A hardearned meal

It was the summer of 2005 and I was sitting at a table in a small restaurant in small town Japan. I was there,working on a project for a customer who wasn't particularly keen on getting it over with. It was an intense 5 weeks of collecting data, cleaning it and trying to make sense and generally keeping busy. The tool on which I had to collect the data was being used extensively by the customer. As a vendor, I couldn't really complain about that, but that meant that on most days I could only use the tool between shift changes and that in turn meant that I had to forego lunch or whatever passed for it at their cafeteria. This even prompted one of them to get really concerned about my continuous absence at the cafeteria and ask me "Are you Ramzan? You Islam?" I replied that I was neither but only an applications engineer doing time in Asian fabs. But I digress. The work would usually get done pretty late in the evenings and on many days I would take a cab into the sleeping town, walk past this closed restaurant, the only one where I could get vegetarian food, to the convenience store to grab a sorry sandwich and a carton of milk and head to my matchbox sized room to crash. On those rare, lucky evenings when I could actually get into town when it was still light, I would head straight to this place which served Japanese interpretations of Italian dishes. I'm talking paper thin pizzas with a layer of wasabi sauce on it. Or pasta flavored with, get this, squid ink. I had managed to convince the manager and the chef to prepare a vegetarian pizza from scratch, as opposed to pulling out the pepperoni slices from a pepperoni pizza and christening it cheese pizza.

It was on one such evening when I was sitting there with my custom-made pizza that this story started. A caucasian couple was seated at a few tables from me and politely nodded. Being the polite fellow that I am, I nodded back and also gave them the courteous smile and proceeded to get busy with the business of inspecting the pizza for its vegetarian-ness and consuming it. It must have been at least twenty minutes before I looked up in time to notice that the couple were preparing to leave. From where they were seated, they had to pass me on their way out and as they crossed me, the lady stopped to enquire about the thread around my wrist. And even before I could play out the oft-repeated response to this query, she proudly displayed her's. In a matter of few minutes and a few exchanges, we got to know a bit about each other. In respect of their privacy, let me just say that they were from down-under and were teaching English at the local school and that they were practising Hinduism. And, more importantly, that they were vegetarians too. Rants and anecdotes of the difficulties unique to veggies in Japan were shared and before long, an invitation for dinner at their place was proffered and was accepted with restrained glee. I was leaving for home that Sunday and it was agreed that I would meet them for dinner at their place the night before on Saturday. It is not often that I get invited for a meal during my many forays into the Asia pacific region and needless to say, the prospect of a home cooked vegetarian dinner definitely raised my spirits and suddenly the world seemed to be not all that bad a place after all. Right? Well, read on.

The day arrived. I had nearly finished packing and was looking forward to the appointment. I took the train to a station close to their house from where the husband had said he would pick me up. When I got off, it was raining pretty hard and it was already getting dark. It was a small station and the few people that got off with me quickly melted away into the approaching night. Just as I was beginning to doubt whether the whole thing was some sort of a joke or maybe even a dream, I saw the lights of an approaching car. Sure enough it was him and we were soon on our way.

Societal demands compelled me to make small talk, something that I don't consider myself an expert at. We shared harmless details of our respective lives, about education, religion and of course, music. He appeared passionate about music and mentioned how he had developed an ear for Hindustani music and rattled off names that I had only seen on CD covers at music stores. He also mentioned that he was proficient on the harmonium. Now, this was Japan, remember, and I was nearly 7000 miles from anyone that was familiar with my musical abilities or the lack thereof. Not to be outdone, I mentioned the time that I had spent learning to play the mridangam (A South Indian percussion instrument). While I'm not given to hyperbole or even blowing the self trumpet, I did skip the finer print that my dalliances with the intrument were of late-80's vintage and that I had never come in contact with one since. He then let me in on the itinerary for the evening which was reading of verses from the Gita followed by a few bhajans and dinner. This was certainly not what I had in mind when I accepted the invitation a few days back. But being used to this routine from my grad school days where the propsect of good food empowered me to sit cross legged for an hour every Sunday morning and keep pace with the recital of Sri Vishnu Sahasra Namam with the help of a book, I was game. We drove on in the rains and we soon arrived at their abode.

His wife welcomed me with a "Namasthe" that made even me, a true blooded Indian, feel a little uncomfortable. The house was typical Japanese with wooden floors, mats, sliding doors and very small rooms. The place was dimly lit and the smell of incense and religion filled the air. The living room had been prepared for the evening with an idol of Lord Krishna decorated and placed in the middle. I positioned myself facing the idol, sitting cross legged on the floor. We had company that night - an Argentinian male, whose name I don't recall, who looked like someone who had done this many times before. I could, even over the incense, detect the unmistakable aroma of basmati rice and an eggplant based side dish was wafting in from the adjoining kitchen which immediately set off hunger pangs within me. I set the mental countdown to about 45 mins by which time I reckoned I would be done with the religious events of the evening and could relish dinner, little knowing that those 45 minutes would be very long, memorable ones.

The husband, who till that point was attired in cotton pants, emerged from an adjoining room in full traditional Indian attire - the panchagajam, a khadi top and a resplendent namam on his forehead. I was slightly taken aback, totally unprepared for such religious intensity while the Argentinian sat there wearing that "Been here, seen this" look. The wife had, in the meantime, set the Gita on the wooden book holder. He quickly breezed through a few verses, their translations and his own comments, concluding it with extolling the Gita. My mental timer, in the meantime, was down to 35 minutes. Then it happened. Announcing that we would now move on to the bhajans, he set about tuning the harmonium and asked me, "You said you can play the mridangam right?" I nodded gingerly, expecting him to say something along the lines of how having one would have completed a musical troupe, providing some rhythm to the songs. Instead, he went into a dark adjoining room and came back out dusting a full sized, real, strike-it-and-you'll-hear-it mridangam, complete with a cloth around its middle.

The deer in the headlights cliche doesn't even begin to describe my situation. I might be imagining this but there may have been a flash of lightning and a bolt of thunder followed by heavy silence punctuated only by the sound of rain against the roof. The look on the Argentinian's face told that even he hadn't seen this act before and I swear that Lord Krishna sported a mischievous smile on his face. Transformed into a "struggling musician", I slowly got up and received it from him: an acknowledgement that I was well past the point of no return, if ever there existed one. There had been signs and warnings all along but I had ignored every one of them. If accepting the invitation a few days back was the deep end of the pool that I was in, the mridangam was definitely the dorsal fin that I saw circling aroud. Mental timer: 33 minutes.

I don't know if it was divine manifestation or the realization of the fact that playing the mridangam was what that stood between me and a sumptuous meal that night. But whatever it was, as I adjusted the instrument to position it under my left knee and gave it the first few reluctant taps, a strange calm descended over me and I became a mridangist at that moment. There were 5 songs that night. As the couple cleared their throats, I summoned Whatever little I had by way of a general sense of rhythm and the concert was underway. Any inhibitions, fears or even the lack of knowledge I might have had at the beginning of the first song had melted away, thanks to the said sense of rhythm that shone like a bright torch that night. I even mentioned to the husband, between songs 3 and 4,that the mridangam required to be tuned and he nodded in agreement. The nerve! By the time the final song reached a crescendo, I was in a zone, striking away at the sides of the mridangam like a maestro. As I set the mridangam upright and got up, the couple came over and complimented me on my performance. They may have said that they were glad it was over but I was floating too far up in ether to hear it. The Argentine gent nodded his approval and Lord Krishna's smile no longer appeared mischievous. It was a spiritual experience for me. I became more appreciative of a sumptuous meal than I was before and also thankful that I hadn't mentioned to him that night about my attempts to learn to play the veena. That could have been very disastrous. Or not.

Sathyabama: A Doomed University

The recent suicide by Vivek, a student of St. Joseph's College of Engg., while shocking, was something that was waiting to happen. It was a matter of time and it happened to be Vivek on the 1st of June, 2009. Jeppiaar and his family of thugs who run the cluster of institutions under the Sathyabama University umbrella, have, over the years, managed to establish an identity of running a "disciplined" institution. Now, in all honesty, this was probably the one attribute that set them apart in a sea of mediocre engineering institutions that had mushroomed during the 90's. Enforcing discipline cost them nothing and was a powerful tool that could create a much better brand value than actually having a great infrastructure or faculty of a high calibre. This idea instantly caught on among the parents, who, upon depositing their children, particularly daughters, into one of these institutions, could sit back, relax and expect to collect a well "disciplined" product at the end of the assembly line in 4 years' time. In reality, they were a bunch of fat, rich, control maniacs with a chequered past, trying to create a fear psychosis amongst the enrolled students in an attempt to woo the parents for their money. The only driving motivation for them was, and continues to be, making money by the truck loads, and to this family goes the credit of making engineering education truly a dirty business.

The idea of discipline is a funny one. There is a faint line that separates enforcing values and being sadistic - say, the difference between Singapore and North Korea, and that line was crossed a while back by these control freaks. A look at the Draconian rule system, reveals some sick minds at work. Preventing boys and girls from talking to each other accomplished nothing other than reveal a medieval mind set. I personally know of many relationships that blossomed even in that barren landscape of stifling regulations. There were "squads" assigned to identify and round up defaulters and bring them to the notice of the management for corrective action. In my first year, I was shocked to see a lecturer going around, checking the faces of the guys for stubble and asking the ones with an unacceptable amount of facial hair to go shave. The chosen ones rushed to the hostel, borrowed their friends' razors and returned with a clean shaven face to try and complete the University final examination within the allotted 3 hours. I'll leave it to you to decide which was more weird: imposing an arbitrary, Talibanesque "no-stubble-during-finals" rule or having a member of the staff enforce it.

Vivek, the dead student, was not a saint - he had plagiarized in an examination and deserved to be disciplined. But punishment, if not constructive and reinforcing some basic values, can have dire consequences and we have witnessed one such instance now. I was involved, in my capacity as a teaching assistant, in a similar case at a University in the US in 2003. The student who was caught in the act was given a hearing (after scheduling one, taking into account everyone's schedules) by the Dean of the school, a student counsellor, the professor and self. He argued passionately how he was not wrong. After that hearing, he was given a failing grade, a warning, advice on ethical behavior and was asked to repeat the course. Compare this with the modus operandi of the moral hooligans running the circus at S'bama. The idea of punishment, according to the goons, is making a student stand in front of the "office" for days on end, denying him a hearing or a fair trial. If found in breach of their extremely narrow definition of good behavior, one is perceived to be guilty, found guilty, declared guilty and then punished, which would usually involve slapping some arbitrary fine and bringing in the parents from some remote corner of the state for a compulsory meeting with the principal/director.

With due respect to the departed soul, he was a fool on two counts. First, for having selected this institution after this became a deemed University, which essentially means they are a law unto themselves. The only reason people (I mean the students) put up with all the nonsense that was dished out in the name of discipline was because the degree would be issued by the University of Madras and that nearly made up for the inconveniences. But again, as mentioned earlier, this could have been as much a result of his parents influencing the decision based on their sense of security around these institutions. For the money that they would have plonked down, they might as well have got their son admitted into a real college elsewhere. Secondly, I blame Vivek for committing suicide for such a trivial issue. Couldn't he realize that there is more to life beyond the confines of the engineering Abu Ghraib that he found himself in? Perhaps he didn't.

This incidence, I'm sure, will die a quick, silent death and will be interred along with the numerous other offences, mainly financial, that the management have committed in the past as a matter of routine. Justice has a price tag and no price is every beyond the capabilities of these education Nazis with deep pockets. It will soon be business as usual at Sathyabama Deemed University. To the parents who silently approve of the methods of these maniacs, it could very well be your son or daughter that could be the next victim. This college came up with sadistic rules while they were under the University of Madras. Now that they are on their own, there is no stopping them from unleashing a reign of terror. It is not as if the students attending other colleges end up turning anti-social. Hell, none of you ever attended Sathyabama!

Reaction to fear

I took my first flight yesterday since the AirFrance Flight 447 mishap. It is a flight that I have now taken more times than I can keep track of. Yet, it was the first time that I was feeling a bit uneasy before a flight. I don't recall feeling this way even before my maiden flight. As I shoe horned myself into the economy class seat, I cast a quick glance at the aircract safety information card in the seat pouch. I'm no expert in aviation technology but somehow it was reassuring to note that it was a Boeing 777-300. And, gasp!, I even watched the flight safety video. 

During the flight, there was mild turbulence and the pilot was on the PA system, urging passengers to fasten their seat belts. Even before the message was over, there were loud clicks as nearly everyone did it in unison. My wife was extremely perturbed as my "reached-safely" call was delayed because of logistics issues and she did not have access to a TV/internet. 

A temporary phenomenon in reaction to a recent mishap - 9/11/2001, tsunami, Jaws movie, to name a few and, like everything else, will pass away over time as memories fade and other mishaps happen. But it was interesting and unnerving in equal measure to observe and be part of it. 

Park benches, iron slabs and thogayal

My Saturdays have recently taken on a solitary hue, what with the wife's taxing schedules making her work week six days long. Yet, she fixes the lunch for me. Or, as it happened last Saturday, a part of it. The menu last week was thogayal (an Indian dip, vaguely). Saturdays have their own character and they don't drop it just because some project is running behind schedule somewhere. This Saturday was no exception and despite all efforts, it was well past late when our day began. The thogayal, for the uninitiated, has two distinct parts to its preparation. There's the frying-the-ingredients part and assigning-the-grinding-to-the-husband part. To her credit, my wife completed both parts before scooting out the door. As her bus pulled away, all I had to do was blend the already fried ingredients into a fine paste and sit down for a good meal. Sounds simple, right? Yes, if not for a "but" coming. But, there was a small catch. I had to add just one more ingredient to make it complete: coconut gratings. Still sounds simple, right? Yes again, if not for a second "but" coming. But, in an effort to move away from using frozen food, combined with the recent acquisition of a mixer, or the more fancy, "food processor", we had purchased a full husked coconut instead of the usual frozen coconut slab. Okay, it was the size of a football and was on sale for under $1.

If you are familiar with the anatomy of the coconut, you would notice a hard shell that protects the kernel from anybody trying to access it. There is no implement in our house that comes anywhere close to being capable of cracking a coconut shell. I gave the situation at hand some thought and donned my shirt, picked up the coconut, locked the door and stepped out into the sun. Being the optimist that I am, I also had and an empty utensil for collecting the liquid inside when I succeeded in breaking it open. My first stop was the apartment unit down the corridor which has served all my hardware requirements successfully on earlier occasions. As I was about to ring the doorbell, I found that it was locked. Unexpected, yes; cause for panic, no. I proceeded to the lift lobby and took a crowded lift down to the street. It is not everyday that the occupants of a lift car expect to have a person carrying a coconut and an empty vessel for company and they were suitably amused. I tried my best to not appear embarrassed. I stepped out into the street and surveyed the landscape and that was when the gravity of the situation started sinking in.

While you chew on that, let's do a quick comparative study of houses in India and the rest of the world. Houses in India come equipped with grinding stones, the size of mini cars. Since the average Indian has moved on to electrical grinders or the readymade, refrigerated batter packets that are available in stores, these stones are now primarily used for breaking coconuts. In those modern apartments that don't have grinding stones, there is still available an aruvaal (Indian machete?) stored in some corner which would serve the purpose. But I don't live in a house equipped to meet my coconut breaking needs and hence I found myself in the streets, literally, with an intact coconut and an empty vessel.

Necessity mothers invention or at least innovation. On that note, I set about testing various installations for their worthiness in being able to crack a coconut. When young, I had learnt, the hard way, that stairs or any other piece of masonry won't help in my mission. I could easily chip away the plastering and end up getting a memo from the housing authorities. The stair railings were steel with rounded edges and a chrome finish - ruled out. Walking a bit further, I tried the wrought iron park bench installed near the play area. I had credited a course in engineering materials nearly 10 years ago in college. While there was much elaboration on its properties, it's tensile strength, Young's modulus etc, I don't recall a professor ever saying in clear terms if it was capable of cracking open a coconut shell and it was time to test it myself. Exactly 3 hard, surgical and noisy blows later I learned it was not. The coconut remained intact but I could sense windows opening and questioning glances thrown at me. I shuffled away from the scene in search of my next tool, wondering why the world was prejudiced against empty vessels for being noisy.

By this time, I was about quarter of a mile away from home, eliminating, on my way, masonry, manhole covers, cars and other people as candidate tools on some reason or the other. I could not locate even one single piece of stone or a small rock anywhere. Which probably explains why there are no riots or violent protests here. Anyway, just as I was about to turn around, prepared to settle for a coconut-free thogayal, I noticed one missing iron grill cover running along the length of a rain water drain that gave me unhindered access to the hard, iron edge of the next grill and it was all that I had been looking for. In the next 15 seconds (Okay, 30!), I proceeded to break open the shell and collected every drop of coconut water. Mission accomplished! One might have even detected a touch of swagger in my walk back home.

Suffice to say that thogayal was particularly tasty that day. My prayers now are that the missing slab doesn't get replaced by Singapore's ever efficient HDB authorities.

Jay Walks into the sunset

After 17 years of making people laugh on The Tonight Show, Jay Leno is wrapping up. The man was definitely funnier than the rest of the pack, with his face, thanks to that signature jaw, contributing to his jocular visage. Even after leaving the US, this is the one show that I've tried to watch whenever/wherever possible. 

He isn't quite walking away from TV though: he is only moving to a 10pm slot on NBC. Hope he takes Kevin Eubanks along too to his new show. The two of them combined to make the show truly enjoyable. Hope his new show is just as successful and Conan can fill up the big shoes that he leaves behind. 

Thank you Jay!

Spelling Bee and Indian kids: E.n.o.u.g.h!

OK. I give up. For the life of me, I can't figure out the nexus between Indian kids and the spelling bee contest. Geeky looks? Check. Dental braces? Check. Glasses? Check. And lo! yet another nerdy one with Indian creds. has lifted the trophy which, in recent years, has become a rite of passage for these kids. The only way an American or an immigrant child from any other country can lay their hands on the trophy will be to pry it out from the hands of a desi kid. In the parking lot. Somehow I don't seem to swell up with pride after say, the 5th Indian kid won it and quite honestly, I'm even beginning to be repelled by this a bit.  

Looking at the stranglehold that Indians seem to have on this contest makes me wonder whether they are naturally talented at or attracted to this contest or are they being pushed and prodded into taking part in them by over zealous parents? Is the Spelling Bee, to an Indian parent, the Wimbledon equivalent for an ex-Soviet father? Many of these XYZ-ovas that occupy the top ranks in the ATP women's rankings had a tennis racquet thrust into their hands by their dad Mr.XYZ-ov and started thwacking a tennis ball probably while still in diapers. May be these kids are forced to spell out diaper when they are wearing one? Whatever be the case, I hope that these girls and boys enjoy a normal childhood and take part in activities outside the confines of the classroon/library. And no, I didn't mean the piano class! I'm waiting to read about desi kids making a habit of winning, say, the Billabong Pipeline Masters in Hawaii.

(Image courtesy: vi.sualize.us)

My 60 minutes with the swine flu

I was in Korea, the democratic, non-nuclear one to the South, last week for a business trip. The air was crisp, flowers were in full bloom, the rolling hills were clothed in green and it could mean only one thing: swine flu alert. Nearby Japan was reporting increasing cases of the virus and as I arrived, the airport was full of face masks and all passengers were being screened for body temperature. I passed through the temperature check, cleared immigration and was out of the airport in good time. Later that afternoon, I was to hold meetings with our customers. 

We had the meeting scheduled for 4pm. Since our office is a 5-minute ride away from their fab, we left at 3:45, allowing ourselves 10 minutes to find a parking spot. We got there, parked and were at the reception by 3:55, bright and dapper. That was when our plan went pear-shaped. I'm not sure what gave it away, but the smiling receptionist pointed out, very politely, that I was from abroad and all foreign visitors were required to get a health clearance on account of the swine flu. My Korean colleagues were clearly surprised at this unexpected announcement. A brief exchange ensued, which I learned, courtesy a later translation, was that I am from Singapore, a normal, healthy, swine-flu-free nation Which meant that I was also normal, healthy and flu-free. And it was politely but firmly rubbished. 

The clinic that could issue this clearance was a 5 minute ride away. So we piled into the car and drove to said clinic. After a short wait it was my turn and the receptionist inserted one of these new-age thermometers into my left ear canal. The reading was 37.7. I'm from India which means that the metric system and the celsius scale of temperature run in my veins. Yet, when it came to body temperature, I am somehow more familiar with the Fahrenheit scale. Yet, from the deeper recesses of my brain, I knew that the regular body temperature should be 36.x, or thereabouts, and mine could be considered above normal. It was probably because of a combination of the overnight flight, the sleeplessness and the anxiety ahead of facing an unreasonable customer, although I was really feeling fine. The nurse tried my other ear. Either some employee in the thermometer manufacturing plant had taken his job seriously or I was thermally well balanced. The instrument gave out a reading of 37.7C from my right ear too. The nurse, bless her soul, was scientific in her methods, acutely aware of the role that sample size played in scientific experiments. Apparently, the folks upstairs haven't broken the Marie Curie mold yet, I suppose. For the third sample, she brought out the ultimate insturment: the mercury in glass thermometer. Holding it in her left hand, she approached me. By this time, she was painfully aware of my Korean language skills and decided that actions bore faster results than her words or their translations. In one fluid move she loosened my tie, unbuttoned my shirt, parted my vest and stuck it under my left armpit and asked me to remain this way for 10 minutes. Rigorous scientific training. I spent the next 600 seconds admiring an ancient functional clock that was reading 4:30 (Meeting time was 4:00), using the self-operated vision testing instrument, and also the self-operated BP apparatus. The old faithful read 37.7C and that meant a visit to the doctor for further steps. She hurriedly noted down the readings and pointed me to the doctor. While all this was unfolding, my senior Korean colleague, Mr. K, was increasingly getting restless and was talking on the phone in reverential tones and was bowing often and fully: an unhappy customer.

While I was waiting, thermometer-in-armpit, there was one room in and out which was a steady procession of foreigners. The ones going in wore creased foreheads while the ones emerging sported broad smiles. No points for guessing that that was where I was headed to. Before long, it was my turn to face the oracle. Mr. K insisted on accompanying me, which proved to be a boon. The doctor, a middle aged lady, as proficient in English as I was in Korean, glanced at the readings and had an animated discussion with my colleague who was frantically waving his hands and shaking his head. She then focussed her attention on me and asked haltingly, "How are you feeling?". All through this episode, if you had paid attention, I had done very little by way of talking. At various points, I had lent my ear to the nurse, not for her words but for her thermometer, but never had to open my mouth, not even for the thermometer. So when I had to respond to the doctor's question, I felt the urge to clear my throat to say all of "I'm doing fine." The clearing the throat part led to a fresh round of animated dilaog between colleague and doctor during which the former cast a quick glance at me, which, in English, could have meant "Thank you, you <insert your chosen curse word here>" The doctor finally signed the clearance certificate rather reluctantly at 4:50, bringing my secret wish for a week long quarantine in some beach/hill resort crashing to the ground. I chose not to ask Mr.K for details of his exchanges with the doctor.

The ride back to the fab, during which 3G forces acted on our necks, was mostly silent. We walked in to the conference room a full hour behind schedule. As the customers instinctively drew away from me in fear by pushing back in their chairs, Mr. K proudly waved the certificate and announced that I was indeed healthy. Thus relieved, they proceeded to thwack us with their unreasonable demands. 

Newscasts, laptops and awkward moments

I like to keep myself updated on what's happening around the world and I've noticed that watching the news, while  I'm not plugged into the www, helps me in that mission. That I'm aware of headlines from across the globe and still  end up getting drenched on my way to/from work because I didn't carry an umbrella is a totally different story. I  have a choice of four channels for local and international news. And in nearly all of them, there appears, seated on  the newsreader's desk, a laptop that seems to be contributing nothing to the proceedings in any obvious way. One of the Tamil channels, and I can't remember which one, has the laptop PC's screen closed half-way and the anchors treat it like a wild beast and make a concious attempt to not let their hands go anywhere near it lest they lose a couple of digits. I've never seen the newsreader, who is always reading off the teleprompter, use it to say, "Oh! look at this piece from the web!" or perhaps even "You guys take a break while I respond to my mails." Offensive it may seem, but at least, that piece of equipment is being put to some use. 

Which brings us to the pressing question: "What if?". I may be taking this a bit too far but what if, one day, he is  online on an instant messenger program and his son, who has made a bet with his friends, messages him right in the  middle of the business news. 

Reader: Asian stocks rallied today on fresh assurances from...

Laptop: Tada! Kiddo just signed in

Reader: ...the Central Bank of Japan....Why you little rascal.. (To the cameraman) No! Keep it rolling while I  handle this.(Starts typing frantically on the keyboard) Theeere, that should take care of the brat...where was I?

Or, what if a malicious program infects the laptop and decides to corrupt the teleprompter that is hooked up to their network, replacing the news script with gibberish or something worse, like the truth. Farfetched, but likely nevertheless. 

Despite all these clear and present dangers, there still sits a tenacious laptop,  perched rather prominently, eating up pixels on my screen. It is either a marketing ploy for product placement or part of a psychological exercise based on results that having a PC nearby helps add credibility to the content. Well, how else can one explain WebMD? One can never be too sure I suppose. 

I'm also peeved by the awkward routine at the end of the newscast. The news has been dispensed. The viewers have  been brought up to speed on the happenings around the globe, the newsreader has wished the viewers good night (or  day) and the title music starts. But the image of an unsure newsreader is still on the screens. The more savvy ones  appear relaxed: collect the sheaf of papers, arrange them in some order, pull out a pen and write something on those papers and generally try to look cool. But alas, not all of them look composed in front of a running camera without a script. Listen to any of Rajinikant's extempore speeches and you'll know what I'm talking about. I could be imagining this. But I can sense the onset of nervousness even as the sports section comes on. This nervousness sits tight through the weather report and as they sign off, it takes complete hold. The cameraman, probably with an evil smile on his face, unflinchingly focuses on them and the poor folks get all too conscious. If it is a single person, they try to do something that is worthy of a newsreader of a big channel, while cursing the cameraman under their breath through clenched teeth. And if there are two of them, they immediately turn towards at each other and start a conversation, to keep it natural. It may last only a few seconds, but I have a tough time imagining what the after-talk would be during those moments as the music plays on. I can straight away rule out politics, business and sport. Also the weather. My point is, and I speak for the news watching community as a whole, that we don't want to be forced to view a muted discussion of studio gossip. Unless we can be part of it, that is.

All this makes me miss the good old, very formal, near neutral, plain vanilla Doordarshan (DD) news that was  flawlessly read by excellent folks like Minu (my personal favorite), Geetanjali Iyer, Rini Simon (later Rini  Khanna), Usha Albequerque, Mrinalini and Tejeshwar Singh and their Tamil colleagues Sandhya Rajagopalan, Shobana  Ravi (Chandigad, killow-meter, cush-meer). Right after they wished me good night (yeah, me!) their image would fade,  the title music would come on and signal the day's end. Given DD's technical abilities, there were those moments  when they would look at the monitor, believing that the clippings would come and instead look at themselves looking at a monitor. After a few uncertain seconds, they'd recover and move on to the next item. There may have been quite a few of them, but those were glitches, or in DD-speak, "rukavats". There were hardly any awkward moments, designed to make them or the viewers uneasy. And certainly no laptops. 

What next?

With the end of LTTE as we know it, the island nation finds itself at crossroads. In my opinion, the removal of LTTE as the sole, de facto representative of the Tamils in Sri Lanka was a pre-requisite for any development to happen in that country. It must definitely be a period of uncertainty for the Tamils as they try to answer the question "What next?". I hope that the Tamil leadership in the SriLankan political set up and the international community step in to ensure that their rights to lead a dignified life in their land are safeguarded. From the Lankan side, it is a question that they must ask themselves too. This situation offers the best chance to build bridges, reconcile, and reach out to the Tamils and create an environment that enables peaceful coexistence.

To state the glaringly obvious, I believe that the immediate need must be to attend to the survivors of the war and then address the bigger issue of rehabilitation of the refugees spread out across the globe. As a distant observer, both sides need to forget the past and try to move on - much easier said than done. As people, and that includes Tamils and Sinhalese, pick up pieces of their tattered lives that have been altered beyond recognition by suffering and agony, they must be looking forward to peaceful times ahead. The wounds are still fresh and needs healing. I fervently hope that good sense prevails and this heralds an era of lasting peace for them.

My Vesak adventures

Yesterday (May 9) was Vesak, the birth day of Lord Budha, the enlightened one. Or, as we call it in our household, Saturday. Now don't get me wrong, this is the case with nearly all festivals (holidays) of all religious faiths. In keeping with usual practice, the day began much later than the regular weekday. My wife had to work yesterday. So after seeing her off, I strategically positioned myself in front of the laptop, browsing aimlessly even as my breakfast waited on the side for my attention when the door chime played out "London bridge is falling down." I knew it was our friendly, talkative, old Chinese neighbor who stops by about 3-4 times a day for a quick chat. The chats are made quick only by his rather limited vocabulary in English. (lady son = daughter) . I opened the door and it was him alright. What was not alright was that he was wearing a nice t-shirt (a rare event), pants (an equally rare event given that he always wears shorts) and a watch (reserved for the most special occasions). He announced, with as much grandeur he could muster, that he was there to take me to a Buddha temple.

Honestly, at that point, I was not aware that it was Vesak day and I thought that he was asking me to accompany him on his routine visit to a temple. I have turned down this offer on at least 6 different occasions in the past and my father too, when he was here, had turned him down on 6 other occasions. He had an air of conviction about him yesterday and made it very clear that he was not taking no for an answer. My usual excuses to wiggle out didn't work and before long I knew I had to give in. He gave me 10 minutes to get myself temple-visit-worthy and positioned himself against the railing just opposite our door. As I turned around, the choice was between taking a shower and skipping breakfast or vice versa. Those who know me well will know what I would have chosen...

I quickly informed my dad, with whom I was chatting, about my impending trip and was off with our neighbor. His son had come down to take them to the temple. As soon as I had gotten into the car and introductions were made, he announced that on account of Vesak, we would be going first to a temple at Bukit Batok, then to the one at Thompson and finally to a temple at Punggol. That was the first moment when it became clear what I had signed up for, actually, made to sign sign up for, and as the car sped into the tunnel at 80kmph, there wasn't much I could do but grin.

In our family, and I'm sure in most others too, going to the temple on a special day would mean a half day event most of which would be spent in a serpentine queue. So a quick mental calculation made it very clear that I was going to be either in temples or speeding to one for the rest of the day and it was only 11am. During the journey, talk was centered on how they were casual about religion and not that familiar with their texts and traditions. That definitely made me less apprehensive about the rest of the day and also raised my hopes for a quick return. And I was pleasantly suprised at the first temple. The routine was short and sweet: find a parking spot (15 mins), bathe the little Buddha (5 mins) and light an incense stick (5 mins) and walk back to the parking lot. The second and third temples took slightly longer only because one was a massive temple complex and it took a while to park the car at the other. At Punggol, I even got a vegetarian Bee Hoon lunch that could have had a bit more salt, been a touch spicier and a lot less wet. But it was vegetarian and I was hungry and that's all that mattered. As I polished it off, what I was feeling was either satiation or may be even nirvana!

All in all, it turned out to be a particularly active Vesak for me. As I tottered into the house, returning from the unplanned pilgrimage clutching a coke bottle filled with holy water and a booklet on Vipassana meditation techniques, it was half a Saturday well spent. Peace!