Chak Diyaaa India!!!

4:45 PM. Hosur Road was just recuperating from a stressful morning rush hour and there was a semblance of sanity about the Baap Of All Roads!

Sanity is an attribute you can seldom associate with Hosur Road and it ceased to exist this monday evening. At around 5 PM, it seemed the whole of Bangalore was on an exodus to Hyderabad. Space-time froze again and all the drivers became extremely "Horn"y :-)

I should have expected all this; after all, India is the land of a billion cricket fanatics!! And missing India in action in a world cup final is tantamount to disservice to the nation!! And what a match it promised to be; India beat England,South Africa and Australia in the previous three matches and were on the threshold of lifting the world cup after a 24 year hiatus.

India Vs Pakistan - The World Cup Final!!!! It just cannot get better than this!!

May be I was dreaming; May be the whole of India was dreaming!! Dreams are a luxury you ill afford on Hosur Road; Reality bit us very quickly and it was a nightmare near BommanHalli :-)

Sports they say is that theater of human emotions where only unscripted drama rules; It surely did in the last 2 weeks in South Africa.

We were old, slow, meek, ugly, predictable and boring a few months back when we were knocked out of the biggest tournament of the game in the very first stage!! It was definitely not a shock - we had professional actors in the team who considered cricket a side business and we had Munaf Patel who believed that diving on the field amounts to blasphemy :-)

The show dragged on and the tournament lasted for a few more months in remote grounds where the players out numbered the ground staff and the audience combined :-)

A fortnight ago, to give India a chance in the 20-20 world cup would have been like expecting to see Rajesh Khanna driving a 1000 CC bike in Dhoom 3 :-)

I think Dhoni and his boys hardly cared if anybody gave them a chance; India rose like a phoenix from its own ashes in the last few weeks to script a spectacular ascent to the finals.

Back to Monday. In the race against time, I lost by 15 minutes and Yousuf Pathan was out minutes after I reached home.

For an hour, it seemed the Indian batsmen had it under control; It was like the calm before the Yuvraj Storm. Yuvraj, in sublime touch took batting to heights unattainable in international cricket; He batted as if he had been waiting for a decade to play in the 20-20 world cup.

Umar Gul, with the look of a breed of dog I cannot name, almost spoiled the party for India before young Rohit Sharma played as if he was batting on a Mumbai street after school hours to take India to 157.

I felt it was enough and for a moment, Imran Nazir made me believe that it was just a figment of my imagination. He continued from where he left off in the previous match until Robin Uthappa showed why India, beating all expectations was in the world cup final. With fire in their bellies, Dhoni's boys played like possessed fighters, there to prove a point. Noo..they were doing much more than that; it seemed they were having the best times of their life there - youthful exuberance unseen previously in Indian cricket.

Franklin D Roosevelt, the legendary US president said that Fear is the Only thing we need to fear about; And fear was conspicuous with its absence in the Indian contingent as it put reputations to rest.

Shahid Afridi, a 23 year old for the past 7 years was out the first ball and everyone thought it was the end of the road for Pakistan. Misbah Ul Haq at the other end was busy calculating moves, runs and balls with unmatched precision to take the match to the wire; Dream Finish to a Dream Final! :-)

Joginder Sharma prevailed and phewwww...we WON THE WORLD CUP!!

9 PM - I havent seen scenes like that in Bangalore before and dont expect to see in the near future.

Cricket truly galvanised India once more!!.

Dhoni And Team....YOU ROCK!!

CHAK DIYAAA INDIA!! :-)

Myth And Reality

September 12th 2007 was an exceptionally unique day in the history of India - the government of a country with an 80 crore Hindu population said that the greatest King in Hindu mythology may not have actually existed!!

Pheww..for a second I thought I was hearing a forecast of the news in 2027!! My happiness was shortlived; there was nothing unique about Sept 13 - within a day, we degraded back to common place politics with the Law Minister making unlawful, sweeping statements about Ram.

The Ram-Sethu project, in all probability, might be off and Tamil Nadu may lose a lot of business. But to me, this misadventure by the government is one of its best achievements so far. It has set the ball rolling on one of the oldest and most vital debates of all time - Myth vs Reality in particular and science vs religion in general.

From times immemorial, the three-letter word GOD has instigated more hatred and love, peace and violence, passion and mithya than what the rest of all concepts could cumulatively manage.

One of the first words to be taught to a child is GOD; and the last word most people try to speak before they die is GOD..not to forget the innumerable times GOD is spoken, taught, read, heard and thought of, in between!!

It is not my aim here to prove the existence/non existence of GOD. I am just intrigued by what is in store for the human race because of the dichotomy in approaching religion(or GOD) and everything else.

As the world becomes smaller, flatter and smarter by the day and as institutions, people and societies are scruntinised in every possible way, how can religion and faith remain untouched by rationale and ridicule? And how long will it continue?

When you talk about religion and God, all other things are trumped over - a fact the self proclaimed cultural saviors of our nation have successfully institutionalised in the last 2 decades. People become emotional, hysterical and extremely irrational when you question anything about their faith.

Douglas Adams had this to say on the trump card that religion is......."Religion..has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, 'Here is an idea or a notion that you are not allowed to say anything bad about; you are just not. Why not? - because you are not!' If somebody votes for a party that you dont agree with, you are free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says 'I must not move a light switch on a saturday', you say, 'I respect that'."

An extension to this in the context of the present issue..

ASI says "The characters of Ramayana are fictitious and there is no evidence to prove that Ram existed and the Ram-Sethu is a natural formation and not a man-made construction".

SPCB(Self Proclaimed Cultural Brigade) says "You dare not say that".

ASI asks "Why not??"

SPCB says "You just cannot".

A famous shloka from Bhagavatam in Telugu says "Never doubt if GOD is present here and absent there..GOD is all-pervasive..you just need to look around, he is present everywhere!" Well Ram is omni-present and why the hell are we making a fuss about just the Ram-Sethu project?? Why not the Bangalore International Airport? In all possibility, Ram might have made his foot impressions there!!

Given this ambiguity, I think SPCB would need the validation more than anybody else - they would know precisely when andwhere to object :-)

I like many characters of Ram and so do millions of Indians...Ram is a legend that does not need any physical existence to inspire and amaze.

But it is time we understand the difference between a myth and reality.

Happy Independence Day..

"A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step from the old into the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people..."...Nehru uttered these magical words with his baritone voice in the constituent assembly at the midnight hour 60 years ago. He couldnt have been more correct in his assessment. We as a nation were so oppressed for centuries that once we had a lent to our voices, we found utterance and took pledges; and in some ways did only that! For 60 years after Nehru delivered his inspirational speech in the parliament house, we took to speeches as if its a way of life :-)

"Respected Head Master, teachers and my dear friends, today we are celebrating the 60th Independence day of India. We got our independence through a non-violent struggle under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru........" these would be the precise lines in which atleast a few thousand high school kids would be addressing their school assemblies today.

"Mahatma Gandhi said that he will regard India to be truly independent only when women of India gather enough courage to walk freely on the streets @ 2 in the night", a woman chief guest @ a Govt Office.

"Jai Jawan Jai Kisan...Garibi Hataao,Bekaari Mitaao..." political leaders at innumerable functions across the length and breadth of the country.

Considering that Communist China doesnt celebrate its independence day with the same zest as we do, today would be a unique day in the history of mankind! Maximum number of speeches delivered in a country in a single day!! Every lane and every office would have reverberated today with grand patriotic speeches customized out of a handful of templates. It is so very easy, predictable and boring - the independence day celebration; you know what you are going to hear! :-)

Speeches apart, I am proud of my country. India mesmerizes me more than anything else..more on this in the next one :-)

Happy Independence Day!!

The Baap Of All Roads!!

"Among the demons I am Prahlada. Among the calculators I am time. Among the animals I am the lion and among the birds I am Garuda" - Shloka #29, Chapter #10, Bhagavad Gita. The latest version of the Gita should read "Among the roads..I am the Hosur Road" :-)

To non-Bangaloreans, Hosur road is the strip of National Highway 7 connecting Bangalore and Hosur (The border town of Tamil Nadu). To Bangaloreans like me, its everything!!

Long long ago..so long ago..precisely 32 months back(Seems ages now..the road has already eaten away 2 months of my life!) I made a tryst with destiny :-)..While the whole world started zooming past in 6 lanes at unimaginable speeds, I decided to sit back, read, think and shake hands with fellow commuters in the neighbouring buses :-) No..it wasnt completely my decision..it seemed the whole of Bangalore conspired to teach me a few lessons.

The rest is history..during the 2 months that I spent on THE ROAD, my emotions varied from despair to anger and from helplessness to exasperation..but one thing remained constant during this love affair - I was in awe with the road, the vehicles, the drivers and even myself!! :-)

The first time I saw the BommanHalli junction, I didnt have words.."Ohh Myyyy Gooddddd!!!" It seemed I had been living in God forgotten sleepy places all my life, places the automobile industry of India seemed to have ignored for decades! Its an insult to call BommanHalli a place....its a phenomenon..its a celebration of exceptional driving skills, spectacular vision and the wonders of human instinct.

What makes this phenomenon so awesome is the absence of rules..you define your way and you decide your rules. I guess Max Plank wouldnt have a better example to describe quantum mechanics - charged drivers fighting it out in a jam packaged junction where predicting the path and velocity of any moving particle is next to impossible :-)

BommanHalli has an aura around it..people feel liberated when they come here; Pedestrians walk as if the road is an extension of their verandas :-) Most of the bikers behave as if the world is going to end in around 20 minutes and they have to reach BTM or Koramangala before that - they get their bikes to do things that no cylist would even imagine in his wildest dreams! If you are riding a two-wheeler on Hosur Road and you are not innovative and flexible, you are a disgrace to the road..you will be stranded there, negating the chances of other enterprising bikers trying to do some fancy stuff.

I forgot to mention about trucks. Hosur road and BommanHalli junction are incomplete without the trucks. Trucks come here in various sizes, shapes, colors and even odors (The difference in odor is more of a varying degree than kind - they all stink!!) . But all of them have one thing in common - Every driver of these possessed machines feels that Hosur Road is their family property from the 16th century. We shouldnt expect much from them..after all they are doing a service to the nation by allowing others to share the road.

Being an avid "truck-watcher", I am seriously concerned by the growing number of buses on the Hosur Road..."growing" actually is an understatement; they are exploding! More than at the Stock Exchange, software companies in Electronics City seem to be fighting on Hosur Road for the coveted prize of the maximum number of buses. Neat, huge buses are now a symbol of pride, power and success! Procession of buses..hundreds of them between 5 and 9 PM choke the Hosur Road and pose a threat to the rights of the truck drivers over their property!

Justice will prevail someday and I will stand by the truck drivers :-)

But I can not stand the elevated fly-over that is coming up on the road. ..its a blot on the face of the road and threatens to damage the "traffic fabric" of the road. Even before it has come up, it has worsened the situation; It takes me hardly 30 minutes on the road to reach the office! :-( Gone are the days when I used to see half of Bangalore's vehicles at BommanHalli :-((

In the last 6 months though, the project has turned the road into a site for the X-Games...a part of the road going up at 60 degrees and the other going down at 45...a hole every 5 meters and a bump every 10. You feel as if you are not driving on the road, but on its isometric view; no need to say..its thrilling! :-)

Nevertheless, the elevated project (I somehow feel they are actually constructing an oil refinery..seeing the huge drilling machines there :-) ) will take the shine off the road. Imagine travelling on the Hosur road uninterrupted and reaching the office in 15 minutes!! It would be like seeing Sanjay Manjrekar hit a test match century in 50 balls! :-)

The only view you will get from your windows will be of the trees and of the buildings..what about the buffaloes, bullock carts and the humanity that we see everyday?? What about the jobs of all those traffic policemen, who with their magical rods could never control the traffic? Hosur road will never be same again (May be we will have a strategy video game someday simulating the exact road and traffic conditions..should be a hit!!).

Well..there are roads...and there is HOSUR ROAD!! :-)

Gokarna..Continued

"Sand, Sun, Beer, Gals"..I am not talking about BayWatch!! This was how Sarkar described Gokarna the day we left from Bangalore..He was partly correct..Sand and Sun were there to see..but alas!! Beer and Gals??? I guess we were far away from civilzation to expect anything remotely related to these two.

Sarkar had been to Gokarna at the peak of the season and he painted a picture of shacks stretching all the way from Bangalore to Gokarna :-) And here we were..looking on as a sadhu and his two dogs patrolled a remote beach untouched for months! Somehow the dogs appealed to me more than their human counterpart. They appeared more genuine, ourgoing and genial.
They sprang to life seeing 16 humans entering their territory; it seemed as if they got a new lease of life after months of trauma seeing the boring sadhu sitting on the pedestal. For a moment, I felt the dogs needed the break more than we did :-)

Pasha had removed his shirt a few hours back (which he forgot comfortably until we entered Bangalore) and he felt at home seeing the semi-nude loner on the beach and somehow struck a cord with him; the two were talking as if they were distant relatives :-) We asked for a bottle of water and got it! We had nothing to lose and asked for place to sleep..and were directed to 3 rooms by the side of an asylum. Well..the 3 rooms were no better than the asylum - people had taken pains to copy half of Oxford dictionary on to the walls of these rooms :-)

We decided to stay outdoors..it was cloudy and pitch-dark. The sadhu seemed to have left and out came our saviour for the night, an enterprising drunken old guard. A quintessential service-man that he was..he was determined to make a dream outing for us. We had fried rice, cold drinks, daaru, and sutta..all in a matter of minutes.. He wasnt contented though; we had bon-fire and DJ to finish off... DJ and daaru is quite a combination for me..especially if I get to move my body in all those directions possible only in science fiction; the only significant thing that I remember after the bon-fire was having stepped on one of the dogs while trying a MJ step possible only after gulping 5 pegs :-)

Morning light and to say that the beach was brilliant would be an understatement; what's more we had the whole of the beach to ourselves. We played as if we hadn't for years! It was time to make a move and Om was our next destination. The time had come, the hour had struck and the models in our group rose to the occasion..every tree bent at more than 15 degrees became a
heritage site and every 100 meters, we found a new national monument. We shot as if all the digital cams were bound to be non-functional from the next day :-)

Om beach wasnt that great...after Paradise..it was like seeing the dubbed version of Harry Potter in tamil :-) We then decided to move to Kudle..Sarkar gave up now and KK, Adi took up the reins of being the path finders. They took their job very seriously; they moved at such an alarming pace that I couldnt help thinking they might have been born and brought up in
Kudle..and have been finding these paths all their lives :-)

The trek that started as "trek ke naam pe dhabba" became a question of survival. We started doing stunts that would have made Mithun Da and Rajnikanth proud :-) Sarkar moved into the dooms day mode - he wouldnt leave his beer even while climbing rocks; it seemed he was trying to savor his last kingfisher :-) Kavya was walking intermittently between innumerable slips;
She would have made sufficient marks on that path for trekkers for the next few decades :-)

We still managed. Little did we know that Swetha was carrying a weapon of mass destruction. She was carrying a hat..err...if this is a hat..then the hats you know would be tea cups! With a span ranging a few meters, she brought a gigantic hat, which would have taken 3 years and expertise from 4-5 countries to be made! She actually trekked with that! She wore it
sporadically, but it was the valiant effort of Srikanth which saved the day :-)

Back to the bus!! I felt that a bit of rest and fresh air would have changed the driver. I was being foolish. Here was a driver who stuck to his rules; he seemed to have attained such an enviable state of self-restraint that any kind of teasing, bullying by the other drivers would not perturb him! He brought us all again to that steady-state where all it matters is you, the bus and the driver..the rest of the road and the vehicles are in a ultra-modern zone you dare not enter :-) It is a unique feeling travelling at the same speed for hours; it brings new perspectives to many things in life! You think about a lot of things, you seldom think when you are accelerating or decelerating! Our driver taught me the value of being patient, the importance of controlling your emotions and the utter waste of time and energy in pursuing things because others are
(Overtaking buses, cars and lorries).

Who said you get nirvana..or you get renunciated only when you go to Swamijis or when you go to the Himalayas. Call up Sangeetha travels and you are on your way to a soul searching experience :-)

We reached Bangalore back @ 1 PM on Monday..and Roma's voice sounded like a rat running in and out of a hole..

13k for the bus, 4k for food and 2k for the stay...One night @ Paradise...Priceless :-))

Gokarna

9:30 PM on the last friday of may. It was pouring. Now rains in Bangalore are very punctual, mostly unwanted and extremely unique. The prickly heat powders, cold drinks and ice creams would have just hit the markets as it starts to pour cats and dogs in Bangalore. The rains also seem to mock the companies in E-City. Everyday, rains trace a sinusoidal wave pattern
between 5 and 9 30 in the evening. It starts to drizzle at around 5 in the evening when the first bus from Infy leaves the campus...and it rises like a crescendo into a downpour by around 8 and its back to perfect Bangalore weather by 9 30 when the last bus leaves; meanwhile, space-time freezes on the Hosur road. Deve Gowda isnt alone...Rain God too hates Infy!!

Back to the last friday of May..

16 of us had plans to go to Gokarna over the weekend. Everything was going as expected - lots of people dropped plans at the end, we deliberated and discussed a lot, planned a lot of unnecessary things and missed out crucuial ones...and overall, managed to generate a lot of hype (U bet we are all true Infoscions!!). Yeah, and as expected, Rain God didnt like our plans; it poured cats, dogs and buffaloes. Rain God wasnt alone in conspiring against our trip. He had company in some Rehman of BTM travels who had concrete plans to cheat us. We danced, laughed and joked before getting into the bus only to realise that it was one of the oldest buses in Karnataka and that travelling a day in it would seriously alter our mental and physical health.

I had booked the bus and was agitated - damn..trip tho shuroo hote hi khatam ho gaya!! :-)...accompanied by two rookie body builders in Pasha and Saurav, I tried to barge into the newly furnished office of BTM Travels...I guess I kept trying for a few unnecessary milli seconds while the huge glass door (I am convinced it was Saint Gobain) made yet another dent(Tembu) on
my already eroded forehead (I have always feared basket ball courts and glass doors). As with the trip, our fight seemed to end even before it started! Team of three reduced to one; Saurav took me to a lady doctor, who seemed both nice and intelligent until I saw a bandage the size of a curtain - may be she had a monthly dressing target to reach.

I was sure I would have atleast 3 stitches; I ended up having none. For someone who had nearly 75 stitches and 5 bone fractures, it was a gross mistake to exaggerate the criticality of an injury (A few years earlier, I would have even predicted when I would have the next round of stitches :-) ). May be, the blood and the loud sound cheated me; but Rehman
definitely did.

Pasha wasnt amused. He quickly donned the role of an angry young man fighting for the rights of his hungry and tired fellow men. In the process, he had to land a nice blow on somebody (After all an angry young man is nothing without a few blows)..Meanwhile, I managed to find a nice comfy place for me..away from the war zone (I was still pondering over how I
missed stitches).

11:00 PM. We had a decision to make. Against all expectations, there was a consensus - we decided to go. I knew I was done with my qouta of injuries and I would be safe for the next 2-3 months....and when even I am safe..the worst is over. Yeah the worst was surely over..the despondent mood for the last 3 hours quickly gave way to bakar-our core competency. We had
some girls in the group and as per the protocol, we started playing antakshari..and I am sure you would guess this too.. we then followed it with Dumb sharades. I am not good at Antakshari..but was cheered for every song that I sang...the big bandage surely had an impact!

We went..we went and we went..and finally saw that the kilometer readings on the road were also cheating us. We just crossed around 200kms after travelling for 7 hours!! It was morning light and the potential of the driver of our "engineering marvel" bus was hard to ignore. Buses..cars..lorries dashed past the windows as if every other vehicle was on a mission
which our driver wasnt able to comprehend. Cyclists requested and got the right of way; our driver will be remembered in those villages that we went through for firing up the imagination of cyclists..for igniting their minds with thoughts no other cyclist in the world would have dared to think.

We reached Gokarna at 4PM...thanks to our formula zero driver and the google map empowered Sarkar. If we had been a bit more gullible, Sarkar would have made us believe that Gokarna is a hill station near Patna. When you sit in a bus for 16 hours seeing every living thing around you get past you nonchalantly, the first thing you would do when you get down is run..we did a shade better..we decided to treck immediately.

Trecking with 5 digital cameras is very difficult...10 steps and 2 photos is the general rule for normal people. But if you have promising ramp-walkers around, it becomes 2 steps and 10 photos. We somehow managed with very few stops to reach the Paradise beach..uhhh...and what a beach it was!! The sea seemed rough and the waves dangerous..but the view was breathtaking...we spent a few minutes savoring the beauty when we realised that we had company on the beach; A lone sadhu type man was looking at us.

The man seemed straight out of Hindu mythological stories..he was seated in a medidating position on a pedestal facing the sea and he looked to be doing that as long as the beach existed. Semi nude, long and curly hair..he looked like the protector of the landscape around him. He was not threatening though; but what he said was certainly threatening - No food, no water and no shelter in the beach for the night...it was dark and about to rain very heavily.

Who was this man? Did we decide to stay back there or did we walk through the jungles in the night? Keep watching this space to find out :-)

Water Works

Yesterday, Himesh cried in Coffee With Karan. The day before, Akshay and Anil cried in one of those "voice hunt" programs. I heard Sunny Deol always manages to cry on the stage. Well, everybody seems to cry these days on Indian TV. I am not sure if the Indian TV has suddenly become so emotional as to call for some "Water Works" every few minutes; but I am sure "Water works" really work - everybody talks about it and what's more, people cry to see the stars cry. I didnt see Himesh cry - I cant see him do anything for that matter; but I definitely saw Akshay cry;whew....he cried because Anil is a very good person...Boy!! Here is a novel reason to cry!!

To the credit of these emotional contests and dramatic interviews, I think crying has always been a part of the Indian psyche; these shows just cashed on it. My mom loved those matinee movies where lead actresses fiercely contested for the maximum tears shed in 2 hours. Luckily Jitendra decided to stop acting and the crying baton was passed on to the television
serials where women cried 24*7 for reasons even they couldnt comprehend.

But the "Cry Baby Cry" syndrome that we see today is different in a few respects. Unlike the previously unorganized, yet promising crying industry, tears have successfully been institutionalized. I feel people now know where, when and how to cry!! Its so very easy. "You are out of the contest now" announces the anchor in such a threatening voice as to tell the
contestant.."Dude..time now to cry..and you better meet our standards!!" People are that much more assured and confident when they cry! :-)

Kapil Dev cried in Vir Sanghvi's interview and since then there has been no looking back. More tears have flown on the television than what monsoons could manage the last year in Hyderabad. There is no denying that people may have at times cried because they wanted to, but the norm today it seems is they HAVE TO. "Cry Your Way To Success" is the new mantra" :-)

I seriously believe that in a few years we will have awards for the best tearful role, for the longest crying performance and the most sorrowful serial of the year. We will have a transparent adjudication process though; No nominations - we have quantifiable data - number of liters of tears!

Tears apart, I am just amazed by the drama that unfolds everyday on the TV - there is not much difference between a news program and a movie; a talent hunt and an interview; a debate and antakshari; there is a common denominator to everything - drama. Haneef Mohammed returns back to India and atleast a dozen correspondents ask his wife - how will he hold their
daughter or what food she will cook for him. We see a miniature version of Karan Johar's movie in a news program, a "touching" interview in a contest and a contest in an interview.

Somebody said "50 channels and nothing to watch...I feel "100 channels and the SAME THING to watch!"