Day 347 - Wanted - Plumbers!

Its leaking! And its leaking everywhere!

Overseas, in the country, in the city and even in my house, I got an errant flush rectified before I moved in!  Mumbai experienced rains at strange times of the year this time.  Maybe a result of a leaking tap somewhere up there, if not due to the detrimental effects of global warming as discussed in my last post.

Nationwide, leakage of a completely different type has been in the news off late.  The Niira Radia Tapes leak has kept everyone in the country interested; and some even amused.  The tapes reveal Ms. Radia spinning her corporate / political lobbyist web over all top dogs of Indian politics, business and even the fourth estate.  Conversations with Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi are especially very explicit and expose the connivance of the media in the unholy nexus of business, politics, babudom and crime.  As a young boy, I used to admire Prannoy Roy from the time of his 'The World This Week' days, as a pioneer in news coverage.  Further on, his election news coverage was also path breaking.  Naturally, I carried forward the same respect to his media house, NDTV, for all these years.  Barkha Dutt and her 'error of judgement' has eroded that respect.  Not only for NDTV, but for all of Indian media.  Interestingly I saw Peepli (Live) today, in which Aamir Khan Productions has given a lot of credits to NDTV, strangely, in a film which mocks the media and its greed for the 'next big thing'.  It will take me a long time to regain confidence in the media and its independence.  As of now, I just can't get the image of them as the power broker and agent out of my mind.  There is no question of whether what Barkha Dutt / Vir Sanghvi have done is right or wrong.  It IS wrong.

In other parts of the world, another big time leakage is making big news.  Wikileaks and Julian Assange have taken the world, especially the cyberworld by storm.  The release of classified information, exposing the big boys of all kinds of wrong-doing, has actually triggered a cyber war.  The United States of America has been at the receiving end of most of the classified cables which have been released by Wikileaks.  Interestingly, it transformed itself into a 'Ku Klux Klan' type of propaganda machinery, with Ms. Clinton and Ms. Palin coming out strongly and denouncing Assange and Wikileaks.  US based servers have off-loaded the website; payment mechanisms to the website have been stopped and the hence now the website itself is off the web. Assange himself has been arrested in UK on flimsy charges of rape (actually having consensual sex without condoms!). A group of Assange admiring hackers have taken on the might of US and started retaliating by hacking into many sites which supported US action.

 The question that I beg to ask is: What is right and what is wrong in this whole series of events?  Is Assange the villain or the hero?  Is he the symbol of the right to freedom of speech or a crook who has accumulated classified information to be used against countries?  I am in no doubt that the original thieves of these classified information would have been Americans themselves and are on the wrong side of the law.  Is Wikileaks also on the wrong side of law by buying the information (from the capitalist thieves of a capitalist country) putting it in front of the world?  Maybe yes, but a whole lot of people out there obviously do not feel the same way and consider Assange to be a crusader.  In the same vein, is Niira Radia wrong in what she has been doing?  Maybe not, she is just doing her job for which she is paid.  The true criminals are the people who entertain her. 

I have to however say, that after hearing the transcripts of the Radia tapes, Ratan Tata definitely comes across as someone who is not comfortable with this lobbying business.  There is nothing in the tapes to suggest that he was party to anything unethical.  He can only be accused of one thing, which is, hiring Niira Radia in the first place. 

Thank heavens for that!  My goodwill for the House of TATAs remains intact, Rajeev Chandrasekhar notwithstanding.  But then that is another chapter of the same story.

Take care!

Day 170 - Bengaluru Beckons

This past week was spent preparing for the Bengaluru visit and then travelling to the city of gardens.  The purpose of the visit to Bengaluru was to attend a cousin's (Shivakumar) wedding.

It was great fun because we went as a group to Bengaluru after assembling in Mumbai as the base.  My parents, brother and sister-in-law arrived just before we departed to Bengaluru on Saturday.  We were also joined by other cousins and their families.  The flight from Mumbai to Bengaluru was pretty much uneventful, except for the pranks of both my little ones at the airport. When we arrived in Bengaluru, the weather was heavenly.  It was cool and pleasant unlike Mumbai's humidity. It was also raining sporadically.  The drive to the city from the airport was full of greenery.  Incidentally, I met Adwait at the Bengaluru airport and he looked fresh and sporty.  Looks like he is enjoying his time at JPMC.

Now, Bengaluru is a city where I have spent close to 2 years of my life.  It is also special, as Priya doesn't forget to remind me, because we started our married life in this city.  Hence, there are a lot of memories attached to the city.  The fact, however, is that , this city has undergone a massive change in the six years since we left Bengaluru for Chennai.  Some of the roads and places are completely unrecognisable.

All the infrastructure projects have been completed.  Grade separators are functional at Dairy Circle, Silk Board and Jayadeva Hospital!  These were just starting to be built when I last saw these places.  Malls have sprung up everywhere.  New residential complexes which did not exist before have suddenly surfaced.  Bengaluru, being a city of bungalows, looks strange with these new age skyscrapers.

I also like the city because of its meticulous cleanliness.  Generally, I have found the southern cities to be more cleaner compared to the north.  It would, of course, be a joke to even compare Mumbai with Bengaluru or Chennai on this aspect.  The other thing that I liked about Bengaluru, and which is completely absent in Mumbai, is the attention to details in the construction of roadways.  You see sign-boards at each junction / traffic signal, clearly telling you the directions to various places.  The roads, dividers, etc. are properly painted / adorned with reflective material.  You see attention to detail everywhere.

On the flip side, like in all other cities in India, the traffic has exploded.  The number of private cars on the roads must have increased 5 folds in the last 6 years!  And given Bengaluru's narrow roads, this causes endless traffic jams.  Again, not as bad as Mumbai, but still a lot worse than it was 6 years ago.  The other pathetic aspect of the city, and for that matter any other city in the south, is the complete absence of a service culture.  You go to any shop, restaurant, hotels, cinema halls, etc. etc. and the people there will treat you like dirt and as if they are doing you a favour by allowing you to be there.  Drives me nuts all the time, as I myself work in the service industry and expect better standards.

The trip, otherwise, was very enjoyable.  I met up with some relatives after a long time, and some for the first time!  By the time we started for Mumbai on the Wednesday, rains had hit Mumbai too. Various rumours about air traffic being diverted from Mumbai due to bad weather were floating around.  However, we landed in Mumbai with only a 30 minute delay to normal weather.

I am at home for one more week and thus, look forward to the rains in Mumbai. 

Take care.