els were given too much leverage, ideally their property should have been taken by the government. Now some of these hereditary suckers are making easy money by converting their palaces into hotels.
There are also some countries masquerading as Democracy who have monarchy as head (albeit titular in some cases). One wonders when will
I came to know through the Net the other day that Agatha Sangma is elected to Lok Sabha by a huge margi
n. About a decade back I used to be staying in Karol Bagh apart from taking up job and dropping it as also occasionally showing my face at JNU Campus (very rarely attending classes) I was also involved in taking classes in god knows what all subjects in god knows what all places on weekends. Those days I was taking Indian Constitution for students preparing for Law in a place nearby. This kid was enrolled (I recall her since she was daughter of Mr. Sangma the former Speaker of Lok Sabha. Teaching Constitution to daughter of Speaker of Parliament of largest democracy….geeeez I have done that too. Sometimes it boggles me the kind of things I end up doing!!. Thankfully I have mellowed a lot recently), she I vaguely remember was one of those always smiling types (I guess mostly with a girl whose mother was a senior bureaucrat with
Errata in the earlier blog: The play i saw was Mudrarakshasa and not Mrichkatikam, the play was about Mauryans and Chanakya. Brilliantly done.
it the mission to Mars has landed. Years later I had the fortune to be at Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) as part of a Project for few months. It was a great experience; we did tests in supersonic tunnels with prototype of PSLV-d2. It was also the year the PSLV mission failed (1993), I was lucky to witness the post mortem analysis of the failed mission. It was quite interesting. It was great to know that the recent PSLV-c9 put ten satellites into the orbit recently, it is a stupendous feat by ISRO (i guess after GSLV).
Vijay Tendulkar who expired few days back was an amazing man. I came to know about him only in 1997-
1998, my awareness of theater was quite limited till then. In 1994 I recall I went for a play as part of temple festival, since the whole day’s program was sponsored by the family I decided to go. The play was not up to the mark- with painfully exaggerated dialogues and some actors missing the cue, in small towns of kerala people react quite viciously to substandard affair. They consider it as personal insult, so they started hooting and the play was abruptly stopped and was replaced by some song, in the meantime the younger crowd started to search some of us youngsters to teach a lesson and I recall hiding in darkness for an hour or so and running full speed home !!!. With this background I had very low opinion about theatre, and so mostly gave not much importance to plays. While I was in 
o introduce few people whom I knew those days to theatre with not much success!!; I recall being very upset if good plays did not have much audience or the phone rang!!.
It was during these days that I came to know about Vijay Tendulkar, infact there was festival of Tendulkar play. I was blown over by Ghasiram kotwal, Sakharam binder (I was initially reluctant to go for these plays- not impressed by the title and having absolutely no idea about Tendulkar!!!), Kamala, Khamosh Adalat Jari hai and so on. All these plays I have watched many times performed by different troupes (even the original Marathi version on a tour in Pune!!) and so was able to appreciate the nuances. Tendulkar was raw, he touched reality the way that we understand subtleties of life often missed in the stampede and made us think. His understanding of life was deeper particularly the issues related to sexuality (compare this with on your face westernized market driven clichéd approach these days). His plays left some very deep impact on my thinking. Bloggers also will be aware that he scripted movies like Ardh Satya, Manthan and so on.
Ps. This brochure of Tendulkar play I saw in 2001 I found in a book the other day, probably used as a bookmark!!. Incidentally I had collected some 100 odd brochures of the plays I liked during those days unfortunately many I lost as my room got flooded in rain and cartons got destroyed in 1999.
ng was all there we just had to jump from the window (shouting ye hath muche dhedhe takur!) or further break the house with all ferocity, many houses had some items left which were used as props!!. The masterpiece though was ‘slow motion’ fight and chase scenes, the fight with slow reactions- these few minutes ‘action’ was planned and choreographed with lot of care, the ‘dying scene’ with exaggerated moves were enacted amazingly by some of the kids. I recall one kid who could brilliantly do the ‘slow motion’ dying-with-bullet-in-his-body complete with labored dialogue ending with fixed open eyes and holding his breath!!. (There are some wonderful things posted in YouTube and this blogger has spent hours going through it. Some of the creations are brilliant. Slow motion fights which we enacted could easily have found many viewers, it was one the kind. Some memories of growing up!!!). When I look at TV screens showing dead people in bomb blast in Jaipur a thought did not escape my mind: Was that man in his thirties lying on the trolley gasping for breath the same kid who enacted those incredible scenes of dying?. Terrible passing thought, it is sickening.
Doctor and Human right activist was arrested for being a sympathizer of Naxalites in Chattisgarh State. His petition was rejected even by the Supreme Court. For common people Judiciary epitomizes rightness therefore justice. Supreme Court is the highest court in the country. But the State of affairs within judiciary is being questioned many a times. There has been serious allegation of corruption as also insensitivity and bias towards elitist policies. The recent petition of eminent people around the world and within the country in support of Binayak Sen has put a serious question mark on judicial system in the country as also the way in which Naxals are dealt by the Centre.
Jaipur is a 
city dear to me I have spend many of my formative years in here. It is one of the peaceful cities in the country. All the places where bomb blasts happened are so very familiar…badi chaupad, choti chaupad, chandpawl…it is disturbing. The walled city of
PS. Condolences to thousands of people dead in natural calamities in China and Burma
I have been to Amritsar before it takes almost 8-9 hours from Delhi in train. The route is quite pleasant with scenes of fertile land and boisterous people in stations. Traveling in train is always great fun provided you have the reservation and climate is agreeable, this March I was passing through MP and AP and the compartment had become a furnace something you associate with months of April and May, the dreaded Indian summer. Traveling in train though always is an experience, these interesting lines by Bill Aitken (in ‘Travels by a Lesser Line’) I came across sometime back that I found very funny:
My love for the train no doubt stems from an infantile urge to thrash phallic steel stallions into tunneled yonis as the earth heaves in Hemmingway approval. Frankly, while I have great regard for both Freud and Hemmingway, I fear they overrate the size of my piston. In short my love for panting monsters falls far short of obsession. The railway is the ground of one’s journeying but my joy in motion is by no means restricted to the gentle sway of one’s carriage. The train is but one convenient vehicle on the voyage to unravel life’s meaning or in this instance the geographical quest of unlimited access. The bauls, I am told, ride the trains of West Bengal and sing of life as a train journey. I think it was Jung who interpreted the station master as guru, while my own guru interprets the presence of railway guard in dreams as ‘God’. I ride railways because they give pleasure and good value, especially in India.
My co-passenger was an elderly Sardarji (Sikh for uninitiated), who was coming all the way from Mumbai. His hotel business is suffering because of lack of parking space he says. Now this is something I never thought about before! At lunch time he opened his bag and invited me to share “aoji roti khao”, this is typical of the place here. The sharing of food is considered most natural of acts (as mentioned earlier this has its roots in Langar or community eating). Other places the co-passengers would enquire whether you not having food “aap khana nahi kha rahe hai?” (You not having food?) or the most commonly asked “khana khyenge?” (like to have food?), this just a formality. The sikh gentleman though had more than formal intentions he kept insisting for few minutes and also added that he had enough food for two. Almost a decade back I had shared Kakhras with Gujaratis (when they travel they really travel!!) but things has changed drastically in last few years, sharing food now is inviting trouble -many incidents of laced intoxicants and stealing has been reported, one has to be vigilant. These incidents don’t affect me though since I travel very light and I don’t really have any valuable further I avoid eating much while traveling restricting to fruits or something very light.
Sharing food is something I associate with since my childhood. In middle class families when something special is cooked they tend to pass it to the neighbors (aaj hamare ghar meh ye khas bana hai !), many times we had sardarjis as neighbors that is how I first tasted Kadi!. Another tradition is that the utensil is never returned empty, it is considered very wrong. So if nothing else a cup of sugar will do! As I moved into richer societies these were replaced by weekend parties and so on, somewhere the old world charm of sharing special delicacy made with lot of care by not very rich family, got lost in the Westernized surroundings. Later as I got on with my life in places like Delhi I found that interacting with neighbors can really get into trouble, particularly when it is a family, your well meaning intentions can backfire seriously. It is better to restrict interactions; I guess that is how life works in big cities.
Since Amritsar is a border city, and out of the way from the Jammu-Delhi main route most trains terminate at this station. I took a room in a decent looking hotel nearby, the cause of initial concern was door sized sliding ventilator in the toilet!!. Dinner at the dabha was quite tasty there though was some skirmish as one fellow insisted on drinking liquor. The pious looking elderly Sardarji who probably ran the place had no words of piety, he told him in no mean terms that if he tried both his legs will be broken (dono tange tod doonga).
Amritsar is a city with long history, the narrow crisscrossing alleys, old shops and houses is like stepping into different era, it remi
nded me of chandni chowk (in Delhi) also a bit of Varanasi in certain places in its chaos. After paying my obeisance at Harmandir Sahibji (Golden Temple- I spend few hours here more about it sometime later) I walked around the city, it was a very agreeable sunny day. Ideally curd should be avoided in the morning that too balmy early spring but I gave caution a go and settled for one huge glass of lassi for breakfast and flipped through Punjab Kesari Newspaper (hindi) that was kept on the table. The main news included bomb blast in Lahore, which probably was around 20-30Kms from where I was located; the shopkeeper who had a cheerful demeanor knotted his brows to express some concern.
The entrance to the place looked innocuous for the most heinous acts committed by the colonial British. Jallianwala Bagh massacre i
s one the defining moment of India’s freedom struggle. The year was 1919, date April 13, New Year day-Bisakhi, British Indian Army commanded by Gen. Dyer opened fire on thousands of unarmed people who had gathered here to protest against the arrest of Satya Pal and Saifudin Kitchlew, two popular leaders of the region. Since this Park had very narrow entrance, foot soldiers were used. As the park was surrounded by buildings, with no exit, people desperately tried to climb the walls of the park. Many jumped into a well inside the compound to escape from the bullets. A plaque in the monument says that 120 bodies were taken out of the well. Official figures put the dead at around 400, hundreds were maimed. If bloggers have seen Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi they will recall this poignant scene.
I had my lunch at Bharawan da Dabha, it is quite a popular place for vegetarian food (ask for Rotis without butter, people in here are seriously into ghee). I liked the food in particular the black daal (lentil). Amritsari Machchi (fish fry) is pretty famous in this region, the frying is done in two stages ending with a pinch of tangy salt with twist of lemon. An ability to identify more than ten varieties of fish in its taste and texture, as also having tried fish delicacies from different part of the country, Amritsari Machchi somehow did not impress me much.
With food grain crisis around the world getting worse it is going to be some real tough time for huge number of people. So lots of people will have to skip their meals (the price of a Kg of rice has increased almost 7Rs in last one year, it is now 20Rs kg, this is the case of most food items), though situation in India has not gone out of hand as in some cities around the world where there have been reports of ‘food riots’. The reason for this crisis seems to be compounding factors of reduction of land used for agriculture as well as impetus on cash crops (like the recent biofuel in many parts of the world), global warming leading to unpredictable climate, silting due to overuse of pesticide, population increase, dwindling employment opportunities and so on. Some in West are also blaming India and China for these crises, since more people in these countries now have purchasing power and so the consumption has increased. I found it very funny this argument. It is true when people’s power to purchase better their consumption and need increases, but ignoring the wasteful culture of people who have more is not for me intriguing, it reflection of time we live in (the snap taken at Madurai).
I recall when I was kid food was short in supply, and so we had to limit our intake (my Tiffin box to school mostly consisted of roti/idli &sugar. Sundays used to be Non veg). The idea of unlimited supply of food was alien. I used to be quite thin, I recall when in one of the class test the question how many ribs humans have, I put my hands inside the shirt to count!!!. It was only when I was 9-10 we had a huge change we suddenly became relatively rich and indeed the consumption increased. But wasting food was considered serious offense, even a sin. Everything in the plate has to be finished or face some serious consequence.
Later in my life I had to grapple the issue of wasting food, you couldn’t store food for too long in summer, and throwing food made me very uncomfortable. Then I came with the theory that nothing can be wasted since when you throw food it is eaten by other organisms. Few months I lived with this thinking, something was not feeling right soon I understood that the energy used is an important aspect. Right from production to transportation to cooking all that add up to serious energy consumption and so if you are wasting food then you are wasting huge energy.
I have seen that people in West consume less but waste a lot, they store so many things that they forget what they have!!. It is culture of waste. In many programs shown in TV I have had glimpse of this mindset. I guess rather than blaming India and China they should look at their own backyard.
Postscript: In West they throw pie during protest!!. In this part of the world we have heard of rotten egg or tomato, things that are waste, people here don’t throw food, that is unthinkable. Pie is edible, few months back I tasted it (too costly, nothing great). I checked the recipe and found that main ingredient include flour, butter, sugar and desired fruit like say apple (quite popular), pumpkin, strawberry and so on.
Clearly what they throw around is actually food for millions of people.
…..continuing with monkey fights in cricket, wasn’t it Plato who said some 2500 years ago that “to be merely an athlete is to be nearly a savage”. Now we know what attracts Coca Cola Pepsi!!!!!
Plato also had something for “merely a musician”. It is difficult to agree to some of what he wrote (this blogger believes that an athlete is epitome of physical perfection and determination)…anyway it is a very interesting read, most times absolutely brilliant. But then Socrates, his influence, was amazing. I guess this period of European history was the most vibrant and accommodating. It is not surprising that, centuries later Renaissance happened in this very region. I read somewhere that Plato could have been to gangetic plane (now India). Is it true? Then he might have bumped into Buddha!!!