check out of the hotel in the morning, finish up the late meetings, grab a bite near the office around 7:00pm and head out to the airport for my late night flight back home departing at a little past 11:00 PM. This time I don’t have to deal with returning a rental car (which calls for special skills at Ben Gurion) and so I can relax as the taxi drops me bang in front of the terminal.

The security check – with or without a clearance letter from work – takes about the same time in my experience so far. And this time is no exception either. But this time I’m held up in the line for getting my boarding pass. I believe that when it comes to serendipity in the small and mundane jobs in everyday life, lady luck flashes a toothless grin at me. For instance, the person ahead of me in the line, any line, anywhere, while at the counter, is always conducting the most complicated transaction without the required papers. Or, the service person at the counter always has to step out – hunger, thirst, family emergency, full bladder - when it is exactly my turn. This time the people in my line, I suspect, are all on the US no-fly list for past indiscretions but are nonetheless trying to board the flight. Either that or they are trying, one person at a time, to work out the business aspects of a merger of United Airlines with Delta. Long story short, my boarding group is 5. In English, it means that you will hunt for a space for your bag while the United crew members helpfully stand in a group and laugh derisively, pointing at you.

Sure enough, as most of the passengers are settling in with their books/e-readers, I’m standing there with my luggage, having been spaced out of the overhead bins by the rest. I try to flag a passing flight attendant. One of them walked right past me saying “They will help you”. They. Who are they? And who are you? Why aren’t you a part of “they”? And why won’t you help me? But it is against our culture to argue with elderly ladies keeping fragile health. Finally one of them (from the original “they”), makes me roll my luggage to the very front of the plane, past the business class and into the first class cabin and points to an overhead bin there with room. As I hoist the bag into the bin, she tells me, rather curtly, that I cannot access it anytime during the flight. If this were a movie, this would be the scene where the poor dad, on a very rainy night, gives up his crying new born son (the future hero) for adoption by a childless and conveniently rich family so that he may have a better life (not before insulting his biological parents while attending a residential school in the hills, wearing a jacket) and goes back to his humble tenement. As I’m about to be walked out of the first class cabin, I turn around and give one more longing look and quickly leave, crying copious tears into a towel even as a firm hand to my elbow guides me away. But on the bright side, I can now say that at least my bags fly first class.

As I make my way back to the cattle class cabin where I belong, an orthodox Jewish man near my seat is requesting a seat change so that he may not be seated next to a lady not related to him. Read more about this interesting conflict here. But make sure you finish this post first. The airhostess, the same one that had just made me do the march of shame, approaches me with this request. Would I give up an class aisle seat for the sake of an obscure religious requirement of a random stranger? That too, on a 11-plus hour flight? Especially after being treated, what’s the word, brusquely, merely a few minutes back? I’m sure that United’s Israel specific training requires her to do this but how I wish she had used her judgment. Tsk tsk.

“I can't give you this case. Besides, I've already been through too much shit this morning over this case to hand it over to your dumb ass” – Jules Winnfield, played by Samuel Jackson, in Pulp Fiction. 

(Funny how I seem to turn to the same few sources – Seinfeld, Pulp Fiction, etc – to get the perfect set of words for just about any situation.)

But this is real life, I’m inside a plane that, barring any last minute glitches, is about to take off and as much as I would like to, I can’t afford to be as hyper articulate as Jules. Nevertheless, I tell her, not in those words, that there is no way on God’s earth or His skies, for that matter, that I’m giving up my seat. Payback, they say, can be a bitch, but instant payback is a wounded, hungry one. I face many hurdles on a daily basis because of my belief in vegetarianism. But I don’t go around kicking up a storm at restaurants or airplanes. And I’m supposed to vacate seats now? Sorry.

Onward to the entertainment section and its time to play the travel trivia jeopardy.

Alex: This airline, which worships and pampers even economy class passengers, refreshes its inflight entertainment content monthly.

Me: What is Singapore airlines?

Alex: Indeed!

Me: I’ll choose United economy class torture for $800 please.

Alex: Answer, that’s your daily trouble from hell, sucker.

My trip saddles January and February and I was hoping to see a different selection of movies – specifically, without The Intern – this time. But no such luck on United. And since I have exhausted the TV content on the onward journey, I’m left with slim pickings. But on the bright side, most of this post came into being on a dark winter night, 33,900 feet over the Atlantic.

The turbulence and also both the landings send sharp jolts of pain through my entire ear canal. With the facial plumbing blocked every which way (remember, I have acute karaoke-iasis) my ears threaten to burst spectacularly any moment. I almost reach for the barf bag to hang over both my ears just in case. Chewing, swallowing and yawning have no effect. I sit there with clenched teeth and my hands over my ears. Fun times.

As the plane makes the approach, the earth beneath, green from the recent rains, is sighted, the bay – cloaked in grey – reveals itself, the bridges are identified and the 101 snakes by the edge of the bay: familiar sights signaling the last stretch of the week long race. I used to be this excited about landing in Chennai, when Chennai was home, craning my neck to catch a glimpse of landmarks, familiar buildings, movie banners, trying to spot our house (OK who am I kidding, our locality) etc. Wherever your travels may have taken you to, whatever be the comforts offered by a fine hotel, returning home to family is truly the best part of traveling.

The taxi ride home was interesting too but that will have to be a post by itself for another day. 

In Israel: fundamental questions, karaoke horrors and secret office parties

Giving out the the standard disclaimer. This is part three of the series. Parts one and two go before this. OK, this is not the Bourne series and you can skip one or two or both. But I'm just putting this out here to give you the big picture. And mutual fund investments are subject to market risks. 

---------------------

The training session, my main reason for this trip, is actually really useful. Over the course of three days, the mild fog hanging over a few disparate topics begins to lift. It is one thing to learn the old school way - seek out the right people, schedule and reschedule meetings, think of intelligent questions to ask, get the answers - the whole nine yards. But it is quite another to have a seat and have the teachers come in and present while you get to ask questions. But what is really special is doing it with the sales team. They hold the ultimate license – the one to ask “fundamental” questions. Pro tip 1: Stick around with them and you can safely get the answers to nearly all the questions you are too embarrassed to ask yourself.

Sales person: “Hey I have a fundamental question. How does this copier work: do I first put the paper in and press this button or is it the other way around?”

Average Joe: “Excellent question Mr. Sidebottom, but that’s the shredder. The copier is over there. Here why don’t I make a copy of that purchase order for you?”

One of them, a pretty senior one, asked a really, terribly fundamental question that could have gotten people to do a double take had it been posed by an engineer or marketer with similar experience. But from a sales guy? People are only too glad to clarify. After calling it a good question first. Pro tip 2: They know to throw a good party and show everyone, including themselves, a good time. In most companies, the sales guy is the go-to man for all questions concerning fine dining establishments, the best golfing venues, nice hotels, resorts and all things good in life. As a result, there is some reception, dinner or other after hours activities planned for most evenings. Compare this with engineering or other training sessions where an evening after a brutal day of lectures and activities would include scarfing down a late and lonely dinner and hitting the sack exhausted. One such night includes hitting a karaoke bar. It has been almost 10 years since I had set foot in a karaoke bar in the karaoke capital of the world: Tokyo. After a tepid start, the party comes to life. Nothing quite warms the hearts of middle aged Asian gentlemen like the sight of a karaoke microphone and a captive audience. Especially after they have been primed with strong beverages. And they gustily start channelizing their respective inner Elvis-Sinatra-Beatles (and now Psy) through an uninhibited, all-out aural attack. Oh and as the night progresses, they put on some dance moves too. Over the next few hours you understand what the phrase “sing like no one is listening” truly means. Passersby that night could be forgiven for assuming that some sort of a primitive ritual involving painful animal sacrifices to a hard-to-please deity was going on within the confines of karaoke hall number 12.

And it is at this karaoke bar, I suspect, that I pick up my infection from hell. Granted, there were sniffles and sneezes during the training sessions. But finger food, shared microphones and inebriated sick people in a confined space is a deadly combination that overwhelms my immune system. I’m running a mild fever, coughing up what I hope are not chunks of my lungs (There goes your appetite!), my chest is weighing a ton and I’m sounding like Frankenstein but less cheery. And as it usually happens in these circumstances, the next days are packed with meetings where I must actually talk. When it rains, as they say, it pours. From my nose, in this case. (Pro travel trip: Never fall sick in a foreign country. You’re welcome.) I want to push out the first meeting in the morning in favor of sleeping a bit longer but the call of duty trumps my body’s loud requests. But guess what? At the very last minute, as I haul my beaten-up self all the way to the room, the meeting gets pushed out to late evening. I must have pissed off many Gods in many ways, I’m sure. But just when I think things are falling apart, a random colleague pours out two glasses of champagne, hands one each to me and a colleague I’m discussing something with, and simply walks away, not even giving us a chance to thank him or ask about the occasion. Glug, glug, glug: gotta love buzz-rael! I mean Israel.

To wrap up this piece, I’d like to share a few interesting things I notice about our office here. Number 1: There are email announcements sent out whenever a colleague loses a family member. They are somber looking emails entirely in Hebrew. Google translation reveals that the email says this: XYZ employee has lost this member of his family and the funeral is to be held at a certain cemetery. I’m familiar with the emails from HR announcing weddings and baby arrivals. But this is the first time I’m coming across official bereavement emails. Interesting. Number 2: Every morning, at about 10:00 AM, there is fresh fruit and vegetables – cucumbers, carrots, baby tomatoes on the vine and some seasonal fruits – placed in baskets in the lobbies on each floor. You get off the lift or stairs and you are face to face with a basket of fine produce. They are even washed. Vegetable peelers are hanging on hooks in the pantries nearby. The crunching sound of carrots and cucumbers can be heard along the corridors. The previous company that I worked for tried this for a very short time in their Singapore office before quickly discontinuing it for reasons unknown. And there is a stall set up on most Thursdays in the front lobby with different vendors, in turns, selling an assortment of interesting things: dry fruits, raisins and nuts (the most popular guy), a florist, homemade pastries and cookies and sometimes linens and bed sheets. But the most amusing thing has got to be the display of empty whiskey bottles that many colleagues have put up on their office shelves. Going by the sheer quantity of the bottles, there must be wild parties going on somewhere unbeknownst to me. 

In Israel: Sleeping in Ikea, missing sunsets and doing the tango with jet lag

Part one of this multi-part series is here, if you are interested. Reading it is not a pre-requisite for this post to make sense: rest assured that this is going to make little sense no matter what you read before or after. But I will still plug it simply because I wrote that one too and since you have decided to waste your precious time in this untrampled corner of the internet, you might as well get more quantity of prose for your efforts.

--------------------

It is a very pleasant 14 degrees Celsius when the Boeing 777 touches down at Ben Gurion. It had been raining the previous week but the evening sun is golden bright as I walk out of the terminal. The taxi driver, Mrs. M – a lady that speaks near flawless, if accented, English and accepts credit cards – engages in casual chit chat. I enquire about the “situation” in Tel Aviv. My intention here is not to do an Anderson Cooper but only to see if it is safe enough to step out for dinner – because last month a couple of stabbings happened not far from where I usually go out to grab a bite. “The situation these days is calm. But the leaders are not taking any initiatives for peace”, she says in a resigned tone that comes from being a lady, a mother of three and trying to make a living in a troubled place. In parallel, we have been warned at work to not venture out on our own and also to avoid a bunch of “mixed” cities including Jerusalem and Jaffa. In other words, business as usual in Israel. Outside of actual research and meeting people, taxi drivers provide the most insight into everyday life in any country. Some of them are just chatty for the sake of being so, but there are others that can give you a delectable slice of life during a ride into town and Mrs. M is one such.

My stay this time is arranged at a different hotel than the usual one I love. The idea is to avail of better rates negotiated for the bigger training group. This hotel is relatively new and is just up the street from the apartment we were staying in last year. The supposedly “chic” design is, how do I put this…terrible. Imagine sharp edged, white, boxy furniture, grey net-like curtains, a downright cheap looking, white table and a about five-foot tall pink lamp (yes, pink) hanging from the ceiling in one corner just behind a contemporary fabric swing chair. And the hidden shelves? It takes me 5 minutes of searching to locate the hair dryer. And the room is done in a shade of white so bright that I’m half expecting Morgan Freeman in whites from Bruce Almighty to walk out through the walls and start playing God. The answer to the question, “What does it feel like to sleep in an Ikea showroom,” is this: right in this room. There is also a picture hanging by the TV of what certainly looks like two heaps in the Manila garbage dump. Remember, chic design. The room itself is oddly shaped. The wall on the far side makes a sharp angle to allow a view of the sea instead of the opposite building. Which brings us to just about the only redeeming feature in the room: a sea facing balcony. But even that comes with handicaps – the glass walls are grimy perhaps from the rains last week, the plastic furniture dirty, an ashtray in a non-smoking room and you can see into (and be seen from) the adjacent room’s balcony. But, one look at the sunset – a fiery ball reluctantly relenting and allowing the sea to swallow it – and you can easily be transported to a different world. But here is the catch: every evening when this elaborately made cosmic drama is staged, I will be inside some conference room in our office, 27 kms away, with not so much as a window, much less a view worth taking in. I know I’m whining but allow me one more rant: the breakfast spread – the one meal that I rely on most for my daily nourishment – is not as good as the usual hotel either. When I’m on business travel, I rate hotels on three aspects: cleanliness, the quality of the breakfast (read vegetarian options: smoked Norwegian salmon? Baby hippopotamus ribs smeared with caviar? Mean nothing!) and the amount of free water they provide in the room (read: 500ml is not enough). This hotel scores 1 out of 3.

This is beginning to sound like an old man’s medical maladies chronicle but I learn that Melatonin is a prescription-only drug in Israel. The elderly pharmacist at SuperPharm, a local pharmacy chain, helpfully offers an equivalent medicine. But here is the problem: the description on the carton is in Hebrew and the pharmacist speaks but a smattering of English. The only thing I understand on that carton is the bright yellow flower – which I assume means to say that I would wake up like one the morning after. So I opt for a drug-free recovery from jet lag instead. What is a few sleepless nights and droopy days compared to popping in pills of questionable ingredients? But on the flip side, that means playing with my sleeping times and going down on my knees and pleading with my mind and body to bail me out one more time. The first two nights are not too terrible – restless and filled with weird dreams, of course -- but at least I get a few straight hours of shut eye. But very soon I experience both extremes: of falling asleep early and waking up way too early and also falling asleep very late and scrambling to board the bus in the morning. However, no matter what happens the night before, the 3pm wave of sleepiness hits me like a ton of bricks leaving me nodding away during the late evening sessions. Luckily I’m part of a group all of who landed with me so I don’t stick out too much. And as it happens with these one-week trips, I will get adjusted to the Tel Aviv clock just in time for my return flight.

I no longer forage for food. I now know enough places including their regular and Shabbat timings, most of them within a 10 minute walk from the hotel district. Two of the restaurants that I like, actually local street/casual food joints, are the Market and Miznon, both located on King George Street – a busy street lined by shops, cafes and restaurants on both sides. They have enough vegetarian and even vegan options for me to skip the longer walk to Jaffa in pursuit of a falafel sandwich for dinner. Although, I must admit that the walk to Jaffa is much, much nicer, taking one along the winding path by the beach. As they say, you win some and you lose some.

Walking around in Tel Aviv is an interesting experience. Many of the streets strongly remind me of India. They are loud, busy, narrow, lined with a mixture of shops, eateries and showrooms, bus stops filled with waiting people and the stains and stench of human and pet urine punctuating the side walk. The streets passing through residential neighborhoods are lined with the characteristic Bauhaus style apartments of varying vintages. This is definitely a city of apartments - there are hardly any independent homes around. The streets are all part of a massive one-way network and they have cars parked on both sides leaving very little room for cars to pass through. Parking spaces are scarce, forcing people to get creative and conjure up nooks and crannies to shoehorn their ride in. But the pavements are wide enough and not bad for walking. There are also wide, tree lined avenues – some with a central footpath, big open public spaces and much greenery by the Yarkon river running to the north. The beach along the warm Mediterranean is a beautiful presence, framing the coast to the West while city space gives way to desert as one travels to the east and south. The young(ish) people at work that are trying to buy a home don’t consider living outside Tel Aviv as an option. Culturally speaking, the city is divided into the classier North and the working class South – the exact opposite of Chennai’s respective halves. Restaurants of all sorts abound and one can have a sumptuous meal without burning a hole in the wallet or, of course, choose to indulge in expensive meals. The staple street food in Israel is, ironically, the decidedly middle-eastern falafel. With a few minor inconveniences aside, it is a bustling metropolis with something to do for everyone as long as there are no active conflicts that is.

I have never been to Turkey but people that have, always talk about how Asia meets Europe there. But I would like to think Israel must be no different. The European cars (many of them hatchback), al fresco dining, people’s sense of dressing, (conflict-rich) history per square mile, the style of graffiti (the best one I saw was “The revolution has been postponed because of the rain”) – all remind one of Europe. The dirty streets, slightly unruly traffic, drab buildings, storefronts with thick steel shutters, cables of all sorts running overhead, on the other hand, serve up the Asian, particularly Indian, flavor. This perhaps explains the pull of India on Israeli tourists, particularly the young, fresh-out-of-army segment. Tel Avivites also seem to possess a rather strong passion for pet dogs. Every other person on the street is walking one. But there is also a distinct lack of cleaning up after their pets. Remind you of India? Oh and there are the cats too. Of all colors, sizes, shapes and in varying states of health – some fit, some not so fit, some maimed – lurking around everywhere in search of their next meal.  

Israel trip diary Jan-Feb 2016

I usually do bite sized nuggets from my trips like the one here or here. But this time around, call it a mix of boredom and lack of enough good movies to watch, I decided to king-size my jottings on the return flight. So I unleash upon you, the unsuspecting reader, the details of my recent trip to Israel.

-------------------------------

The onward journey: The good taxi, the bad flight and the ugly movie

The day of departure dawns. I drop off my son at his school in the morning after assuring him for the hundredth that I will be back in only a week. He promises to take care of his mom and be a good boy. Of course, he doesn’t like me traveling, is saddened at the very sight of the packed bag and he has made that clear over the past few days. He doesn’t want to understand but knows he has to relent. I can’t pin it on his age for this is not very different from my own state of mind in many situations. I hope his friends at school can distract him enough to make it easy on his mom to deal with him for a week while I vanish from home.

I have to fly out in the middle of the day for the first leg of the journey. I don’t know about you but for my trips, I prefer slinking out under the cover of darkness, especially for the ones abroad. As a Chennaiite, nearly all of the foreign travels of friends and family started at an ungodly hour in the night and I suspect that my mind has been subconsciously conditioned to that routine. SQ528 to Singapore that left Chennai at 11:45pm was my default flight. But there is certainly something about finishing dinner at home -- topping it off with curd rice and homemade pickle -- before leaving on your travels. The family staying back goes to bed right away, you doze off as the airplane lifts off and the morning after you call them from wherever. Talk about a comforting routine. Leaving in the middle of the day seems disruptive in many ways. I’m leaving a dad-sized gap for my kid to deal with in the afternoon and evening, not to mention the wife having to deal with it all by herself. And I’m cooped up in an airplane when I can be doing so many other things on land instead. I do have the option to leave at night but that would be one night before and I certainly wouldn’t take that.

The ride to the airport is uneventful. The driver was, as usual, a Punjabi who preferred conducting all his chit chat with me in a 80:20 mixture of Hindi and Punjabi. My tentative responses in very bad Hindi didn’t seem to put him off one bit. For a change, the taxi – a yellow Prius instead of a beat up Chevy Caprice or a Ford Crown Vic. -- didn’t smell like a barn. Two air fresheners – green, tree-shaped ones – hung from the handles above the rear windows on both sides, giving off a strong scent. I don’t know which chemicals were used in the concoction but they gave me a terrible headache. In hindsight, the barn smell – a heady cocktail of sweat, body odor, spicy aromas from a long ago lunch consumed in the cab and unwashed seat fabric -- would have been tolerable. At least the contents would have been organic. 

After spending many months cloaked in plastic sheets, the sprucing up of Terminal 3 in SFO International has been completed sometime after my previous trip. And I must admit, the end result seems to take a baby step towards nice and swanky instead of the SFO default of drab and utilitarian. My frequent flyer membership, about to expire in a few months from lack of frequent enough travels, allows me lounge access. But the lady manning the entrance seems to differ in opinion. After a few minutes of remonstrations and explanations, she relents and lets me pass. United should reconsider their friendly skies© tagline. Friendly skies; grumpy earth ©which would be 50% true. You’re welcome. This just goes to reinforce my belief that friendly service in the airline industry – both on land and in the air – is owned by just two companies: Singapore and ANA.

Planes are taking off under grey skies as if being catapulted from a giant sling from the end of the runway as I slide into a sofa seat by the window that looks out to the runway. There is some time before my flight will be called and I can watch a few take offs as I help myself to hot oatmeal and strawberries. I’ve done a fair bit of flying around but even today I’m awed by the sight of a plane taking off: the bigger the plane, bigger this awe. I instinctively compare the takeoff -- plane taxiing out to the end of the runway, turning around, pausing a moment or two before thundering down the tarmac and lifting off smoothly -- to a Curtly Ambrose or a Courtney Walsh delivery in cricket. It really doesn’t take too much imagination for the similarities are so strong. There is the stylish sauntering up to the end of the run up with perhaps that nonchalant wiping of the sweat against the sleeve, the casual, one-handed collection of the ball passed by either mid-on or mid-off after it has been shined with the sweat and spittle of the fieldsmen, a couple more involuntary rubs against their trousers, the turning around – the defining moment, that slight crouch of their frame as they start the most elegant of run ups, the stylish pre-delivery slide as that wrist-banded right arm telescopes to a scary height and whoosh, the release. Call me crazy but may be Messrs. Wilbur and Orville were reincarnated as Walsh and Ambrose? My love for cricket in general and the two gentlemen fast bowlers in particular will ensure that no number of years of flying shall diminish my fascination for planes lifting off. Planes landing? Not so much.

Time to take off. I have forgotten to carry my melatonin tablets – I did the packing myself this time -- and I don’t find them in the few shops by the gates. I must hunt down a few in either Newark or Tel Aviv. Much against my preference, I opt for a window seat as it is in the slightly roomier economy plus section – small rewards earned for my travels – rather than choose an aisle seat in economy class. I prefer to be the one disturbed rather than the one disturbing. I have had a brunch in the lounge on top of steaming idlies polished off at home and no meals shall be served on this flight. So I doze away in an attempt to sync up with Jerusalem time. No use.

I land in Newark for the ninety-minute layover for the Tel Aviv flight. Snow on the ground serves as a reminder of last week’s storm “Jonas”. I have the usual dinner at the gate-side restaurant before I board the second flight. And I don’t find any melatonin in tablet form, only dissolvable tablets in cherry flavor. I dread jetlag alright but there are certain things that I don’t consume no matter what.

This time I’m in an aisle seat towards the very end of the plane. It is a Chuck Lorre buffet for entertainment: 3 episodes of Big Bang Theory and 2 episodes of Two and a half men (with Charlie Sheen). And much against better judgment, the Robert DeNiro fan in me forced me to watch The Intern also starring Anne Hathaway. Terrible. Mistake. Here is the synopsis: a vanilla wafer, dipped in caramel, topped with chocolate syrup and rainbow sprinkles served with a glass of Martin Scorsese’s tears to wash it all down with. Ack! The next time a new DeNiro movie comes out which, going by the rate, should be sometime next week, I’ll watch The Casino or The Goodfellas on DVD instead. A sincere request to Mr. DeNiro: You had a dream run with Martin Scorsese. As difficult as it must be to you and even to us, let’s face it: it is over. There is a fine line between riding away into a glorious sunset and groping about in the night that follows after and I’m afraid that you may have crossed it. Please leave us with good memories instead of sleepwalking through crap like The Intern.

Robert DeNiro (looking into my eyes, arms apart and with that signature downward curl of the edge of his mouth): Are you talking to me?

Me: Yes I am, grandpa.

----------------------
My scribblings are really bulky and I'm thinking of splitting up it into 2 or 3 pieces after I polish up the rest a bit. Soon with installment #2.