10 mind blowing facts about Hyderabad traffic

1. High beam is a must (and I too comply to this restriction). I sometimes feel that most drivers do not know that there is a low beam.
2. Not just cycles, motorcycles, auto rickshaws, and cars, even trucks take the wrong side. No exceptions, not even the airport expressway.
3. (Corollary to 2) It is perfectly OK for Huge trucks to make a U turn on the airport expressway
4. A bike, auto, or a truck will be parked meticulously, blocking half the road, at the every conceivable left turn.
5. Helmets are banned. A very few in the IT corridor flout the ban. My head, your headache!
6. When you honk a group of people walking on the road, nothing, just nothing, other than the honk will happen!
7. If your registration number is from another state, you can pay a one time road tax and regularize your number for life. If you commit a non fatal traffic offences with such a car, just showing the tax receipt breaks the heart of the traffic cop in such a way, that he lets you go!
8. Skipping this one, had to make a total of 10. No offence!
9. TRS stole Hyd from AP. To imprint themselves forever, the new registration number series start with TS, because you are in Telengana “State”. Not TG, or TL but TS! Rajasthan should have been RS, Maharashtra – MS, Haryana HS, Goa GS, Orissa OS, … Assam AS! See?
10. People, like phantoms, coming out of nowhere, randomly cross the roads. It is noteworthy that phantoms do not need to look at your car while crossing the road at their own pace. See number 6 which is also applicable. Zebra crossings are few, but will never be used.

PS: Every city’s traffic has a unique story. I had the privilege to drive in Calcutta for the first time ever during these Pujas. But despite the crowds, narrow streets, and the killer buses, I could see the difference.

Salvation

The largest religious congregation in recorded history starts today at the Maha Kumbh in Allahabad. As much as one tenth of the Indian population (yes!) will assemble there, to move a step closer to salvation, at the confluence of the Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati, in a stupendous spectacle that occurs once in 144 years.

Nude ashen ascetics will lead to the waters with rustic fervor. Saffron akharas of multiple sects will follow in procession. The rest of humanity will huddle behind them. At the right moment, those lucky to avoid a stampede will jump into the holy brown waters – vigorously washing off their sins – gargling, blowing, coughing, sneezing, spitting, rubbing …. Batches and batches will repeat this throughout the day – the holy water absorbing all the filth.

To serve the pilgrims, uncountable tents have been laid out by the Government on the holy banks. Drinking water is scarce, toilets barely flush, and none of the three Emergency hotlines work. Diseases run abound – it is a glory to die here after all. Only a huge epidemic will ever get reported in the media.

In this holiest place on earth, families can overcome sin even if they abandon their ageing, ill, disabled, and daughters. Everyone will go back with a lofty conscience and lots of good luck enough to cover their future transgressions.

Enough crap! To help your quest for salvation, you can smoke pot in the open. What a place!

[1][2][3][4]

Smoking – 1

I tried my first cigarette when I was 16.

Done with the secondary boards, I had changed my school to do higher secondary. We had moved to a new locality as well. New tution classes needed me to move and mingle around my home town. A new wave of friends of all flavors flooded my life. Blame the biochemistry of my age or the sudden vacuum after the gruesome boards, I felt fatally attracted towards all things forbidden.

I started taking the liberty of staying out longer in the evenings – and ardently participated in the evening congregation of guys, appropriately called thheyk ( ঠেক ) in Bengali slang. It is a daily meeting, somewhat secretive, to discuss all the new discoveries of your burgeoning adolescence. And perform some experiments. Rights to admission are reserved.

Some of my new friends were regular smokers already. And one evening, Chhotka, his pet name, offered me to try a puff. I disliked the very smell of  tobacco smoke. And I liked just two thing about the whole arrangement of smoking – the smell of gas used in the lighters, and the smell of an igniting matchstick. But I was too excited and decided to try something new.

My first attempt was that of a perfect novice: I dragged in a mouthful of smoke and just blew it away – without any inhalation whatsoever. It was greeted with giggles and even sneers from some regulars. The process left me noxious – with an awful smell in my mouth. “Why do you do this?”,  I wondered. An hour of spitting and some chewing gums later, I went home that night.

Despite my doubts about its exoticism, I fell in to his persuasion the next day, and we started the exercise early. Why persuade? The expectation was that once I too become a regular I will share back as well. The guideline was like this:

“Drag mildly into your mouth, and then into your lungs. Dilute the smoke with more air as it goes in.”

“And keep the filter dry … yesterday, you had sucked it wet”, he raised the most common problem with sharing a smoke.

I tried my best, but it went horribly wrong. The violent choking that followed left me coughing breathlessly for the next 5 minutes. The laughing pro-s agreed:  “First time you inhale, that is expected”.

But once the choking subsided, I felt my first nicotine high. Kicks from most alkaloids have similar characteristics when encountered the first time – relaxed muscles and mild dizziness. And perhaps dilated pupils. It elevates confidence and all of a sudden I felt a lot more at ease with my new friends that evening – as if  I had earned some certification.

I was feeling like an adult already.

… Continued to here  …

PS: Just my experience; I do not glorify or vilify smoking

Thrashing the Androids

This is  not about the lovely phone you are planning to buy, or for that matter, breaking it apart. As an aside, let me tell you: boring Engineering texts define thrashing as a form of resource contention, when all resources are engaged in switching from one task to another. And that is the only work that gets done. It may be possible to get Google’s famous mobile operating system into such a contentious state – but in reality I do not know the exact steps.

Fortunately our story of thrashing is more punchy and realistic. This is a story from a land of semi-robotic humanoids, called Androids for ease, ruled by a set of fully robotic humanoids. Everyone worked to survive. And like everywhere else in the known sad world, there was always so much to do and never enough time to complete any single task at ease.

By the power of the Blue Chip, every unit deserved the right to honorable manufacture, service, and disassembly, and in between: the right to be provided ample opportunity to explore its assignment, create a design, solve the problem, and then execute it like a love story in poetry. Discussing challenging questions, learning new concepts, and basking in the sheer beauty of original design was the specification. Even the dream of a plan provisioned for everything, from accessible battery recharge to heat sinks, first grade spare parts to free servicing.

But this is Ad-Hoc-Land: like routines never invoked, designs turn out to be just dreams meant to be shattered. Plans are made just because they are part of the protocol. The recharge chords are always in short supply. As such batteries are barely able to maintain their minimum charge.  Most of the available power is used up in transmitting status messages. In the absence of spare parts, wear and tear is getting aggravated by the repressive conditions. The human half is half human still. It still finds sheer joy in solving differential equations. But the poor chap’s joy is  marred by the maniac calligraphic requirement – the answer should be  correctly written in good handwriting. And to pour water over the whole circuitry, there is a probable short circuit in the local remote control, making it to spurt random messages. Even before an Android loads a module fully, it gets referred to another. And then another. And so on. Sending back a status often presents the problem of encoding a circular linked list festered with null pointers. In the near future this threatens to exterminate the human half of this race.

Already circulating rumor messages say that the full fledged robotic rulers of the system are on a secret mission. The narcissists want more of themselves. Everything else has to be eliminated: by charge starvation, damaged power points, low voltage or just doctored remote controls.

Full fledged humans may not be able to realize the pain Androids feel. Only Androids can.

NB: This article is arguably figurative, although may consumed ‘as is’ – especially by those supporting the concept of  machine psychology.

NB²: Bazinga!

Rajdhani Express

Indian Railways has come of age. The Rajdhani trains have got a good facelift: the train in which I was travelling, for instance, has been sold to the National Stock Exchange. Gone are the dirty orange and butter yellow, or dirty white striped coaches. Everything is draped in NSE colors – from the coach exterior to panels above the seats, to the common area. Even the window panes are not spared – though it is done quite nicely I would say, you may see through them from inside. I might have missed any NSE details in the toilet, though for different reasons altogether. Not that the flux of money bothers me, it is actually good sign. Had it touched more than just the coaches, I would have been happier.

But in India some things do not change after all – mostly the overall train riding experience. The experience is broadly categorized as “bad”. Although many things have changed over the years, Modern forms of bad experience have taken over more archaic ones.

Let’s start with the worst of the lot: toilets. The infrastructure has definitely improved, since you can no longer see the tracks through that dirty hole. Flushing too has become push-button. But the cleanliness of the people using it hasn’t changed at all. In the morning, I had to hike 2 coaches to find a usable toilet. And that too after being barked at by an occupant who had ‘locked’ it using the same latch that opens from outside. I don’t think this basic design flaw is listed anywhere as unsolvable.

And now over to fellow travellers. Not that I hate customized ring tones, but repeated howling of “jai ganesh jai ganesh ….” at the top volume at midnight was not exactly a heavenly experience.  Especially when you are trying hard to sleep under the dirty and probably lice filled blanket, protected by a thin supposedly newly washed sheet. The religious agony aunty, who has taken a theeka of resolving everyone’s family issues, worked till late night. She always talked like they used to make trunk calls in old films.

Talking of films: gone are the days where the past time was just a portable cassette player playing the recent chart busters. The coupe next to ours was occupied by a young couple who has been watching Hindi movies, one after another, after another … ad inf, on their notebook computer. The volumes were moderate but I kept marveling at their exclusive thoroughness and attention to detail: from the cheap jokes to the lengthy dhinchak songs. Some jokes and even songs got repeated at the lady’s request. The new world modern looking Bengali couple seemed to be a connoisseur of 90s popular Hindi movies as I recognized from one of the songs. They had not even started their dinner when the guys came to clean the plates. I am pretty sure, the I would have become eligible to write a review of The Inception had I put in so much effort.

And to add to this was something disturbing you cannot even blame. An infant of a few months kept me at the edge of my sleep, all night. The mother tried her best but without avail. Not all were bothered by this however. Surely not my good old Keralite friend who snorted off all night and was up at six sharp, he boasted later.

Smoking is banned on trains for more than decade now – although with zero compliance from the passengers. People do it at will, in the toilets. I used to encounter a faint smell of tobacco smoke every 15 minutes.  Also illegal is opening doors on a moving superfast train. A desperate young hero repeatedly sought attention of a high school girl by standing firm on the wide opened door, when the Rajdhani was cruising at may be 80 km per hour.  Indians in most cases, just love to break the law. And in other cases, as we all know, they have to break it. Either way, why not love what you are doing!

I later encountered the door guy, hale and happy, but thought he might be doing the door stunt for a reason. He had a sphere of body odor around him: anyone falling inside is liable to lose consciousness. Fortunately I encountered just the Event Horizon.

I am pretty sure the Railways (yes, my tax money) pays a lot more to the contractor than what shows. The cheaply paid train staff provides you service of the same value they earn. This varied from relatively minor mischiefs like not giving you a newspaper if you do not ask for it, to minor mistakes like not checking is the flask contents are still hot, to utter felonies like presenting a non-vegetarian meal to a vegetarian. The poor guy would have sold back the remaining newspapers back to a vendor, or kabari. Or he was just being lazy with the flask. Or he was suffering the genuine mistake of another staff member in the veg-non-veg goof up. They also perform a customary ‘begging for tips’ exercise once your ride is about to get over.

Our Rajdhani was heavily delayed by widespread dense fog over Northern India. And of course by the delay in the incoming train. The outsourced train staff did not have allowance for provisions, the Rajdhani stops for a few minutes at any intermediate station, and no vendors are allowed on the Rajdhani. And all that simply meant that passengers had to skip a meal. There were no options left.

A perfect finish.

NB: Although truth is the main course here, some sauces and spices are fictional.

Chinkileaks

Leaks of America’s secret cables have swayed the world’s media. Less known are these leaks from the Chinese embassy in New Delhi.

Greetings to the Politburo!

Let us start with a good news. Indians call us Chinki-s. And so do they call the inhabitants of the Chinese territory they claim as their “North-East”. It seems that they secretly ‘know’ it is ours!

Long back when China was illiterate, we have tamed our huge population, with our Chairman’s favorite – bullets. Now that illiteracy in China is extinct, we can do that with our strictly controlled media and internet.
Its a lot different here in India. Although only a third of India’s population is still illiterate officially, we have a fair hunch that it is more widespread, given the cheap gimmicks that Indian politicians perform to get support – a concept they call Democracy. People are controlled mainly by false promises –  one of the basic foundations of India’s Democracy. Media is free from Government’s control, but is largely controlled by money to iterate between the zillion scams unfolding everyday. Nothing is followed up till the end. Indians profoundly believe that after all, its the journey that matters, not the destination.

As you will be knowing, the Indian state claims to be non religious – the government’s activities are not determined by religion (as opposed to China’s irreligious – the Communist party is officially so), there is not a single politician here who has the ‘gun mein dum’ (yep, sounds like Mandarin, but means courage locally) to claim himself as an atheist – not even the mainstream communists. Religion and religious favoritism form the core of India’s politics. And to add to this confusion, there are multiple sections within the prominent religion, sworn foes to one another, always fighting over “Chairman knows what”! In the stead of leaders leading the people, Indians have a bunch of jerks fanning their most immature sentiments. Leaders leading them where? Good for us: nowhere!

There is one metric in which China will love to lose the first spot to India. In the next fifteen years, India will be the most populous country in the world. Some fools here – even those without turbans, think it is a great feat. While we managed to strictly imposed our binding one-child policy, India’s two-child policy is non binding. Even their prominent political leaders flaunt ten children. And they will be completing this so called feat with an interesting demographical statistic. The capital and the adjoining north-western states already  well known for their low sex ratio – caused by rampant sex-selective foeticide and infanticide. People in these areas see their newborn children as a means to earn money –  by a proudly held custom called Dowry. The girl’s side pays the boy’s side a huge sum of unaccounted money for no bloody reason at all! By the way, this custom is termed illegal from the very inception of the Indian state. But like everything bad, it is passe as custom. We are still utterly confused about how such lawlessness can thrive so perfectly.

Back in China, we groom bright children to have good education and end up in the Communist Party’s important posts. And so we have Engineers and scientists among our ministers and important state officials. In India, a typical politician would be an illiterate convict who would be a blood relation to someone else already in the government. Your good characteristics do not determine your political destiny. In fact, it may work as a disadvantage. With personalities towering over ideologies, India aptly deserves a monarchy.

In China’s communism, government workers have learned (arguably the hard way 🙂 ) to be hard working. Indian people vie for Government posts to get a reprieve from working. The so called right to strike have made our communist namesakes here our unofficial  agents. In the name of seeking worker rights, they have managed to make India utterly unproductive.  State run hospitals, banks, and manufacturing units are known for their profound inefficiency. The rich, powerful and informed keep away from them.

India also provides protection to the so called backward communities, and reserves a certain portions of government jobs for these people. In the India social chemistry, this translates to communities competing with each other for being recognized as backward!

All of India’s sporting feats are out of individual brilliance. The role of the State being a big zero. Had they been Chinese we would have groomed  them  to world champions. Almost all funds meant for development of sports, and even international sporting events are looted openly. Something which would have won the looter a firing squad in China.

Let alone Beijing and Shanghai, India’s huge cities do not compare even close to our second grade ones. Most cities are heaps of filth, wrapped with bumpy roads, covered with slums, with the unruly traffic signals, bugged with beggar syndicates.

Our dear friends on the Western frontiers are continuously providing support to destabilize India. But it seems Indians do not need this spoon feeding, they are already helping themselves.

And last of all, things here are not improving soon – Indians are not interested in changing anything.

Being vegan

Why do I eat vegetarian?

 

Because I cannot even imagine the vagaries of a slaughter. Non-vegetarianism makes you the reason for a murder. Don’t the desperate cries of the unfortunate animal tender your heart? It has to wait for its death – most probably watch its friends and relatives murdered openly before its own eyes. It is not just blood, but motion which makes life so real in animals. Shells and clams feel the same pain as goats and chicken.

 

Scientifically, plants have life as well. Life is after all just a series of chemical reactions. But do all living beings  have feelings?  Movement seems to make a point – but not always: Mimosa pudica moves – so do Sunflowers. I would say a fear of death does make a valid point about rights for animals. The crave to live – the fight for survival is seen most openly in animals. Well, plants do need an honorable mention – they too fight for water, nutrients, and sunlight – and devoid of them, die. After all you have to jump, shout and say that you don’t want to die. Remember, germs (some of whom are taxonomically Animalia) are exceptions – firstly, they don’t shout and then we need to kill them to remain alive ourselves – I am not eating them after all.

 

Eggs don’t shout, but are after all living cells – each a possibility of a new animal life. So what if  seeds in fruits are eggs  for plants –  fruits do not have the stench of eggs!

 

It is strange that my set of teeth has four canines. Evolution too is oblivious of animal rights. Wait, canines come good in eating sugarcane!

 

Lets make this rule: living beings which shout have rights. Correction, life which moves feels pain. More correctly, life which fear death are to be shunned. Well not all of them. And some others outside this. To  refine the rule still further – I will hand pick living beings which will be on my palate, and I don’t have a damn logical explanation for that. Come on, it is for me to decide what I eat!

 

I am logically starved. I will logically starve.

Do not Call

We all know that laws in India are farce, and meant to be there for the sake of it, not to be followed. Compliance is a bare naught and you just need money to buy your immunity from law.

The great visionary lawmakers managed to create the farce placeholder rules for just every damn thing. Say for instance, the majority of the text messages you receive on your phone (unless you are hotly in love), or the majority of the calls you receive on your phone are technically illegal allowance. All these ask for money – in some way or the other.

One fine morning …

“Hello Sir, this is Imran from Jumpstart Consultants”

      “And?”

“Sir do you recall we met about six months back at Spice mall, where I discussed with you a really great ULIP?”

      Oh ya I do recall that trauma. But I recall I’d prayed you not to try contacting me again. I said: “But last time you failed to sell it. Why again?”

Laughs. “Sir, we at Jumpstart would like to maintain a good relationship with our former clients. And have come up with an unique plan to …”

      … loot me …

“… manage all our clients’ assets. Sir we already have all details about your previous policy, and would provide you free consultancy on this, like when to exit, which one to buy, which riders to pick …”

      … and how to swindle all my money …

“… what are the risks involved – all these from our experts”

      “But why are you doing this?”

“Because we would like to maintain a great relationship with our clients”

       “Look dude! I am not taking it what you do it as a past time, like social service, and moreover, I am yet to be your client – I dont recall you ever selling anything to me”

“Your  ULIP was procured  through us. I told you sir!”

        The backend processing unit of the Insurance company or the agent must have sold out my policy number. Last time I met this guy he showed me an absurd set of terms where you get an absurd cover for everything upto a terrorist strike on an aeroplane. Everything  was still fine, till the guy wanted to provide a proof for this unbelievable statement the next day. He forwarded a mail containing a loose discussion of these terms among the senior staff of his organization. And I asked him not to call again. This time too I will say:”Could you please not call me again?”

“Sir, give us an opportunity to serve you”

        I hang up.

One of my biggest mistakes ever was to do some research about personal loans. And even after three years, I get a call on a fresh Monday morning, like this:

“Sir, do you need a personal loan?”

“No, by the way … who asked you to call … (she hangs up) … me?

Battered so many times, at last, I decided to hit back.

Another day:

“Sir, our bank is giving you a personal loan?”

            “Kitna kilo chahiye?”

“What? Sir?”

           “…  Mutton abhi mil jayega. Pork aur beef thoda delay hoga. Abhi kaata hai. Fleecing chal raha hai.”

“What the …?” (hangs up)

Wrong numbers also carry a similar junk payload – I am usually gentle to these guys – with one exception, a call which followed a pushy crank call:

“Hello? Mohit?”

I swore silently and answered: “Yes?”

“… abhi tak samaan nahi pahucha yaar”

       “Aare mere ko bachao !!”

“kya!? Kahaan how tum?”

 With a trembling voice I said:  “main Islamabad mein!”

“… kya … ?? kayse ?”

        “Mujhe Taliban ne utha liya … “

Somehow the guy did not even think this can be prank:

“Kya bol rahe ho?”

         “1 karor maang rahe hain”

“Rupaye!!?? Ransom?”

         “aare nahin! rupaye nahin!”

“fir?”

         “Rasgulle!”

“kya bol rahe ho?”

          “Tumhari baap ki shaadi hai na?”

“what are you saying Mohit?”

The guy was a tough nut – I continued:

          “.. actually your father flew in like the Superman to save me”

(guy hangs up…)

There were extensively publicized reports when the Do not Call (DNC) list implementation was announced by the Telecom Department. But I never came across any improvement to this menace. Try http://www.donotdisturb.in/ to register with various organizations.

Being Indian…

I once took pride in my nationality. Over time, I realized with my conscience that I was indeed, taught to do so. My conscience – my sense of right or wrong, the rational right or wrong, not the solemn one!

Nationality, in the broad sense, is a political instrument to create more positions of power. We are taught to love our nations, and follow its political intelligentsia, blindly. It is a mass hysteria, created to imbibe partisan ideas, inculcate hatred which teaches people of the same ethnicity, background, and above all language to live separately, and so unfortunately, proudly so. I have deliberately missed religion from the previous list, not exactly because I am an atheist, but because religion could not make it to this list. Independence struggles are written down in gold, by the first rulers of the new nation – the same struggle which termed them as terrorists a few years back, by the bygone rulers. Ahoy! a new nation got created: we have a few more bastards legibly eating our resources!

Independence, albeit won sixty years back seems lost, to the color of her skin, the language he speaks, the money I have, the caste you belong to, and above all our religions. Don’t misunderstand independence – after all its India’s independence, from the ruthless British, not yours, fool.

And for whom? The story of independent India is after all written by our political muscles. India would not have been any worse as a dominion of Britain. We proudly forget that all the infrastructure, from railways, roads, hill stations, museums, postal system, educational institutions, judicial system, to the Central Secretariat and Parliament were in fact built up by the British. We would have been no better than Somalian pirates without a British occupation. Numerous little kingdoms would have fluttered around … passing down realms of power down blood lines. Well, quite similar to what happens today!

Way back in history, some great men made socialism a way to equality in society, and some capitalists denounced it. We somehow caught the buzzword. But with our mighty traditions we are worse of both worlds. The range of money which is spent by a citizen over a day, varies to extents which are would put even the biggest capitalists to shame, or the poorest of failed states to relax. But unlike capitalism nothing seems to work here: there are red tapes everywhere, we picked up the easy (and worse) part of socialism.

With out basic rights getting dictates by hegemony, casteism and intolerance, elections being fought by narrow minded regional mongrels just after a quick buck, and even the head of state chosen carefully to be dumb….

… sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic …..

… any one ?

The Affair

I am married for about three years now … And my wife often says, I have transformed over the last year.

I have loved twice, may be thrice in my life – but never so deeply, so madly. For her, I have learned to sing. Watched videos I’ve never seen before ! Performed caricatures which even my wife has missed. I have cut down on my sleep, worked late at night, and again woken up early. Just for her. To steal just one more sweet moment with her.

People have asked me: Is it worth it?

My daughter, Mehuli just turned a year.

Unlike motherhood, which is felt in flesh & blood (my wife once told me) from the moment one comes to expect, fatherhood (I know) grows up: softly, from the awe of that little pink thing, to the joy in seeing her smile at me, to the wonder in seeing her walk, the charm of hearing her call, to the love I feel today.