tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-368361952024-03-27T16:05:38.481+05:30StetLife, unedited.Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.comBlogger358125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-45270627702732910612017-10-31T18:47:00.000+05:302017-10-31T18:47:11.834+05:30Damn you, online shopping<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>I’m unfashionably late to this party</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>(Published on October 28, 2017 in Business Standard)</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">My generation regularly left home to go to shops to buy things, even after the advent of the internet and smartphones—which, for a long time, we did not even have. We lived for decades in these horrific conditions, like primitive amoebae scrabbling about in the mud. But let us not dwell on sad things.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The good thing is that, as the generation that went from booking long-distance calls two days in advance, to booking space travel online, we are fairly adaptable. We move with the times. In that spirit, I would like to announce that I may never visit a shop again, because of a thing I’ve discovered called ‘online shopping’.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">If you’re going to tell me what a lame fossil I am, save it. Some people learn embarrassingly late in life that sexism is pervasive; others are late bloomers when it comes to giving all our money to Amazon and feeling grateful for it.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">There have been many hurdles to my shopping online. One, I—still—need to put my foot in a shoe before buying it, and was applying this principle, donkey-like, to all products. Two, I have a pre-#DigitalIndia, post-#Aadhaar suspicion of connecting merchants with my bank account unless I’m physically present. I’m sure the actual process is very sophisticated, but in my head, when I click on ‘Place your order’, I see a giant pixelated blue hand reaching into my account and taking all my cash, and then running away with it to Fiji where it dips its giant pixelated blue toes in the surf, instead of sending me my things.</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">Three, I hadn’t realised that you could buy </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: medium;">anything</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;"> on the internet, from a rubber band to a broccoli, to a bed, to a flying car. Four, I felt guilty about ordering, say, a packet of paper clips, and making other people use huge amounts of wrapping, fuel, and personal energy to bring it to your doorstep, when I can just as well walk down to the corner store and buy a packet of paper clips in four minutes without a bag.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Well, I’m over all of that. First, I live up three flights of stairs, and it’s much easier if someone else goes up and down carrying stuff. Second, I can buy anything at all from the fingertip superstore! Given the staircase situation, I have my eye on the flying car. Third, I can return anything I don’t like.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">This last perk sounded dodgy to me at first, but I now know its evil plan. I scoured the internet for a compact milk jug that pours well, and ended up buying some unsatisfactory ceramic item. It arrived. After wading through kilos of packaging, I unveiled what looked like a big drunk bird—a dull yellow thing with a beaky schnoz that dripped. I immediately put the returns process in motion; but it turned out to be incredibly slow. In the many days since, I have fallen hopelessly in love with this milk jug, and cannot bear to be parted from it. It’s <i>my</i> fat yellow drunk and dribbling bird, yes it is, and we are very happy. I have torn up the returns labels and placed a broom near the front door, in case a returns person rings the doorbell and I have to brain him.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">So here I am, bleeding profusely from the bank account, and it’s the best. Actually, you know what’s the best? A garlic peeler. You won’t know you needed one until you catch yourself buying it—and that is the limitless fuel of online retail.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">See, moving with the times. Moving like Elvis.</span></span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-60666646802351330602017-10-19T17:03:00.003+05:302017-10-19T17:03:54.824+05:30Guess who’s coming to dinner<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Doctor, I’ve been having these bad dreams.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I’m having a dinner party. My guests are Aung San Suu Kyi, celebrated leader from Myanmar; Harvey Weinstein, madly powerful Hollywood producer; Honeypreet, devoted daughter of convict Gurmeet Singh; Jay Shah, quiet Gujarati businessman; Nandan Nilekani, mastermind of Aadhaar; and government contract worker @FollowedByPM2019.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">What? I like meeting new people.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>8pm. Ding dong!</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Me</b>: Welcome, Suu Kyi. I visited Myanmar in the 1990s, and walked by where you lived under house arrest as a beacon of democratic dissent, political prisoner of the brutal junta. Look at your gold Nobel Peace Prize medal! Wait, is it looking like rusted tin because of the Rohi—</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Suu Kyi</b>: If you say the word ‘Rohingya’, I’m going to leave. I’m very cool and elegant and adored, and everything is very complicated, and you don’t understand anything.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Me</b>: This is disappointing, but familiar. Our PM does that same trick if you ask him a question about 2002.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>8.06pm. Ding dong!</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Me</b>: Good evening, Mr Weinstein. Please take your hand off my butt. Take your hand off her butt too, wtf is wrong with you?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>H. Weinstein</b>: When I was growing up, that was just the culture. I hope you know that I can <i>end</i> your dinner parties in this town. I’m off to rehab, where they will help me focus on how madly powerful Hollywood sex offenders get to go to rehab instead of jail.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>8.07pm. Ding dong!</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Me</b>: May I help you? Oh, is that you, @FollowedByPM2019? I was expecting a grey egg.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>@FollowedByPM2019</b>: You %*#?@ presstitute, you’re just sore because your perks and &$%^&* gravy train have ended after 70 years of $%^& Italian paymasters, you $$&% omg is that Harvey Weinstein? Sir, you’re my hero, sir! Wanna mentally undress these two out loud?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>8.08pm. Ding dong!</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Me</b>: Nice to meet you Mr Nilekani, please come in.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>N. Nilekani</b>: First link your Aadhaar to your bank account and mobile phone and hairdryer. Otherwise I’m blocking your doorway in accordance with a government directive.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>9.45pm. Ding dong!</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Me</b>: You’re just in time, Mr Shah—dinner is served. Would you like some cheese?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>J. Shah</b>: Of course not! <i>The Quint’s</i> sources say I’m a health freak. And an obedient son. And a doting father. And I bring my parents khakra.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Me</b>: I’m very impressed with these touching human details, much like <i>The Quint.</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>J. Shah</b>: <i>The Quint’s</i> sources say I’m a sanskari son who will think a 100 times before violating any rule. Okay I’ve thought about it, I’ll have 16,000 helpings.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>J. Shah</b>: Do you need anyone I know to help you pass the cheese?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Me</b>: Here’s all the cheese.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Me</b>: Honeypreet! I didn’t hear the doorbell, how did you—oh, don’t worry about the hole in the floor. Let me show you the washroom so you can clean off all the mud.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Suu Kyi</b>: Does she always tunnel in to dinner parties like that?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Honeypreet</b>: It started with a bit of PTSD in a courtroom, but now it’s just habit. Excuse me, I’m just going to look for a hiding place for my cash and weapons. Must hide. Must hide. Must—</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Me</b>: Sit down, Honeypreet, relax, have a drink. Mr Weinstein, take your hand off her butt. And his butt.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>@FollowedByPM2019</b>: I like b&%*@es who drink whisky even though I’m afraid of them. I have much to learn from Harvey sir.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>N. Nilekani</b>: Guys, let me stack the plates on your biometrics.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Me</b>: *Throws them all down the tunnel. Muffled shouting, scuffling. Goes to bed exhausted, afraid to fall asleep and dream.*</span></span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-64062410225974439992017-10-19T16:59:00.002+05:302017-10-19T16:59:17.007+05:30Dinner party Napoleon<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>I’m sorry for all the shade I threw at the PM</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">My new home is in a tucked-away pocket of the city, so easy to get to that nobody can find it. I invariably send elaborate directions; my friends invariably ignore them; everyone invariably staggers in an hour late with mud-streaked clothes and twigs sticking out of their hair, swearing. In hosting these chaotic dissenters, I’ve had an insight that has blown up all my convictions, and imperils my identity. It’s like seeing the Matrix in all its horrible magnificence, and realising that you are Agent Smith.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">My siblings used to call me Napoleon, because I was short and headstrong. I don’t know what they were trying to say cough*control freak*cough but it seems to me that Napoleon achieved greatness because he was not burdened by any democratic nonsense. The fastest way to the history books is to be captain of the ship, with a great vision and absolute power to implement it.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Today, at large in my own ship, my quirks have gone rogue. I’ve become Captain Whatshisface with the octopus tentacle beard, on the <i>Flying Dutchman</i>—a hopped-up monstrosity of hubris. Today, in my house, not only do I wash my own hands and wipe away crumbs compulsively and place towels just so, but I have also caught myself following my visitors around, discreetly snooping on them to make sure they’re also doing things my way or, to use the technical term, the right way. (Okay once or twice, they caught me.) When they’re not doing it right, I become much less discreet and have been known to snatch things away, ban certain behaviours, and supply a lot of one-way commentary.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">For example, I cannot abide sticky and/or oily fingers touching taps and drawer handles, or being wiped on a cloth that was meant to dry dishes. I cannot abide cutting juicy or smelly things on the kitchen slab minus chopping board. I am baffled to notice that people often don’t follow my rules—which, by the way, are in place because they are the best way to do things—even when I’ve stated them clearly. I’m trying love and compassion instead of throwing people off the balcony, but I am aware that the latter is more efficient.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Meanwhile, I’m considering issuing visitors some kind of biometric ID card so I can hunt down each oily, sticky fingerprint and help them re-orient their thinking for the greater cleanliness of the household. It’s for their own good. It’s okay if people misunderstand me in the short term; many important historical figures were reviled in their time by those too blind to see.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just say it: I would like to extend a heartfelt <i>mea culpa</i> to Mr Modi and his associates. I’m sorry for having been so critical—I didn’t know, I didn’t know… I finally understand that there is nothing as intoxicating as the cocktail of dogma and dominion. I finally understand why someone might behave like a micro-managing, know-it-all autocrat: In our heads it is obvious, and right, and good.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Sometimes I lie awake worrying that nothing short of a stake in the heart is going to save me from the path I am on. </span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">But most other times I lie awake thinking up snappy acronyms and Twitter trends like #JeSuisModi. Maybe I’ll make my friends give me their fingerprints before I give them directions. Mitron, I’ll tell them, the sky is the limit in my #NewPlace.</span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-32323847131898671462017-09-21T16:24:00.001+05:302017-09-21T16:24:26.043+05:30Some rooms of one’s own<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>The curious case of being like Benjamin Button</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>(Published on September 16, 2017 in Business Standard)</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">A sense of the weird—weird supernatural, not weird awkward—has lately dawned upon me. I’m afraid to tell anyone because they’ll think I’m losing my marbles, so this is just between you and me. Here it is: I’m living my life backwards, like Benjamin Button. It is upsetting to realise that my whole existence is patterned on an incredibly annoying Brad Pitt film, but the day we look away from truth is the day we could have been perfectly happy in a comforting lie but no, you had to be all goody two-shoes.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The fact is that while my chronological age is proceeding—apace, you might say—as per normal schedule, my temperament and actions have been steadily reversing the normal schedule. I began life as a detached, contemplative child who was happy to read and knit. I spent my twenties struggling with mortality; my thirties striving to stay fit, and my early forties being unruly in bars. Now, in middle age, I have moved into my own place for the very first time. You see the trend? When people say, ‘Where do you see yourself in the future?’ I will have to say, Going back to school, then throwing things at my siblings, and finally crawling around sticking my baby fingers in electrical sockets. I suppose my mother will have to stick around to de-raise me.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Speaking of my mother, she was naturally shattered that, after living with her for so long, I’d found and moved into this place so suddenly, while she was travelling. I went to visit her when she returned, guilt-ridden from anticipating her grief in the howling void of my absence.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">‘Hello,’ she said, ‘Make sure you empty your cupboards, because I’m turning your room into a guest room and plan to have lots of visitors come and stay.’ It was a poignant moment. I thought to myself, How fast they grow. She also came to visit me in my new house, and began several sentences with “When I come to spend the night…” That woman is all about revenge.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">So here I am, solo householder, writing down how much I spent on eggs and Harpic (et voilà, breakfast), engaging in intriguing cat-and-mouse games with electricians and plumbers, severely curtailing my drinks budget, and battling an army of ants so relentless and unreasonable that I think they might be on Twitter. I’m saving used tea leaves to put in potted plants. I walk into kitchen stores and quietly take leave of my senses because even though I’m a crappy cook I am helpless in the face of kitchen porn. My neighbour picks up my newspaper for me and sweetly sticks it in my door. People WhatsApp photos of crumbling plaster and seepage to each other instead of screaming up the stairwell. It’s just grand.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I’m told householding gets really old, really soon, but it’s only been a couple of weeks, so my castle and I are still very much in the honeymoon phase. I walk around admiring the light—buttery in the morning, honey gold in the afternoon; and the space—not too big, not too small; and the comfort of my bed—not too long, not too short; the sweet kitchen—not too complicated, not too simple; and the endless, endless cupboard space, of which I have pretended to occupy three cubby shelves by spreading stuff around thinly. The maid said, You’re going to bring more clothes, right? and I said, Hahahaha, have you met me?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">My mother calls it my Goldilocks house, just right for me. That probably means I could very well wake up one day and find the place full of bears. But that’s life in reverse.</span></span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-33158372299126287062017-09-04T18:22:00.002+05:302017-09-04T18:22:42.638+05:30Something fishy about the kettle<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>It turns out that sometimes tea is not just tea</i></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>(Published on September 02, 2017 in Business Standard)</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">This week I bring you an important public service announcement: You know the handy electric kettle in your hotel room, the one placed on the tea and coffee tray? Well, according to a report in <i>The Independent</i>, some guests may have boiled their underwear in that kettle, leaving a residue of nasty, potentially deadly, bacteria in there.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It’s an upsetting read. All my life I’ve walked into hotel rooms and headed straight to the tea tray to make myself cup after relaxing cup of tea in that kettle, never once considering that somebody may have boiled their undies in it. Well, the only stupid person is the person who refuses to learn, and that ends today: I’m never packing extra underwear again, this kettle thing is genius. As for the toxins, if so many of us wear underwear so filthy that it has to be boiled, we’re probably already resistant to a large variety of harmful substances.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">A kettle is efficient, and anyway, what are the options? Don’t say the hotel laundry service—who trusts hotel laundries? They probably just have a giant kettle down there. You could hand wash things in the bathroom sink, but that would mean putting your phone down, and that’s just crazy talk. No, the kettle is still winning.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It’s also environment friendly. Remember that the wars of the future will be fought not over whether or not the finale of Season 7 of <i>Game of Thrones</i> was disappointing, but over water scarcity. That may sound unlikely when Houston and Mumbai are drowning, but flood and drought are flip sides of the same climate change coin, and climate change is upon us, good people. We must all do our bit to save the planet. My father once told me that when he was a young man, living in a rented box room and always in a hurry to get to work, he often saved time and resources by shaving with the same water in which he boiled his eggs. I think there’s an important lesson there that can be applied to underwear and teabags. The teabags would give the underwear a nice sepia colour, or just even out the sepia colour you’ve already given it, and panty backwash might add that missing <i>je ne sais quoi</i> to your tea.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Just kidding! It’s gross and dangerous, people, don’t boil your freaking knickers in the freaking communal tea kettle that other people are going to use for tea! I can’t freaking believe that we’ve got space probes analysing Jupiter, and chips the size of pinheads running the world, and we still have to write sentences like that.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">On the other hand, as Jean-Paul Sartre and Marvin the Paranoid Android knew, humans are inexhaustibly horrible and disgusting, and they seem to become more horrible and disgusting when they’re at hotels and restaurants. Waiters spit in the soup, housekeeping staff wipe drinking glasses with the same cloth as the sink and sofa; guests defecate in wardrobe drawers, urinate in minibar bottles they leave in the minibar, leave unspeakable fluids on their mattresses, and poop in their towels; annoyed housekeeping might clean your bathroom floor with your bath towel; one person clogged up the toilet by sticking an entire rotisserie chicken into it, and one guy killed a monkey in his room. And those are just the stories that do get told.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">What I'm saying is, the kettle is not necessarily the filthiest thing your hotel room has ever seen, but it could be the most dangerous.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">The obvious fix is to avoid tea and coffee altogether, and just pack your own hip flask. You can wrap it in lots of extra underwear.</span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-7024079499091223772017-08-26T13:21:00.001+05:302017-08-26T13:21:20.005+05:30No country for columns<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>I’m only doing this out of duty</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>(Published on August 19, 2017 in Business Standard)</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I’m tired and grumpy and I almost didn’t write a column at all, because my plan for the day was to lie under the dining table under a blanket, with my thumb in my mouth and my face in a sack of salted chips and a glass of something comforting. I’m only writing this out of a tiresome sense of duty, and to annoy the people who hate self-indulgent columns. I figure I’ll just list all the reasons why I’m tired and grumpy—literally list them—so that we don’t have to have a great whacking discussion about any of it, because I'm all discussed out, and so terribly sad about everything that I don’t know if my heart will recover, except that it always does, the stupid masochistic thing, usually just in time to get broken again.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Anyway, here goes, in no particular order:</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Dozens of children died in a hospital in Gorakhpur because the hospital hasn’t paid the oxygen supplier’s bill despite multiple reminders. After first denying that the hospital had anything to do with this, the BJP public relations machine decided to look decisive by going after various hospital staff members who actually tried to make things better.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Indian Vice President Hamid Ansari’s term came to an end after a speech or two in which he said several true things about how Indian Muslims feel. His exit from office was marked by a pack of BJP-RSS leaders and writers gracelessly snapping at his heels with speeches and articles drenched in contempt, communally-charged insinuation, and gloating.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar’s Independence Day speech was blacked out by Doordarshan and All India Radio on Prasar Bharti’s orders because Sarkar refused to “reshape” his speech to cut out the bits about People Who Weren’t Involved With the Freedom Struggle and the bits about a danger to the secular democratic fabric of India. When the story broke, the BJP public relations machine first spent a day flatly denying it, and then said Okay, we did it, but gravity of the nation sanctity of the occasion blah blah.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The Supreme Court called in the National Investigation Agency (NIA)—the guys who work on counter-terrorism and other national security issues—to get to the bottom of an interfaith marriage between two consenting adults.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">A woman in Rajasthan was beaten, whipped, made to eat faeces, dragged by her hair, made to lie on a bed of embers, blinded by embers shoved into her eyes, and accused of witchcraft, by her relatives, over property. She died of her injuries. The police at first refused to register an FIR.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">A pedestrian hit by a car in Delhi lay on the road for twelve hours before someone took him to the hospital. Many people approached him meanwhile, but only to rob him. One passerby gave him some water but took Rs 12 in return because, he said, nothing comes for free.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I won’t say a word further, even though there is no shortage of things to add. This brief list suggests to me that it is a far, far better thing to lie under a table in a foetal position than to write columns that do nothing to slow down the acute case of political and social ebola that we currently seem to have. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Nope, columns do nothing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">What we really need is an Opposition. So I’d be grateful if it would kindly move from under the table, where it is taking up all the thumb-sucking, foetal position space. That’s my spot.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-10583428624604466072017-08-08T18:25:00.001+05:302017-08-08T18:25:34.337+05:30Privates on parade<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>The fundamental right to privacy matters fundamentally</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>(Published on August 5, 2017, in Business Standard)</i><br />
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For reasons best known to themselves, the mighty Indian people consistently fail to put me in charge of our great country. My candidacy has been low key because of my idle recreational commitments, but still, this is very unfortunate. Now we have a colossal jobs crisis, Amit Shah’s bank balance is 300% fatter than when he came to power, the national drink is cow urine, the Chinese are getting fresh with us, only the courts stand between us and Death Eaters, and the place is generally going to the dogs. I’m not bitter or anything, but it serves the mighty Indian people right. They don’t seem to know a good thing when they see one.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">And apparently they don’t know a bad thing when they see one either. Just look at the number of people who think it’s fine to say that Indians have no fundamental right to privacy, and that it’s okay to have to link your Aadhaar number every time you sneeze. What have you got to hide, they ask? You’ve got a smartphone and a Facebook account, why are you suddenly concerned about privacy? Why are you standing in the way of development? What about Malda?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">None of these people get the following basic concept: Choice/consent, o mighty Indian people, fundamentally changes the nature of your actions and how you feel about them. For those who think this idea is overrated, here’s a laundry list of things with and without choice/consent. In each case, see if you can identify the option that includes choice/consent, and which option you naturally prefer.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Your wardrobe, vs prisoner uniform. Sex vs rape. A volunteer army vs a conscripted force. Signing up for Facebook vs signing up for Facebook at gunpoint. Reading out bits of your diary to your friends, vs your friends stealing your diary and uploading it on the Internet. Coming out to your parents when you’re ready, vs your trusted confidante telling your parents behind your back. Locking your jewellery in the bank locker, vs locking your jewellery in the bank locker and having the manager allow a bunch of companies to borrow and rent out your jewellery for profit. Enjoying a bit of a flirtation, vs being stalked. Standing for the national anthem because you show patriotism that way, vs standing up for the national anthem because you’re terrified of being arrested or beaten up if you don’t. Executing a bungee jump after being appraised of the risks, vs being pushed off a bridge.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">How did you do?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Long-time readers of this column can testify that I am the absolute, no-contest empress of oversharing. But I’m also nutso-style private about what I don’t choose to overshare. Choice/consent is everything. We also have the right to a reasonable expectation of privacy. We should be able to make a phone call without worrying that someone is tapping the phone, or travel without reporting our movements. Our tiffin boxes should not endanger our lives. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">All this amounts to the right to be free and left the hell alone. </span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">Privacy obviously cannot be an absolute right. But the state must be made to meet a stiff legal standard to justify any encroachment on it.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">People who pooh-pooh privacy are like those kids who are so busy getting the right selfie that they back all the way off the edge off the cliff, and then look all surprised on the way down. I’d be quite pleased to watch them go if the rest of us weren’t also being backed off the same cliff, but at gunpoint.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I remain available to be sworn in whenever you come to your senses, o mighty people of India. I’m very good at swearing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-54666487702012615532017-07-29T10:48:00.001+05:302017-07-29T10:48:34.127+05:30Wtf week: Pass the sphygmomanometer<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>(Published on July 22, 2017 in Business Standard)</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The other day a friend of mine declined a second cup of coffee. My blood pressure is high, he said. I snickered at him for a bit before admitting that mine might be too. He said that if I didn’t see a doctor, he would tell my mother. I said I’d already told her, so nyahnyahnyah. Our maturity counts were clearly still low, but he made me go upstairs and fetch the sphygmomanometer, technically known as ‘that BP measuring thingy’.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Neither of us liked our first results, so we made it best of three. Another friend joined us just as we were being forced to move it up to best of five, and by the time a fourth friend showed up, we were just passing the thing around with grim focus, trying to beat each other’s measurements. At some point we acknowledged the sorry distance we have travelled between passing the beer and passing the sphygmomanometer. But we can’t be blamed for being jumpy and short-tempered.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Take just this week or two. This week, the Supreme Court began to hear arguments for and against having a fundamental right to privacy. I know, right—who on earth would even want to argue, in the year 2017, that Indians don’t have a right to privacy? The Indian government, that’s who. Indian government, why can’t you just not be evil? Watching the live tweeted proceedings, I chewed my fingernails to bits.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">This same week, I read about a 10-year-old child who is 26 weeks pregnant from being repeatedly raped by her uncle. The district court in Chandigarh has refused to allow the one child to abort the other child, because rules. The legal abortion ceiling is 20 weeks, except for in certain exceptional circumstances. Apparently the learned judge does not consider being raped into pregnancy at 10, an exceptional circumstance. At this, my precarious exercise routine completely collapsed.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Then there was a cringe-inducing reaffirmation of class and caste barriers at a residential complex called Mahagun Moderne. A resident allegedly mistreated and abused a domestic worker, whose infuriated allies stormed the complex and threw stones. Union Minister Mahesh Sharma, a professional champion of the over-dog, put his arms around rattled residents and swore that he will ensure that the poor migrant workers never get bail, and that his party workers give them a “befitting reply”. (Translation: ‘Judiciary? What’s that?’) My sinuses immediately began to hurt and fill with goop.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">And finally, India is being steadily and scarily militarised. The penniless tycoon, Ramdev, is creating a private security guard service to, as he said, “help develop military instinct in each and every citizen of the country so as to awaken the spirit and determination for individual and national security”—or, as he didn’t say, raise a militia. Pravin Togadia and his pop-veined Vishwa Hindu Parishad are training 5000 “religious warriors”. And the Prime Minister’s Office has asked the Human Resource Development ministry to incorporate some elements of military schools, i.e. physical training and patriotism, into regular schools. If students at Nalanda had had this training, said a minister of state for HRD, they would have foiled Bakhtiyar Khilji’s plan to plunder and destroy that great, ancient university. That caused my eye to erupt with a stye.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">So I’m ending this week fat, bloody-fingered, stuffy-nosed, and swollen-eyed, all because of the news. But now is nothing. Pretty soon we’ll have private ragtag armies ricocheting around the subcontinent, inventing wrongs to right by sword and gun, all of it sanctified by Nationalism, India’s brainless new god.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I’m saving my sphygmomanometer battery for then.</span></span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-34661057720212880502017-07-29T10:45:00.002+05:302017-07-29T10:45:17.842+05:30Lunatics, zombies, and jerks<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>Helping people drop dead prematurely since the dawn of mankind.</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Have you noticed how innocent people are forever expiring prematurely? Healthy as horses, dead as dodos, not their fault, very sad. One of the leading causes, according to a statistic I just made up, is competitive fundamentalist religion. Religious lunatics, who think their imaginary friend is better than other people’s imaginary friend, are constantly causing people who may or may not have imaginary friends to drop dead. And they do it in creative ways—spigots of blood, hangings, beheadings, stabbing, stoning, flaying, crucifixion, heads on pikes, dismemberment. They tear babies out of wombs with swords, barbecue people alive, fly them into buildings, gas them, blow them to smithereens, gun them down, poison them. They broadcast fake news to WhatsApp zombies and let the madness begin.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Each religion tries to beat the other religions, mostly literally. They all have that competitive killer instinct that sports coaches are always looking for. It makes them lynch and bomb each other—the fundamentalists, I mean, not the coaches—and throw money and training at their own best guys. They sometimes mean to kill innocent bystanders, and sometimes kill innocent bystanders even when they don’t mean to, because their aim is bad in all senses of the word. But even great talent needs nurturing. What they require is the environment, and the encouragement, to do better, to be better.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The time has come, my fellow citizens, for us to pause in our selfish little lives, take a breath, and contribute to creating this opportunity for fundamentalists to achieve their full potential. Since we already have a sports metaphor stretching to breaking point above, I propose a Religious Olympic Games.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I envision a huge religious fundamentalist competition, sponsored (obviously) by arms dealers. Let us assemble the batshit crazy of the world into vast arenas, and give them the time and space to share their thoughts and feelings with each other without inconveniencing the rest of us. Let them mill about in the confines of a series of enormous, blood-absorbent stadia, thoughtfully located in the heart of nowhere. We will supply them weapons and energy bars, lock the doors, and let them have at each other. The rules are simple: the last person standing has the best imaginary friend. That’ll be good, since they won’t have any real friends left.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">To chivy this process along, I suggest that we also lock in those jerks in politics who like to fan the flames of violent religious competition. They excel at it and will deeply cut the time needed to extinguish all human life in the stadia. Since they too need incentive, we’ll announce a simultaneous competition for electoral dominance. One selfless organiser sitting at a remote computer terminal somewhere will have to manipulate the voting results, live-streamed on a large screen in the stadia, to keep the hacking, lynching and bombing going at as high a rate as possible.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The Religious Olympics Games will solve two problems at once: The last pious lunatic can pick his or her way through body parts to finally own the victory podium (which will consist only of the gold—no runners-up) and spend the rest of his or her life being excruciatingly smug and preachy to a bunch of decomposing human remains; and we’ll have gotten rid of the whole bunch without getting ick on our hands. It’s win-win all the way!</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Then the rest of us can get back to doing whatever we have to do to get through this vale of tears—commune privately with god, make art, sell ball bearings, drink—without dying prematurely at the hands of lunatics, zombies, and jerks.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I even have a Games motto lined up: Altius, citius, fortius, quitbotherius.</span></span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-2044092302453791382017-06-26T11:00:00.003+05:302017-06-26T11:00:59.065+05:30Enlightenment in the hills<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So there I was, sitting on a lightless porch in blackness thickened by the garden beyond. All around me was Lucifer, the shining one—but only in the shape of luciferin and luciferase, two of the chemicals in the chemical-rich posteriors of fireflies. Their reaction with oxygen creates those tiny winking lights that bejewel summer nights.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Except when the bugs are upset. A friend gently trapped some fireflies in a jar, and they began to rapidly flash their bottoms. (Not like that—don’t be so juvenile.) It’s a strobe-like distress signal. A bunch of other fireflies showed up and made uncertain flybys past the jar, now pulsing like a tiny disco. I’m not sure what they were planning to do for their fallen comrades—flash them some solidarity? break them out of jail? Maybe some were just rubbernecking.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The inner thoughts and feelings of fireflies are important questions when you’re out of the large flashy posterior we call Delhi. I’ve been roaming around in the hills, in cloud and rain and shine, under cedar and oak and starlight. I haven’t clapped eyes on a newspaper in eleven days, and it has improved my health. The other day I spent my day observing classes in a school in Shimla, and that considerably improved my mood—plus, I had an epiphany.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I always maintain that not always, but often, the difference between a free citizen and a bag of meat shuffling along behind a guy with a purse/totem/whip, is teachers. The classroom is a madly exciting space in which young people discover the potential and value of their own minds. Probably even the tiny fellow who spent the whole class staring at me with his mouth open. I wouldn’t bet the house on him, but still.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Madly exciting, that is, for the teacher. Imagine being able to introduce someone to the idea of thinking for herself, without immediately being accused of being a paid Italian slave! This is a strange but pleasant new idea. As I went from class to class, enjoying the delicious soup of student vibes—eagerness, intelligence, timidity, uncertainty, relish, rowdiness, shy affection, and the inevitable bouquet of bodies fresh from the soccer field—I found myself contemplating the never-before thought that perhaps it might be fun to teach.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It’s a never-before thought because I have horrible stage fright. My heart starts hammering, my voice gets squeaky. And yet this time, in class, I had no trouble talking—in fact, I may have had trouble shutting up. That’s new. Maybe it’s because I no longer experience kids only as annoying little frights. All I see is dramatic irony with aromatic armpits. For all their freshness and brilliance and creativity, they seem like innocent little accidents waiting to happen, and thank god somebody takes the trouble to help install, in their brains, the equivalent of a seat belt and an airbag. Maybe also a sick bag. And a bullshit detector. And a critical alarm light. And a toolbox and manual to maintain and repair their own engines… You get the drift. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Shaping an open, curious and compassionate mind that is also fortified against manipulation is no easy task. I have no idea why they imagine that 12 years of schooling is enough. I’m thinking that 30 should do it. That’s probably why my schoolteacher career is dead in the water.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Anyway, I’m back in the boiling summer plains now, fireflies and shawls and moist forests just a wistful memory, so if you need me, just look for a woman zig-zagging around the place, rapidly flashing her bottom. (Not like that, don’t be so juvenile.)</span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-43617022853444637882017-06-16T15:13:00.002+05:302017-06-16T15:13:58.626+05:30The connection between drinking and horrible news<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;"><i>Never have I wanted a stiff drink more.</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;"><i>(Published on June 10, 2017, in Business Standard)</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">Timing is everything, and mine is awful. I can only ever think of a question to ask after the discussion panel has disbanded. I wear a boot cut when everyone is wearing skinny jeans. I decided to start drinking like a troubled teenager just when my peers had begun to buy houses and stay up late doing their kids’ homework.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">But worst of all, I decided to stop drinking like a troubled teenager for a couple of months, just before news came in of children getting blown up at a concert in </span><a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Manchester" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2591dc; font-size: 15px; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Manchester.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;"> The news then went on to behave like a faulty firecracker, shooting all over the room sparking crazily, as if it had short-circuited from all the weird bad stuff it had to report.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">For example, the government said it cared deeply about cruelty to animals, and banned </span><a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Cattle+Slaughter" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2591dc; font-size: 15px; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">cattle slaughter </a><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">across India, except in places that like to eat beef and are about to vote. (It is probably upset with Kerala, which told it to take a running jump between mouthfuls of beef curry.)</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">A Rajasthan High Court judge said, Dear god, Indian people, can you believe I’m a High Court judge? The actual words he used were about how peahens get pregnant by drinking peacocks’ tears, but same thing.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">A woman in Haryana was gang-raped, and rode home on the metro clutching the corpse of her baby, which her attackers had thrown into the road because it was crying. Also in Haryana, two men raped a woman and then bashed her skull in with a brick.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">In Madhya Pradesh, police shot and killed five farmers who were protesting, in a creative interpretation of the government’s #JaiKisan hashtag.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">In Delhi, the CBI raided the properties of the promoters of NDTV, which is arguably the only news channel still critical of the government. In the aftermath, </span><a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Dawn" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2591dc; font-size: 15px; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Dawn </a><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">published a column urging Indian media not to be so craven, and urging Indians to take to the streets to protest creeping authoritarianism and defend our liberties. You know things are bad when a Pakistani newspaper is irritated by our cowed media and our sheeplike acceptance of ‘religious fascism’.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">A </span><a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Bjp" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2591dc; font-size: 15px; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">BJP </a><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">member of the legislative council in Jammu started a campaign against momos, because while they might look like wildly popular little lumps of snacky deliciousness, the legislator knows that they are wicked addictive drugs that will corrupt and sicken our youth.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">To top it all, there was a hideous story from the UK of a four-year-old autistic little boy whose mother died suddenly at home of an epileptic fit, and who himself starved to death in their flat, clinging to her decomposing body.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">Now you tell me if the world cannot stand a little biochemical softening of the edges. There’s a reason grownups are allowed to drink. Here I am, having swapped psychic haleness for physical health, and I’m here to tell you that it’s not that great a deal. One is trying to be an upright citizen with a fresh-faced liver, in full possession of her faculties, but if ever one has needed a stiff drink, it has been in the last sixteen days, fifteen hours and twelve minutes at the time of writing, not that I’m counting.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">A troublesome neighbour, who is directly responsible for my temporary abstinence, keeps trying to lure me back into temptation by offering gateway drugs like soft drinks. I’m staying strong, but I suspect this will be more possible if I make the odd exception. So I won’t really be drinking until July, or until tomorrow, whichever seems more reasonable in the moment.</span></span><br />
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-53081723051126465442017-05-29T15:19:00.001+05:302017-05-29T15:19:33.311+05:30Why so serious? Lessons in laughter from the Dalai Lama<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>Loosen up</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>(Published on May 27, 2017 in Business Standard)</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, is a fabulous old egg. People of consequence tend to be a bit buttoned up, but he wears his eminence—wise learned monk, political firebrand, spiritual leader—like the lightest of cloaks. Everything he says comes with a gleeful ‘khi-khi-khi’, or a hearty guffaw. At almost 82, he jokes that after this life he might wind up downstairs rather than upstairs, khi-khi-khi! He takes the most infectious delight in everything. His ability to see the funny side of things is what makes him a truly enlightened chap, at least to my atheist eyes.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">His Holiness could easily play up the gravitas. I mean, hello, he is revered as the bodhisattva Avalokiteshwara, the embodiment of compassion, who sticks around in this vale of tears to serve those who are suffering when he could perfectly well be relaxing in Nirvana. Of all spiritual leaders on earth, of all the godmen and sadhus and cardinals and imams and rabbis and shamans, he is arguably the most loved. From exile in India, he keeps the Tibetan cause blazing on the world radar. He could take himself very seriously indeed—hundreds of millions of people do, after all.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Instead, he is a joyous, laughing beacon of dissent, both political and spiritual. Like the Buddha—that most fabulous of all old eggs—he speaks of the vital importance of not deifying people or teachings, of not following mindlessly; of the importance of engaging in critique, questioning, independent examination, and independent practice. He’s interested in testing the old scriptures against science, and in updating them where necessary. In other words, he’s loving, humble, rational, secure, intellectually and spiritually adventurous, and he’s got a wicked sense of humour. No wonder he’s so loved.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It’s enough to make you want to leap into his lap and hug him forever, while making side-eyes at the dreary gargoyles who are currently celebrating three years of buttoning up India so tightly that nobody can breathe.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">All that these gargoyles seem to know how to do is bow and scrape before gods and men and scripture and each other, all the while speaking of pride; tom-tom each other’s manliness and strength, all the while being too frightened to utter a word of dissent. All they do is impose with violence, what they cannot achieve with argument.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">And, my god—and please read this in a very shouty voice—they have no sense of humour, like, none! Everything is just so terribly sacred and pompous and self-important and fearsome and worshipful! If they weren’t such stuffed shirts, they might admit how ridiculous they are, achieving the opposite of everything they aim for. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Newsflash: You can’t love your country by oppressing your countrymen. It’s stupid to be proud of made-up ‘facts’. Stamping out questions is the opposite of education. Having a huge digital surveillance system isn’t the same as being modern. You can’t respect women by calling them goddesses and treating them like chattel. You can’t terrorise and kill people over cows and expect the world to admire your traditions. You can’t be pious by being hateful. You can’t enforce respect, it has to be earned. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The problem with being too serious is that you can’t see when you’ve tipped over into absurdity. It’s just silly to puff up your chest quite so much when we’re all going to end up as small piles of ashes and dust.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">But you can expect everyone else to laugh until their sides hurt, because laughter is a natural response to absurdity. I’ll probably still be laughing well into the alleged afterlife—probably downstairs, khi-khi-khi.</span></span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-91577052454967712732017-05-14T10:06:00.001+05:302017-05-14T10:06:42.663+05:30RSS and the art of manufacturing super-babies<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">Is it a short baby? Is it a dark baby? No, it's an RSS super-baby!</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;"><i>(Published on May 13, 2017 in Business Standard)</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">Canadian singer </span><a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Justin+Bieber" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2591dc; font-size: 15px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Justin Bieber </a><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">is visiting India just as India is talking about babies, though not as many babies as in Justin’s superhit ‘Baby’. Nothing reflects the zeitgeist like horrible teenage pop.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">I’m no baby lover. I have had none myself, despite some close shaves. I have been a useless aunt in terms of babysitting, and in all the other terms in which one can be an aunt. I can’t wait to get to life’s reproductive checkout counter and exchange my fertility for a small beard.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">The reason for my sluggish maternal instinct was precisely put by American writer Jean Kerr: “Now the thing about having a baby—and I can’t be the first person to have noticed this—is that thereafter you have it.”</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">This is not to say that I don’t appreciate children. They’re cute as buttons, and nothing is as interesting as a child before its native genius is schooled out of it. But let’s face it: I don’t like the short, dark, dumb ones. Who does? Certainly no self-respecting Ary—I mean Ayurvedic, people. This is why I am so delighted, as a patriot, that those amongst us who are most dedicated to social work and nation-building have taken on the challenge of turning short, dark, skinny, dumb Indians into taller, fairer, better-built, smarter…Germans, I guess? Or Norwegians? No matter—they’re all Hindus anyway.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">If you’re a short, dark, skinny dumbo who had a hard time finding someone to marry, you can give your children a leg up on the marriage market and in life by turning to the Garbh Vigyan Sanskar (Uterus Science Culture) project, the brainchild of the Arogya Bharati, the health wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). They will help you have not just babies, but better babies. If you have already had the great misfortune of birthing a short, dark, skinny, dim replica of yourself, you will have to keep him/her—hello, we’re not barbarians—but then you can try to have a better baby, and who’s to know which one you take better care of? We’ve been doing this with boys versus girls for ages.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">Members of the </span><a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Rss" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2591dc; font-size: 15px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">RSS </a><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">have, in the past, demonstrated their scientific temper by covering their cell phones in cowdung; saying that cows both inhale and exhale oxygen; and warning that girls who study past 10pm are immoral. I’m no doctor, but the science behind manufacturing super-babies sounds similar: have sex when the right planets are lined up; stop having sex after you get pregnant (according to Arogya Bharati’s Dr Ashok Kumar Varshney, a PhD in biochemistry, it’s “suicidal for the mother and the baby”); and have the pregnant mother chant </span><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px;">shlokas </em><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">and </span><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px;">mantras</em><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">. All of this apparently repairs faulty genes, making Jatin look more like Justin. Western science can engineer genes in petri dishes; India can engineer racist pride right in the womb. </span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">Arogya Bharati has tried to help Indians manufacture proper fair babies ever since they got the idea from Germany in the 1940s. You can’t really tell this from casting your eye over the Indian population, but these things take time. Luckily the </span><a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Rss" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2591dc; font-size: 15px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">RSS </a><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">will be around for a while.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">Speaking for myself, I’m glad to be off the baby-making hook—or, as Shashi Tharoor might have said, exultant to have eternally recused myself from viviparously nurturing minuscule iterations of </span><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px;">Homo sapiens </em><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">despite my biologically enhanced capacity to perform the function of distaff ancestor.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">I don’t know why people make fun of the guy. If my </span><a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Super-baby" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2591dc; font-size: 15px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">super-baby </a><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">didn’t come with a super vocabulary, I’d want my money back.</span></span></div>
Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-27579423437794650742017-05-04T16:54:00.003+05:302017-05-04T16:54:46.675+05:30Our guys, their gais<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>(Published on April 29, 2017 in Business Standard)</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">If I unexpectedly had five minutes of the government’s undivided attention—thoo, thoo, thoo—I would tell it just this one thing: Guys (if you will pardon the expression), the cow thing has gotten completely out of hand.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I don’t mean out of hand as in, how people are killing other people over cows. Nobody in the government cares about that. Nor do I mean how every cow is getting an Aadhaar number, though even lots of humans don’t want one—the government thinks that’s a good use of time and money. I don’t mean how killing a cow can get you life imprisonment in various states. Those state governments like the idea. It’s not about how people are checking other people’s tiffins for beef, since nobody is more into monitoring tiffins than the government. Forget that we’re going to open a retirement home for elderly cows in every district. The government really wants to. And I certainly don’t mean how, despite all this, people in the northeast can go ahead and slaughter and eat beef to their hearts’ content—the BJP is eyeing elections there next year, so cows can take a hike, which tells you a lot about the relationship between cows and votes.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">No, what I mean, guys, is that the cow thing, and by ‘thing’ I mean all the stuff mentioned above—the cow thing makes you look straight-up ridiculous.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Ignore, for a moment, the insignificant outrage of your own citizens, and look at India through the eyes of the world. The world sees a giant nation with giant potential, bedevilled by hideous poverty and suffering, in desperate need of healthcare, education, jobs, and infrastructure, looking to the government to deliver development.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">And what does the world see the giant nation doing about it? Putting cows front and centre. Cows on the street, cows in the newspapers, cows in television studios, cows in election campaigns, cows in the law. Cows everywhere except on our plates.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">If I were the world, I’d back away quietly, being careful not to make any sudden moves.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Not that the world is going to come out and say that. The world will rock back on its heels and stroke its chin and keep up a polite rumble about markets and investment and potential and so forth. But later, over drinks by itself, it will say: That India—interesting country, big market, but my god, talk about loony tunes.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Guys, you’re going to say, Who cares what the world thinks? We’re the best, it is our destiny to lead the world, look, everyone’s doing yoga, everything the world has was originally ours.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">But let’s get real—you care deeply what the world thinks, because you have a massive insecurity problem. You suspect that maybe you aren’t the best, and you suspect people of sneering at you. Even some of your own people, who see this whole thing as cowboys versus Indians. You hate being sneered at—it makes you crazy. The crazier it makes you, the crazier you act, and then the more people sneer at you. It’s a problem.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The world will probably just hold its nose and take crazy in its stride, as it always has, dealing with all kinds of shady people as long as it can make money off them. It’s possible that you won’t care that it is holding its nose—but I doubt it.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">So you might want to course correct the whole cow thing. It makes you look as if you can’t lead us, let alone the world.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">That’s what I would say. But it would probably be a total waste of five minutes.</span></span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-50107577338298220122017-04-19T17:36:00.000+05:302017-04-19T17:36:25.919+05:30A toast to freedom in the Blue Mountains<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>Welcome to the sanitised playpen that used to be the Republic of India</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>(Published on April 15, 2017 in Business Standard)</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I spent this Thursday sitting on a hillside in the Nilgiri Mountains, worshipping a couple of coconuts. The Nilgiris stand like big blue teeth in the welcoming smile of the Deccan—or, as Tarun Vijay calls it, where the black people we live alongside, live. I was at a bhoomi pujan to bless new landowners and their land, throwing my godless good wishes into the mix. After two sweaty hours we buried two tiny silver snakes in the ground, and repaired to a humongous lunch—or, as Ram Vilas Paswan might put it, beyond the regulated restaurant portion.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The pundit and I had a brief chat. He seemed surprised that I wasn’t Australian, which was his first guess. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Where is your child, madam? He asked. I don’t have a child, I said. He wiggled his eyebrows.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Your husband, madam? He asked. I’m not married, I said. No husband? he breathed.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Grey hair, no husband, no child, I confirmed. His face became very still. Then he stuck out his hand. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Best, he said.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Best, I agreed, and we shook on it. I raised my fists and said ‘Freedom.’ </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Freedom, he nodded. Even I am not going to get married, madam. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Best, I said.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It was so refreshing to be toasting freedom. Everywhere I look, people are obediently giving up autonomy, choice, and individual rights, without a whimper, law by law, rule by rule.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The BJP is rolling like a conquering juggernaut over India, on the promise of transformation, and living up to that promise—it is transforming hundreds of millions of fully grown, perfectly competent adult Indians, into helpless, gummy toddlers who must be soothed when they wail, fed regulated amounts of approved food on a predetermined schedule, and re-raised to achieve predetermined dreams.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Welcome to the sovereign socialist theistic majoritarian sanitised playpen that used to be the Republic of India—please deposit your brains and your gonads at the door. The BJP nanny state is relieving us of the stress of having to make our own choices and make up our own minds. If someone is upset, it will stop the whole playdate until someone says sorry. It makes everyone use our indoor voices. It wants us to progress together by finding the dumbest, most regressive toddlers, dragging everyone else down to their level, and proceeding backwards at their rate.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The nanny state is toddler-proofing the room, covering up anything complex or age-inappropriate. It censors words like ‘bra’, and ‘beef’ that allude to impure ideas, and any words with double meanings, and ‘Bombay’, and phrases that the Prime Minister has used. It decides the content and size of your tiffin. Meat is dodgy. Alcohol is bad for you. It tells you when to sit down and when to stand up, and how to love the nation.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It only allows good wholesome fun—no late nights, no premarital sex or romance, no subversive art. Fun is culturally scheduled and features bright primary colours, Bollywood tracks, and family outings for ice cream.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The nanny state will homeschool you, but only as much as you need to be a thriving toddler, including how not to question it. It will make sure it knows where you are and what you’re doing at all times, apparently for your own safety. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Toddlers don’t need democracy; they need a firm nanny. This nanny will not hesitate to beat kids to death for disobedience. That makes all the other toddlers shut up and put their thumbs right back in their mouths. That’s how you build a strong, proud playpen.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I’m thrilled to report that around the Nilgiris, they still seem to like being adults.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Freedom. Best.</span></span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-69759781871259925152017-04-06T14:44:00.003+05:302017-04-06T14:44:51.659+05:30Laughter is the best resistance to political bullying<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i><span class="s1"></span>Jokes are kryptonite to authority.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>(Published on April 1, 2017 in Business Standard)</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Authority only really works on people who agree to consider it authoritative. Not authority like the police and the courts—obviously those guys have guns, and jails, and can physically impose their will upon you. I mean authority like the power to control people’s minds and lead them by the nose down whatever nasty little majoritarian alley they want. That kind of authority needs—nay, is absolutely at the mercy of—citizens’ individual cooperation in treating it like the big strong manly alpha dog that it wants to be. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">This is a shaky leg to stand on. And you know what sneaks up and nudges that leg in the back of the knee, making it wobble and look silly? Jokes! Jokes are kryptonite to authority. They are to pompous egos what needles are to soap bubbles. They make people laugh and point when they should be bowing and scraping. This is why politicians and godmen are such a thin-skinned, humourless lot, and make such free use of guns and jails. They hate being made fun of—it’s bad for their image as fearsome, wondrous people wielding fearsome, wondrous power over masses faint with admiration. The more they suspect people of mocking them, the more they fall back on guns and jails. This is also why their followers insist on respect for their leader, else their feelings will be hurt, and, you guessed it, we’re back to guns and jails.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In Myanmar in the late 1990s, people wouldn’t say a word about the military junta in public. But they whispered indignantly about a comedy trio, the Moustache Brothers. Two of them had been sentenced to seven years in a labour camp for an act criticising the government. Years later, in 2008, the famous Burmese satirist Zarganar was sentenced to 59 years in prison, though he was freed by amnesty in 2011. The whole editorial team of French magazine <i>Charlie Hebdo </i>suffered the most extreme review of their work when they were gunned down by Islamist fundamentalists who didn’t find them funny. The wildly popular Egyptian satirist Bassem Youssef was arrested in 2013 for mocking President Morsi.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Closer to home, in January 2016, comedian Kiku Sharda was tossed in the clapper for a couple of weeks for mimicking Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh and offending his followers’ sentiments. This month, a young man in Uttar Pradesh ended up in the clink for posting a morphed image of the new chief minister, Mr Adityanath; and another young man in Maharashtra was arrested for uploading a photo of a warrior-king with Mr Adityanath’s face stuck on it, after his friends ratted him out to a pro-Maratha reservations organisation.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In other words, politicians and god-botherers fully understand that humour is the pointiest, pokiest form of resistance. It is also, by nature, untameable. Turkish president Erdogan, who cracked down on hundreds of people who make fun of him, found this out the hard way: His crackdown only inspired even more jokesters and satirists.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">For its creativity, for revealing uncomfortable truths, for its sturdy self-respect, and for its refusal of mind control, we should, this April Fool’s day, celebrate the many delicious forms of humour available to us—light comedy, wit, irony, sarcasm, satire, spoofery, parody, mockery, ridicule, and plain rudeness. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Prime Minister Modi led by example, this January, when he called for more humour and satire in public life, saying that the power of laughter is greater than the power of weapons. He’s dead right. After I had recovered from the immense shock of finding myself in agreement with him, I actually clapped. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Let it never be said that I have nothing nice to say about the man, okay?</span></span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-20125503123896070912017-03-30T16:21:00.002+05:302017-03-30T16:21:20.892+05:30Whose line is it anyway?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>You mean this is your own stupid opinion?</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>(Published on March 18, 2017 in Business Standard)</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Sometimes, after I return from a trip to social media, I have to take a moment to compose myself. Only when the whites of my eyes are no longer visible, and my blood pressure has stabilised, can I can sit down and calmly cuss the idiots out over dinner like a normal human being.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Just kidding. They’re not idiots, they just have views different from mine.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Just kidding! They totally are idiots. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In this deeply polarised political climate, it’s becoming harder to talk to whoever constitutes the ‘other’ side on any issue—not because of their views per se, but because of their view of the origin of your views. The same Modi-backer who claims to have arrived at her choices via cool-headed independence, is quick to dismiss opposing views as motivated—by blind hatred, by slavish loyalty, by political puppetry or financial incentive, or (my personal favourite) by the desire to be ‘fashionable’.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I figure this last accusation arises out of the notion that power and success so obviously require compliance and deference, that critique can only be a form of attention-grabbing cockiness. The other accusations seem to arise from the belief that your views must be dictated by something suspect—by class, political allegiance, sour grapes, or payroll—anything but your own principles.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The Modi-backer, for her part, must resent her views being perceived as springing from bigotry, religious chauvinism, venality, insensitivity, jingoism—anything but her genuine desire to see a man of action stop corruption in its tracks and develop the hell out of the country. I feel her pain, and feel that I should make an effort to reassure her that I understand her.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">So here’s the best case scenario: I have nothing against any economic good that the BJP can accomplish in terms of fighting corruption and raising incomes without trampling over rights and environmental regulations. But if she thinks that she can cherrypick economic roses out of a nasty bouquet of social hemlock, she is either unaware of the RSS’s agenda, or aware but certain of her own acceptability to the majority and uncaring of her fellow citizens, or deluded into thinking that Mr Modi does not represent the Sangh despite his tireless, lifelong service to it. There, does that make it clearer?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Seven years ago, when the world was merely horrible, rather than horrible and proud of it, I wrote a <i>Stet</i> column titled ‘Left brain-right brain’. It paraphrased a friendly conversation about Palestine. Re-reading how it degenerated into insults hurled across a deep, wide belief gap, I recognise that dynamic as today’s mainstream. The only difference is that now the conversation is about Indians and other Indians.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The BJP’s storming of U.P. has disheartened a lot of liberals, who are keenly feeling their political marginality. But the wonderful thing about being a liberal is that you can go ahead and be the very last one left standing. That’s the principle of the thing—individual rights, down to the last individual.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">So go ahead and fling social media faeces at us, tell us how irrelevant we are, and accuse us of opposing Mr Modi to be cool. (Face-palm—glad you think it’s cool, but that’s not why we’re doing it.) Tell us about our ‘political masters’. Tell us how you felt put down by our superior tone, so you chose a religious supremacist. We’re still not going anywhere. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">And regardless of what you believe about the source of our respective stupid opinions, in the same way that mine reflect on me, know that yours reflect on you.</span></span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-3615760022727507222017-03-10T07:52:00.001+05:302017-03-10T07:52:08.597+05:30Nationalist baby steps<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>Intern here and you could be a big nationalist one day</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>(Published on March 4, 2017 in Business Standard)</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Are you a passionate young person? Do you often feel inadequate, and are you beset by inchoate feelings of anger and fear and disempowerment? Do different people and different ideas create feelings of panic? Is your skin thinner than the thinnest argument you can muster? Are you happier running in a pack, following clear directions, than exploring things yourself? Are you willing to trust and venerate your leadership? Are you looking for like-minded people, and, more importantly, are you willing to never rest until there are only like-minded people to be found?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">If this describes you, please take our multiple choice entrance exam.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Congratulations! A very warm welcome to you from all of us here at the Anti-Antinational Brainless Vigilantes Plague, or AABVP. We think you’ll be very happy here, because, as we like to say, ignorance is bliss.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">First off, may we offer a pat on the back to prop up your fragile sense of self? You scored a brilliant 100% on your multiple choice entrance paper, choosing from the four interchangeable versions of the single possible answer we provided alongside each question. You’re a genius. There is little else to know, and if anyone tells you different, here’s a handy manual entitled ‘Making Weapons Out Of Whatever’s Available’. It’s not hard, mostly pictures, mug it up. It’s often going to be your first resort.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">We teach you what to think, not how to think for yourself, so please don’t do anything dangerous like try to use your own brain, or indulge any stray feelings of self-doubt, guilt, compassion, or mutual respect for people unlike yourself. These uncomfortable feelings may arise, and we know how scary they can be, but be assured that they will pass. Stay strong.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Some people will tell you that there are other answers to the questions on our entrance exam. They will criticise ideas, and authority, and will not be afraid to do so. They will act as if it’s normal. These are the people who are destroying India. What do you mean, how? Have we taught you nothing? Questions that do not conform to the answers we have provided, are invalid. This gig runs on a need-to-know basis, and what you need to know is: These are the people we hunt. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">If you find one of these people, which you will, because they’re everywhere, this is your time to shine. Our standard operating procedure is pretty simple.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">1. Get into their faces and yell the four interchangeable versions of the single valid answer you know.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">2.If they argue, push them and threaten to rape them.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">3. If, for the sake of form, you wish to come across as reasonable, agree with them fully, then say ‘But!’ and repeat the four interchangeable versions of the single answer.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">4. If they keep talking, pick your favourite picture from the manual and do that.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">5. If things aren’t going your way, appeal to the nearest policeman. The police will help you.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Remember that you won’t last a minute in a verbal debate, so if someone starts one, skip directly to intimidation. If that doesn’t work, go back to the manual. You’re so cute when you’re angry! We’re very proud.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">By the way, please don’t confuse us with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad, or ABVP—that’s the nationalist student organisation affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), who tirelessly protect our universities and communities from intellectual and cultural mayhem, showing the kind of extra-judicial entrepreneurship and dedication without which this country would shatter into a thousand tiny pieces. The ABVP is for the big boys.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Maybe if you do well here, in ultra-nationalism nursery, you could think of joining them one day</span>.</span></span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-78167846190122431562017-02-27T11:42:00.000+05:302017-02-27T11:42:08.010+05:30Health is wealth<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>And health is wealth. Repetition is key.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>(Published on February 18, 2017 in Business Standard)</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">My eldest niece, who just last week was sixteen inches long and did nothing but poop and sleep, this week turned 12 years old, and has kind of a cool haircut. If that’s not weird enough, a couple of days ago I heard an aunt tell my mother, “It was a nice day, and we didn’t have anything to do, so we said, chalo, let’s go get a bone density test.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In other words, gentle reader, time passeth. I have not been paying attention, so now it leapeth up and biteth me in the butt. I haven’t yet begun to think of bone density tests as a leisure activity, but I am now open to saying never say never.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I last had a top-to-toe health check about fifteen years ago, back when excess was only an occasional thing. Since I thought of myself as ageing at the time, my clean bill of health made me pretty smug. Today it is obvious to me that I had nothing whatsoever to do with the test results—I was just young and hale. Fifteen years on, occasional delinquency has slipped into hardened habit, and physical discipline has pulled its blankie over its eyes and gone back to sleep. What used to be an invigorating run in the park is now a sedate walk that feels like hard work. In other words I have grown bibulous, portly, lazy, and mutinous about it all.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In my twenties, I would observe all the weird old people walking around the world with their paunches and double chins and their cottony lack of muscle tone, and I would say to myself, Not me. That will never be me. Since I know it can get there, I simply won’t let it. Forewarned is forearmed. Why are they smirking? I will always exercise. I will never overeat. I will never drink too m—okay, I didn’t say that last thing, but you get the picture.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Dear weird old people, please accept my sincerest apologies. I kneel before you, eating crow and also humble pie, since I always have one portion too many of everything. Smirk all you want. I deserve it.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">To the judgy young people I used to be: I could just smirk quietly to myself, but I am instead going to do you a solid, and pass on some valuable wisdom that nobody told me. Here it comes:</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It’s going to happen to you too, suckers. Mwahahaha.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">What will happen to you is that you haven’t the faintest idea of the power of one simple thing: repetition. You know those mind-numbing canyons of sculpted stone, created by wind and water? They aren’t made by typhoons and tsunamis. They’re made by perfectly ordinary breezes and little lapping waves that simply keep gently breezing and waving, over a period of time. Repetition can erode, and it can build. Mine, needless to say, have built—around all the areas I was going to keep forewarned and forearmed.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Since my emotions cannot keep up with what I’ve done to myself, I have decided that actually this is all happening because of a dreadful medical condition which will be revealed by a full medical check. Except that I’m too frightened to go by myself, so I’ve made a date with a friend who is also too frightened to go by himself. (I can just hear my niece: “And then my aunt and her friend said, it’s a nice day, let’s go see the doctor.”)</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">So, judgy young people, you are now forewarned and forearmed. You either need to understand the power of repetition, or start practicing your best smirk. You’re welcome.</span></span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-21948990540252319482017-02-07T15:08:00.000+05:302017-02-07T15:08:16.948+05:30Boots on the ground<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>Resist now! Or, you know, in a bit.</i></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>(Published on February 4, 2017 in Business Standard)</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">You know how, when you’re feeling a little bit superior, and it’s a strange new feeling that you’re enjoying and haven’t had your fill of yet, and then suddenly something happens to make you feel inadequate all over again? It’s so annoying.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">When the US elected Donald Trump in a shock election that left the world shaking its head to try to get rid of the roaring sound in its ears, a large number of Indians said to themselves, ‘Hah! We thought we had it bad in India. At least our Prime Minister comes from a known political position, from a structured, if disagreeable, cultural supremacist organisation. At least he’s predictable. At least he’s making the right noises, even if his creatures are nasty violent chauvinists whom he doesn’t chastise publicly, and whom he follows online, meets, and felicitates. At least our Prime Minister isn’t some loose orange cannon.’ Trump is so much worse.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Boy, did that feel good. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">And then ordinary Americans went and screwed up our smugness by being all inspirational. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Look at them, vowing hyper-vigilant media scrutiny. Look at them, marching in droves, calling their senators relentlessly, and using social media to organise rather than whine. Look at them, setting up rogue twitter accounts from inside the White House and governmental organisations, to make sure that their fellow citizens keep getting information that isn’t Trumped up. Look at them, losing their jobs for refusing to defend his executive order barring entry to Muslims from seven countries. Watch them savaging Trump on comedy shows.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Look at the CEOs issuing calls to hire </span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">more immigrants, and the consumers boycotting businesses that support Trump. Look at the lawyers, suing the government on behalf of people stranded by the Muslim ban—on the weekend! for free! <i>lawyers</i>, dude! Check them out, standing at airports across the country with banners saying ‘No ban’ and ‘Let them in’. Look at them standing by rows of Muslims praying in public at an airport, and cheering them on. As <i>The Daily Show</i> host, Trevor Noah, pointed out: </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">Muslims praying in public at an American airport, and hundreds of people cheering them on—just think about that for a minute</span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: medium;">.</i></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In other words, Americans who identify a threat to their core values have painted or printed up signs, put on their boots and coats, closed the social media tab on their laptops (because what are mobile phones for?), emerged from their houses, and taken their bodies out onto the streets in solidarity, yelling at the top of their lungs. They are resisting the hell out of the daily horror show put on by their new government—making us, who specialise in keeling over like ninepins before authority, look really lazy and weak. Turns out Americans are so much better at citizenship.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Boy, does that feel bad. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Speaking for myself, while I’ve walked the streets now and again, I have also skipped marches because I was really busy having lunch. I’ve protested by tapping a button on social media. I’ve possibly slept through some urgent things. Look, the weather in Delhi sucks—it’s always either boiling or freezing. Sometimes you just have to know what’s happening next on a TV show. Marching is hard on the back and feet. Life gets in the way, and so does your expanding waistline.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Blah blah, excuses, excuses. Watching American protesters get their act together so quickly and so forcefully only reminds me of all the resisting that Indians should have been doing for the last three years. Thanks for nothing, ordinary Americans!</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Now if I’m to hold on to my dignity, all I can do is hope that, somehow, writing counts. </span></span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-25339999174563898202017-01-26T11:25:00.002+05:302017-01-26T11:25:22.287+05:30A bridge too far<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>(Published on January 21, 2017 in Business Standard)</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Everyone will tell you: It’s important to make a good impression. The world treats you better if you dress well, speak well, don’t smell, are punctual and reliable, and don’t make a spectacle of yourself. Boy, has that ship sailed. I once made a half-hearted attempt to catch up with it by buying new jeans, but some doors never reopen. The only good impression I make is on the putty that dentists use to make dental moulds.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In a December 2006 instalment of this column, I promised not to write any more columns about my teeth. But that was ten years ago, and maybe I lied; plus, there’s been a development. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">To recap, so to speak: Ten years ago, both my front teeth were yanked out as the grand finale of a long comet tail of dental events—caps, pins, bridges and really gross gum surgery—rooted, if you will, in a childhood accident that was totally not my cousin’s fault, though I’m always open to receiving nice presents from her. Long story short, I ended up with a temporary denture. My dentist told me to come back a few weeks later for a permanent bridge, but I’m lazy, and was traumatised, and, really, ten years fly by.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I don’t mind the denture; I enjoy dropping my teeth at kiddy parties, and select adult parties, and listening to the screaming. It’s probably genetic—it seems that my grandfather also dropped his dentures at passing children, and when the parents turned to see what made their kid cry, there was only a sweet old gentleman, reading his newspaper and minding his own business. It’s practically family tradition. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">But all good things must come to an end. It turns out that when there is space in the jaw, teeth begin to roam, like the ruthless white colonisers of North America. Mine (teeth, not ruthless white colonisers of North America) are striking out. So this week I decided that it was time to arrest the joyful pirouetting of my lateral incisors, and get some permanent teeth.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Here’s how they make a bridge for your front teeth. The dentist sticks a needle into a seriously tender part of your face while you twitch like a pinioned insect. When you’re numb from your eyebrows to about the middle of your chest, he drills your lateral incisors for half an hour, whittling them down to thin little sticks. These are so hilarious that you want to post them on Facebook. But your only job is to cry, moo piteously, and flail because your throat is filled with water, and your nostrils are numb, and you can’t breathe. This last move draws censure from the dental team, who tell dark tales of drills nicking lips and hands caught in wires. Then they fashion temporary caps and cement them onto the hilarious little sticks, put the denture back in, and tell you to come back in a week to fit a permanent bridge.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">So now I’m walking around the world with two fake caps gleaming out of my face like rakshas tusks or, as I like to think of them, beacons of hope that it won’t be another ten years before I go back. Until then, I have to eat softish foods, because if these puppies fall off, we’re back to hilarious little sticks. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">But I’m not really worried about looking ridiculous, because ridiculous just raised the bar a lot higher by swearing in Donald Trump as POTUS this Friday. Who can beat that? We should all brace ourselves, as they say. Because there’s a man, if ever there was one, who’s got a bridge to sell you. </span></span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-88566687381681022832017-01-12T16:07:00.003+05:302017-01-12T16:07:46.381+05:30Ten percent human <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>There’s a reason we talk about having ‘a gut feel’.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>(Published on January 7, 2017 in Business Standard)</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">On a recent flight, the man next to me drank six glasses of wine and then asked if he could read my book. I was watching a movie when he asked, so there wasn’t a good reason to say no. Books broaden one’s horizons, even if one is already seeing multiple horizons. It would have been mean-spirited to refuse. But I couldn’t help being irritated, and the trouble with lending a book resentfully is that one is plagued with trust issues. I spent ten minutes spying on him while he thumbed repeatedly and exclusively through the contents, sometimes pursing his lips, sometimes holding his head and blowing out of his nostrils like a horse. Then his meal arrived, and he plunged his right hand into daal while continuing to paw my book with his left hand. This was the last straw.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I popped the headphones out of my ears. “What are you doing?” I said coldly. He looked up through his eyelashes, a la Princess Di. “This is a very surprising book,” he said, and then leaned across the empty seat between us and bellowed, “Who ARE you?” into my face. That’s irrelevant, I snapped. “Well I think this <i>book</i> is irrelevant,” he said, as if this was a brilliant comeback. I reached across and snatched it back. “Read your <i>own</i> book,” I said, as if this was a brilliant comeback. Thus our acquaintance took root, flared briefly, and passed away, unmourned.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The larger point, here, is that I advise you to throw on some clothes, lace up your shoes, and grab your phone to order this book at once. It’s called <i>Gut</i>, by Giulia Enders, and it features chapters like ‘How does pooing work?’ and illustrations of bacteria with smiley faces and capes. If you, like me, are irresistibly drawn to accessibly written books about science, you will thank me, as I thank my friend Martin who pointed me to this one.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I have written about bowel movements in the op-ed pages of this long-suffering newspaper, so it’s not as if my interest in potty is a secret. What is truly baffling to me is why so many other people, barring Bengalis, aren’t as interested, considering that it’s a daily affair that can make you miserable when it goes wrong. But whatever—life is short, miss out if you want to. At any rate, poop is only one angle of that thrilling young field of research, the human microbiome.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">For those unfamiliar with the term, the microbiome refers to the unimaginably large numbers of bacteria that have co-evolved to live all over the human body to, mostly, preserve and defend it. If that creeps you out, you might want to digest this: In the womb, you are composed of 100 percent human cells; by the time your microbiome stabilises around the age of three, only about 10 percent of your cells are human. The other 90 percent are bacteria. They began to colonise you the moment you exited your amniotic sac. In the normal course of events you emerge into the world with a protective coating of your mother’s vaginal flora, and go from there, picking up and breeding billions of bugs a minute. About 2-3 kilos of bacteria, or about 99 percent of all your critters, live in your gut, and comprise a large part of your immune system, and what scientists are calling your second brain.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It’s all completely fascinating, and Giulia Enders makes you laugh even as she blows your mind. Do yourself a favour and read it. Just please don’t read it with your hands dipped in daal.</span></span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-85419614260772084382017-01-12T16:05:00.003+05:302017-01-12T16:05:32.040+05:30First Christmas<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>And thankfully the last</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i><span class="s1"></span>(Published on December 24, 2016 in Business Standard)</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The first and only time my family celebrated Christmas, I was seven or eight. It was early in our stint in Switzerland, and my mother thought that she would do the whole thing with the tree and the presents and so on, to broaden our cultural horizons. She duly went out ten days beforehand and bought a tree—a teenage sized fir, as firs go, in a pot. Glossy green, not too big, not too small; quiet personality, but with a presence; just right for pre-pubescents to decorate without injury. She placed it in a festive corner behind the television (it was a small apartment, and one needs to be able to see the television), and we awaited the big day with excitement. In our Christmas, we were all the virgin.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Some days later, the tree began to look a bit peaky. A day or two after that, it turned brown from head to foot. Shortly after that it heaved a deep sigh, dropped four-fifths of its needles onto the floor in one whoosh, and expired. Consternation. It turned out that we were supposed to have watered it. But this was our first Christmas, and we weren’t going to give up on our tree just because it had died. What if they’d given up on Jesus just because he had died? </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">A couple of days before Christmas, therefore, we dressed up the poky brown stem with shiny balls and gold stars and angels and whatnot. We dressed ourselves up too—I had my hair in a bun, for some reason, and wore an old lady’s grey sweater, and a skirt. It’s amazing that I didn’t develop arthritis. We arranged our presents around the dead tree and settled in for some Christmas cheer.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The whole thing was a fiasco. I broke my mother’s pearl necklace, and when she assumed it was my little brother’s fault, I let her yell at him in an act of cowardice that makes me cringe to this day. I didn’t give anyone presents—though, in my defence, the narrative suggested that children only rightfully get presents. My father was in a bad mood—though, in his defence, he’d had three children before the age of 30, and the bad mood predated and postdated that Christmas. My mother’s smile careened between chirpy and psycho—though, in her defence, she’d had three children before the age of 26, no experience of Christmas trees, and was stressed out by her sulking husband, her yowling five-year-old, and her eldest daughter who, in my memory, remained barricaded in her room. As her middle child I was largely inconsequential, but when I entered her field of vision, glamorously bunned and skirted up, she managed to remark that I would certainly always have to make my eyes up, “later”.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It was a perfectly dreadful evening, bad feelings fogging around our dead tree, a tinselled skeleton mired in a pot of guilt and regret. It was sort of redeemed by the presents we opened the next day, but very soon thereafter we reached an unspoken family consensus that we should just never attempt to do stylised celebrations ever again—and we didn’t. When it comes to Christmas, much like weddings, other people’s are more fun to go to than one’s own.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The tail end of this year feels much like that evening, to me, and so I feel we’re all about due for a spot of redemption. I have forsworn all religious greetings, but I predict that you’re going to spend Saturday and Sunday eating and drinking, so here’s wishing you a happy weekend.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Tip: If you’re not having fun, you need to start watering your plant ten days ago.</span></span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-18555095216664675922016-12-10T09:51:00.000+05:302016-12-10T09:51:01.408+05:30Closet economist<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>In which I demonetise my wardrobe</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>(Published today in Business Standard)</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The end of the year always triggers my de-cluttering instincts, which are rare, but ruthless. If a baby gets thrown out with the bathwater, that’s fine—the place will be quiet, and I’ll get to eat all the Cerelac. So I spent a good portion of last week weeding out my closet. About 95% of it is rubbish, and of that, I decided to purge 86%. I don’t know if those percentages are exact, but they’re the ones I remember.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">As I suspected, I had way, way too much clothing, which you would never know from what I actually wear. I found about 15 lakh crores of things I’m tired of. Things I’m too fat for. Things that I have multiple copies of. Hand me downs. Thirty year old t-shirts. New things that don’t work on me because I’m bad at shopping, which is also why I have so many things I never wear, and hand me downs, and thirty year old t-shirts of which I’m tired. I shoved them all into four enormous garbage bags, and handed them out. About 11 lakh crores of those things, maybe more, will end up in other people’s closets. I can’t remember where those figures come from, but I see them every time I close my eyelids—the point is, I threw out a huge amount, and felt mighty pleased.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">But guess what? My closet is still full. First I thought it might be some kind of magical closet, in which I should also consider rooting around for loaves and fishes, and maybe Aslan the Lion. But then I remembered that I’ve done this de-cluttering exercise before, and my closet inevitably refilled with superfluous clothing, as if it has a congenital condition that is fated to assert itself relentlessly. Maybe, I thought, that condition is me.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Yes, I do like to have clothes to wear, should I suddenly choose to wear them. I often keep them around just for that eventuality. I like them to be in available in my closet, so that I can just retrieve them, because it turns out you that there are a lot of places you can’t go unless you have clothes on. I feel reassured that if I have to suddenly dash to the hospital in the middle of the night, or travel to a cold country, or just play dress-up in front of the mirror, I can do that. They’re right there, in my closet! They’re my clothes, after all. But god, they make a huge clutter.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">This got me thinking. Could the answer be just to not have any personal clothes at home anymore? Maybe we could just all use a huge central store of clothes, and take what clothes we need for the day, or for an occasion, from there? The problem with that is that when I borrow a warm coat, the central store will know I’m going somewhere cold; and when I want to play sexy dress-up, it will watch me borrow the wig and the lacy panties. It’s not illegal to wear a wig and lingerie, but you may not want other people to know about it. Heck, maybe you don’t want anyone to know that you like yourself a pair of bellbottomed velvet corduroy pants. Would I enjoy my lack of privacy just because nobody else has any either?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">That’s a lot of verbiage about something as obvious and necessary as clothes. But I’m merely sounding a friendly note of caution. The thing about closets is, you have to make sure that when you’re cleaning them, other people aren’t cleaning up, and that you aren’t being cleaned out.</span></span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36836195.post-62898077500854765672016-12-10T09:48:00.002+05:302016-12-10T09:51:13.970+05:30Demonetisation PTSD<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>I dimly remember the days when my money was mine.</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">I have trouble flying—hate it, avoid it. But if your country is going through demonetisation hell, and you’re among the privileged, it’s your duty to not clog up ATM lines unnecessarily. It’s your duty not to stress small businesses by buying on credit (except cigarettes, because, hello). It’s your duty to damn well get on a plane and visit family in a foreign country that feels like home in that there, too, your money is useless.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">It’s been 16 years since I was last in Hong Kong, and I’d forgotten how awesome it is. Mountains and sea! Public transport! Dumplings, beef, sesame oil! Gorgeous skyline! Roadworks with no dust or rubble! (This is how you know you’re from Delhi.) But what really blew my mind was the overwhelming banality of cash.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Strike me dead if I’m making this up: Everywhere I looked, people were just whipping money out of their pockets and spending it, as if they had some kind of reliable supply. They behaved as if their government couldn’t possibly say, “We take back the promise printed on the money, it’s all junk except for petrol stati—hospi—seeds for farmers, until November 24—29—December 31—oops, November 24, okay just watch this space and see if you can keep up, because we can’t, terrorism national interest surgical strike masterstroke.” Seeing cash brought up chaotic, disjointed memories of a previous life, and made me anxious and sweaty.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">The Peak and harbour are beautiful, but the most spellbinding thing is that when Hong Kongers say, “I’m going to the bank/ATM, back in five”, they mean five minutes, not hours. They just leave home, without even packing water, biscuits, books and a tent. My sister told me that she enters her bank without queuing, wrestling an armed guard, and shouting at the manager while waving a fake wedding invitation card. She said to please not let my mouth hang open like that. Most amazingly, you can withdraw as much of your own money as you like. I’m told the government and reserve bank don’t impose an arbitrary, changeable withdrawal cap based on their favourite sun sign that day. People’s blithe, free access to their own money brought tears to my eyes, and gave me restless dreams.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Back in Delhi after these confusing few days, the PM was crying and laughing, not in a good way. He conducted a poll on public sentiment that made the public laugh and cry, also not in a good way. The Finance minister said both that a) demonetisation is going brilliantly, and b) it’s the Opposition’s fault. The changing rules no longer matter, because nobody can keep them straight, and discretion has taken over. Nobody can find the RBI governor, though my cousin spotted a haunted-looking man bearing an uncanny resemblance to him, dressed as wait staff in a restaurant. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Trauma shrinks expectations. I pack my water, biscuits, books and tent, and take my place in the queues. Every time I get close, cash runs out. But deserted shops, the unnatural abundance of parking spots, my dry bank, the empty ATMs—this entire gigantic shitstorm is now more real and easier to process than Hong Kong’s rash trust in stability.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">It’s important, when dealing with trauma, to come to terms with what happened to you, instead of repressing it. To relax, creep under the bed next to where everyone now keeps legal currency, take out your plastic, and stroke it by the light of your smartphone while gibbering openly.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Meanwhile, I now owe the cigarette guy and the kathi rolls guy. But I’m sure that, as patriots, they don’t care, and ticked ‘Brilliant’ on the PM’s poll.</span></span></div>
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Mitali Saranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410342332262362493noreply@blogger.com0