Mantralay, the Maharashtra government headquarters, may be the seat of power but its common impression is that of an extremely boring place stuffed with boring people in a bleak, dank environment.
This is largely true but that is only if you are a chance visitor. To a regular, Mantralay is a veritable pit of colourful stories – scandals, affairs, intrigue, politics, and of course the quirks of sundry officers. Each visit peels forth a new character, a new experience and you go home with a richer understanding of human psychology.
Often, it’s difficult for a woman journalist to hang out with the officers. They are as wary of you as you are. But if you make the equation clear in the first few meetings, many get comfortable enough to share some of their official secrets with you.
Last year, I wrote a series of stories for a leading English daily on how the chief minister was targeting a senior IAS officer because the officer refused to help the CM’s son get a piece of land at a concessional rate. The editor egged me on to drive a virtual campaign, prompting many a disgruntled colleague to decide that it was the officer who was leaking out these investigative stories to me.
O for life to be so simple! The officer was out of the job and had no access to any files. More pertinently, wouldn’t he have leaked out these stories to other journalists he knew rather than me, who he came to know only after I wrote the big stories?
Some day, I should be able to talk about it. My calling often makes life exciting. For one sensitive story I was working on, the source was in another town. He didnt want to leave any trail. So, we created a fictitious email ID called `deepthroat’ and shared secret data through this ID. The password was funny too and made our target very clear. Each time he or I had something important to say, we would use this ID to which both of us had access.
In another instance, when a source suspected his phone line was being tapped, I changed my name—only for him. Each time I called him, I would identify myself as X, a name he was familiar with but his family wasn’t, so they would want to know who I am and what I wanted. Thankfully, he took his family into confidence soon enough.
Once a colleague heard me calling this person and got highly suspicious when she heard me identifying myself as X. She gave me curious looks for a long time after that. It is another matter that my husband, who should be more concerned, was least ruffled when he heard me announcing my new name on the home phone to the source.
Even the people we meet would make great copy if we were allowed to write about them. One senior bureaucrat, who was sidelined for all important posts, had this reflective air about him. He would speak in clipped tones, be very proper but dwell mostly in a dream world of his own making. Ask him a question and he was most likely to ponder politely and tell you very purposefully that he would not be able to answer it. The man has just retired.
I have a peculiar relationship with another one. Each meeting of ours starts with fireworks but by the time I leave, we are best pals. Till we meet again.
A serving officer, he is high strung as hell. Self-important with an air of smugness that tears out a mile to irritate you, he occupies a crucial seat of power. So meeting him is sometimes inevitable. If you are given an august audience with him at all, you are accosted first with his grim face bearing this look of if-it-wasn’t-for-me-the-world-would-collapse and you-better-look-grateful. Crisply, he arches one eyebrow and mouths, ``Yes?’’ with pursed lips and some contempt laced with exaggerated politeness.
I offer a faint smile (after fighting a kiddish impulse to stick out my tongue at him and turn heel), valiantly sit across his table and breathe (rather, exhale). The first time I met him, I told him I wanted to see for myself whether certain measures they had promised the high court were in place. That set him off. ``What do you mean, you want permission to see? Nobody is permitted to enter that place,’’ he snapped.
Each time, he dismisses any query summarily like a court of law deciding my fate. And each time, our progress report reads like a painstakingly well-set regimen. First, he embarks on a long session of media bashing, how he doesn’t care for the media and how he doesn’t need them and how he need not have entertained the media – all different ways of saying the same thing and telling me he craves attention.
Then, he informs me how he is a man of his own making and how he was once a media person himself but how things have now changed and how we are all a bunch of morons (no, he doesn’t quite say the word) -- all through which you keep your lips pursed because he gives you no room to interrupt. There’s no point looking offended because he is so taken up with his own speech he is not looking. At some point, I feel like pleading for mercy or fleeing but my professional dedication keeps me rooted.
The third stage: I face the brunt of every single media misdeed of the past 15 years (or maybe 20). At last, at weary last, when I can’t keep up the pretence any more, professional interests be damned, I tell him off too. Each time he utters a syllable, I snap at him with all the dignity I can muster, and this goes on for a merry five or ten whole minutes. At some point, I am struck by the bizarreness of the situation: Here I am, sitting across my host of the moment, with a glass of water offered by him in my hand and yelling away at him but refusing to budge.
The last stage: Providence takes pity and he gets gentler. Almost as if someone had knocked him on this head, M'lord turns Mr Hyde, decides to relent and give me my information. ``Here’s the information. You can use what you like.’’ Now, why couldn’t he have done this half an hour ago and saved us both this wear and tear?
Relieved, I smile, ask a couple of questions which he readily replies and we part grinning and beaming, putting the ugly past behind us like true sportsmen.
I naturally assume this friendship is for keeps but come the next time and he is back to his dour self. I am getting old and can’t keep up. So now, I just tip-toe my way past his chamber with a lot of reverence, and decide to miss a story rather than face one more unseasonal blast.

I have been pondering over life (and death consequently) the past few months. Though I nurse a tendency to plunge into such deliberations often, my chaotic life largely keeps me away from any serious ascetic pursuit.
A recent illness and an enforced two-month home stay, with some help from those awful drugs, got me into researching the meaning of life. And inevitably, as it always happens, my mental gymnastics-- extrapolating the theory of relativity to the theory of life and so on -- dragged me into the forbidden territory of the philosophy of karma.
During my graduation, I had done a paper on Bhagvad Gita which has karma -- specifically nishkaamkarma -- as its central theme. Right from those days, I have had a healthy disbelief for karma as we are taught today.
While I never cease to wonder at nature and its laws, karma escapes me completely. My sisters, steeped into spirituality, try to convince me it is as scientific as everything else. But somehow, karma fails to impress me when I look around and think. I know I am not qualified but let me still present my agony.
If karma is taken as the simplistic theory of `as you sow, so shall you reap', why are the baddies of the world so happy in life? I know very few people who are good and have not suffered immeasurably. One sterling example would be a Gandhian who virtually ran the Mahavir International Centre near Dahanu. I got to know Manibhai Patel thanks to my social worker mother. The man was a gem of a person and epitomised nishkaamkarma in every way. All his life, he toiled for the tribals, took care of the ashram and radiated a peace and calm that I have yet to sense in anybody else. Having left his home at a tender age to work for society, he had the ashram as his family.
Blessed with a robust, hard-working body and an equanimous mind, he enjoyed good health till his late eighties. When Manidada fell sick, my faith in humanity, and later nature, was shattered beyond redemption. The man who held the place together for 50-60 years suddenly became an outcaste. He couldnt move nor talk clearly. This made it impossible for him to communicate. Each time he attempted to express himself, he would weep tears of frustration. For the next two years, I watched him shrink into a shadow of his former self. My heart sank each time I saw him. But he suffered silently and offered a smile whenever he was asked about his health. ``Saaru chhe,'' he would mumble valiantly.
The ashram took care of him as they would an inmate at a hospital. I could see he was aching for homely care and warmth as there was little else one could do for him. When he died five years ago, I received the news with tears and a sense of relief that he was now past the torture of living.
I want to know why should someone who has never hurt a fly suffer so much? I have seen my maternal grandparents, who were literally worshipped in their erstwhile village and were known for their angelic nature and austere lifestyle, face a similar fate. Both of them suffered the agony of ill-health for over a decade before giving in. These are but a few examples.
The believers tell me the good suffer so that they can achieve moksha -- or salvation. No more rebirths for them. They say they exhaust all their leftover karma in this birth.
But, salvation at what cost? What about the others who don't live so pure a life. Why do they get easy lives and easier deaths? So that they pay for ALL their karma in the next life? Why won't they suffer their karma, at least some, in this birth?
Each time I wrong someone, am I paying him back for what he did to me in one of my previous births or am I creating fresh karma?
If karma is as simplistic as this, how do you explain the positive and negative energies that charge the universe? You may have noticed sometimes you curse someone, the curse actually lands. Or, when someone wishes you ill, you do suffer. I have experienced the latter several times (though sadly, not the former!)
How come all the good people are paying for their sins of past births and the bad people are usually an arm's length away even from bad breath?
You may have seen people who pray to gods and godmen, people who wear healing stones, do pujas and yagnas, benefit. So, what happens to their retribution? Where do their bad karmas vanish? If gods get appeased and forgive you so easily, karma loses its sanctity. If bad karma can be absorbed by incense sticks and pujas, why bother to be good?
I have no answers but lots more questions. For some other time.

PS: Posting a comment by a friend, Durgesh Kasbekar from Canada, through my login as he couldnt get through. Some others too have written saying they dont have a blog but do have a comment. As Durgesh's comment seemed to add value, thought it needs to be posted.

For a country known for its seamless acceptance and tolerance (in these stressful times) of its multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-dimensional societal fabric, the burning of Deccan Queen by Dalit `protestors' bodes ill.
The systematic protests all over Maharashtra over the Khairlanji episode (in which Dalit women belonging to one family were allegedly gangraped by some casteist villagers) are a big mystery. Intelligence agencies are trying to figure out the whodunit but have no answers yet. They point out wisely that no Dalit leader commands that kind of a following which will wreak havoc on notice.. and adequate notice was clearly given. The incidents spelt the antithesis of spontaneity and of course, came a bit late in the day.
The bigger surprise, to me, was the media. I am told the local media in Nagpur played up images of the dead women's naked bodies (yes, actually!) for days on end, playing on public sentiment and effectively stoking the fire of casteist resentment. The English media, forever haughty, lost little time in tut-tuting and condemning the incident but refused to probe any further. For God's sake, the incident was in a back-of-the-beyond place which no Mumbaikar could possibly care about, could they? Why waste too much newsprint and newsgathering effort on such matters?

There cannot be two opinions about the fact that the crime was gross beyond words but I have a different worry. The media has been less than accurate on some aspects of its reporting. And that makes it guilty of having fuelled a partly non-existent fire.
I'm trying to get documentary evidence of how we could have been misled about one brutal part of the Khairlanji incident. If I don't get the evidence, I promise to hint about it here. If do, I'll write about it here too but only after my paper publishes it. So, watch this space..

I continue to be amazed at the emotional outpouring over Sanjay Dutt's sentencing... For days, a starved media ran feverish campaigns collecting the opinion of the man and woman on the street about whether Sanju baba (Baba?!) was a criminal/terrorist or not. And quintessentially, many a man and woman on the street offered that he was not... how could he after spouting all the Gandhian wisdom in a movie and after all the good that happened in the world after the movie was released.
So, said one of the teens into a mike thrust in his face, ``In my view, he should be forgiven.'' Thank god the judiciary is not yet governed by arbit mush but the law as laid out in black and white. It's a different matter that the law of the land does not apply uniformly for all. When Sanjubaba was imprisoned as an undertrial over a decade ago, he was suitably lodged in the JJ hospital's ICU after he complained of chest pain or some such. (I forget the details now). When he continued to enjoy his stay in the air-conditioned and private comforts of the ICU without reason, a good-willed doctor brought it to my notice and got me his case papers which said the man was fit.
I wrote about it in the daily, `The Independent,' where I worked back then. The then TADA judge, J N Patel, took cognisance of the piece and ordered that Sanjubaba be shofted to the general ward IF necessary instead of depriving a needy patient.
If I recall right, the actor stayed in the general ward for long thereafter without reason and mostly remained ``under observation.''

Take his sentence. Mumbai Mirror has rendered a sterling service to Mumbaikind by highlighting how two other accused in similar circumstances have been convicted under TADA but not Dutt. Why would a court, following the thumb rule of law, follow two different sets of parameters for similar cases?

Milking the farmers dry..

Ok guys. I get the message.
Now that I have opened up comments, I have got some nice ``vicious'' ones, the ones I had specifically requested you fine people, with folded hands, NOT to send my way!!!
But guess what? what I didnt tell you in my mail was that your `dor' is very much in my hands. So, I will decide whether your comment makes it to the blog or not. Aha!
Thanks for the nice ones that have come so far, Anshu, Shammi and Arun (i.e. Dr Bhatt!).
Yes, do email me as you always do, if you don't have a blog here or cannot post a comment.

Sorry for behaving like a homing pigeon. But I can't help feeling amazed at this portly man we in the media indulgently call the `Maratha strongman. ' For those outside the state, I am talking about Sharad Pawar, the union agriculture minister and the BCCI chief. Should it be the other way round, going by his grading for each of these masks?
Last evening, the ticker on one news channel flashed, ``Eight more farmers commit suicide in Vidarbha'', (a region covering Nagpur, Amravati, Akola and all of central Maharashtra). On the screen was Pawar beaming over some Significant Moment of his life as BCCI chief.
The man sucks! Since this January, an average of three farmers have been committing suicide in Vidarbha region every day. The issue is multi-faceted and complex-- difficulty in getting seeds for organic farming, ignorance about multi-cropping, irrigation, loans going at 25 - 50% interest and so on. (have written a little more about this earlier on, for those who are interested.)
And what has this man, who has the gall to call himself an agriculturist, done in the past nine months? As far as I know, he has not bothered to pay more than one whistlestop visit to this region. Of course that visit boomeranged and most anguished farmers justifiably wanted to throw their vegetating produce at his face.
So what does our man do? He promptly drops the show, flies back to Delhi and plays boss at more welcoming places like BCCI. Any other self-respecting person in his place would have sworn not to look in any other direction until the farmers' lives got back on track. But here's a man who couldnt care less about the farmers or about Sonia Gandhi becoming prime minister so long as his kursi is firmly tethered to power. Someone needs to load-shed him.
It's India's misfortune that it's a democracy. Our skewed voting system enables us to vote in anyone who makes or promises to make a modicum of difference to our living space. So someone like Pawar can get away with this brazen callousness simply because he has improved life for himself and, in the process, for others, in his home town, Baramati, which religiously votes him to power poll after poll for 25 years. It's ironic that one region of Maharashtra (the farmers) can't do a thing because another region gives him a leg-up to Delhi.
Last heard, he was shuffling his feet in front of Sonia Gandhi to save his skin. The Sphinx was to address a Congress-I CMs' conclave at which the farmers' plight was expected to come up for discussion. It worked. The S commended his work at the conclave which mainly comprises packages and packages and promises of easier credit.
More on why he is so critical in this business of saving lives and agriculture (in that order) and why his packages are a sham. One, he is the agriculture minister. One expects him to deliver, and not the finance minister whose job it is NOT to fund cosmetic rescue efforts by his colleagues.
Two, Pawar is from Maharashtra, has been CM thrice, and continues to expect the state to fuel his ambition of becoming PM.
Three, in a brilliant perspective piece in DNA, food analyst Devinder Sharma gives a perfect insight into the crisis plaguing wheat cultivation today. The entire story can be safely co-opted for other crops as well.
The gist: Ever since the government began permitting private parties to buy wheat directly from farmers, India has become net importer of wheat from being an exporter--from 0.5 million tonnes, we now import 5.5 million tonnes (two million additional tonnes thanks to Pawar's honourable anxiety to prevent a `food scarcity') at the cost of Rs 5,500 crore. As private purchases created an artificial shortfall in public godowns, the government imports wheat. The price of imported wheat is Rs 1,100 per quintal, twice that of the government's procurement price of Rs 650. Why not pay this amount to the ailing Indian farmer instead of his American counterpart who already enjoys huge subsidies from his government?
Next, the government comes out with a Rs 2,480 crore saviour package purportedly to boost productivity in the 138 Indian districts producing wheat, but which actually helps the agribusiness lobby. So, we have generous hand-outs for sprinkler sets, gympsum supply and such. The sarkar mai baap is also actively discouraging higher yields by threatening to get out of procurement.
Yet, we had a wheat harvest of 72 million tonnes in 2004-05, enough to feed the country for a year. But does it matter?

Saw Lage Raho Munnabhai recently. Wasnt too sure whether it will do justice to Gandhiji but Tushar Gandhi, great-grandson of the Mahatma, reassured me.
And of course, many were surprised that I, a self-professed Gandhi fan, hadnt seen it.
To keep my reputation intact, I marched into the multiplex (do they have any single screens left?!) with a dupatta and a muffler tightly drawn over my head (I had a huge cold and was on sick leave). As it turned out, the AC was smartly turned off midway and I was soon sweating.
The movie was sweet, of course, with not one politically incorrect word or glance. It was nice to see someone resurrecting Gandhiji in this manner, and the effect the movie had on people.
One small quibble.. it did not bring out the import of Gandhiji's superhuman persona, which is fine. But, on the contrary, it made him look a trifle sorry at least in one scene in which Sanjay Dutt shows the other cheek to the assaulter. Here, a casual reference to the fact that Gandhiji did not only believe in getting beaten up all the time would have helped. All his life, he protested violence. But he believed that violence is better than non-violence if someone is turning to non-violence out of fear of the opponent. As far as he was concerned, cowardice was a worse vice. And, I may be wrong, but this scene left me with the feeling that Gandhiji was preaching cowardice.
I am amazed at what this movie is doing to people. There are quizzes on the Mahatma, Gandhigiri problem-solving and so on. What I find ironic is that when the media needed to know whether the movie does justice to Gandhiji, it turned to his immediate family-- Tushar Gandhi and his aunts, etc. And to think, Gandhiji hardly got any time for his immediate family, caught up as he was in tending to his country-wide brethren. For a man who considered his family as just any other Indian family, it's a sad comment on how we have treated him by deciding that his legacy is limited to his family alone. Why on earth is he called Father of the Nation?
P.S. To me, Gandhiji's family is the real Gandhi family-- the first family of India but we choose to bequeath that title to the Nehrus who for reasons unknown (or probably well known) decided to adopt the surname, `Gandhi'.

I have been reading a biography of Albert Einstein, one of my favourites along with Isaac Newton since my childhood. Even he had to pay the price for being a Jew in pre-Nazi Germany and could therefore appreciate the virtue of non-violence and Gandhiji.
One of Einstein's comments that gripped me as a kid has been about his own relativity. He would stroll down the beach and often wonder at the universe (or space?) before him, and ponder over his own insignificance in the larger scheme of things. Like a speck of sand on the beach, he said.
If a genius of his order thinks this way, what are we? It is this humility that makes Gandhiji and him just so admirable.

Now, for a few good laughs:

My Mallu husband was born and brought up in Kerala. One fine day, he decided to up and study in Baroda, least daunted by the fact that he knew no Hindi, let alone Gujarati. There, he ganged up with a few fellow Mallu students to give us the benefit of some hilarious moments:

He bought a pair of slippers at a shop. The bill was in Gujarati. So, he asked the shop-keeper the price. The shop-keeper said something in Gujarati. My man thought he said 75. So, remembering someone's this-worldly advice about bargaining being the key to happiness in Gujarat, he said, ``No, give it to me for Rs 70.''
The shop-keeper stuck to the amount. After much head-banging, the shop keeper took out some currency notes and showed him Rs 45! ``It's only Rs 45,'' he said exasperatedly. ``Why should I take more?!''
Some sincerity this! And they still say Gujjus are money-minded.

After a few months, his Mallu friends grew confident of handling small talk themselves. So, at a restaurant, when they were served two plates of unda bhurji and they wanted to swap one for a curry, one friend bravely called the waiter, and brandishing the plates, said, ``ek unda bhurji jao, ek egg curry aao.''

The funniest is the anecdote about a friend who would go to the bus stop and, unable to read bus numbers in Gujarati, ask people around, ``Ye bus kiska hain?'' Not surprisingly, he got only funny stares and no answers.

One of his Mallu friends was left home alone one day. He was taught two Hindi words to tell the maid: ``Idhar saaf karo,'' pointing to the kitchen platform. When the maid came, the friend did as told. The bai nodded and told him, `` Ok. you need to take away all the stuff stacked on it first.'' To which he said, ``Idhar saaf.'' She said, ``Yes, but how do I clean with this mess around?'' To which he repeated, ``Idhar saaf.''
This apparently went on for a respectable amount of time after which the maid shook her head, slammed all the paraphernalia on the floor and went at it.

A softcore Mallu (as opposed to hardcore, because he thought he understood Gujjus well) had to see the doctor. But the clinic was closed. So, he asked some people nearby about the doc's whereabouts. He was told, ``Woh off ho gaya.'' ``Oh,'' said the friend, and went back home. The next day, he dutifully trudged to the clinic and heard the same story. And the third day too. After some reflection, he asked a friend, ``Does `off' mean a long holiday?'' The Gujju enlightened him, ``It means the doc is dead.''

Another Mallu had a funny experience with his doctor. He told the doctor, ``Kuch bhi khao shardi hota hai.'' The doc was foxed. How come? he asked. How can all foods cause a cold? After some decoding, each figured they were misinterpreting the other. The matrubhakt mallu meant vomitting and not cold, as `Shardi' in Malayalam is vomiting!

Here, I partly reproduce a mail sent to a friend abroad with some additional writing. Thought some of you might be interested:

The other day, I was speaking to a bureaucrat, who offers me a very typical take of the farmers' problem. Over the years, I have been watching thousands of acres of farmland disappear to make way for industrial, commercial and residential constructions.
I was asking him if he has any idea how much land has thus been sacrificed to so-called progress. He said urbanisation is an inevitable process and one must not resent it if villages disappear. I told him the farmers take the lumpsum money given for their fields and then have no steady source of income.
But he was on to bigger things. Even if villages dont exist in Maharashtra, he told me, it doesn’t matter because we the people don’t depend on the state for grains or pulses. We only get our fruits and veggies from our neighbourhood.
So what's the big deal? he said. Most farmers grow jowar and bajri for local consumption. That shouldnt bother us city slickers, he argued. When I pointed out the state’s popular crop, sugarcane, to him, he said only cash crops grow in Maharashtra for real sales and they don’t suffer. So it's perfectly alright if they die or sell their fields.
I remembered cotton but i decided to stop this silly conversation before it got more inane. When I told him Punjab and Haryana, the wheat bowl of India, too were seeing farmer suicides every day, he said, oh yes, but that should not concern us because Maharastra cannot do anything about it.
He implied thus that our concerns should be limited to what we can do something about. How callous and self-absorbed can we get?
If you look at how these dead farmers' families get relief, it's even more pathetic. Some junior official peeps into his home, asks his family questions. If he finds a family problem, there is no way the family gets any money; the suicide is promptly attributed to internal problems even if he has a huge outstanding debt staring in everyone’s face. If the land is not his name, he is doomed, and so on. And, just how much does this dead farmer get anyway if he kills himself? All of one lakh rupees, which comes, if it does, after six whole months or more. Some of these process have now been streamlined. But again, as someone said, one cannot take pride in giving prompt `compensation’ (such a disgusting term!) when we couldnt prevent the farmer from killing himself in the first place.
I seriously cannot understand what's wrong with us as people that we cant see the suicides clearly as something very wrong, unethical, unequal and outrageous.
The world over, the pattern of development is skewed. Urban agglomerates thrive at the cost of villages which ironically provide the feed for this parasitical growth.
India being agrarian (soon, we will saying this in the past tense), it cannot afford to blink at the problems facing its villagers. The entire community fabric of the village –its culture, spirit, and self-reliance, -- is coming apart. The crafts are dying, there is no colour left in the green belts, and the fields are starved of water, power.
The way I see it, we are paying the price for ignoring Gandhiji. India lives in its villages, he said, implying thereby and saying it loudly on too many occasions as well, take care of the farmer and his village and you will have taken India on the road to prosperity. Today, India lives in two halves—one half is upwardly mobile, prosperous and a go-getting wannabe while the second is a stark picture of poverty, deprivation and hunger. We depend on the villages instead of the other way round. So, shouldn’t wealth too flow from there instead of the other way round?
Even if you don’t agree with this argument, we urbanites are directly affected by this neglect of our rural countrymen. Thanks to ceaseless migration, life in cities has become difficult for each one of us. At least for that reason, lets speak up and stem the rot.

Today, I want to share with you an experience that gnaws at me...
Last week, I was on my way home by train when a eunuch jumped into the ladies first class compartment at Kurla. Slim, athletic build, bright red lipstick standing out in a made-up face. She squatted on the footboard, and started crying silently. No sobbing but I could see the tears kept streaming down her cheeks.
Not knowing what to do, I buried myself in the paper. We have been conditioned by society to fear eunuchs. But though I dont fear them much, I felt awkward about approaching her probably because of the others around and because I didnt know how she would react.
After 15 minutes of this should-i-should i-not, I decided to talk to her. I tapped her knees which were thrust protectively in front of her and asked her, ``kya hua?'' She ignored me. Again, I asked her, Kya hua? She continued looking down.
I turned to the door, and stood there. Suddenly, she looked up at me with a tear-stained face and said in perfect English, ``I am suffering from AIDS.'' I was stunned. She continued, ``I don't want to die. I love my mother very much. I dont want to leave her.''
I swallowed that with some difficulty. I had thought it would be a more manageable problem of abuse by cops and clients or some such thing, and I could help. Recovering, I asked her if she was taking medication-- the anti-retroviral therapy prescribed for AIDS patients. She nodded and started sobbing now. I told her not to worry, that many AIDS lived for 15 to 20 years and as she didn't seem to have any apparent health problem, she too would live. ``Nothing will happen to you,'' I told her uncertainly, not knowing what else to say. As we were nearing my station, I patted her shoulder, gave her some money and was about to jump off when she suddenly knelt down and kissed my dirty big toe. ``God bless you!'' she said with big teardrops shining in her eyes.
The lipstick took some removing...
Why do we shun eunuchs? Why can't they earn a decent living, like the rest of us? Instead of sympathising with them, we condemn her to a contemptible existence because of one organ gone wrong. And then, we condemn her again because she is forced to sell herself to eat.
We seem to accept all those men who torture, burn and murder their wives or rape other women much more easily. Isn't this too inequality of the sexes?
The thought keeps nagging me: what exactly was her fault? Do we shun people who have a hole in their hearts or don't have a limb? Do we throw them out of our homes and ban any civilised living for them? Gender profiling, what?

The past two days have been spent panicking over the next terror target. The fear was always in the air but it's now verily palpable. And while Britain and the US grind their teeth and rub their noses to the ground to ferret out potential terrorists, we in India are coping with a bigger crisis: The Government.
What was India's first reaction after 11/7 (isn't that how WE write our dates instead of 7/11 as most newspapers have been obligingly calling it?) ? None. On the third day, when the whole world was wondering what we are waiting for and when the country was agonising over the deafening silence, PM Manmohan Singh took a ``hard stand''. He said the talks between India and Pakistan ``may'' suffer. Wow!
All dailies lapped up his tough talk and nodded grimly in appreciation. What else did we expect? A complete freeze on all talk of talks with Pakistan? A crackdown on terrorist factories in Pakistan, and mass detention of the trouble-makers from SIMI and allied forces? Pressure on the US to bring Pakistan to book? A complete stop to all those friendly buses plying between the two countries and legitimising the transfer of terrorists and their lethal wares?
Nah! This is what right-thinking countries do. The US and the UK would do. We know what the US did post 9/11. We also know what the UK did after the 7/7 train bombings. Actually, we should leave the US out of this. It went too far. The Bush brand of terrorism which destroys countries is much, much worse than 9/11, by any standards. Many, like my mother, couldnt sleep for days after his attack onIraq, feeling for all the innocents being bombed. I actually began hoping Saddam wont be caught and was positively depressed when he was.
Just a few days ago, Tony Blair branded all subversive acts in Kashmir as terror acts. A big step that finally got India some kind of international recognition that the violence of Kashmir was not a local concern. Something we couldnt achieve with all our coaxing and tomes of proofs for decades, one single act of terroism on his home ground has managed.
Leaving aside its terror act in Iraq, the US too has done some hard sniffing and hard talk. A few days ago, Hafeez Mohammed Sayeed, founder of al Qaida’s political wing, Jammat ul-Dawa, was about to enter Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, to make some pre-Independence Day speeches when US pressure forced Pakistan to detain him in Islamabad. Sayeed’s right-hand man, Jia ur-Rehman Lukhvi, heads the operations in India and operates from Anantnag in Jammu and Kashmir.
I dont know why we are so diffident. India has been very firmly yanked into the terror dragnet of late. But even as terror knocks at our doors every now and then, we are still unprepared to cope. It is still grappling with archaic policing methods, weak intelligence and political will – all of which erode its prevention and detection capabilities.
In May, when 13 kgs of RDX and a cache of AK-47 rifles were seized in Aurangabad, three key terror operatives – Fayyaz Kagzi, Rahil Sheikh and Zabiuddin Ansari – managed to flee in good time. Had they been nabbed, many believe 7/11 would not have happened.
If the police don’t err, the political bosses do. Every time, the cops grab a suspect, they are told to back off. The US and the UK, on the other hand, are known to be brutal in their treatment of suspects so much so that a Muslim constable in the Scotland Yard was stripped of sensitive duties after the 7/7 bombings last year. While that amounts to discrimination, what we have in India is reverse discrimination.
Nobody had heard of Raju Khan until he got a summons from a local police station inquiring about his recent visit to Dubai. The next day, Khan, who we now know is the son of choreographer Saroj Khan, was all over the papers. Some more Muslims were detained for questioning in different parts of the state, causing a first mention on byte-starved TV channels and then a full-fledged outcry in Asian Age. How dare they? fumed Seema Mustafa. (Only namesakeness, nothing more here!) Feeling left out, other papers including Times of India joined the chorus. Soon, police chief A N Roy was defending himself before the media and his political bosses, in that order for acts of omission he hadnt quite committed. ``We are questioning 3000 persons out of whom 800 are Hindus,'' he said plaintively.
What gives? Why can't he simply say yes, we are questioning everyone we think is suspect. If you don't want us to, dont complain when you get bombed. We could be wrong but then, we could be right too. We havent quite killed or tortured anyone yet. We are damned if we dont get a lead on the blasts, and we are damned if we question someone for a lead. How can this approach work?
Look at Australia. It has told the hardline Islamic radicals to buzz off if they want to crib about the country. Not very kindly too. Nobody found anything amiss. Imagine anyone even whispering something like that. They would be roundly packed off to oblivion.

In Mumbai at least, the police force is in a sorry state, thanks to weak will. A senior officer such as Hemant Karkare came back from a useful stint with central intelligence agencies to the Anti-Corruption Bureau instead of being lapped up by an intelligence wing—and that, after a three-month neglectful wait.
Similarly, many feel that the crime branch, which was once an elite force, should have been asked to lend its might to the Anti-Terrorism Squad in busting the blasts. As somebody told me, the line between terrorism and underworld is very thin and sometimes, not quite there. The crime branch’s inputs would have been invaluable, had it been pushed into service. The only hitch: who will tell the cat, our politicians?

Indian agencies has a long way to go before they achieve the wizardry and sophistication of their US counterparts. The book `The true face of Jehadis,’ by Pakistani journalist Amir Mir quotes from Gerald Posner’s book, `Why America slept..the Failure to prevent 9/11’ to narrate the skills used by the US to make a top al Qaida operative sing.
Pakistan was forced to hand over Abu Zubaydah, captured from Rawalpindi in March 2002, to the US. According to Posner’s book, the man was taken blind-folded to Afghanistan to a simulated Saudi jail with a created Saudi environment that made Zubaydah comfortable. He is alleged to have then told all about terror’s political patronage and Pakistani military sympathizers. This degree of conception, planning and execution is still unthinkable for us.
But if we aim there, we might manage a little better than we do now.

I am vehemently anti-quota having suffered because of such systemic ills myself. And I am all for this who-blinks-first between the students and the spent force-with-nothing-to-lose, Arjun Singh. In fact, I am puzzled at the way everybody is behaving as if it's only the students' nightmare. We have decided to stay mute outsiders. Each one of us gets directly affected by this nonsense. You will have more students with a substandard education-- he will pick only what he can understand-- treating us in hospitals.
The production quality all round -- whether it is a building, a newspaper, or a handbag, will suffer. And then, we'll all put a hand to our heavy heads to complain that we, as a nation, are never going to make it.
There must be something seriously wrong with this democratic system that allows everybody to prey on the aam aadmi. Doesn't he too have any fundamental rights? we pay for the so-called sins of our ancestors -- and for how long? Will someone please tell me what kind of payment/retribution is this that lets someone who didn't make the grade to get into a college leaving behind someone who did. Isn't it far better to let that someone be funded for his education but that he try for the seat on merit?
what message are we sending out to all, as my father says? That the backward classes, SCs, STs, Vimukta Jatis, Nomadic Tribes, OBCs are all no good with their brains? That they need a concession in marks rather than money? What exactly are they weak in-- brains?
Let's all spare a thought for the future and take our lives in our hands!!

At last I have hit pay dirt!
My last post earned me lots of wrath from people who defy branding. One asked me why `I' had pegged the number of Bangladeshis in the city at 1 million. ``why not two or three?'' demanded an activist. A friend queried sarcastically if I didn't want Bangladeshis in my backyard, who did I want? More clones of myself? Well!
Didn't know the choice was soooo limited.
Another one suspected I was a BJP supporter. If the BJP indeed is raising this point, -- I don't remember the last time they spoke on the subject -- could it possibly be because Bangladeshis are NOT Indians? IF the BJP is indeed vocal about it, surely it is not as if the presence of Bangladeshis hurts only Hindus? Give it a thought. At least there is merit in THIS logic of theirs, presuming it's theirs. (More on how it hurts each one of us later.)
Conversely, are the Congress and its clones quiet because Bangladeshis are Muslims and by virtue of that fact, should be allowed to settle down into OUR country? Shouldn't you recognise an illegal immigrant as an illegal immigrant irrespective of his religion or nationality?
Yes, we did have a policy to resettle Hindu refugees from Bangladesh for a while but that owed to the terrible political climate of that country which persecuted them, leaving them with no option but to flee.
The casual mention of Bangladeshis has indeed been very revealing.
Of course, there were several -- many, many more than the hate mailers -- who enjoyed or agreed with what I had written. But the problem is they are a silent majority. It's absurd that a wrong view prevails simply because the people with these views are forceful, and those with a perspective prefer to sigh and resign themselves to their fate. Lest they be tainted as BJP supporters!
Now, let me explain to my friends and foes why every issue need not be viewed with coloured glasses. For decades now, everyone has been complaining about Mumbai bursting at the seams. The city has been short of power, roads and water. Check out the slums where many of these Bangladeshis -- I talk about them because all my respondents are now talking about them. I would ideally include all encroachers into the picture -- are squatting. They consume water from punctured pipes or illegal supply; they get illegal power, and of course they hog our roads.
Someone will promptly argue they consume less water than families living in buildings. True, but then, they shouldnt be consuming any water at all.
While cribbing about load-shedding, we automatically point accusing fingers at the utilities for not planning for the future. But the encroachers-- the illegal immigrants-- are a co-accused in this case. They are responsible for snatching away portions of infrastructure that was built for us-- the legimitate citizens of the city who pay for everything we use. or at least are supposed to.
Yes, there are those obnoxious developers preying on every inch of legitimate space building legitimate towers that draw more people into the city and that consequently also legitimately poaches our resources. I would be the first to agree that their activities have caused our resources to shrink much more than the illegal immigrants. But since these guys are a matter of policy-- we have no vision in place to cope with such an influx into the city or means to deny them their right to living here -- unlike the illegal immigrants who are necessarily not wanted.

So, the next time you have an issue with the city's crumbling infrastructure, look out of your balcony. Part of the problem probably rests close to it. And think. Are you large-hearted enough to permit all countries to settle down in your city as if it were their birthright? I am not sure if there is any political philosophy that allows this.
But do give me all that headbanging. Go on. Makes the blog a better place to be in.

Ok, this is extremely loose talk...if you hang on too long, you may find yourself suspended from your senses! Don't say you weren't warned. You're of course welcome to crib your heart out later!

The first rains of the season pulverised Mumbai, reduced the sprawling megapolis to a crumbling, stumbling sea of people stuck at the predictable bottlenecks dotting the city.
And, typically, the media came down heavily on the usual suspects: the municipal commissioner -- whose own office had to go without power, the traffic police, and of course the `State Government', that unwieldy monolith conjured up by voters to bear their share of responsibilities as well.
Suddenly, we found ourselves back to square one. After all those endless trips to Mithi river-- you got the feeling that the river by itself would cure the city of its flooding woes -- by everyone who was any kind of authority, we had been comforted into believing 26/7 was the climax of our waterlogging history. And that this time, we would all be singing, rim jhim gire saawan....all four months.
But alas, nature had other plans. So, we are back to doing what we do best. We throw garbage out of our window-- check out the railway tracks ALL ALONG the harbour line and piles of debris on EVERY road we walk on ---and curse the BMC for not clearing it up.
Where else would you find citizen apathy of this level? The city is like a vacuum cleaner that never gets cleaned. It keeps sucking in people in thousands every day. Where they live and what they do cannot be important because this is after all a democratic country and we all have the right to live where we please. Even if we are not Indian.
The last time I wrote on the subject, intelligence agencies pegged the number of Bangladeshis alone at one million. Do you know how many people this means? The city has a census population of 12 million.
And this is the official count. There are any number lurking in places like Navi Mumbai-- there has been a surfeit of beards, sherwanis and fez caps in places like Sanpada in the past ten years and Thane, not to speak of the rest of the country.
They invent a ration card and become citizens of the country. Have you noticed of late how many crimes and accidents seem to involve people with strangely un-Indian names. That bit also gives you an idea about the kind of occupation that earns them their rozi roti.
But mention the B- word to some of our dyed-in-the-wool `socialist' (which kind, I wonder) friends and they see red: look, they argue, these Bangladeshis provide cheap labour in the construction industry, powerlooms, etc. So in effect, they are subsidising you and your economy. what's your problem if they earn some poor pennies and live on the roads in the bargain.
What indeed is my problem? My problem is that these construction labour types, who make up less than half of THEIR population, are eating into my fellow countryment's rights. Because they come cheap, some needy Indian has been deprived of his right to occupation.
Next, they are extremely unclean-- litter and shit all over, come in a package deal-- two-three wives, countless children follow in the fortnight they arrive -- and are susceptible to violence.
The most important question of them all: why should i have to put up with these illegal immigrants on my land, even if they are angels from Paradise?
There are enough of my own countrymen bothering me anyway. Look at the daily influx into Mumbai: about 300 families - that is 300 x 4 = 1200. Consider a year's collection -- 1200 x 365 = 4,38,000. In 10 years, this would be an addition of 43.8 lakh people feeding off the same supply of power, roads and water, among other things. For a measure, Singapore, the city-state is 40 lakh.
I have lived in Sion all my life. It was a beautiful place with lots of trees, neat gardens, acres of clean pavements, and PEACE. Today, you have to watch your step if you set foot there. Chickens, yes actually, crow away on festering mounds of garbage; rowdy youths spit and storm past you along the sidewalks, and scrawny children in soiled clothes bawl their lungs out outside your door.
What other than a serious population explosion could have caused this nightmare to be heaped upon us in broad daylight? Yet, when someone proposes an entry restriction for the city, we oppose it immediately, partly because it comes from an autocratic saffron leader with whom we are loathe to share even the air we are breathing, let alone our views on the city.
The best way out then is to curse the BMC and its corrupt ways for letting the city go to the dogs. We have no involvement in our own future, other than fighting for the rights of all our global brethren to come and live here and live irresponsibly in the true spirit of Vasudaiv Kutumbhakam.

Next post on why things are sooo bad in our cities. (promise to keep it shorter!)

My first post

Have been thinking of doing this for almost a year now.
The idea behind the blog is to air and share my views on all the goings-on around us --messy, murky, happy, nice... so far, i would circulate among some discussion forums and personal e-groups.
now, I am hopefully on to a bigger canvas. With your support.
I plan to work this more like a diary, so i hope you will bear with me and let me know what you think. Let me begin with today.
Today, I met Dr Parthasarathy, a genial person and former secretary of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board. Two days ago, when I called for an appointment and told him we had met once, he praised a sterling piece published in a daily in 2002 and asked me whether I had written it. I promptly denied. How couldnt I! I rarely ventured into atomic energy and when I did, I didn't think they were sterling pieces. Today, he showed me that piece. And of course, it was mine. I was thrilled to see how well I had put across the issue of radiation in medical establishments practising nuclear medicine.
The piece had stirred up controversy and landed up as a Parliament question as everyone got alarmed at the absence of nuclear safeguards. I now remember the background of the story. It was not too well received in my office. The reporter who covered the beat was naturally resentful about the fact that someone else wanted to step on his turf. The story went inside and did not have my byline. (I hadnt taken any, I recall)
It is at moments like these that you feel all your thousand odd years in journalism were well worth it. When someone remembers you by your clipping written long ago! AND when you find you had done justice to your job even then!
The feedback to my stories was tremendous when I worked with a non-Mumbai paper like The Statesman. Trust the Bongs to read every word in their paper carefully. Journos like me live to see these days...after all, what's the point of our writing if someone somewhere is not reading it.. I hope you are!
More when we meet next.