Musings

As a onslaught of the construction industry the green cover opposite our flat has been fully razed to the ground. A once upon a time "cynosure of all eyes" is another construction site now with the regular mud & grime taking the toll on us. No more lazy times sitting by the window sipping tea, watching the brilliant tree cover with a blank mind. Soon there would be houses, people who may peep in to our house or worse still, start predicting the time table of our lives! In all this transition the worst hit creatures seem to be the birds that used to frequent the trees making their homes in the sylvan surroundings. It used to be a matter of pride to be sitting near the window and see a variety of rare birds from home. Now all I can see is a desperate search by some birds trying to find their once comfortable nest; all gone by a single stroke powered by the quest of money. As some of my close pals come on their annual visit "to India" (it never stops amazing me ho...

Few weeks back there was a burglary in our well guarded society. After all the postmortem it was concluded that the security guards are very over worked and tired. Hence after 3 a.m they tend to get slack and fall prey to the over powering sleep. Soon after the robbery security was stepped up and one guy was made to sit (my sympathies with him) in front of the house that was robbed. It seemed rather funny why that action was taken when the deed was already done. Soon out of boredom of sitting in front of the empty house the guard was again overpowered by sleep :) He was sacked the next day. My heart goes out to the hard working Gurkha who used to earn a few hundred rupees after spending hours doing something absolutely uninteresting & killing his otherwise healthy spirit. The diktat was changed after 2 weeks and all is back to normal now hoping that the robbers find a better society to enter and not ours! Ditto to how our country operates. Now that 26/11 is here we talk of slack s...

The welcome in to my office parking lot every morning would be very warm. As I park my car a familiar hand would wave from far “Good morning Madam”. Smiling at him and also acknowledging my good luck I would think “What a nice cleaner guy, every morning without fail greeting me inspite of me not availing his service”. After several months I decided to employ him to clean our car. Needless to say he was elated to hear my decision. “Sure Madam, I will clean your car every day except weekends”. Happy that I finally had someone to clean it regularly unlike the previous one at home who appeared at his will, I agreed to the “no cleaning on weekend” condition. “Madam, I will start from Monday but I need advance”, was his next statement. It was like a thunderbolt for me, paying advance for something which had not even started. “Yes, people here leave jobs and go off without paying me so I have started taking full advance”. Wow! I thought this is planning, risk mitigation at it’s best. Wondered...

Last couple of weeks have been a wonderful insight on how we as human beings always reach out to something not native to us. I happened to be at a "annual ball" of one of the defence services recently and saw many ladies dressed in the "best of the west" attire and dancing away to the latest hip hop numbers. As always I came back amazed at the way our Indian women have adapted to the west. Dramatically opposite has been the sight at the many music concerts happening at full glory at Chennai in December. Invariably there would be a bunch of non-Indians dressed in the "best of India" listening intently to the raaga alapana or clapping enthusiastically to a good Bharatnatyam piece. The sight of Kalakshetra the college dedicated to fine arts was the icing on the cake though! At a Bharatnatyam recital all the front rows were occupied by non-Indians who are either pursuing some form of Indian art or just plain admirers of it. It was heartening as well as a tad ...

A recent article by Shashi Tharoor on the growing disparity in India has set me thinking on how we can bridge this gap. Mr. Tharoor talks of India being a land of paradoxes and there is a lot of truth in his observation. When I look at new railway tracks of the MRT at Chennai, it feels good to see progress..at the same time when you look down from the train, it is so heartening to see swamps of water and hutments all around the dirty water. Ironical as it may seem, the growth of the overhead rail (for the people who can afford) is really at the cost of the people down below living in such conditions. On the other hand, no matter how accommodating you appear to the people below the poverty line they mostly seem to get the better of you. I listen to my maid's many excuses for not coming to work on a regular basis only to see her happily taking advantage of the time off. Regular "extraas" like grains / clothes given out of compassion soon appear in the " should have...