Wikimapia

Here's my home in Mysore!



Here it is!

New logo

Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport got yet another facelift in the form of a new logo. Note how the logo cleverly embodies the letters CSIA. Smart, huh! A Bangalore based design firm was hired to design it. Can't help but notice that the colour scheme is too close to Bangalore Intl Airport's logo ;-)

For a Song

My dear sis-in-law forwarded me a mail yesterday. It was some debate about why the national anthem of India "Jana Gana Mana" by Rabindranath Tagore isn't appropriate and does not deserve to be our national anthem. According to the mail (it was an email-chain and had already crossed I wonder how many inboxes), Tagore composed this song in praise of King George V of England when he visited India in 1911.

I was piqued by the suggestion and was reminded of a similar case trying to tamper with the song a year ago.

To me, the issue sounded weirdly interesting. The song may have been written in praise of whoever, though there isn't conclusive proof that it was written in "honour" of the King, but does that warrant renouncing it as our national anthem? Agreed, it was sung for the first time the King visited India by none other than Tagore himself. But it is hard to believe that a poet of Tagore's intellect and calibre would denigrate himself and his country by praising the King over God.

Here's an excerpt from a letter that Tagore wrote to a friend explaining the circumstances:
"A certain high official in His Majesty's service, who was also my friend, had requested that I write a song of felicitation towards the Emperor. The request simply amazed me. It caused a great stir in my heart. In response to that great mental turmoil, I pronounced the victory in Jana Gana Mana of that Bhagya Vidhata (God of Destiny) of India who has from age after age held steadfast the reins of India's chariot through rise and fall, through the straight path and the curved. That Lord of Destiny, that Reader of the Collective Mind of India, that Perennial Guide, could never be George V, George VI, or any other George. Even my official friend understood this about the song. After all, even if his admiration for the crown was excessive, he was not lacking in simple common sense."

I'm personally bothered by this pseudo-national awakening that is growing in our people. The British ruled India for centuries. To clean up their acts would mean not only to rename Bombay to Mumbai and Madras to Chennai, but also to undo the Indian Railways and the numerous hospitals and schools they built. Are we prepared for this? There are thousands of roads and buildings in India named after the British; we simply can't afford to waste time, effort and resources renaming all of them. There are a zillion other urgent tasks that need attention all around us.

Don't you think that we'd do better by giving up this quest to undo what the British did (though I'm no great fan of everything they did), and do what we as Indians can do? If something warrants correction, it needs to be corrected; But what's in a name, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and so would Bombay!

That said, our national anthem was written by an eminent Indian poet whom all of us hold in very high esteem. Isn't that and the fact that it has been our song for over fifty years not enough to maintain its sanctity? This is the question all of us have to ask ourselves.

Life, Liberty and ...

Last night we were watching a program on TV. It was about the 9/11 commission and the struggle the brave families of those who lost dear ones in one of the most brutal incidents in modern history were going through to get answers. It was quite a graphic story which showed video footage of some extremenly horrible sights of that fateful day. It left her in tears at the end.

Watching the program and her, I could not help but remark - "If there really is something or somebody called God, and He created the world, I'm sure he didn't intend it to be like this. Did he make a mistake by putting Man in the picture? Has His creation gone beyond control? Has He given up on the world and let us fend for ourselves?"

Most certainly yes. We attribute so many good qualities to God, and I'm quite sure sadism isn't one of them. Then what is the purpose of letting all these deadly incidents happen? Is wanting to be happy too much to ask for? Or is it the "want" itself which is the ugly feeling? Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness - wasn't that the goal of the makers of this country? Did they ask for a wee bit too much? Probably they should have left out the "Pursuit of Happiness" thingie, or was it "Life" itself?

Faiths

Man will stand up to defend what he believes in. Religion, ideology, belief, faith - call it what you may. Early man was geographically spread across vast areas of land, separated by natural boundaries like mountains and oceans. The birth of ideologies in these distinct populations was naturally peaceful as all people of one geographical area subscribed to one thought, and there was no reason for conflict. With an increase in population, the urge to explore, conquer and rule swelled. This led to the clash of armies first and religions later on. The former was swift and brutal, but the latter wasn't. Because man will hold on to his faith and die rather than give in to an alien one. Because feelings like hunger and survival are physical, but religion and ideology stem from someplace more fundamental than the physical self.

Aug 15th

I woke up this morning earlier than usual. The first thing I did was to log on to the Times of India website. My only concern/instinct/urgency -- to see if something had happened in India. Why, you may ask. It was the 15th of August, Independence Day in India. And there was this lurking feeling that something bad would have happened.

I came to work. My friend, after a while, remembered that it was August 15th. And said "Kuch hua nahin?" .. As an afterthought, he added, "Happy Independence Day".

I've often pondered these last few months on why we are living amidst a cloud of fear. It seems to be constantly feeding on an unseen dread, and growing within us in the process. Many recent terrorizing acts within the country, compounded by the West's continuous brainwash about the War on Terror, seem to have taken a mighty toll on the Indian psyche, the distressing effects of which are instances like the ones above.

This brings me to a more general concern about the state of affairs we are in today. Why is it that suddenly I feel like I'm in the middle of a battlefield, though in reality I couldn't be farther away from it. Why do I hear "War" everywhere? Is it a war for power? Is it a war for religion/beliefs/faiths? Is it just Big Oil? Is it just a modern reincarnation of the Medieval Crusades?

The answer, I'm yet to find.

God!

I had been debugging an elusive piece of code since morning, struggling to get a grip on its slimy appendages. Every time I made an advance, it would slip away between my fingers. Lousy piece of binary junk! Finally, at noon, as my tummy began to give up on me, I nailed it, bam! A simple reference gone haywire, and my boss was looking at it like it was Watergate in the making!

I shrieked out in relief "Holy Crap!!" .. One of the underwriters from the adjacent cube was probably offended. She came over and said "You don't curse your God like that. Haven't you been taught not to?" I could make out from the stern and hurt look on her face that she was a devout Catholic or somebody of that sort. I gave her some gyan - "Look, I'm an Indian. We have 330 million recognized Gods as of the last census. Nobody has a freakin clue as to how many illegal immigrant Gods are crossing the border every day. So, even if I swear, no God'll mind as I can switch from one to another if somebody's cross with me. You know, Customer is King!"

One of those days

Yesterday was like one of "those days". When everything goes the wrong way with laser precision. It all started the previous night when, instead of setting my alarm for 7 am, I accidentally set it to 7 pm. Now, that was the first night I was spending in my new apartment, so I could barely sleep till past midnight, when I surprisingly dozed off into deep slumber.

9:00
As it had to happen, my alarm didn't ring, and I didn't realize the reason when I jerked open my eyes into the glaring sun (Told you, first night, didn't know east from west). It was 9 and I was expected to be at work at 8:30. I ran into the shower with gusto and was scrubbing when I heard my cell ring. I grabbed it and regretted my doing so the moment I pressed the green button. It was from the rental office reminding me I hadn't given them the check. Dammit! I rushed out as fast as I could to the bank nearby, got a cashier's check and dropped it off on my way to work.

9:55
Well, the bad streak continued when I realized I was lost and didn't remember how to get onto 270 N. After a couple of miles, I decided to ask and pulled into a gas station. The lady there sounded a little peeved at my query for no reason (probably she was expecting I'd buy something) and reluctantly showed me the way. I drove off at top speed, only to realize the fuel indicator on my car was hovering below the
E-for-empty mark. I was in a gas station a minute ago dammit! Another exit and 10 minutes wasted in filling up my new baby - a sleek Saturn Coupe.

10:12
I drove the 25 miles to work at the top speed my car could make, thankfully all the cops were on the other side catching cars going in the rush hour traffic (I was going against traffic, the sole reason for living on this side of town rather than that!) ..

10:45
Sliding into the first spot available in the lot, I rushed towards the building, all the while thinking that I should take the entrance farther away from my boss' cube. But it was "the" day, and I had to be a dimwit. So, I took the wrong entrance, and there she was, coffee mug in hand talking to one of my teammates. She smiled. I smiled. She smiled again. And I muttered I got lost on the highway and it was my first day in my new house and there was no gas in my car and I had to drop off a check at my rental office - you know, all the standard reasons that anybody would have given to escape a late entry, except that I gave all of them in one go and that made it look all the more fishy.

10:55
Sweating, I slid into my seat thinking what else could go wrong in an already cracked-up morning, when this cup of coffee landed on my neighbor's table from his hand, spilling half of it on my laptop.

Home

We made a trip home recently. During Jan-Feb. It had been just 2 months since I visited India, but for my wife, it was a visit after 2 years, to the day.

I was bent upon telling my wife all the time that it would be a rocking-shocking experience. But the optimist that she is, she kept hoping that Mumbai would've been cleared of its slums and Bangalore of its dust. I was secretly hoping the same, but I am normally closer to reality that she is, so I was not disappointed. The slums thrived, the roads choked, the traffic had grown 5 times, and the cricket team had lost 2 matches. But the indomitable Indian spirit showed no sign of waning.

We displayed the usual symptoms upon arrival - scared to drive or cross roads, wary of water, and the like. And we did the usual NewYorkers-VadaPav-Frankie circuit, visited friends, ate at Tendulkar's, attended a party hosted by her mom and then headed to Agra to catch a glimpse of the Taj before someone bombed it.

Down South, the sambar was sizzling and the new bahu was dazzling. My bro tied the knot and flew off to Goa to bask in the sun and spice up with mackarel curry and his new found love. While we kept saying - 3 weeks 2 short!

Before we knew, we were in the dry-cold-claustrophobic confines of a 747 en route to LAX, where an INS officer smiled at us and did not say "aliens", but said "Welcome". A welcome change!

It's amazing how we "aliens" (the INS thinks Air India flies from Mars) have seen the past two years fly by in an alien land. How we arrived here, how we went from the mundane to the more interesting things life had to offer, how we fell in love, how we said "i do" in chorus, how we greeted every morning with a radiant smile and every evening with a thank you. Is it the land? Is it the people? Or is it just us who cast this magic spell that makes time fly, winters warm and the water sweet? What it is is of no concern. We just feel happy that we have arrived.