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April 25, 2009
One Smile is All it Takes
Queues are stressful. Whether they are airport security lines or the lines at the passport office; they are all uniformly distasteful.
Here's what happened two weeks ago.
I have to get a passport renewal done. I reach at 9.45AM to see that a large line has already formed, since people have been queuing up from 8.00AM. I am lucky to get in by 10.20AM. I am then asked to wait behind 5 other people in the "Tatkal" line and I realize that my turn will come only after an hour.
An hour of waiting can be quite difficult. Luckily, I have some calls to complete and this takes up 30 odd minutes. I spend the rest of the time studying the situation and the people around me. There are long lines everywhere and behind me in the "Tatkal" line there are now more than 10 people.
The clerks are reasonably polite but as time passes by there is some irritation that seems to creep in. Part of this is because many people have not come with the appropriate paperwork or some want to get the police check process canceled since they want to leave the country the very next day; the clerks are not empowered to allow this and a lot of time is wasted in needless arguing.
When my turn comes, I find out to my chagrin that my paperwork is not complete as well. I need to get a couple of old visas copied. The clerk though is quite nice and asks me to get the copies and come back immediately. Luckily, the copier is in the adjacent office in the same complex. There is a small waiting period during which I get into a fight with another woman who has come after me but wants her papers copied out of turn.
I am now quite irritated, but luckily the paperwork is now fine. The clerk now asks me to stand in another line to pay the money. It's been two hours now and I want to get back to work. There are six people in front of me and I can see that I will have to stand for another 30 odd minutes. I can feel myself frowning and knotting up.
I keep looking around, trying to distract myself. As I turn around, a pretty woman in her mid-20s gives me a broad, eye-reaching smile. One smile. In that instant, my frown just dissolves completely, replaced by a small, growing smile that completely overpowers my irritability. All of this happens spontaneously and virtually instantaneously and without thinking I turn around and tell the woman "Thank you for the smile." She smiles even more...she then tells me that she has met me before once...I didn't remember.
It doesn't matter that she knew me. The point is that I didn't know her at the time when she smiled. To me it was just someone in an adjacent line being nice. And it took just that one smile to make all the difference.
I think as a race, we Indians just don't smile enough. I don't know why that is; maybe we are afraid of rejection if the other person does not smile back or perhaps we are just not a "smiley" race.
I hate "sayings" and "quotes", but this unknown ditty is so apt.
"Smiling is infectious,
You can catch it like the flu.
Someone smiled at me today,
And I started smiling too."
Posted by bhavinj at 08:05 AM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2009
How Beautiful Should a Voice Look?
Three days ago, a friend (thanks, Tillu), posted a YouTube link on Facebook about Susan Boyle's performance on the show "Britain's Got Talent". After you type Susan Boyle in the search bar on YouTube, you should choose the first video; it is 7:08 minutes long, because it contains her pre-performance build-up as well. Here we learn that Susan is 47, and from a small cluster of villages somewhere in Britain. She has a double chin and is matronly plump. When she is asked who she wants to be like and says "Elaine Paige", you can almost hear the sniggers in the audience, while the camera cuts to looks of disbelief on the judges' faces (Amanda Holden, Piers Morgan and Simon Cowell, the latter of American Idol fame) and then to a teen in the audience rolling her eyes. Elaine Paige is considered by many to be the "First Lady of British Musical Theatre" and became famous when she played Eva Peron in the musical "Evita". Her signature song is "Memories" from the musical "Cats".
Susan Boyle however decides to sing, "I Dreamed a Dream" from the musical, "Les Miserables". Just before she starts to sing, the camera pans once more across the judges and the audience; you can sense their weariness and their thoughts, "here is one more talentless, over-the-hill woman taking her shot at 1 minute of stardom". And then she sings. It's difficult to describe what happens next in words...so it's best if you see the video yourselves. The best part of the video however is seeing the incredulous looks on the judges' faces when they realize that here is a woman who can actually sing and that too with a voice perhaps as good as Elaine Paige's.
Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Blink" writes about the pitfalls of making presumptuous, instantaneous decisions based on our "gut" feel. As in Susan Boyle's case, we are so tuned to our woman singers being sexy and young (no thanks to MTV, etc), that we intuitively make a call about someone's singing talent based on her looks and appearance. And many of us have a lot of trouble differentiating between "good-looking" and "good-sounding" voices.
In "Blink", Mr. Gladwell further goes on to talk about how women would hardly feature in classical orchestras, some years ago, because it was assumed that they just couldn't play the instruments as well as men. It was only when curtains were put in front of the performers during auditions, and the judges had no clue who the person playing was...man, woman, white, black, etc, that women started getting selected and now account for 50% of all orchestra players.
To further drive home this point; type "Paul Potts" in a YouTube search bar and select the third video that says, "Paul sings Nessun Dorma". See his pre-performance build-up; his lack of confidence, the plump face with bad front-teeth; a salesman in a mobile phone shop in a town in Britain, who wants to be an opera singer. All you need to do is to hear his tenor voice once, to understand what I am talking about.
In the days when radio was king and there was no television, it was only the "voice" that mattered and this worked very well for all the singers of the previous generation. Today, when television rules, the paradigms are different; average, but good-looking singers are usually more successful than great, but "not-so-good" looking ones. So I ask the question again. How beautiful should a voice look?
Posted by bhavinj at 08:25 AM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2009
It Takes Guts!
My generation has always been eternally cynical. When it comes to voting, politicians and elections, this is even more pronounced.
So what are the options available to us during an election?
1. Not vote
2. Go to the voting booth and then decide not to vote (Rule 49 O).
3. Do research and find out the most honest / best candidate among the ones standing and then cast your vote for that candidate, irrespective of his/her party affiliation
4. Convince an appropriate candidate to stand
5. Stand for elections yourself
The first is a real option that can be exercised in a democracy. The second is rubbish and a quick Internet search will reveal why. The third used to be difficult because adequate knowledge of a candidate, his/her performance, assets, past scandals, etc used to be difficult to obtain, but is much simpler these days due to the widespread availability of information on the web and websites that now track the candidates quite rigorously and religiously. The fourth and fifth are tough, especially for the vast middle-class in this country, which unfortunately has the least say in how this country is run.
And so, when a PLU (person/people like us) stands for election, you sit up and notice.
When Mona called three weeks ago to say that she was standing for the MP election from South Mumbai, as a candidate of the Professionals Party of India (PPI), which incidentally I had never heard of (and none of my friends and family had either), I had no clue how to react.
My first thought was. Wow!
Because...it takes guts to do something like this!
Mona is an ophthalmologist, and like most doctors, a daily wage earner, who earns only when she sees patients. It takes guts to put all that on hold for 30-45 days and campaign. Forget the loss of income and practice; you need to spend money to run a campaign; letters, posters, travel, meetings...all come with real costs. And when you don't have a party behind you that is spending on your behalf, this becomes even more of an issue, since you need to spend your own money. Mona has two young school-going daughters, who need constant parenting. She has a household and a husband to take care off as well. Like all middle-class mothers in their late 30s and 40s, she is already on oxygen, gasping for air, juggling multiple responsibilities and just running to stay in the same place.
And then she decides to contest to be an MP from South Mumbai.
To my mind, there can be no better person to manage a constituency than a multi-tasking, middle / upper-middle class mother in her late 30s/early 40s, who is used to handling twenty problems and issues at the same time, while staying steady with her feet on the ground with her sanity intact. In fact, maintaining a constituency and representing it in Parliament, would be much simpler and easier. And the icing? She is just like you and me and understands our middle-class issues.
Mona Patel Shah. I am not from your constituency and unfortunately cannot vote for you. But I am proud that a doctor and a working mother has had the guts to take a stand and do something about issues that all of us just crib about all the time, without actually doing anything. I don't care if you win or lose (obviously I fervently hope you win), but you've already made a difference and become a role model...just by standing. All the best!
Posted by bhavinj at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)
April 04, 2009
The Republic of South Bombay
This confidential letter landed on our news-desk two days ago. Though there was no letterhead, we believe that it came from someone close to the "Powers that Be", who run are country. It was addressed to a gentleman from Colaba, who shall remain anonymous for everyone's sake.
"Dear Mr. ____.
The letter that we received on 20th March 2009 was the 26th letter from you on this subject, in the last two years. We haven't replied to you because for quite some time, we've all believed that you've been sending these letters only to lighten up our lunch hours. However after you've started attaching signatures from prominent citizens in support of your cause, we now think that you are truly serious about the matters raised in your letters.
Before things go out of hand and you get into trouble, we would like to tell you what the ground realities are.
1. No. Mumbai cannot end at Worli.
2. No. We can't rename South Mumbai as the Republic of South Bombay.
3. No. We cannot issue visas for travel beyond Worli in both directions.
4. No. Just because Pedder Road is going to be one way for 30 days, we cannot temporarily redraw the boundary of South Mumbai to end at Kemp's Corner. You actually managed to get 10,000 signatures for...this?
5. Just for your information. Charkop is not Charminar's sister in Hyderabad and Dahisar is not a superior form of yoghurt.
6. A small geography lesson. South Mumbai also includes all areas to the east of Raja Ram Mohan Roy Rd, including Khetwadi, Bhuleshwar, Bhendi Bazaar and Mazgaon. That these areas don't jell with "South Mumbai's state-of-mind" is irrelevant. The world is not a Billy Joel song.
7. No. Alibag's beachfront and the sea between the Gateway of India and Alibag are not part of South Mumbai.
8. No. Khandala cannot be South Mumbai's winter capital.
9. No. Bandra, including Pali Hill cannot be a satellite state like Pakistan and Bangladesh were at one time. It does not matter if you have 5000 signatures from Pali Hill residents.
10. No. Just because you want the Dhirubhai Ambani school to be part of South Mumbai, you cannot open the Republic of South Bombay's consulate in its premises.
11. No. 1900s will never reopen. Nor will Studio 29. Rang Bhavan however might have a chance one day.
12. No. Navynagar cannot be converted into South Mumbai's very own International Airport.
13. No. Members of Willingdon Gymkhana and CCI who live beyond Worli cannot be summarily removed.
14. No. Rugby cannot become South Mumbai's national sport.
15. No. Just because Freddie Mercury was born in Colaba, "Bohemian Rhapsody" cannot become South Mumbai's Anthem.
One of our secretaries in the office, who sometimes has thoughts along similar lines, but from the perspective of a certain state in Eastern India has asked you to think about this. The population of people from the Land of Darkness is quite substantial in South Mumbai, though these cooks, chauffeurs and menservants are probably invisible to you. If they were to elect the Great Socialist as your Prime Minister (and he would probably have a landslide win), you can be rest assured that the Republic of South Bombay will go from a Maximum City to a Land of Darkness faster than you can finish Mr. Suketu Mehta's opus. No wonder it was Mr. Adiga who won the Booker.
Hope this takes care of all your queries and issues.
With regards
An Anonymous Well-Wisher"
Posted by bhavinj at 05:26 AM | Comments (0)
