March 28, 2009
The Failing Body Waits for No One
Last Tuesday, this paper's lead by Vikas Hotwani was about a banker who developed tinnitus (ringing in the ears) after going to a disco/pub. Actually, the only unusual thing I found about the episode was the banker's relatively young age.
A couple of years ago, my niece and her husband, who are in their late 20s and live in London, were visiting Mumbai. They wanted to experience our city's nightlife, so we first had dinner at Seijo and then went down to Poison, a discotheque in the same premises.
The music was essentially some kind of trance music, which went "dhad dhad dhad" for the entire time that we were there. I found it quite boring after the first half hour, but since my cousins were having a great time, we stuck on. When we left, two hours later, I had a ringing in my ears, which I often used to get in my younger days after rock concerts or disco visits but would usually disappear in a few minutes. This time, the ringing didn't go away and persisted till noon the next day. When I checked with the ENT, she said that this was because the loud music had killed a few of my inner ear cells and she warned me that this would only get worse with each exposure to loud music. I haven't been to a disco since then.
When I was younger, there were only three ways to listen to Zep, Sabbath and Purple. Loud. Louder. Loudest. I was obviously damaging the inner ear cells even then (my wife insists I am deaf since I need the volume to be really loud when I am watching television), but it didn't matter then. Now, in my mid-40s, it makes a big difference. I'm not getting any younger and those dead cells won't regenerate and I want to be able to preserve my hearing as much as possible.
Heart attacks, stroke and cancer are the big life-changing experiences, which usually bring us face-to-face with our mortality. But in our 40s, these still happen to a small minority. What becomes evident gradually though, is the slow but definite and inevitable deterioration of various parts of our bodies. We can't pull in all-nighters the way we could when we were in our 20s; we need to sleep more than before; we can't run as fast as we could earlier; we can't hold down our alcohol as well; our joints start creaking; vague aches and pains start troubling us without notice...I'm sure you can add to this list.
Most of us live in some form of denial, until some incident occurs that makes us face the truth of our failing bodies. For me, this was brought home when I found one fine day that to read the newspaper, I had to place it farther away than usual or I had to remove my myopia-correcting spectacles. There is even a saying in Gujarati for this, "chaalis pachi betaara" (after forty, you see double). Hypermetropia, the medical term for this condition, invariably affects most people once they enter their 40s, leading to the need for reading glasses or bifocals or progressive lenses.
A few days ago, one of our dailies had a front-page feature on how our mental capabilities start going down after the age of 27. I presume that this applies even to our physical capabilities. So, if you're older than 27...welcome to our "over-the-hill" world. And morbid as this sounds, remember that it will only get worse.
Posted by bhavinj at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)
February 28, 2009
It's Not Just About Rs. 90
It’s just Rs. 90, but the request stops you cold. You think it’s a joke and walk in. A couple of hours later, you come out and hand over the valet slip. You are asked to pay Rs. 90. Incredulous, you blurt out, “You’re kidding, right?” But you already know they’re dead serious and so you hand over Rs. 100. Your car comes and the man returns with your valet slip and a Rs. 10 note. In disgust, you ask him to keep the Rs. 10 as well. You get into the car and drive away, with an irritated feeling that’s difficult to explain, but makes you wonder why a hotel of this standard has to behave in a manner that completely spoils the mellow tranquility of good company, food and wine.
And while you keep chewing on this incident all through the ride back home, a couple of neurons suddenly fire away and the truth of why they charge Rs. 90 and not Rs. 100 dawns on you. “It’s the tip, you fool”, your charged mind tells you. Some manager has probably realized that irritated or not, the chances are that you will not take back the Rs. 10, and thus the drivers will not be deprived of the usual tips that valet drivers in other hotels get.
Your wife thinks it may be a temporary phenomenon. It’s a new hotel and probably still finding it’s feet. But when you go a month later and hand over the car keys to the valet, you realize that your wife was sorely mistaken. It rankles and irritates.
You talk about this with your friends, some of whom are aghast, some amused. Some go to the hotel, just to see for themselves, whether this is true. Some are annoyed and others pass it off as an American idiosyncrasy. For some, “its just Rs. 90, forget it!” but many others are upset and say, “they have serious guts to take Rs. 90 after I’ve spent a good four-figure sum on the food.”
I must be honest though. The first time I went to the Four Seasons on E. Moses Rd in Worli, I was so upset that I refused to get into the car and went to see the lobby manager in charge. He was probably so used to this by now that he didn’t miss a beat with his polite answer, “Sir, we are different. We are the Four Seasons. We believe that each service has to stand on its own.” I looked at him, completely at a loss for words (which as you know by now is a big deal for me) and before I could come up with an apt retort, he said “And believe me sir, every hotel in Mumbai will start imitating us soon.” I couldn’t believe his guts and I just turned around and left. The Taj, the Oberoi, the ITC Grand…they will start charging for valet? The very thought...
The funny thing is that when I got out of San-Qi, I just couldn’t wait to tell all my friends about the great multi-flavored edamame and the brilliant vegetarian makis. The Rs. 90 incident just blew that thought away. And at least till six weeks ago, nothing had changed.
And I sometimes wonder, whether the reason why Phoenix is so popular as compared to Crossroads earlier and Atria now, is due to the simple fact that Phoenix does not charge for parking, whereas Crossroads used to and Atria does!
One wonders!
Posted by bhavinj at 02:19 PM | Comments (0)
February 08, 2009
Baby Face and Pink Lips Laugh as KM Leaves HT
On Saturday, My wife smsed me, "KM is leaving HT". My instinctive reaction was "Good for HT...and for all of us".
Why? Here's a review that we’ve had to suffer, week after week...
"In the brightly colored, college canteen, over two cups of cutting, “speshal” chai, Baby Face (smile, smile) looks at Pink Lips (blush, lush) and immediately falls in love. Together the Ra-Ra couple heads out to the plush hills of Cheese-Land or is it Mahabaleshwar in disguise? Pink Lips' father, Raised Eyebrows (blink, blink) is dead against Baby Face. His sidekick Mr. One-Finger (poke, joke) is asked to separate them, but falls between the cracks (crack, smack, get it?)."
"After two songs and some Bhojpuri-like dialogues that do no disrespect to Mr. Kader Khan, we realize that the main villain is actually Mogambo II, who has a feverish tick and keeps snapping his neck sideways and front-back and keeps winking each time he sees Ms. Pink Lips. Eventually, he winks too much and his eyes pop-out (zing, zing), into Baby Face's hands, who promptly throws them into the Arabian Sea (or Dead Sea? Ha, Ha)."
"Suddenly a twin-brother, Plucked Chicken, crops up. He falls in love with Pink Lips' sister, Blue Nails. Mogambo II returns after the interval, having had eye transplants and hair-weaving; he looks 25-years younger and resembles the twins' father, whose only memory is a 25-years old, crumbling, black and white photograph. After an emotional reunion (cry, cry), the twins find that their mother, Mrs. Teardrops, has been imprisoned for many years by Raised Eyebrows and One-Finger. Our two heroes and their father get ready for the final rescue mission, which ends in a bitter-sweet, fireworks-laden climax (bam, slam and zing, ding), until all is right, except for one unfortunate surprise at the end."
"Is this the same team that gave us DDLJ? It's sad that the weakest link turns out to be the screenplay, which seems to have been written with a shaking hand, while on a swaying train-ride, following by a tonga-ride to Jhumri Talaiya."
"However, even with all these problems, the films rides on the broad shoulders of Mr. Shahrukh Khan as Baby Face, Ms. Sridevi as Pink Lips and Mr. Bachchan as Raised Eyebrows, who's one, just one raised eyebrow is equal to a hundred words. These three, along with Mr. Karan Johar's ersatz direction, lift the film up from its peanut-butter colored morass."
"Rating: 4 ½ stars (would have been 5, but for the screenplay)."
It wasn't always like this, but that was in another life. Eventually the contextual reviews and the intelligent dissections gave way to the use of just clever words, with no real content, which in turn compromised the value of the stars and rating. We would still read the reviews, but that was for the lack of anything better. Whether it was the TOI initially and then the DNA briefly and until now the HT...it just kept going from bad to worse with each week's review.
A good film critic cannot also be part of the industry; also being a film director obviously leads to serious conflict-of-interest issues and lack of dispassion while critiquing. This has been obvious even to ordinary human beings like us, ever since his first film. I thought I was the only one, but while Googling, I found others who agree even more virulently, for e.g. here - http://passionforcinema.com/khalid-mohmmd-wtf-are-you-writing/.
Goodbye, KM and hope Mr. Iqbal Masood's real successor comes along as soon as possible.
Posted by bhavinj at 11:05 PM | Comments (0)
January 31, 2009
Through Someone Else's Looking Glass
Sometimes, when we see ourselves through others’ eyes, it can be quite a revelation; especially when what those others’ see are dancing bar girls, cavorting around you and I.
Three years ago, I was in Raipur, along with two other colleagues from Mumbai, lecturing at a State level professional meeting. After we reached the hotel, the organizing secretary proudly told us that he had arranged some really exciting entertainment at night, which he was sure, would not disappoint us. We expected an orchestra or perhaps a ghazal session to accompany the dinner buffet, as is usually the case at such meetings.
Around 9.30PM, with dinner well underway, one of the organizers came on stage and announced the start of the anticipated event. Through the haze of a thick fog of liquid ice, a woman, dressed in a tight, bright, plasticky dress, started slithering and gyrating to one of the popular “dhin-chak” numbers of that time. Apparently, the great piece of entertainment that we were so breathlessly awaiting, was…get this… “dancing bar girls”!
Within half an hour, all the women and children had left. As we too were making our way back to the rooms, we ran into the chief organizer who asked us whether we were enjoying ourselves. Without waiting for a reply he said, "I couldn't get dancing bar girls from Mumbai (this was around the time they were banned), so I arranged them from Nagpur" and then without batting an eyelid, came his kicker, "But I guess this must all be so routine for you...do these girls meet the high standard of the ones you normally see in Mumbai?"
Routine? High standard? Dancing bar girls? I personally have never been to one of these bars, but I couldn’t care less if this is how some people get their highs (which I guess would be both literally and figuratively). My problem is that our hosts in Raipur actually, truly believed that our main form of entertainment in Mumbai was to go and see dancing bar girls. For a long time I tried to understand why they would form such impressions and I could only guess that this may be due to a combination of Bollywood movies, reality shows, television soaps and Ms. Rakhi Savant’s media antics. It is so easy to form such weird impressions of people and places; even today, many people who have never been to the US firmly believe that it is a land of easy XXX chicks, eagerly waiting for us outside JFK, the moment we disembark.
I thought this was an isolated incident. However, the more I narrated this story to other colleagues and peers, the more it became clear that this was becoming a routine phenomenon, which became quite clear when I was in Patna two weeks ago attending our National level conference. Each night for three nights, for entertainment, there was an orchestra along with dancing bar girl types in low-cut cholis and ghaghras, swaying to the usual "beedi jalaile" numbers. This time, three years later, even the women and children hung on, without any embarrassment, almost as if such shows have now become a way of life.
At the cost of sounding repetitive; dancing bar girls surely have their place in the scheme of things, serving the needs of a specific target population. But when they start occupying the top of the non-cinema, non-television entertainment pyramid, perhaps it’s time for some soul-searching and interrogation?
Or maybe it’s just me being naïve?
Posted by bhavinj at 04:02 AM | Comments (0)
November 08, 2006
Bottlenecks to Progress
This appeared in today's Mumbai Mirror.
As Matunga becomes more and more crowded, with the insane increase in high-rises and cars, traffic is getting to be completely chaotic, with an exponential increase in travel times.
To understand this, let’s see how many bottlenecks now affect a simple route…say from Matunga gymkhana to the area behind Aurora theatre.Warning: Unless you are a hard-core greater Matungaiite, you might want just want to skip directly to the last paragraph.
Outside the Gymkhana, you can either take a right or a left.
If you turn left, the first bottleneck is at Matunga Market, which of course, is expected as always. Then, a little ahead, comes the new bottleneck, at the Post Office junction, due to the traffic coming from the Bhaudaji road extension. Past this, you then get stuck getting onto the Circle, where you often have no choice but to wait until the Amar Mahal signal turns red, to be able to ease into the consequent reduced flow of vehicles. Then comes the right turn on the Circle itself at the Anand Bhuvan signal, after which you have to quickly take a left turn onto the small Circle-to-Khalsa road. Sometimes, if the traffic is backed-up at the Adenwalla road signal, this can take a good 1-2 minutes. Once on this small road, idiots trying to go to the Natural ice-cream parlor can create another bottleneck, on your way to Rasna Panjab, where you then have to take a left.
Once here, the rest of the road is common even for the route described below.
If you turn right from the Gymkhana, you take a left at Ruia college upto to the main-road signal, where there is usually a wait of upto 7-8 cars, which can sometimes make you miss one turn. Past the signal, you have two choices. You can take a left at Adenwalla road and then drive past the no-entry VJTI right turn and take a right into the small lane, just before the Circle, to reach the Circle-to-Khalsa road. But since this small one-car-at-a-time lane is not a one-way street, if there is a car coming from the opposite side, you can get stuck for quite some time trying to negotiate your way.
The other choice is to go all the way straight upto the St.Joseph’s circle and take a left, where there is often a gridlock. If you manage to get past this, you then immediately hit the Wadala East signal, where unlike in the past, all the cars now want to take a right turn (due to the crazy township development in Wadala East) which leaves very little space to go straight. Once this is negotiated, it is then a nice, quick drive to Rasna Panjab, as in the old days.
Past Rasna Punjab, irrespective of how you’ve reached there, you again get stuck because of the double-parked cars outside Café Coffee Day and Classic. Past these, you take a right and then a left and again get stuck at Sahakari Bhandar, due to all the cars trying to either park there or leave from this new “Walmart of Matunga”. Only then are we home!
Bottom line: The price of progress seems to be increased travel time. Till the last couple of years, we always used to discount the time it took to travel from anywhere to anywhere, within Matunga and Wadala, since it never took more than 5-7 minutes. Now, it can take upto 15-20 minutes! I guess, we’re no longer a village, and progress just doesn’t seem like such a great thing anymore!
Posted by bhavinj at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)
May 19, 2006
Just Once is Enough
This essay appeared in today's Mumbai Mirror.
We had the 20th class reunion of our medical college batch that joined LTMMC in 1982, about four years ago. Except for those few who didn’t want to be found, everyone who was still in India was there. Along with their spouses. It was great to see and meet everyone after such a long time. As the afternoon wore on, the one thing that hit home was that everyone without exception was doing well in life. Everyone! Including those who had come in through the reservation seats, which were around 35% in those days.
It was then that the power of affirmative action struck hit many of us and we talked about it at length during the reunion post-mortem a few weeks later. We could remember some of our colleagues who had come in with nothing else, but the dream, fire and ambition to be a doctor and who, despite initial failures and problems, had become doctors like of all us. Their lives, the lives of their parents and families and those around them, had completely changed along the way. To put it in a country-western kind of way – they now had the money and the gals. Without reservations, it is unlikely that any of this would have happened.
Some of them went on to do post-graduation as well, by fighting for the post-graduate (PG) seats like everyone else. Eighteen years ago, when we were taking up our PGs, there were no reservations. A post-graduate degree in medicine was considered a “high seat of learning” and it was unthinkable that you could have reservations at this level. And everyone fought it out at this level, irrespective of caste, creed or method of original entry into the MBBS course.
Reservations work and make a difference. There is no denying this fact. But the reason for reservations is to provide an opportunity to those who do not have a level playing field during schooling or in junior college. Those who are economically or socially disadvantaged are thus helped by this one act of affirmative action, when they join medicine. Becoming a doctor is a big deal…you enjoy an elevated status in society, you join the top 5% earners in the country and life changes for the better. Always. Even if you don’t want it to. Just one doctor in the family is all that is required to pull the family out of its cycle of poverty and related problems, thus serving the original purpose of the reservation policy.
Unfortunately, in practice, the policy does not work as envisaged. Too many people from the “creamy layer” take advantage of this policy and abuse the system. In theory, those families that have already used the reservation policy to better themselves, should no longer be allowed to avail of reservation seats, simply because of the accident of their birth-caste.
Just as it is intuitively obvious that the “creamy layer” should be disallowed from abusing the system, in the same manner, once a person is a doctor, using reservations as a method of gaining one more advantage, i.e. a PG seat, should also be considered abuse of the system. It is not people from the general public who take up a PG seat, but only those who have already become doctors. And by the time medical students have become doctors after their 5 ½ years grind, the playing fields have leveled, irrespective of the original portal of entry into the system.
By allowing those who have become doctors on the basis of a reservation seat, to get a PG seat as well through reservation, is a case of double affirmative action. Just as double jeopardy is unacceptable (trying a person for the same crime twice), double affirmative action (allowing the same person to get a reservation seat twice) does not make sense. It is unfair to those who are fighting for these seats on merit and also insulting to those who despite having entered MBBS through reservation, have now proved themselves equal to everyone else through sheer hard work and perseverance.
We didn’t have PG reservations, eighteen years ago and the system worked well. Somewhere down the line, the “higher centre of learning” and “double affirmative action” reasoning was subverted, someone went to court and 27-30% reservations were introduced. Now they want to make it 50%, which is absolutely ridiculous. Its time we went back to 0%, i.e. no PG reservations whatsoever.
Posted by bhavinj at 11:38 AM | Comments (0)
September 11, 2005
Matunga's Running Problem
This is today's Mumbai Mirror piece.
"2BHK, 5 minutes from Five Gardens”. Ads such as these are guaranteed to catch your eye. Never mind that the building is actually in Parel and the promised “5 minutes” to Five Gardens, is actually a fast drive at 5AM in the morning, without traffic and signals.
But, that is the pull of the “Five Gardens”, which together form one of the largest green spaces in the Matunga, Wadala area. Not only do these gardens provide the necessary open space and greenery, they also serve as community place, where people of all kinds converge: to walk, run, exercise, play, socialize, flirt and neck.
The perimeter of the gardens provides a concrete walkway, where in the early mornings and late evenings, you find people of all shapes and sizes; most walking, a few running, some slow, some fast, some working-out and some just preening. The place has its own pecking order, but you need to be a regular to understand it.
And yet, running or walking in Five Gardens, is not as great as it is made out to be. Since the perimeter is bisected by two large roads, you have to stop virtually every quarter of the way along, to let traffic pass. And though less, there is still no getting away from the noise and smoke that comes with the buses, taxis and cars passing by. And as with all decent open spaces in this city, peak walking times often resemble busy Bhuleshwar streets.
Furthermore, walking on concrete is not the best way to learn Newton’s second law; you know, the one that says that “every action has an equal and opposite reaction”. The more you pound the concrete, the more it pounds your cartilage back, and it’s just a matter of time before the complaining knees start creaking and groaning.
The problem is, there aren’t too many alternatives. Walking or running inside the gardens is not easy because of the grass and gravel. Some of the smaller nearby lanes, such as RP Masani Lane, the VJTI lane and the roads around Don Bosco help if you don’t want to bump into people all the time, but the concrete and pollution remain. One friend of mine, just to get away from the crowds, actually runs at 5.30AM on RAK Rd (char rasta) in the middle two lanes, upto Sewri and back.
Unfortunately, Matunga lacks an enclosed space like a Jogger’s Park or a Priyardarshini. Maheshwari Udyan is too small and not exercise-friendly at all. The nearest large garden is Bhakti Park in Wadala East, near the IMAX, but that’s a good 20 minutes drive away from Matunga and is slowly getting crowded as well.
For those who don't want to run, there are alternatives like the gyms at Matunga Gujarati Club, Matunga Gymkhana and Talwalkar's in Wadala. Which are not bad options, but they lack the glamour of some of the newer, trendier gyms that have come up in other parts of town.
Having said that, one of Mumbai's best mud-tracks for walking and jogging is also one of Matunga's best-kept secrets. Few people know about it, and even fewer use it. .....and honestly, Viplav would kill me, if I mention another word!
Posted by bhavinj at 04:24 AM | Comments (1)
August 12, 2005
Can’t We Get Anything Right? About the New Domestic Airport Terminal
I arrive for the 10.40AM flight to Trivandrum and find that the walled-off enclosure that I’ve been used to seeing for the last few months, is now a full-functioning, spanking new terminal. I walk in, trying to absorb the new sights and sounds and find familiarity only in other confused faces like mine, all of us taking our time before striding in, trying not to bump into non-familiar objects.
All the non-IA airlines, except Kingfisher are in this terminal and things seem pretty chaotic. Jet Airways gets the pride of place, with its check-in counters, bang in front of the main entrance. After finding the correct counter to go to, I get my tele-checked boarding pass within a minute… and then get promptly shoved from the back by a harried Bengali woman who has come-in late for her Kolkata flight that is scheduled to leave in less than 20 minutes and can’t find the correct counter to go to in this crowd. So she comes to the first relatively empty counter that she can see, which as it turns out can’t take check-in baggage. Luckily the Jet ground-staff is very polite and helpful and she is taken care of. I manage to extricate myself and with 20 minutes to go before boarding, start to go to the upstairs lounge.
I go towards the only logical area, but the only sign there says “Security Check”. I turn the corner nevertheless and find two long lines of people. I’m lost! Where is the way to the lounge? Where is Arjandas Gangadas Khatri, the book shop? I turn back and go all the way to the other end only to find another entry point. Finally giving up, I ask one of the Jet ground-staff the way to the lounge, only to be told that I have to take the elevators on the left, just before the security gates. There is a passage there? She nods her head at this question.
I stride back towards the security gates and find an alcove to my left which now houses all the familiar shops from the old terminal. Arjandas is in disarray, but they manage to pull out the latest copy of PC World for me. They are cribbing as hell, because business is down…mainly because no one knows how to find them and they are no longer “on the way”. All the shops are now in this alcove, and you have to make a special effort to go there…impulse buys will definitely be affected. The stairs and the elevators to the lounge are in this alcove as well.
The Jet lounge on the first floor is however still the same and the only sane place during this entire experience.
I get back down to security check and find the lines smaller but the chaos unchanged. There is a separate line with an x-ray machine, for women, which is obviously underutilized as compared to the only other one, which is overwhelmed by the men. I ruefully view the non-existent line on the “ladies” side, but the attendants are firm on the segregation. Normally at this time, security check is a breeze, but I land up spending a good 15 minutes, before I am picking up my bags.
I finally get through security check to find that boarding for the Trivandrum flight has just started. In front of the single counter for Trivandrum, a long line snakes upto the steps, which divide the actual security check area from the boarding area and everyone’s stumbling to find a way of joining the line. People who need to go to another counter, have to cut across this line…as usual, some apologize and some just push and shove their way through.
I finally manage to get past the boarding check and onto the bus pick-up area, where things are now more familiar. From then on, everything’s as usual.
Granted that the terminal is only three days old, but it seems difficult to imagine that things will improve, unless eventually we’ll have both the terminals running simultaneously.
Questions:
Why is this terminal so small? Or are they going to eventually use this one and the older one besides it as well?
Why is the signage so inadequate?
Why is the gap between the security check area and the boarding counters so small?
Who the hell designed this place in the first place?
I mean, can’t we get one f****ing domestic terminal right?
Posted by bhavinj at 02:21 PM | Comments (1)
