Festival Blues..&....Happy Diwali To All..

The festival of Diwali is almost upon us. I am sure everyone would have heard of a peculiar south Indian custom of newly married guys spending the festival at their in-laws place. This is looked forward to by the newlyweds, I guess. But it makes life hell for the single people like me. Like when my mom does her pre-Diwali routine of staring at me in great sorrow and saying with a sigh “hmm!! this year too, you will be here. When will you go to your in-laws place?” Now this innocent question usually drives me to rage and foam at the mouth. But not this year for I had thought up an appropriate answer to her question. Read on to the end to see what I said. But this post is about more than just a rant on the festival blues which strike single people. And i will explain why now.

The other tradition seen during all these festivals is the crawling out of the woodwork of these peculiar pests known as the match-makers. Nowadays most everyone is a matchmaker and cannot bear to see someone being single (and happy) without volunteering to find the perfect match for him or her. You run into them in even totally unexpected places, like for example, an alumni meeting. There you are leaning against a table in a corner and looking at the worn out aunties who were once the dream girls on campus, looking at them and exulting in escaping their clutches in days gone by; say at such a moment of profound relief you run into some random junior you don’t even remember and who goes onto announce the birth of a child to him, but immediately switches track to ask why you, the esteemed senior from college is still single, while juniors like him are busy producing their own juniors. At such times if you feel a firm need to remind them why you were the most esteemed senior in college by putting a leg up their backside, you need to control that immediate urge to kick somebody/anybody.

Most men friends are like that. Whenever I get together with my much married men friends they immediately start their matchmaking spiel to me. “my wife has soo many nice suitable girls in her friends circle” starts the conversation “these girls are all rich, good-looking, intelligent, warm, friendly and humorous” and add in an undertone “everything my wife is not” before continuing to say “so what do you say? Shall I ask my wife to set up someone for you from her friends circle?” you politely demur and as its best to nip such a thing in the bud you add your reasons “thanks but no thanks, err..i have met your wife and god help me if I end up with someone like that too. You better tie a rope around my neck and push me down a well rather than do something like this to me after calling yourself my friend” so the friend looks crestfallen and then asks plaintively “at least you will tell the wife that you declined, no? I will call her in now and you tell her something to show her that I did talk with you on this subject and it was you who refused. She has been pestering me for quite some time to talk to you and if she thinks I did not ask you I will have no horse-riding, uh, again tonight” So to assuage the strained marital relationships of your friend like every good buddy should do, you greet his wife when she comes in and asks in a oh, so innocently phrased question about your marital search (as if she hadn't whispered in her husband's ears for a whole week about it),and then you lie to her that you are in the midst of a relationship with a wonderful girl (who only exists in your imagination- a part which you neglect to mention) and with a sigh the friends wife gives up her new found hobby of matchmaking and goes back to her favorite pastime of bullying her husband.

Again a variation of this occurs sometimes when your friends without any prompting from their wives try to pass on their near and dear relatives to you in the guise of matchmaking. It starts something like this “How goes your girl search? Still not found anyone good looking, hey? Have you seen my sister-in law? Don’t you remember her from when you came to our house for my baby's naming ceremony? No? Ha that day you must have seen her only in a salwar kurta dress. You should see her in a jeans and white t-shirt. Or better yet when she is wearing a half-sari. Ah!!! That is a sight for sore eyes. Heavenly she is in a half sari and even in a short skirt which she wears sometimes to college. She has such a fine, nice, rounded, ass that every time you see it you feel like reaching out and..err...if you like I will arrange for you to come see my sister-in-law, do you want to?” he asks in a sad, everything is lost to me and my life is already over, tone. The gracious thing to do then is to refuse politely and point out that if the sister-in-law is as glorious as described than there must already be a long queue behind her with even one very close relative of hers standing in front of the queue trying to gain her affections and I couldn't afford wasting time to gatecrash the queue and being rebuffed.

While I have mentioned all my men friends on trying to play matchmakers for me, I have deliberately not mentioned any of my women friends as having played matchmaker. The reason for it is pretty obvious. They have not. And no self respecting women would ever will. Ask anyone around. Any guy around. If ever they had any women friend try to set them up with any other friend of hers. The answer would be in the negative. The reason lies in their overwhelming kindness. Knowing their friends intimately, as they do, no women would wish to saddle another woman, even her best friend, on a helpless, innocent male friend. They are actually doing us a good turn by not indulging in matchmaking because they know both sides intimately and out of pity for the guy they let him enjoy his carefree bachelor life a little more time. Plus as the great Tolkien says in LOTR, women are like dragons, they love to keep their riches to themselves and not share it around, even if they have no particular use for those riches. Actually Tolkien doesn’t say that about women, he only says it about dragons. But would I call my women friends selfish? (and hope to escape unscathed?). So it’s better to blame it off on someone dead like Tolkien, who cannot be got at that easily...

And finally we come to the relatives. These are a peculiar species who hang around places like wedding halls trying to smell out who is married and who is still single to practice their matchmaking skills on. After having conducted one or two marriages in their own immediate families they believe they have become experts in making matches. And to prove it they are ever vigilant in smoking out unmarried people and outing them in front of everyone assembled at the wedding. However much you try to escape their eagle eyes, sometime over the course of the wedding they will end up spotting you and hail you over in a booming voice which can be heard all over the wedding hall, waking up even the groom sitting on the dais day-dreaming on his upcoming activities. To prevent any public damage to image, you hurry over to where they are seated amidst a group of their cronies from the village and then the uncle would start of like this “what happened to your marriage?” “We are still looking” you reply half-insolently hoping to get off with that, but the uncle has other ideas. He will go on to say “still looking uh? How long? I know one fine girl in our village, very good worker. She will get up at 5 in the morning, wash half a dozen buffaloes, milk them, put coffee for everyone and then go on to cook food for twenty people at a time – all before noon. And without taking any break. Very hard Worker. Always busy, always cleaning the house. Always cooking something. Very, very hard worker. Shall I fix her up for you?” You are not impressed by the offer but mention something in an undertone like “looking for an educated” but that’s all you are allowed to say before the uncle rudely interrupts in his loudspeaker voice to shout at half the hall “educated? What are you going to do with education? As long as she sleeps beside you and gives you children what more you want? Education it seems, education. Hmmph. These modern boys. You go. I will talk to your father”. Shaken beyond endurance you disappear from there in an instant and wonder about the uncle’s wife who must have been selected only on the basis of lying beside him as he recommends to everyone else.

If uncles are like that, the aunties take on a different track. Most of these idle aunties go around visiting assorted god-men, astrologers and people like that and after mugging up half a dozen trashy astrology magazines; they end up thinking they are specialists in horoscope matching’s. They sidle up to you and suddenly throw questions at you which you cannot understand the reason for “what time were you born?” if out of politeness, you respond candidly “morning time” they are still not satisfied with the reply but impatiently go on interrogating “arre baba, time? time and day? Tell me. So I can check if you were born on a Rahu Kalam or a Yama Kandam” As you stare at them wondering if they are joking they go on to ask “what is your date of birth? Nakshatram? Raasi? Your birth star? There is one girl among my relatives who has remained unmarried for a long time, I think we can fix you up with her. I say, do you know if your mother has any copies of your horoscope with her now?” and the only thing to do to duck such rapid fire questions is to point the way up to the parents and escape.

And finally we come to the greatest match maker of them all- time. We go around with the hope that when the right time arrives the perfect match would drop right into the lap provided by that ultimate matchmaker. And oh, if you are wondering, what I told my mother off this year it was “mom, I have half a dozen girlfriends who are waiting for me to come celebrate Diwali at their house. Shall I go?” and that shut her up. So who wants me to come to their place this year, uh, who, who,? Just kidding…

And Wishing A HAPPY DIWALI TO ALL of you….single or married..have fun.

Book Review - The Bankster by Ravi Subramanian

Book Review : The Bankster – Sponsored by BlogAdda

Author – Ravi Subramanian

Publisher – Rupa Publications, 2012.

Price – INR 250/-

ISBN – 978-81-291-2048-9

The Bankster, from the bestselling author of The Incredible Banker, or so goes the Blurb below the title. Actually, this is the first book I have read of the author Ravi Subramanian, I having missed out on his previous bestseller. Although I have heard of it being spoken of in book reading circles, I really wasn’t interested in reading about high finance and its associated skullduggery as I reasoned it would be all about killing with call statements and destroying with bank drafts. But I confess I was surprised and have changed my mind that bankers do a get a little action too (and even some on the side). And the reason is this one- The Bankster- an amalgamation of a banker and a gangster. Something which anyone who had dealings with any MNC bank, thinks in their minds but rarely says so. So here goes a brief synopsis of the story – Spoiler Alert- if you haven’t read it.

The story takes place in parallel in two different worlds. The first one is of course at  Greater Boston Global bank (GB2), specifically its regional branches at Mumbai and deals in depth with the jealousy/politics and shenanigans going on between the various branches in the name of cut throat competition and incentive based pay. And the second story is the rapidly deteriorating situation involving protests at the site of a to-be-commissioned nuclear power plant with the climax tying them together into one whole logical story.

The novel starts off with Vikram Bahl, the eponymous banker of the story, and Retail Banking Head of GB2 running rings around his colleagues, superiors and subordinates just to prove how smart he is. He poaches the best staff from all the other divisions by encouraging their dissatisfactions against appraisals and uses their talents in his own division to show stellar results quarter after quarter and to shine in their reflected successes. In this unhealthy practices he is helped by a willing accomplice, Tanuja the head of HR, with whom Vikram is carrying on a long standing affair which is also mutually beneficial financially for together the two run a recruitment scam where a percentage of the cut in the referees fees from the referral recruitment agency goes to their private pockets.

And everything is hunky dory until one of the new recruits, a relationship manager named Zinaida Gomes trips up majorly in her aggressive approach to get results. She facilitates an account opening which has all the indications of being used in a foreign exchange benami transaction scam. This prompts an internal investigation into the account and surprisingly results in a few murders, with one after the other of he investigators (and employees of the bank) being bumped off by the mysterious account holders. It goes to the extent of one of the banks employees Harshita along with her husband being bumped off during a holiday in Vienna. The twin murders of tourists in safe Vienna brings in the Austrian authorities into play. They discover to their surprise that the crime is financed partly by the sale of blood diamonds from African combat zones and has all the hallmarks of a CIA financed operation.

Meanwhile in the parallel story, Krishna Menon the lone crusader of Devikulam in Kerala who has been running a strong anti-nuclear campaign against a nuclear power plant for all these years is on the verge of giving up in hopelessness when he meets the charismatic Jayakumar, who runs a NGO. Jayakumar, a man with hands in many a pie, not only pumps in cash into the movement but also brings in much needed political support. But that’s not the only thing he brings in. He deftly changes the peaceful movement into violence and destruction and the entire campaign takes a turn for the worse- horrifying the gandhian Menon. And as Menon investigates, he finds out that behind the facade of the NGO movement and the money provided by Jayakumar are hostile foreign powers which are against the nuclear advances being made by our country.

This money when traced is found to be routed through Hawala transactions (Forex Crimes) from GB2 bank neatly tying in the two different threads which are brought together in one swift climax. To read the ending, you have to buy the book. So go buy and find out whether the Bankster(s) are finally caught and get what they deserve. Or do they walk way scot free as in real life.

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The Save Earth Project...a Few ideas.

Disclaimer : this Post was written as a guest post for fellow blogger RP Aravind's Save our Earth challenge on his blog “A real foot-print of Facts” . I am as far from a tree-hugging environmentalist as you can find, but science requires us to be subjective about the facts and here are a few facts as I see them.

Imagine a distance of 10 Kilometers...if you are a native of Chennai that is approximately the distance from Marina beach to Besant Nagar beach. A journey done in maybe 30mins; traffic permitting. Now I want you to close your eyes and imagine doing the same journey in a different plane- vertically. Instead of going straight along the ground, just go straight up into the air, for about ten km and then stop. Now open your eyes and see. What do you see? The beautiful view of the earth down below? No. You won’t be able to see anything, because by then, you would be dead of suffocation, dead for lack of air to breathe. That’s right 10km or 10,000 meters is the upper limit for a human being to survive by breathing naturally. Even by 8km, the height of Mount Everest, the atmosphere is so thin, that you need oxygen tanks to breathe. By 10km it is practically beyond our lungs capacity to draw in any of the life giving air we need in sufficient quantities to enable us to live on. So if you have been following the example I gave above,  the maximum we can live on in this earth is from 0km-the surface of the earth right upto 7km above. Nothing beyond that. And all of the earths population has to somehow fit in and survive within that 7km zone.

Fortunately for us we are able to utilize the other dimensions – length and width pretty well and thus we have spread ourselves out on the surface of the earth in an efficient manner. But for all the technological advances we have made, we are still limited by the atmospheric ceiling we have to live within and the safety parameters of oxygen saturation which we have to respect. Our jet planes which go above a ceiling of 30,000 feet are an enclosed body of oxygen filled tubes and so are our manned rockets and shuttles. Oxygen which is available abundantly in the first 7km above our heads is a non-negotiable necessity for life on earth. Any messing with its availability and we are in a bad way to survive as a species. And which brings me straight to my point. Air pollution. Specifically pollution caused by excess CO2, CO, CFC's etc to the atmosphere, reducing the percentage of available oxygen in the air.

 

When life first boomed on planet earth, which according to paleontologists may be as early as 3 billion years ago, the oxygen level on this planet was far richer, according to some sources as much as 22% - a time when there were just algal blooms and lichens overrunning the planet earth. The thing about the gas oxygen is, that although beneficial and necessary for our metabolism in the right quantities, it is also an extremely toxic gas in the wrong levels, even dangerous. Its responsible for the process known as oxidation or rusting and pretty much damages anything it comes in contact with. Life on earth has taken long millennia to adapt and assimilate this toxic gas into its metabolic cycle and use it for energy. Any change in this hard achieved balance might turn out catastrophic. 

 Proponents of global warming are always talking about the harmful effects of green house gases on the environment, how they will melt the glaciers, cause flooding and devastate the earth with rising sea levels. Imagine a scenario where the rising sea levels forces human beings to start living higher in higher in the atmosphere. Maybe in plateaus and hills. Now throw into this mix the steadily deteriorating quality of air we breath with oxygen depletion. Now that’s a one-two punch that can knock out most of life on this planet.  Some might adapt and some might survive. Plants for example, for which oxygen is just a byproduct will survive and even thrive in an oxygen depleted, carbon dioxide laden atmosphere as it will become optimum environment for them. The other higher animals which do not make the necessary mutation changes fast enough will certainly go the way of the dinosaurs. Will man too? 

Although this looks like a nightmare scenario, I would not bet against humanity to survive. We, even for a species with such a short history of development on planet earth, a mere 5 million years of presence here, have evolved far beyond the other long living species. The shark has lived on earth for more than 65 million years. Yet we hunt it and eat it with impunity. We even catch it and put it on exhibition in marine worlds. Humanity has even in its short span of presence has shown the evidence of being a fast mutating, fast adapting species. When we first split off from the monkeys, we were severely disadvantaged in our physical attributes of lack of  stature and the anatomical changes forced on us by having to walk upright instead of having a balanced walk on all fours. But we took that disadvantage and converted it into success. Bi-pedalism freed our hands to construct tools. An opposable thumb allowed us to use finer and finer instruments. And a lack of physical strength forced us to develop the intellect. Till we finally ended up as the dominant life form on this planet.

We humans have always made hard decisions to survive as a species. Now its time to make some more. To decide whether we can continue to pollute our atmosphere with our chemical processes or whether we can attain a state of equilibrium with our environment. Whether the population explosion and over population of the earth finally depletes enough of the earth’s resources as to categorically tip it past the balancing point and into degradation of all life on earth. Whether the anti-nuclear energy advocates who fail to realize the damages coal burning power plants cause by throwing vast and unlimited quantities of carbon monoxide and dioxide into the hitherto virgin atmosphere are doing. I don’t have any answers to this question not being an expert on this issue. But as fellow human being and someone who needs the planet earth to survive, as much as anyone else, I can offer a few suggestions.

The first one would be intensified population control to achieve if not limitation at least an equilibrium at the current level of 6 billion humans. As it is we no longer have any big natural predators to reduce our population and we have with our science conquered death by disease to such an extent that we are now one of the longest living species on planet earth. So it becomes necessary for some means to be found to stabilize the population at the current 6 billion levels.  Remember this planet has to support a large number of other species life forms too, everything from plants, to amoeba to insects and animals. Human beings just cannot keep on increasing in numbers without over stressing the resources available. It’s either population control or off-planet colonies for the extra population on moon and mars. Either way we cannot support more than this number on the mother planet earth without seriously endangering all life on earth. 

And my second suggestion would be to intensify scientific researcher into non-polluting sources of energy and forget the easy way of digging for coal and siphoning out oil. Burning of Fossil-fuels is the biggest source of pollution of the atmosphere. And as long as we don’t have a viable and cheap(practical) way of utilizing solar energy and other renewable sources, we have to accept that nuclear energy is inevitable. More bang for the buck, the only caveat being its safety aspect, which should be looked into and maintained more rigorously than what was done till now (remember Chernobyl?).

These are my only two suggestions which might help preserving our atmosphere at breathable levels for the near future. I would like to hear from you if you have any more practical ideas. And if you think that I have also joined the bandwagon of the enviro-scaremongers and end of the world theorists, you are wrong. I have infinite hope in the resilience of humanity. We might have made some mistakes but there is nothing which human ingenuity cannot set right. Soon, pretty soon, we will find a way out of all this mess we have got ourselves into it. Human history shows us. So let’s all hope for the best and do our bit for mother earth.

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