May 02, 2009
The Times, They Are A-Changin'
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'
Bob Dylan, "The Times They are A-Changin"
You can mark the milestones in your life by the cars you've had. In 1983, my first car was a hand-me-down Ambassador that had been in the extended family for more than 20 years, a car with gears so hard that by the time I learnt to drive it expertly, I could've driven any vehicle, large or small, on Indian roads.
In the early 80s, we also bought our first Premier Padmini. The waiting list was for more than 3 years, but we managed to get an out-of-turn car through some professional quota. Given the prevailing imperious attitudes, arranging a loan from the local bank and taking delivery of the car from Premier Automobiles were both quite harrowing tasks; the bank was the nicer of the two. Once we got the car we never went back to the company for anything; which explains why there was a flourishing business in places like Koliwada, for repairmen and mechanics. That company completely deserves its current fate (Dylan was so prescient).
Then came the Maruti revolution, which not only ushered in the era of choice, but also allowed cars to be purchased without any significant waiting. And by the time we bought the Zen in the mid-90s, private banks had already started their liberal and aggressive lending policies, which we first experienced when we moved to a Honda City in 1998. By then, things had completely changed. From the time we entered the showroom till the time we left after a test drive, we were treated as if we really mattered as customers, a phenomenon that was further amplified in the years to come, by companies like Hyundai. The next couple of car purchases were even simpler with the car companies and the banks actually falling over themselves to give loans and extend freebies, to the extent that for one car, we actually received an interest-free, one-year loan.
But all these "changes-for-the-better" suddenly felt quite insignificant last Saturday, when I sat with this MacBook Pro, fired up Firefox, went to tatanano.com and clicked "Book Online". I chose the model, input my personal details and paid the deposit through my netbanking account...all in a mere 10 minutes. Sure, there is a waiting list for the Nano and I may not even get an allotment this time; but I was actually able to book the car and pay for it online, in the comfort of my office, without having to bother about showrooms, bank loans, etc.
It is not just that the car is relatively inexpensive and significantly "green" as compared to the others in the market. The Nano shows us how far we have come; from those times when a Premier Automobiles clerk or peon could throw us out of the showroom if we made even the slightest mistake during the purchase process, we are now in a world, where we can see, book and pay for a car online without having to interact with any human-being, if we so desire.
But do you know what the Dylanesque paradigm shift is? India is the only country in the world today where you can actually and truly buy an entire car online. Trust me...I've searched and searched and searched.
Posted by bhavinj at 05:14 AM | Comments (0)
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 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)
March 05, 2006
Damned if you, damned if you don't
This appeared in today's Mumbai Mirror
The resident doctors all over Maharashtra have again gone on strike this week and its that déjà vu feeling all over again.
Every three-four years, since the early-80s, there has been a strike by resident doctors. The issues are always the same: more money, better working conditions and better accommodation. This time the flash-point though, is the issue of security, due to the increasing incidence of doctor-bashing violence by patients within the hospitals.
Should the resident doctors strike?
Think about living, four to a 150sq feet room, with bed-bugs, poor ventilation, terrible food, unclean water, a 24-hours a day, seven-day a week schedule and the constant threat of work-related diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV and hepatitis B, and now, the threat of violence. For around Rs. 8000/month (<150$). Now think how you would feel if the resident doctor were you, or your son or your daughter.
So why is there such a big issue created when they go on strike?
Because, when the residents strike, more than 50% of the city's population is suddenly deprived of basic and essential medical services. That’s right. 50%. 7 million people. So do read on.
Let’s now understand who these resident doctors are!
Resident doctors are the ones who are training for their specialty MD and MS degrees, after having finished their basic MBBS and internship, in colleges, usually attached to large public hospitals, usually run by the government, e.g. JJ Hospital or by the Municipality, e.g. KEM, Nair and Sion. These hospitals provide health-care virtually free of cost to anyone and everyone, even to those who are not domiciled in Mumbai.
The residents, in theory, are supposed to be “trainees”, “training” in these hospitals to obtain the theoretical and practical knowledge that they need to eventually become qualified, specialized doctors such as surgeons, cardiologists, radiologists, etc. - in reality, the authorities get cheap labor to run these public hospitals. In KEM Hospital alone, there are 700 resident doctors and 400 staff doctors, which means that if the resident doctors aren’t around, at least 60% of the work should still go on. In reality, only 5-10% of the actual work happens, because despite their “student/training” status, they are completely critical to the functioning of these hospitals. Even the “peripheral” hospitals such as Kasturba (opposite the Arthur Road jail), Rajawadi (in Ghatkopar), Bhagwati (in Borivli), etc, stop functioning, because they too completely depend on residents posted in rotation from the central hospitals.
Are the residents then morally justified in striking?
Do you really think that we have never agonized about this? This is a demon that has always haunted us, all through each strike that we’ve ever participated in. I don’t have an answer despite extensive soul-searching, but most of us eventually rationalize this action by transferring accountability onto the authorities, holding them responsible for the strike having happened in the first place.
These strikes are preventable, simply because the demands can easily be met. If the authorities were proactive and tried to solve the residents' problems in time, things would not come to this. Expecting this to happen however, is obviously a pipe dream. Maybe, the residents could go to court, and file a public interest litigation. But from where will the resident doctors get the time, energy and money, required to fight a court case on a daily basis? And so, the only solution that remains, is to go on strike, for which there is at least some concerted and determined effort, manpower and time, if not money, available, for a short period of time.
You would think then that the authorities would want to negotiate with the doctors to resolve the strike. Think again!
Who are the people affected by the strike? It is those people who cannot afford private doctors and hospitals, those who earn less than sustenance level and those who live in slums or on the roads or wherever.
The authorities do not care, since these poor people affected by the strike don't really matter. It is not like the Municipal Mazdoor Union going on strike and winning their demands in 24-48 hours, because no one can stand their garbage not being collected.
Moreover, the resident doctors are eventually doctors, who after a few years are going to be in the top 10% income bracket in the country – subconsciously, this affects the extent of public and press support – the authorities play with this fact and so they wait and threaten, wearing down the patience and enthusiasm of the resident doctors, who after all are educated, intelligent, white-collar individuals, completely unused to this sort of a method of protest.
At the end of a month or 40 days (the usual length of a residents' strike), the strike ends, the weary residents accepting whatever few sops the authorities are willing to give. And the authorities magnanimously tell the striking doctors that they will not penalize them for not having worked for one month and will allow them to keep terms - one of the worst fears resident doctors have, is of losing a six-month term or losing registration. Threaten them with this loss and half of them start thinking of capitulating.
Why don't the residents learn from the past? Because, every three years, a new crop of residents is in place. And the lessons of the past are forgotten.
The anatomy of the strike, thus remains the same.
First week - enthusiasm, rallies, hunger strikes, street plays
Second week - some of the less enthusiastic residents go home, some default, some start studying for their exams on the sly
Third week - government threatens loss of term and enthusiasm dips.
Fourth week - most residents want to get back to work.
Fifth week - strike is over
But things don’t end here. Like a tragi-comedy, even after an agreement is finally struck, the authorities do not always fulfill the terms of the agreement. Follow-up by MARD (Maharashtra Association of Medical Doctors), after a strike, is extremely poor due to the fact that the doctors get extremely busy, working, learning and reading for their exams and they are extremely mobile, changing hospitals and rotations all the time. The authorities know this as well and can play around with the terms and conditions any way they want…until the ground is laid for the next strike about three years later. And everything comes full cycle.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Posted by bhavinj at 01:50 AM | Comments (0)
August 10, 2005
Of Columns and Columnists (...and Bloggers)
I was sitting for dinner late tonight and saw the latest issue of Fortune on the credenza. I picked it up and immediately started off with the last page, which is Stanley Bing’s column called “While You Were Out”. In fact this particular piece titled “Do You Know Who I Am” should be mandatory reading for all of us who land up occasionally or regularly wallowing in our own self-importance.
It’s the same with the Sunday Mid-Day. Until Khalid Mohamed left and though I detest the way he plays favorites with Shahrukh and Sridevi and Karan Johar, his movie reviews still had to be read with the Sunday morning tea. The next column my wife and I both, have to read, is Anil Thakraney’s “In Bad Taste”. I may not agree with everything that he says, but he writes from the heart and has still remained angsty.
Uma today introduced me to Mahmood Farooqui’s column, which I guess comes out on Monday, but which I will have to read only online, since I just don’t get the time to read Mid-Day on a working day. Every Mumbaiite (I hate Mumbaikar) should read his recent piece on the Mumbai rains.
I start Time magazine from the back page as well, first reading the op-ed or essay that comes there. My favorites are Pico Iyer and Charles Krauthammer, who is a regular columnist with the Washington Post.
For the last few days, it’s been Uma’s and Dilip’s blogs along with Seth Godin.
I am a sucker for the “personal essay” or “opinion piece”. Maybe it’s the voyeur in me, but I guess it is exciting to get that one little extra insight into another individual’s mind, with each new piece, getting to know someone through a mosaic of words, which reveal small bits of information, but with enough held back to make you want to come for more.
Whew!
Posted by bhavinj at 10:11 PM | Comments (3)
The Times…They are a-Changing…About Praja, the BMC and a Migrant Family
It isn’t too often that I am pleasantly surprised, especially when it comes to the authorities, especially the BMC.
About eight months ago, a family of around 15 people, suddenly laid claim to a part of a pavement outside the Servants of India Society building on SVP road in Prarthana Samaj. They were probably migrant laborers, probably from Andhra Pradesh. Some of the older men stayed put with the women, whereas the younger men I guess, were usually out working. Half of the six-foot wide pavement was occupied by them, outside a shop that has been shut for over a year. They would sleep, cook, bathe and perform virtually every house-related function on that pavement. They removed all the pavement tiles surrounding their area of occupancy and the entire area reeked of filth.
This is a busy thoroughfare, and there were times when the sheer number of people in their family would actually prevent people from walking on that pavement. I was affected as well, since I had to go from one office of mine to another, past this family, at least thrice a day.
The adjacent shops tried to get them evicted with police and BMC complaints. They were removed a couple of times, but they always returned. A couple of months back, when I asked the local paan-wallah what the status of the complaints was, he just put his hands up in despair saying that no one was willing to listen and help.
Two days after Terrible Tuesday, there was an email going around about help-lines in the city and one of them mentioned a website called Praja, which liaised with the BMC for registering and solving city-related complaints. On a lark, I went to the site and saw a detailed scheme for registering complaints on any issue that the BMC is involved with. I went ahead and lodged a complaint about the nuisance created by this family. I received a tracking number and a message saying that the complaint would be taken care of by 10 August. This was on 02 August.
“Yeah, right!” I thought, and then promptly forgot about this.
Three days ago, while walking on SVP road, I suddenly realized that the family was gone. The pavement was again its usual width and except for some wooden planks and the pot-holed, tile-free rectangular bald spot, which had been hidden from view until then, there was no sign of the enroachment. Maybe they were all at a wedding? Hoping against hope, all of day before and yesterday, I waited for them to return. Till late last night, they had not.
Last evening, I logged onto Praja and using the tracking number, which I had luckily saved, I checked the status of the complaint. It was labeled “closed” as of 08 August, two days prior to their committed date of fulfillment. Wow!
I expect nothing from the BMC and I am happy if they just keep out of my hair. For them (thanks to Praja, of course) to have actually taken pro-active action on a real civic problem? I am zzzimply amazed!
For those bleeding hearts, who might want to shed a tear for the family…go ahead! I am happy that they are gone. They were a complete nuisance and had no reason to take up residence on this busy pavement. It is a different thing to find a spot to sleep at night, which a lot of people do on that stretch…but to live there, cook there, shit there, in full public view, to prevent people from walking, to block-off the entire pavement except for a half-foot width during the rains…is complete unacceptable.
I only hope they don’t return. If they do…that’ll be fodder for another story tomorrow.
Posted by bhavinj at 04:59 AM | Comments (0)
August 08, 2005
About a Training School for Girls About to Be Women...And the need for Strong Hands
I first read about this on Uma's site and followed the link to Amit's site for a hilarious take-off. The original article appeared in yesterday's TOI, but apparently according to Charu, this had appeared earlier in the Hindu and on Rediff.
These links per se should suffice, but just to encapsulate. Bhopal has a training institute for girls, where they are taught to be ideal housewives. Apart from regular, mundane stuff like how to cook and take care of the in-laws, they are also taught some really interesting stuff that includes, having sex between 12midnight and 3AM and singing bhajans between 3AM and 6AM. The funniest part however is the one where the article describes the five ornaments of a good wife. To quote "an ideal wife must have five "ornaments" — coyness in her eyes, smile on her face, sweetness in her speech, love in her heart and a hand that can work very hard. " I love the last "a hand that can work very hard" part. Amazingly evocative!
Honestly, this is not a joke. And apparently there are training camps being held in other parts of the country as well, based on the success of this one. So maybe in the future we'll start seeing matrimonials that mention that they have obtained a training certificate from Hemnani? ....And another certificate of having done weights to strengthen their hands?
Posted by bhavinj at 08:55 PM | Comments (3)
August 05, 2005
Site Finally Looking Good, PILs and Silly Talk
I finally figured out how to work with Movable Type. Thanks to Ajit and Jigs, Movable Type 2.6x was upgraded to 3.1x yesterday. I spent many hours this evening trying to figure out how to use MT correctly and properly and finally with the help of Elise's site, things worked out. The site finally looks the way I want it to.
In the meantime, I also managed to download FeedDemon, a news aggregator, which seems to be working fine. Until now, I was using Sage, a skinny feed-reader available as an extension in Firefox.
I have been irritated the whole day by SMSes and emails sent by supposed well-meaning people about the PIL that has been filed by high-profile celebrities like Mahesh Bhatt, Alyque Padamsee and the like, asking all authorities including the BMC, railways, etc. to give detailed answers about what they had done during and after Terrible Tuesday. This according to me is a complete waste of time, makes no sense at all and almost seems like a publicity stunt.
We also have people like Pritish Nandy, in the TOI of all places exhorting us not to pay taxes and Fali Nariman in the Rajya Sabha saying that Mumbai should be hived off Maharashtra. Sure, all of us are angry, but shouldn’t there be some sense in what we say?
Probably one of the better suggestions was from Cyrus Guzder, during a panel discussion on NDTV, where he mentioned that "mohalla" committees need to be empowered at the local level to interact with the ward officers and corporators. I believe that grass-roots mobilization will help, along with one definite plan of action at the top level involving all the concerned authorities (fire brigade, police, hospitals, BMC, etc). But acts of frustration, whether manifested by PILs, proclamations and opinion pieces or by stopping trains and gheraoing officials, do not really help anyone.When the trains are delayed, the ones really troubled are those who have to get from one place to another for their jobs and their employees.
One of the best sites to read about the problems at various levels in Mumbai is Death Ends Fun, by Dilip D'Souza. The piece by Deepika D'Souza on the Mithi river and the Mahim creek estuary is amazingly enlightening.
Posted by bhavinj at 08:16 PM | Comments (5)
August 04, 2005
All About the Rains
After writing about our experiences on Terrible Tuesday, my thoughts turned towards those times when the rains were fun. This was when I was much younger and had the time to appreciate the rains. This piece is out today in the Mumbai Mirror.
For the last few years though, each time it rains, the first thought has always been of the possible extent of disruption that it may cause at work.
In 2000, during a similar deluge day, though of lesser proportions, I had trekked from work at Girgaum to Matunga. That experience was chronicled on the site then and I've brought that piece back into the blog.
Posted by bhavinj at 08:45 AM | Comments (0)
August 03, 2005
Of Taxis, Mid-Day, etc.
I am trying to assess the spread of the previous avatar of MFM.
I found my Top Ten piece on Mumbai taxis reproduced with permission. Which led me to remember how it had been plagiarized by a journalist working for chalomumbai.com (the online version of Mid-Day) and how an alert reader had caught this within two days of its publication. This had led to a big row and my readers had spammed the junior editor's email box.
Both these pieces, "The Top Ten Rules that Mumbai Taxi-Drivers Follow for Passenger Comfort and Satisfaction" and the subsequent piece on the plagiarism have now been reproduced on the current site as well.
Posted by bhavinj at 12:24 AM | Comments (0)
June 03, 2005
A New Beginning
Its been almost 3 years now since I last updated the site. At some point, I guess, I just got bored with the site. I was also facing a losing battle with time. Professionally, things have grown to an unanticipated level over the last five years. And, the twins are growing up fast as well, and are now 5 1/2 years old.
I have started writing regularly on a weekly basis for Mumbai Mirror for the last couple of months. That has now spurred me to re-start the site as a proper blog. In the next month or so, I will try and get all the old posts in as well.
My immediate plan is to understand how to use Movable Type properly and to try and redesign this site the way I want it.
Posted by bhavinj at 09:26 PM | Comments (8)
July 02, 2000
Of Plagiarism, Mid-Day and chalomumbai.com
Three days ago, A, an MFM reader sent me mail saying, "Unless your name is Mrudula Nair someone is stealing your stuff and posting it to this site without giving you credit". The site was www.chalomumbai.com, the new avatar of mid-day.com and the article was my "Top Ten" list about Mumbai taxi drivers.
I clicked on the link that A had sent me and sure enough found that Mrudula Nair had lifted that article from my site and credited it to herself. In the middle of my morning work-day, swamped with a hundred and one things to do, the only thing I could think of was how to bring Mrudula to justice. I normally let my secretary do all the calling, especially if it is to organizations where you have to cut through a maze of secretaries and "manager-shielders", but since no one at work knows that I am MFM, I had to do handle everything myself.
I called Mid-Day and asked for an editor, anybody really, not knowing where to start. Everyone was apparently busy, so I asked for Dr. Bachi Karkaria, the editor-in-chief. She too was busy and though I left my mobile number with her secretary, I was sure she wasn't going to call back - this is India and editors-in-chief don't get back to people they don't know. Inspiration struck me and I called again and asked for the "Chalo Mumbai" staff. I actually got through to a human by the name of Rajeshwari. I told her my real name and that I was also "Man From Matunga" and I was pleasantly surprised to find that she had apparently heard about me. When I told her about Mrudula's theft, she said she would talk to Sachin Kalbag, the chief guy at chalomumbai.com and get back to me; she also told me that action would be taken only "if we can prove that she actually lifted the article, which is something we still don't know yet to be true". Fair enough!
I didn't hear from anyone till about 1.00PM, so I called again and left another message for Sachin, who had gone out for lunch. He actually called back around three and after introductions, during the conversation, checked out the article in question and my site. He immediately accepted the plagiarism charge and asked me how he could make amends; the options were, crediting the article to me or removing the article from the site. Vanity raised its head and I asked him to credit the article to me. I also asked him to get Mrudula to call me and to apologize to me - she obviously hasn't done that so far.
Plagiarism is the act of literary theft, the stealing of someone's ideas or work. The plagiarizer therefore is nothing but a thief. Unfortunately, the law and society in general, especially in India, do not treat thieves who steal material objects such as cars, wallets and jewelry and thieves who steals ideas and words in the same manner. The former are typically prosecuted and jailed, but nothing much happens to the latter. As far as I am concerned, if a thief should go to jail for stealing a wallet, Mrudula by the same token should be behind bars for stealing the article. But that will never happen, simply because our society values tangibles more than intangibles.
People usually steal when two conditions are met. First, there should be a need and second, the chances of getting caught must be minimal. Both reasons must have been at work here. Mrudula had been in touch with me earlier, through a hotmail address, which has since been discontinued, asking me to contribute something for this new site. I wasn't too excited and though I initially agreed to send her some stuff, I later just didn't bother. She was probably under tremendous pressure to get material and probably didn't have the time, intelligence or creative power to come up with something and so must have decided to steal the article as an easy way out. Since www.manfrommatunga.com is not a particularly well-known site and in today's million hits a month race, is a relatively obscure and small site, she must have figured that no one would ever come to know. And that is what would have happened, considering that my readership is pretty small. But somehow A stumbled onto the article and recollected having read it earlier and took the trouble to tell me and she got caught. She must have also thought that even if she got caught, "to kya hoga" (what will happen!). In another place and another time, she probably would have been booted out of her job...in our country I am not sure.
To be honest, when I first saw the plagiarized piece, along with a sense of outrage, were mixed a sense of pride and irritation. Outrage that someone could actually steal the piece, pride that someone actually thought the article worth plagiarizing and irritation at the fact that they stole an article, which is not really my best piece. Along with these, was a sense of impending frustration related to the act of trying to bring Mrudula to task.
Today, three days later, I checked the piece again at chalomumbai.com and guess what! They have credited the article to me, but to my real self and not to MFM. Which is why I haven't included the URL of the piece in this article. I have asked them to change the credit, so let's see how long that takes and when that happens.
If you think this is important, or maybe just for the heck of it, you could write to Mrudula and Sachin using the feedback form at chalomumbai.com. I had posted their email addresses here, but Sachin has now threatened me with a legal notice, if I keep the addresses on this page, so I have had to remove them. Apparently, they think that mail sent to them complaining about this is the same as spam. It gets really funny when the accused becomes the aggrieved party.
Posted by bhavinj at 12:05 AM | Comments (4)
