And then, just like that, I stopped writing. There was increased pressure from work, the twins took up some time and I guess I also lost interest. And then, again, just like that, it all re-started, when I received a call from Mumbai Mirror. They had somehow managed to find me out and Meenal asked me if I would write about Matunga in their "Writer's Bloc" column. Without wasting another second, I took up the offer and here I am�back.
This site continued listing all the Mumbai Mirror, Matunga-based articles till 2006. Somewhere in early 2007, Writer's Bloc died a natural death.
Well, guess what! I am back. I now have a weekly column, titled "An insular mirror into a 40-something's life" that will be published every Saturday, in the same paper. I will keep updating the site each Saturday/Sunday. If anyone wants to receive a notification related to my posts, please mail me at bhavin.mm AT gmail DOT com. And those who are more Facebook inclined can use the link below.
July 02, 2010
The Irrelevance (or Not) of Junior College
Last week, I asked the daughter of a friend of mine, who has 91% in SSC and wants to take up Science, what her criterion for choosing a good college was! Pat came the reply. A college that doesn't bother with attendance.
I just can't fathom the current brouhaha over the junior college admissions.
What are the parents who have gone to court, fighting for? The right to get into a college of their kids' choice and then not attend? Is there any college left that actually teaches and makes classes and tuitions irrelevant? Or as it appears to be, have the colleges become academically irrelevant with the onslaught of classes and tuitions. And if this is true, then wouldn't the best college to go to, be the one that cares two hoots about attendance and allows the kids to attend classes outside, even during college hours?
So, is there some other non-academic relevance to junior college that has everyone so riled up?
For many students, junior college is a rite-of-passage; just not having to wear a uniform after ten years can be liberating in itself. And then there are other culture shocks and milestones; finding yourself surrounded by kids of the opposite sex, especially if you are from a same-sex school; understanding that other types of schools exist as well and that everyone does not have the same thinking process; realizing that being a topper in school does not guarantee standing first in college; figuring out that 'Our Father in Heaven' is not a universal prayer across all academic institutions (just kidding!).
These issues can make or break a student! What makes things easier is having a great peer group; either school-friends all going to the same college together (how boring) or finding new friends with similar interests (how exciting). This becomes simpler if the kids get admission to a 'good' college, which essentially is one that ensures that all the students within the college meet a certain basic minimum social and intellectual level, which in turn hopefully allows easier compatibility within the peer-group. Oh, and the 'katta' or 'aka', the canteen food and chai, the entertainment in the vicinity and access to Ayn Rand books, are all important issues as well!
All of which effectively mean that the choice of junior college is governed by only two issues; whether minimum attendance is compulsory or not and whether the college and its image fit into the social and intellectual world-view of the student and the parents. Academics has nothing to do with the choice of college!
Not that things were particularly different even 30 years ago. I joined the best science college in the Dadar-Matunga area, but the college did nothing for me academically; I got into graduate college because of the vacation classes in PCM and tuitions in PCB. Quite absurdly, the only disciplines I was enthusiastic about in that college were English and French, partly because Ms. Bhelande and Ms. Ruby were both so damned passionate about their respective subjects and partly perversely because these subjects had no relevance to my getting into graduate college. Though a short two years, junior college, was a defining point of time in my life, coming especially as I did, from an all-boys school with a lot of attitude. To top it all, I was lucky to have forged some terrific friendships, most of which have survived till today!
It is definitely worth fighting about the choice of junior colleges...just as long as we all know what the true reasons are!
Posted by bhavinj at 06:26 PM | Comments (0)
June 18, 2010
Extreme Time Warps
I sometimes find myself wondering about the extreme time warps we live with.
One is our black and yellow taxis, which are just complete disasters. There was once a time perhaps, many decades ago, when taking a cab meant that you were well-heeled and people would actually look up to you, if they saw you getting out of one. This was however also the time, when Premier Padminis and Ambassadors ruled the roost and the only cola was Campa.
Guess what! Those of us who used to drive those horrible cars have now moved on, not necessarily to more expensive cars, but definitely to 'better' ones; more importantly we now enjoy a wide choice of vehicles to fit all budgets and needs. Unfortunately, the black and yellows are still caught in a 3 decade old time-warp; smelly, rickety, bumpy and noisy, apart from being horrendously uncomfortable and still driven by uncouth, "paan"-chewing and spitting drivers, who push their front seat all the way back, so that there is no space for you in the backseat. In today's day and age, it is sheer torture to sit in one of them and when you see someone stepping off one of these, you feel a combination of pity for what they have had to endure and anger because today, a cab-ride is really just a grand rip-off. Granted that there are newer air-conditioned cabs on the roads, but unfortunately, they don't cruise and are rarely available at short notice.
The black and yellow Padminis have to go!
On the other hand, I find myself daily in a futuristic time warp. A future of tablets, connectivity, great apps, virtually instant start-up and absent crashes. A future where your whole computer can fit into the palm of your hand, without the weight killing you.
Day before yesterday, the Google Earth app was released on the ITunes store and it works just magnificently on the IPAD. A few days before that, QuickOffice was released, allowing both Google Docs and Microsoft Office documents to be easily edited. Today, I use this device for all my email, most of my browsing, for reading books, scientific papers, many magazines, my RSS feeds, for seeing TV shows, making presentations and for taking notes. And (though I rarely admit this), even for playing games (Scrabble just rocks). Virtually 80% of my entire computing gets done on this handheld tablet. This article is also being typed on and emailed from the IPAD. And with more and more apps being put up, the whole experience is only getting better and better.
Last Sunday, Ajit, a close friend, called for my views on the IPAD. We spoke all the way (with 3 call drops of course and I wasn't driving), from Matunga to the Gateway, discussing its pros and cons. Finally, I told him that the only way to understand the IPAD was to just get one and do a complete self-immersion, simply because there is no comparable device currently available, against which it can be benchmarked.
The IPAD is the way personal computing will go!
The big paradox that could disturb the space-time continuum? Using an IPAD in a black and yellow cab!
Posted by bhavinj at 07:38 PM | Comments (0)
June 11, 2010
The 'Unputdownable' Lisbeth Salander
Crime thrillers, detective stories and mystery novels rarely have original plots. The basic premise of someone committing a crime and someone trying to solve it, has not changed in centuries. The reason we find some authors and stories more interesting than others is mainly because of the way in which the words are handled, or because of the idiosyncrasies and character development of the crime-solvers and sometimes the villains as well. In the end, a good mystery novel is one that is..."unputdownable".
My tastes have veered from Fatty and the Find-Outers and Hardy Boys, to Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Dolye to current-day authors like Jonathan Kellerman, Richard Stark and Ian Rankin. Though, it is the authors who create these books, it is their unique characters who breath life into the plots; people such as Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Philip Marlowe and Sherlock Holmes to name a few. Unfortunately, there just aren't too many interesting detectives / policemen / criminals turned good, who have cropped up in recent times.
And since in this day and age of perennial lack of time, it is hard to justify reading a crime thriller without feeling pangs of guilt over the fact that the time spent reading it could have been used to read something more "life-changing" or "educative", a detective story has to be really, really good to justify the effort and time taken over it.
So imagine how great it felt, coming upon a protagonist, who is a thin, young, 4ft, 10in Swedish misanthrope in her 20s, a social misfit and outcast with innumerable tattoos and piercings, who only wants to be left alone, but because of the fact that she was abused as a child, wants to exact revenge on those responsible, has a photographic memory, perhaps has Asperger's syndrome, is a computer hacker and fights to maim and hurt.
Welcome to the world of Lisbeth Salander.
Lisbeth is a character created by Stieg Larsson, who has written three crime thrillers, together also called the Millennium trilogy, around her and a journalist investigator called Mikael Blomkvist. The stories are based in Sweden, mainly Stockholm. For starters, the books completely blow away any ideas we may have had of the Scandinavian countries being peace-loving, slow-paced islands of "ramrajya". Add to this, the complex plots, the central theme of sexual abuse and the combination of Lisbeth and Blomkvist...and you have three books that are..."unputdownable".
I am still on an idyllic local vacation and knowing that I had some time, I downloaded all three books into my Kindle app on the IPAD and finished reading them over a span of five days. The first book is "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", which can be read as a standalone novel but also provides the background for the other two books, the first of which, "The Girl Who Played with Fire", is really just the first half of a story that finally ends in "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest". Mr. Larsson died of a massive heart attack after finishing these three books; he had apparently planned ten.
Many people have compared Lisbeth to Modesty Blaise; I wouldn't know since my exposure to Modesty Blaise is restricted to the lurid Sunday comic strip of my youth. But whatever Lisbeth may be like, it is amazing the kind of empathy Mr. Larsson manages to evoke for her, despite all her shortcomings and lack of traditional morals.
After a long time, we have a character, for whom it is worth spending the time required to get to know her better, in the pages where she lives.
Posted by bhavinj at 08:25 PM | Comments (0)
June 04, 2010
Crossing the Circle
Last Sunday, in exasperation and anger, I hit the rear passenger door of an Audi with the flat of my hand. The Audi went a little ahead and slowed down, but then prudently decided to drive on, once a traffic policeman started walking towards it. My hand however kept stinging for another 10 minutes. And worse, my usually hot-headed daughter started counselling me about temper control.
The Sunday before that, I lashed out at a bike and managed to hit the pillion rider. Luckily for both of us, the rider in front did not lose control.
It's been the same story for the last 5-6 Sundays. In the evening, between 6 and 7 PM, my kids and I take a walk from our home to Abbas, the only circulating library left this side of town, so that the kids can return the previous Sunday's books and borrow new ones. The walk is quite nice... and the Circle bustles with activity; people buying liquor, getting their photographs done, checking out the various salons that have suddenly mushroomed all over the Circle, waiting patiently outside the various food joints, eating ice-cream or partaking from the various food-carts on the broad pavements, getting their shoes polished or on their way to or from Matunga market.
Our walk involves crossing the main road once to go over to the other side of the Circle.
It's an insane situation!
The signal for pedestrians is just too short. The time that it takes to cross is barely enough for a young, able-bodied person; elderly people often have to wait in the middle and cross over two signals. Part of this is because the pedestrians are rarely able to utilise the entire time allotted for crossing.
Because, the cars just refuse to stop.
It's a busy pedestrian junction. The cars and bikes can obviously see that there are people waiting to cross. But they don't stop. Perhaps if it was 5.00AM in the morning, the 'not-stopping' could be justified. But at 6.00PM in the evening? Worse, there is hardly anyone around to enforce the law. And once in a while, if there are cops, even they are ineffective. But, that's not the point!
What is wrong with these half-witted, idiotic, "sitting on their brains" drivers? Can't they see the elderly and the young children waiting to cross? Is one minute of 'waiting' going to make an earth-shattering difference to their useless, boring, inconsequential lives?
Virtually each time the vehicle signal turns red and the cars continue past the signal, someone has to jump into the traffic and shout at the dolts to make them stop. Sometimes, someone like me hits out as well. It's less painful during the monsoons, when there is an umbrella at hand.
It's a crazy situation that seems to have no solution, simply because both the problem and solution are us. And we are not likely to change!
We are all like that only!
So, for whatever this is worth, here is an appeal to any of you, who drives past King's Circle. Please! Stop at the signal, when it turns red! Please!
Posted by bhavinj at 07:20 PM | Comments (0)
May 28, 2010
The Languidness of May
Its everywhere.
In people, in places, in the city...in this piece as well.
It's best appreciated at Phoenix Mall, where bored teenagers gather to kill time. The girls all have an unstated uniform - hot pants, halter T-shirts, painted nails and flip-flops. The gait is a slow waddle. The guys follow.
The boys and girls at the check-out lanes in the supermarkets are slower now than ever, as are the Cafe Coffee Day baristas. Its all sossegado. No one is in a hurry. There is nowhere to rush to.
The traffic too seems to have decided to take it easy. It takes half the time these days to get from anywhere to anywhere, at least in South and Central Mumbai. The honking is down. The harried mothers clogging the 9.00AM and 4.00PM roads have all but disappeared.
The kids are constantly lounging. Glazed looks in front of the television. Hoping actually for school to start. Half the friends are away, the other half gathering in the house that is the coolest. The outdoor games are played without energy, usually in the twilight zone between dusk and sunset...and they are still soaked in no time.
Work is down. Customers, clients and referrers are all away. There is no sense of urgency, even among those who have come from out of town. And there are very few coming in from out of town anyway.
The clouds are in on this as well. Two days ago, in the evening, the rain-clouds gathered as if debating internally what to do. The sky was momentarily overcast, raising hopes that perhaps one or two of them would break away and burst and pour down. Eventually, listlessly, they all ambled away.
The markets are volatile. But the street talk is all "theek hai", "hota hai", "manage ho jayega", "badme cover kar lenge". Its as if everyone has momentarily learnt to detach himself/herself from the outcomes.
It's the late May syndrome, which is getting more and more pronounced each passing year.
With some exceptions, though!
- The International airport is a fish-market.
- The railway platforms for outgoing trains are even worse, if there is anything that can be worse than a crowded fish-market.
- The main street of Interlaken looks like someone's transplanted Five Gardens there.
- Istanbul looks like Colaba Causeway.
- And, London feels like being in a Karan Johar film with lots of fair-skinned extras milling around.
I'm not complaining.
It's a good state of mind to be in.
And since we have only till 14 June, let's just enjoy the limpidness and laziness and listlessness, while we can. (Does anyone know why all of these words start with "L"?)
Posted by bhavinj at 07:30 PM | Comments (0)
May 21, 2010
Running With and Straddling Diversity
"I walk a lonely road,
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone"
This is how "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" starts. Even though I first heard this number by Green Day, a few years ago, it still, each time I hear it, unfailingly sweeps me off my feet. And, if I play it at the end of a tiring run, it always manages to infuse into me the extra zing and stimulation that I need to keep myself going for at least another round and a half. "Boulevard..." ranks in my top 10 all-time great list of Western rock numbers, a list that also includes "Stairway to Heaven", and "Bohemian Rhapsody".
Three days ago, during a run, "Boulevard..." was followed by this Hindi number on my music player.
"Ae Khuda, mujhko bataa, tu rehta kahan, tera kya pataa
Hum to yahan pe musafir hain, jo dhoondhe apni manzil ka pataa"
I didn't miss a beat and continued running with the same extra vigor that "Boulevard..." had initiated.
I heard "Ae Khuda" for the first time recently on Indian Idol. I found this song by Salim Merchant so enthralling that I immediately ripped it off a '"Paathshala" music CD. I hadn't expected it to play during my run, and I was pleasantly surprised that I didn't have to break my stride throughout the duration of the song.
My running playlist has a mix of Hindi and English songs...all of them uplifting and with a beat that matches my stride. And honestly, the language makes no difference...my feet and mind are equally comfortable with both.
There are many like me who grew up on a steady diet of Hindi songs. Binaca Geetmala on Radio Ceylon was a weekly staple and a way of being in touch with the latest numbers. In the 80s, like many of my friends, I slowly graduated to classic rock bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and the Doors, along with the Beatles and The Who, with some bubble-pop, like Abba thrown in as well. And, over the years, my tastes have veered from metal to punk to Shamshad Begum to chick-pop to Indian rock and briefly, even to Jagjit Singh.
No wonder so many of us are so schizoid. Straddling multiple cultures, which differ so completely and yet are so assimilated in us that while running, if the IPOD shuffles suddenly from "Stayin Alive" to "Tum Mile", I don't even miss a beat.
And how things have changed.
In the 80s, if you listened to rock, it was infra-dig to like contemporary Hindi film music and you could, horror of horrors, never ever dance to Hindi music in discos. Never, ever! Only old Mukesh and Rafi renderings were considered acceptable listening by the 'sophos' and 'pseuds'. Somewhere down the line though, Hindi film music became more and more acceptable across all levels of our society, and now more often than not, there is more Hindi music than Western playing at many dance parties and in discotheques.
In how many cultures across the world, would this be seamlessly possible? How many people are able to effortlessly move among completely diverse genres, without any conscious effort? Isn't this uniqueness among a good number of Indians, something to be proud of?
Posted by bhavinj at 07:53 PM | Comments (0)
May 14, 2010
Galli Friends, School Friends, College Friends....Your Closest Friends!
Mr. Pritish Nandy, many eons ago, in The Illustrated Weekly, once posed a question that went somewhat like this, "What will you do if a friend, who you call a close friend, comes to you saying that he has just killed someone and wants your help?"
I have been quite clear about the answer since those early days. If you believe this person to be your closest of close friends, then you'll help. Period. You can't rationalise and think of options and consequences. There are no buts in a close friendship.
The problem is that such friends are really hard to find. And the question that each one of you must ask yourself is this. "Do you have at least one friend on whom you can unload your deepest, darkest secrets? Just one person who you can trust with anything and everything? Just one individual in this whole, wide world, who will stand by you, come what may?" I know people who have tons of friends and the knack of creating back-slapping buddies out of people they have met for less than a minute and yet have not one such person they can lean back on.
The simplest and the strongest friendships are the "galli" and building ones, followed by those forged in school, junior-college, college and graduate college, in decreasing order of strength of friendship, with professional colleagues and recent acquaintances coming last.
I am not saying that all school or "galli" friends are as close and non-questioning as Mr. Nandy would want them to be. However, virtually all close friendships are forged in school or during college days. As we grow older and meet people mainly from our professions and in the work-place, we tend to circle more and more, feinting, questioning, parring and then taking time to reveal one little facet after another, unwilling to strip off all the masks that we have learnt to put on, over the decades. It is only with friends made when we were very young that our personas are close to naked, with hardly any layers to peel.
Even if your school-friends are not your closest friends, they are still the one set of people with whom you don't have to put on an act. You can be as you are, without having to worry about what others will think of you, especially if you get a little drunk and can't control the "*&%&&�@�"s that may uncontrollably start rolling off your tongue. Who you are and what you have become, don't matter a lot with with "galli" and school-friends, while more recent friendships are invariably based on your current status and position. When we were young, the people around us came from a wide variety of backgrounds, while today, we more and more tend to only meet and interact with people who are just like us.
Which is why the thought of meeting up with old school friends at our 30-year reunion is so exciting. It matters not if you haven't met each other for more than 10 years...it takes less than 5 minutes to get back on track. Right now all our efforts are focussed on just contacting as many of those who have passed out in 1980 from Don Bosco, Matunga.
And without spouses, we will all be able to regress easily to our childhood states, without any worries. And hopefully, some of us will stay sober. Or not. Whatever. Who cares! We will take care of each other. After all, that's what old friends are for!
Posted by bhavinj at 09:38 PM | Comments (0)
May 07, 2010
Humble Pie
I celebrated my 45th birthday a few weeks ago. Unless cancer or cardiac disease strikes me down or an accident claims me prematurely, the statistical probability that I will live till the age of 90 is quite high. I believe I have lived a full life till date, but it's been a long 45 years with all it's ups and downs. I can't even begin to fathom what it will take to get through another lifetime of 45 years...it's scary.
The issue is not just the number of years that I might actually land up living. It's the fact that these years will be considerably different from the ones that have gone by; sooner rather than later, as younger blood emerges, I will no longer continue to be the top dog that I currently am; the children will grow up and leave; old friends will dwindle in number and the body will start misbehaving in tiny innumerable ways.
Whatever and wherever I may be these days, the contemplation of another 45 years is instantaneously humbling, bringing me down to Earth virtually immediately, deflating without any further ado, whatever-sized balloon I might be at that point in time!
Humility isn't easy to come by. The 'do you know who I am' and 'don't ask me I know everything' syndromes are getting to be more and more pervasive. And this, despite the fact that we don't really know much about a good number of things. We don't even know what causes Alzheimer's disease forget about even starting to know what leads to a conscious state of being. You'd think that this lack of knowledge and understanding by itself would make most of us more humble, but our bubbles of self-delusion are unfortunately only growing larger and larger, day by day.
The New York Times last week Wednesday carried the story of a lady with Stage IV breast cancer that had metastasised to her bones. She was given less than 2 years to live. She is now alive for 17 years and none of the expert oncologists really knows why. The human body can still stump the most brilliant minds and hands; any doctor who doesn't understand this is just plain self-delusional and blinded by the fog of a self-engineered God complex.
It's not just doctors, but experts in virtually all fields and disciplines, who need to acknowledge their lack of answers to so many questions and puzzles in life. Else, why would the vast majority of economists, financial pundits and experts not have seen the recent financial crisis coming? You'd think that at least after this fiasco, all these experts would have learnt their lessons, but I don't think humility is a quality that is taught in business school.
Nature humbles us all the time, but we just don't learn. The recent volcanic eruption was in Iceland, but people were stranded all across the globe, farmers in Kenya were on the verge of bankruptcy, conferences and meetings were canceled overnight and no one even knew how long this would continue, some experts even talking of an ash cloud for 2 years.
No wonder that pride and conceit, individual and collective, have always had a short shelf life, a lesson, which if both the Modi's had taken to heart, would have perhaps averted their current problems. Each one of us at some point in time has had to eat crow. What makes the great among us stand out is the grace and seemingly effortless humility with which they accept both, success and failure equally, without letting either get to their heads. I know a few such people. Do you?
Posted by bhavinj at 09:43 PM | Comments (0)
April 30, 2010
My Kids' Grouse with Mr. Anu Malik's Rudeness!
During dinner last night, my kids and my nephew starting discussing the Indian Idol eliminations that are currently being aired on television. This was the first time that they were watching these early Indian Idol episodes and the main topic of discussion was the judges' rudeness. They felt that Mr. Anu Malik and the other two judges, Ms. Sunidhi Chauhan and Mr. Salim Merchant were being unnecessarily rude to the contestants, especially those who were singing badly.
One example they quoted was of a contestant from Kolkata, who sang so badly from the start that all the judges, in a synchronised manner, just put their heads down on the table, in disgust. The contestant was very upset and expressed this on his way out. My kids were surprisingly in agreement with him.
I had watched the first two episodes as well and knew what they were talking about. I find these early audition episodes quite entertaining, especially because the judges are not politically correct, even though they fall far short of Mr. Simon Cowell's insults on American Idol.
I was a little surprised at my kids' thinking. I presume that this is probably related to the way things have changed at school with respect to competition, because of which they truly believe that everything and everyone should be fair and should be given an equal chance, irrespective of the presence or absence of talent and ability.
I think its time I make them read the "Eleven Rules of Life", apparently ascribed to Mr. Bill Gates in circulating emails, though in reality excerpted from the book "Dumbing Down Our Kids" by Mr. Charles Sykes.
Rule 1 - Life is not fair - get used to it
Rule 8 - Your school may have done away with winners and losers but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
I'm sure you get the central theme.
The kids need to realise that that hard work is important, that talent is important, that if you don't do well, your parents won't always be there to mollycoddle you, that you won't always get what you want, that ventures may fail, that you usually need to work like a dog to succeed.
And that' where I have a problem with Indian Idol; that the judges are not rude enough and should perhaps be more like Mr. Cowell and less like Ms. Paula Abdul. If someone thinks he can sing and turns out to be "besura", that person should be told the truth, straight on his face, without mincing words. And those who try to win sympathy by coming up with hard-luck stories, like the Army gentleman, who couldn't sing, but who played on his cancer-struck sister's recent death, should be torn down even more, rather than be hugged for being brave enough to come to the audition. The cynic in me refuses to believe that this was not an attempt at getting into Indian Idol on the back of a dead sister. Honestly, if you are willing to try anything to get your 10 seconds of fame, you should be willing to take your 10 seconds of rebuke as well.
Anyway, I wasn't able to convince my kids that it is acceptable to be rude if the context demands it. So, I just hope that they learn fast, that in the real world, people will be rude and horrible and unpleasant and that they they will have to face these people and situations, eventually on their own.
Posted by bhavinj at 06:52 PM | Comments (0)
April 23, 2010
I am Alive Because of My Child...But my Child is Not...Alive!
I can keep going on and on about all the issues that irk me day after day, as far as drivers and cars in Mumbai are concerned. Overshooting the white line at the signal, incessant honking, refusing to give way and driving in the middle of a two-lane road, making sudden turns without signaling...the list is virtually endless.
However, among all these, the one thing that really drives me around the bend, is seeing adults holding infants and children in their laps in the passenger seat.
This has to be the most insane thing that a parent or adult can do. Just so that there is no misunderstanding and to ensure that we are all on the same page here, let me run through this scenario again. I am talking of a situation where an adult or parent sits in the front seat of a moving car with a child on his/her lap.
Seeing this make me so mad, that I have actually overtaken cars on the road, made them stop and berated the parents and drivers. Unfortunately, this never works. Why is this such a big deal? Are you kidding me?
Let's assume that you are in a head-on collision. You are in the passenger seat, with your son or daughter in your lap. The force of the collision will either create an impact between the front dashboard and your body or will cause the airbags to get activated. When this happens, your child will be your cushion. In effect, your child will bear the brunt of all the high-impact forces and reduce their effect on you. You will live, but your child may not.
I know this sounds quite gruesome, but I really don't know how else to get this message across. In the Western, developed world, a child has to be kept in a proper car-seat with correct restraints/belts in the back-seat of the car, even if there is no one else in the car. No child is allowed to ride in the front-seat, forget about riding in the lap of an adult. Please understand that in the event of a collision, even an airbag can kill a child. Not only that, since children can rarely be still for more than 1-2 minutes at a time, they can significantly distract the driver, if they are in the adjacent passenger seat, which can in turn lead to an accident.
Even holding a child in your lap or arms in the back-seat is not acceptable because in the event of an accident, an unrestrained child will be flung around in the car and can suffer serious injuries. But just as many motor-cyclists still don't wear helmets, drivers in many other cities in India still don't wear seat-belts, families of four still ride together on a dinky scooter, I guess some things will not change unless there is strict legislation and enforcement.
It is because of this enforcement, that at least in Mumbai, we all wear seat-belts, irrespective of whether we believe this saves lives or not. Trust me, it does! It is the same strict enforcement that has made people think ten times before driving after drinking and probably three-four times before driving while talking on a cell-phone.
I am quite clear about this. The next driving law we need enforced has to be about child safety. All children should be in the back-seat, in car-seats and/or wearing seat-belts. No children should be seen in the front-seats and definitely not in some idiot adult's lap.
Is someone listening?
Posted by bhavinj at 08:06 PM | Comments (0)
April 17, 2010
The IPAD Phenomenon - When Paradigms Shift Drastically
There are times and there are times. And there's this week. My IPAD arrived Monday (thanks Madhavi and Amol). Today is Thursday night and I am sitting in front of it, the device propped up on a custom-made, solid teak-wood stand designed by Murthy (thanks Murthy), touch-typing this piece on the Pages app. The only reason I miss Microsoft Word is the absence of a word counter, but I am sure that my editor will be able to sort things out in case I go overboard.
Ever since the IPAD has been announced, people have been making profound 'expert' comments, discussing it's pros and cons even though most of them have never even seen one, forget about having used one. It's been called everything from a net book to a Kindle-killer to a glorified photo-frame. And guess what...it is all of these and more.
So what is it! It is first of all NOT just an ebook reader like the Kindle. In fact with the Kindle app available on the IPAD it doesn't even matter anymore whether you use the IBooks app or the Kindle app to read books.
To me, the IPAD is a completely new computer platform, familiar in some ways if you've been using an IPhone, but still different in many other ways. Depending on the kind of work you do on a computer, the IPAD can probably take care of about 80-90% of your needs. Email? Check. Web-surfing? Check. RSS newsreader? Check. Calendar? Check. YouTube? Check. Facebook? Check. Twitter? Check. Music? Check.
From a work and productivity perspective, the Pages, Numbers and Keynote apps provide basic word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation capabilities, respectively. In fact, Keynote can probably take care of the presentation needs of more than 90% of the people, 90% of the times and I was able to use it and connect to an LCD projector on Tuesday itself. For those in the scientific fields, the Papers app is perhaps the best reason to have the IPAD - all your .pdfs, perfectly PUBMED catalogued, available at your fingertips....literally. And, the Things app is perhaps the best To-Do management tool ever. The battery-life is a good 10-12 hours...essentially you charge it at night and the IPAD works throughout the day on that one single charge. And every app/program opens virtually instantaneously, though you can use one only app at a time.
Downsides? It's heavily net dependant and good connectivity is a must. File management and transfer are a bit of a pain and if you want to type fast you can't just hold it in your hands...it needs to be propped up.
Each new device will have individual pros and cons that can be discussed ad nauseum in all kinds of forums. What is radically different about the IPAD, is it's form and design and the way it changes how you use and experience a laptop. There is no lid, no power cord and no mouse, just your fingers. You can use it tilted, sideways, or straight-up. You can lie flat and hold it above you. You can cradle it in one arm or hold it in front with two. You and the device are connected by just your fingertips; no wires or cords...it can't get more intimate than this.
There will soon be more devices like the IPAD, from other manufacturers. And at some point, in the not-too-distant future, virtually all computing except for some heavy-duty, professional or proprietary stuff, will be done only on devices like this.
I am holding the future of personal computing in my hands. And typing this piece on it. And emailing it as a Word doc to the Mirror office from the device itself. How much better can it get?
Posted by bhavinj at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)
April 09, 2010
Stupid or Smart! It's All a Matter of Perspective!
Last week, during the Easter weekend, with access to our favorite garden cut-off, my wife and I landed up at Five Gardens for a walk. Usually a quiet and popular place in the evenings, the area last week was a complete disaster. The heavy traffic on the central roads not only raised the decibel levels sky-high, the constant flow of cars also made it difficult and dangerous to cross from one garden to another. And with some parts dug up, it was virtually impossible to walk along the entire outer Circle.
That's not even really the point of this story!
Adenwalla Road connects King's Circle to Five Gardens. For some time now, it has been dug up in such a way that you cannot use this road to go directly from King's Circle to Five Gardens. If you come in from Five Gardens, the road ends after 150 meters or so and you either have to stop and park, if you live there, or you have to turn around and go back.
At the Five Gardens end, there is a big aluminum sheet barrier, just where the left turn into Adenwalla road starts, which sports a prominent sign saying "No Entry". Then 10 meters ahead, where Adenwalla road crosses the outer Circle, there is another similar barrier with a "No Entry" sign.
You would think this would be enough for most people.
That day, after I found the outer Circle painful, I realized that I could walk and even run on the newly laid, 150-meter stretch of concrete on Adenwalla road. With my new running playlist on my new IPhone, I started walking and running back and forth on this road.
That's when I noticed the really smart, stupid people. Every 3-4 minutes, a car would turn into Adenwalla road from Five Gardens. Seeing this car, invariably, a couple more would follow, I guess assuming that the first car was being driven by someone who knew something that they didn't.
A quarter of those who came through were people living on Adenwalla road, returning home. But the rest of the cars were driven by extra-smart people, confident perhaps that they would find at least some way of getting through to King's Circle, despite all those "No Entry" signs. So they would drive those 150 meters and suddenly hit a dead-end, then they would roll down their windows and ask the boys who were playing cricket how to get across, and on finding that even their smartness wouldn't be able to help them do that, they would then make a U-turn and drive back the way they had come, having wasted a good 5-10 minutes of their time proving their stupidity.
Every 3-4 minutes, one car!
Trying to be smart, by assuming that everyone else following the rules was stupid!
These are the same people who drink and drive! Who drive without seatbelts! Who drive on a one-way road from the "No Entry" side! Who drive with a child on their lap on the front-seat! Who drive while talking on cell-phones! Who ignore central dividers and obstruct traffic from the opposite side when there is a traffic-jam! Who break signals whenever there is no policeman around!
These are the same people who think that everyone who follows rules and pays attention to signboards is stupid.
The funny thing is that they wallow so much in their presumed smartness, that they cannot even recognize who the truly "stupid" people actually are!
Posted by bhavinj at 07:58 PM | Comments (0)
April 02, 2010
How the Cloud has Made me Free
Warning: If you're not one of those who sleeps with a laptop and breathes connectivity, you might find this piece a shade boring. Or not!
I am a self-professed geek. I bought my first laptop in 1994 and since then, have hardly ever been without one by my side, day or night. My wife used to call it (and still sometimes does) her "souten" (mistress). I have emails from 1999 still stored on my hard-disks and backup drives and have successfully migrated photographs and videos across multiple laptops and platforms over all these years. From using Windows 3.1 to XP and now OsX on the Macbook Pro and the Air, I've been through it all, save UNIX.
Last Friday, my Air froze.
And for the first time in 16 years, I didn't and haven't panicked.
One of the important things that I had to do last Friday was to finish my piece for this column. I wrote it online using Google Docs, re-edited it on the family IMAC at home and then emailed it out. I'm doing the same thing today.
And all the other stuff?
Almost everything is up in the (Internet) cloud.
My contacts are all on Google and seamlessly sync with my IPhone. Google Calendar now controls my time and schedules and all its multiple, multi-colored calendars sync in real-time with my IPhone. About six months ago, after buying 80GB of space on Google for 20 US dollars, I created POP accounts in my Gmail account for my work, personal and a couple of other email IDs, to ensure that all my emails, from all my accounts would be automatically archived in Gmail and then be easily and rapidly searchable using Google's search engine. More importantly, I no longer have to worry about deleted or lost emails. As for sending and receiving emails on the go, the IPhone (like the Blackberry) works so well even with multiple accounts that I hardly feel the absence of a laptop. For spreadsheets and now even .pdfs, Google Docs works quite well too. And as for photographs, all of them since 1999 are on IPhoto and simultaneously archived on Picasa online.
I carry two USB devices. The first is a 64GB stick that has a bunch of backed up and archived files and videos for reference, including my Powerpoint presentations. These too, over the next few weeks, will be uploaded into Google Docs as well as Windows Live Sync, and will then be available whenever and wherever I want them, without any laptop issues to worry over. A bunch of my scanned documents has also been dumped into Evernote, the desktop version of which constantly syncs with an online server, which in turn allows me to access all these files from anywhere in the world using just a browser. The other USB device I carry, is a Tata Indicom Photon device (Reliance I believe works equally well) that allows me to go online anywhere in the country, at high-enough speeds.
Not having a laptop also means not having to carry a bag; the two USB sticks stay in my wallet and the Iphone lies in my shirt pocket, and I suddenly feel so untethered and free. Imagine the pleasure of this freedom after 16 years of being wedded to a square-shaped metal/aluminum, mice-infested object that has power (and control) issues, is prone to frequent breakdowns and constantly freezes up.
Now if only I can find a way to get rid of my phone as well!
Posted by bhavinj at 07:59 PM | Comments (0)
March 26, 2010
People Can't Be Purged
A couple of months ago, a colleague expired. I called up the family and expressed my condolences. The matter rested there, until last week, when finding myself with some free time at the airport, I started going through the address book on my cell phone and came across the dead colleague's entry. I paused for a brief moment and then went ahead and pressed the delete button. With one stroke of the keypad, his contact details were gone.
And though this seems like such an act of finality, traces of the person will continue to live on somewhere or the other in this omnipresent, almost omniscient digital world of ours, in some form or the other, whether it be emails, blog posts, photos, calendar entries, saved SMSes or Facebook or similar profiles and pages. Unless the person is a complete digital hermit, it is not possible to purge one's digital consciousness anymore, alive or dead. In essence then, digital souls just don't die!
The wired world in that sense is similar to our brain; even after people have crossed over, some trace of their being continues to remain in our minds for decades, resisting any attempt at purging or erasing.
The only thing that one can purge with respect to people, alive or dead, are ours lists and networks that they belong to. Three weeks ago, I sat down over an afternoon to bring some sanity to my Facebook Friends list, using Dunbar's rule of 150 as a benchmark. Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist, has a theory about the number of people with whom an individual can possibly maintain a stable inter-personal relationship. He estimates the number at 150, beyond which he believes that it is not possible for an individual to handle and track people. Many people agree with him and I intuitively think that his theory is right as well.
I had more than 350 friends on Facebook and if you seriously believe that a site like this helps keep track of friends and family, then the size of the Friends list should be manageable to allow some decent interaction in the limited time one has. While going through the list, I realized that there were people there who I actually didn't know, some who had never logged back after their first try, other who had actually blocked me from seeing their Wall and many who were friends because of this column, but were either not active or were not interacting or commenting.
And so I purged and purged and purged...and I am finally down to 210 odd. I am now better able to at least once a day follow what the Friends are upto. A good number of my close friends are actually not on Facebook and if that be the case, I wonder whether the Friends list should actually go down to less than 100, but I don't really know the answer to that question.
Facebook is not real life. You can't just over one afternoon go about deleting or unfriending people in real life hoping that they will just disappear. Just like dead people continue to linger in our memories, lost friends and acquaintances also continue to occupy nether recesses in our neural networks, often showing up into our mainstreams of consciousness at the most unexpected moments. As is happening right now, where a memory of Parind Munsif from school has suddenly surfaced; Parind, who was my best friend for a couple of years, but who then completely disappeared, as if from the face of this Earth.
Life is complicated!
Posted by bhavinj at 07:33 PM | Comments (0)
March 20, 2010
It's Because They Have Guns, Stupid!
I have this fantasy. I am driving a high-end bulldozer on Mumbai's roads. Whenever I find a cab or a car parked or driving illegally, I slam into it and convert it into metal pulp. I am the road-warrior, in charge of keeping the roads of Mumbai safe. I am the unchallenged Emperor of Concrete. I can bulldoze anyone who dares me or gets in my way.
This fantasy of course, will never come true. But I keep gravitating to it, each time it gets really bad on the roads; people walking in the middle, drivers honking at me for no reason, cars in front suddenly going maddeningly slow, buses coming dangerously close, all on the same stretch of the road, all together slowly but surely, raising my temper and wrath.
Now imagine that I have a gun!
I am not sure if on a really, really bad, stressful day, after having fought with and shouted at everyone and his uncle and aunt, I would be able to resist the temptation to pull that gun out and frighten the wits out of the people who were hassling me.
Now imagine that I am a person who is unable to handle stress, or is deeply depressed, or has just lost his job or a dear one, or is in the middle of a divorce. And I also have a gun that I have pulled out so that I can make the people who are stressing me out, quiver with fear.
Something snaps.
I pull the trigger. Someone screams.
Have gun...will use!
We've been led to believe that it's extremely difficult to own a gun in our country. But it surely doesn't look that way these days. People are suddenly pulling out guns at traffic signals, at toll-nakas, after drunken bouts in discos and in private parties. And then we have this man who completely loses it this Thursday, just because he couldn't stand the sound of construction work in his building.
Anyone can lose self-control during extreme stress. But not everyone starts harming himself/herself or people around. Even when that happens, it usually takes the shape of some kind of physical violence, either in the form of fisticuffs or blunt weapons or sometimes knives, all of which though potentially fatal, do not carry the finality of a gun. Worse, the person holding the gun may have never actually intended to shoot; but a sudden slip of the finger, or change in the emotional state may be all it takes for that little extra pressure on the trigger...and then, boom!
Hardly any other civilized country, except the United States, allows private individuals to own guns. This is perhaps not the forum to debate the pros and cons of gun control in the US. However, as far as India is concerned, given our levels of maturity and self-control, there is no question that there should only be more control over who is allowed to buy and use guns, rather than less. It should be virtually impossible to buy and own a gun. Not only that, I am also convinced that those who own guns should submit to regular psychological evaluation and counseling - if they fail these tests, their guns should be confiscated and this rule should apply even to those who use guns as part of their official duties.
We just can't have 50-year old men with access to guns shooting teenage girls because they've snapped. Period!
Posted by bhavinj at 09:03 AM | Comments (0)
