The Mother of All Put-Downs

Umm...Mom, feel free to skip this post :)

I'm constantly surprised by the number of people who haven't heard Pink's new club-hit called "You and Your Hand". And thats when I have to remind myself that not everyone spends every free minute on weekend nights dancing in their town's hottest clubs. That, not everyone likes to spend hours gyrating with abandon to the latest amazing beats, crushed between a gaggle of gorgeous toned bodies, the alcohol buzz just loud enough to drown out the voice telling you that your dancing sucks, body thrumming as one with the all the rest on the dance-floor, collectively generating a heat-wave that overwhelms the air-conditioning and leaches out those apple-martini imbibed calories into abs-crunching dance-moves. I've never understood why.

OK I romanticise a little bit. Yeah...the beats can usually be more accurately described as brain-numbing, the bodies are often sweaty, please-put-your-shirt-back-on kind. That voice in your head - the one valiantly trying to tell you your dancing sucks? Its right...and you're better off not drowning it out. And there's no space to move in a self-respecting club let alone let loose with abs-crunches. But on the whole, clubbing is a ton of fun. It is!

Anyway getting back to the main point...a lot of people don't seem to have heard about Pink's latest club-hit called "You and Your Hand"

I love the song - its very very danceable - specially in the remix version thats played almost daily on Energy. Energy, to give you some context, is my favorite Bay Area FM station (energy927fm.com). They play hard core dance tracks 24/7 with a wonderful lack of irony. For example, they'll play "I can't wait for the weekend to begin" on Monday mornings, just when you're stuck in a traffic jam on Highway 101, on the way to work.

Again, back to Pink's song. The reason I really love it is because the lyrics are steeped in a huge vat of pure, wonderfully unchecked sarcasm with the power to eviscerate any and all dopes in bars who find themselves at the receiving end of the song.

Here's the refrain:

I'm not here for your entertainment
You don't really wanna mess with me tonight
Just stop and take a second
I was fine before you walked into my life
Cause you know it's over
Before it began
Keep your drink, just gimme the money
It's just you and your hand tonight

Its the last line that elevates this song, in my mind, to the title of the Mother of All Put-Downs. Its pure unadulterated, pithy, sarcastic genius. Saddam Hussein, who coined the term "Mother of All..."and who was sarcastic till the very end, wryly questioning the bravery of the mob who taunted him as he walked to the gallows, would've approved. I think.

Of course if you're one of those people who do spend every free weekend night minute in clubs - you might appreciate the rather sad irony of singing along to the lyrics.

If you're there. Every weekend night. In that club. Then, you probably can't afford to sing it like you mean it. :)

Not unless you're Pink, anyway

The Blessing of an Impermanent Smile

If you’ve read the Kite Runner – you might remember that the eponymous character, a preteen Afghan servant-boy was born with a cleft lip; a permanent smile as the book put it. I read the book relatively recently at the urging of my Mom. Though initially not very interested in the book, I found I couldn’t put it down once I’d started and was rather disappointed when it ended. I wish it had been a few hundred pages longer. It’s a story spanning several years spent in pre and mid-civil-war Kabul and in San Francisco.

One of the most heart-warming passages in the book for me – and the book had many heart-warming as well as heart-breaking ones L - was when the protagonist’s father, a rich Afghan Pathan, at whose house the Kite-Runner worked and lived, flew in a doctor from India on the Kite Runner’s birthday to perform surgery on him to fix the cleft lip. And in doing so, gave him the gift, no a blessing, of smiling only when he wanted to, only when his smile could also reach his eyes.

It wasn’t long after I finished reading the book and perhaps because it was on my mind, I came across an ad in the newspaper by an organization called the TheSmileTrain. I think it was the organization’s name that first caught my eye…it brought a vision of train bogies full of happy, smiling, sunny faces to mind. I read the ad – something I don’t usually do – and then checked out their website too. Feel free to do the same by clicking on anywhere that TheSmileTrain’s name is mentioned in this post. Beware – before you click - you might find yourself compelled to make a donation. TheSmileTrain is an organization dedicated to performing the simple surgery to fix cleft lips on kids all across the world. That’s all they do. In countries like India, Brazil, Uganda, these surgeries cost as little as $250 and have the ability to transform the lives of these kids. Since 2000, they’ve helped more than 200,000 children, many of them in India.

In TheSmileTrain’s words millions of children suffering... with unrepaired clefts...cannot eat or speak properly. Aren’t allowed to attend school or hold a job. And face very difficult lives filled with shame and isolation, pain and heartache. Many are also abandoned by their parents at birth. Think about it, when was the last time you saw someone with a cleft lip in a position of power or eminence. Families suffer too. A friend of mine who was looking at the web-site with me, told me about a friend who didn’t want to share pictures of her new-born baby with any of her friends and relatives. The mother privately told my friend, that the baby had a cleft lip and the parents, who I’m sure loved their child, did not want to show him off until the surgery that they were lucky enough to be able to afford.

There are so many things in life that we should not take for granted. A voluntary smile, I think, is something everyone should be able to. Here’s to TheSmileTrain for working to extend that privilege and blessing to more and more people everyday.

Paris Hilton Hospitalized After Alarming Spike in IQ

FAKE NEWS ALERT! ALSO PUBLISHED AT SISTER SITE DAILY NEWS PARALYSIS

Leading socialite and hotel heiress Paris Hilton (ageless) was today rushed to Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles after doctors measured a sudden spike in her IQ during a fitness check. An intern at the doctor’s office, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that the occasional songstress’ condition was “serious but stable”. Paris who has recently been going through a particularly stressful period due to being awarded a jail sentence for driving on a suspended license, was not available for comment and was said to be under sedation to help calm the unusual amount of brain activity that was caught “just in time” according to the intern, who admitted to being an ardent Paris Hilton fan.

“There’s just no one better than Paris when it comes to posing endlessly in front cameras at all times of the day. Anyone else might have easily died of boredom from mindlessly repeating the same poses in 8 different dresses each day.”, she said. “But Paris’ has been doing a yeoman’s job over the last decade or so. She’s my hero!”

Dr. Ridge Waters, a celebrity Hollywood psychologist, said the IQ spike was probably caused by the large amounts of time the actress was spending in recent days in figuring out ingenious ways to stay out of jail. Just last week she hit upon the brilliant idea of starting a MySpace petition to Governor Schwaznegger of California through a friend, fired her lawyer and generally spent enormous amounts of time brain-storming ideas with friends. According to Dr. Waters such high levels of mental stimulation in individuals unused to it, can be especially detrimental to the brain’s long-term ability to handle daily mind-numbing tasks. Such a development could spell disaster for the 24/7 socialite.

A friend of Ms. Hilton, who rushed to the hospital when she heard the news, tearfully said she’d been afraid something like this might happen since last Friday when Paris claimed to be feeling “discombobulated by the legal terms used by lawyers.” It was reportedly only the second time that the often-time model is known to have used a word with more than three syllables. The first instance being when she addressed noted fashion designer Ermenegildo Zegna by his first name at a party. Her friends explained at the time, that she usually calls him ‘Erm’ but didn’t want to sound like she was clearing her throat when so many microphones were present.

Sources close to Ms. Hilton have hotly denied claims by some bloggers that there had been other such instances, saying that “Yves Saint-Laurent” does not count since it is really three words not one. The sources also dismissed that this would have any long-term effects on Ms. Hilton’s ability to fulfill her many endorsement deals, in an attempt to calm nervous media buyers. However in a sign of things to come, stocks of several tabloids fell sharply in late trading on NYSE on worries that the IQ spike might be persistent and could sharply reduce Ms. Hilton’s poses-per-day average. Meanwhile, dismayed fans of Ms. Hilton had started gathering outside the hospital by late evening, holding placards saying “We love you Paris” and “Stop! You had us at Disco…”

The Squirrel(s) who Ate Too Much - Conclusion

An Allegory in 2000 Chirrups

All characters in this story are fictional. Any resemblance to an alarmingly over-weight population of a stupendously consumption-driven society may not be purely coincidental. I’m talking about the Yosemite squirrels, of course. No really! :)

Click to read Part I first

Click to read Part II first

Click to read Part III first

Part 4: Darkness

Squirrel FAQs - Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Should I feed squirrels peanuts? (Source: www.squirrels.org)
A: Only if they are unsalted. Too much salt is not good for the squirrel, it increases their heart rate. This in turn, can contribute to an early death.

“Bushy-Brow?”

Bushy-Brow who’d been devouring the delicious pine-nut, oblivious to everything around him, nearly jumped out of his skin. “What? Who is it?” he snarled. “Its me. Wavy.” Said a small voice below him. It sounded a little scared. He turned and looked down to see Wavy-Tail peering up at the branch. “I’m sorry Bushy-Brow. But I heard you and Curly-Whiskers talking about a Pine-Nut Patch and decided to follow you. Where’s the Pine-Nut Patch Bushy-Brow? And why did those Long-Legs take Curly-Whiskers away?”

Bushy-Brow took a deep breath – he had to stay calm and follow the emergency plan that the Long-Legs had told him about.

“You shouldn’t have followed us Wavy.” He said in his best you’ve-been-a-naughty-squirret-but-I'm-still-willing-to-forgive-you voice. “You know squirrets especially are not allowed this side of the hill.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Wailed Wavy. “Please don’t tell Ma. I only wanted to get a pine-nut for her.”

Bushy-Brow made his way down the trunk, carefully holding his pine-nut under his chin. “Hey.” He said kindly, plopping down softly beside the downcast squirret. “You made a mistake but its OK! Curly-Whiskers has gone with the Long-Legs to get the pine-nuts.” He nuzzled Wavy kindly. “Now don't look so disappointed. I’ll let you share a secret treat instead. But you have to help me dig, then."

“Anything!” said Wavy grateful that Bushy-Brow didn’t seem angry anymore. Bushy-Brow hurried over to a nearby tree and started digging with his paws. He moved over a bit to let Wavy in by his side. They both dug hard for about 5 minutes when Wavy felt a different texture under his paws. It was slippery and smooth – not hard and crumbly like dirt. Wavy had never seen anything like it. "OK, move over and let me pull it out”, said Bushy-Brow nudging him away, a little roughly. He caught hold of the plastic packet with his teeth and pulled it out. Wavy could see that there was something that looked like food inside the slippery cover. Bushy-Brow gnawed a large hole through the plastic and then shook it with his teeth until all its contents fell out.

“You’ll love it”, said Bushy-Brow “Its very rare, but it goes bad outside the covering very fast, so you have to eat it all right away. OK? Are you hungry?” “Yes. Yes!” Said Wavy, chasing his tail in excitement. “Ma has been allowing me to eat only 2 hazel-nuts a day. I’m very hungry!”. He pounced on the nuts and started gobbling them up.

“Yeah I’ve not been happy that she’s not doing her part to finish the daily food blessing.” Bushy-Brow said slowly "I’ve let it be for now since I know she’s grieving for Red. But there’s no reason to starve a youngster like you.”

“These are really tasty” said Wavy in delight in between chomps, not really listening. “What are they?”

“They’re called peanuts.” Said Bushy-Brow, looking at him unblinkingly. “These are special peanuts. They have something called salt rubbed on them that makes them taste even better. I'm glad you like them. Eat up then.”

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Curly-Whiskers crouched, scared to death, in the trap lying on its side in the back seat of the car. He could hear the two Long-Legs talking to each other. Then one of them brought the black case close to his mouth and said something to it. He heard the box start chirruping. He could understand the words but still couldn’t quite understand what had happened to him. “I’m telling you”, the box said, “Buying Bushy from that trapper and this Babel-Box were the two best investments we ever made.” The box stopped chirruping. The Long-Legs kept on talking to each other in their strange tongue.

“I agree, man. Its so much easier to train an animal with this thing.” Said Roger. “Pavlov would’ve loved it!”

“Yeah.”, said Fred. “We got ourselves a big guy today. These buggers seem to be really gorging themselves on the nuts and shit. Beats force-feeding those damn geese and ducks. These squirrels are great – they do all our work for us.”

“Yeah. I can’t do force-feeding man! That's cruelty man!” agreed Roger. “But who’d have thought squirrel liver pate would taste so good or get so pricey on the black-market after they banned foie gras!"

"Or" crowed his partner. "that we’d someday become the Squirrel Liver Moguls." "Dayhum! ", he said drawing out the word and savoring the feeling driving it, "Life is good.”

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A dark night had fallen over the hills of Yosemite. Pine-Eyes scampered into the Food Patch trying her best to control the panic that she could feel rising in her stomach. She hadn’t seen Wavy for hours now. He was usually back by moon-rise. Well the moon hadn't risen but that was only because today was its Day-of-Rest.

The Patch was its usual noisy self, squirrels everywhere, over-eating, chirruping nineteen-to-the-dozen and resting after having over-eaten. Only Bushy-Brow was being relatively industrious, intently clearing the brush from the edges of the Patch.

She couldn’t see Wavy amongst the throng gorging themselves at the Patch. She'd been hoping he had defied her and gone to the Patch to eat anyway. But he wasn't there. Where was he?!

“Has anyone seen Wavy?”, she called out, trying to keep the nervous squeak out of her voice. “He went out to play and hasn’t come back yet.”

Barely anyone looked up from their dinner.

Concluded

The Squirrel(s) Who Ate Too Much - Part III

An allegory in 2000 chirrups
All characters in this story are fictional. However any resemblance to an alarmingly over-weight population of a stupendously consumption-driven society may not be completely coincidental. (I’m talking about the Yosemite squirrels, of course. No, really! :)

Click to Read Part I first

Click to Read Part II first

Part 3: Twilight

Wavy was climbing carefully down the hazel tree, a large hazel-nut tucked under his chin. “Ma is going to get such a surprise.”, he said to himself, “She’ll think there’s hope for me yet.” He was about half-way down the trunk when he heard chirruping. It was Bushy-Brow with fat old Curly-Whiskers. Curly-Whiskers had been one of Red’s closest friends. They were hurrying down the small path that led over the top of the hill. Wavy had never been there before. It had never been considered very safe for squirrets because you could run into a lot of Long-Legs there. And then, when the eagle attacks started, Bushy-Brow had decided that it was best if no one – squirrels or squirrets – went there...because the Pine-Mother alone knew what other dangers lay there. So no one did, anymore.

“I’m telling you I have the same feeling that I had the day I found the Food Patch.”, Bushy-Brow was saying as he scurried up the hill, a few scampers ahead of Curly-Whiskers. This time, I think the Pine-Mother wants to lead me to a Pine-Nut Patch. I can just feel it in my bones.”

Curly-Whiskers scurried as fast as he could, trying to keep up with his much fitter leader, but already feeling a little winded. He could hear his sacred-drum in his ears already. But he couldn’t help feel excited. It would be wonderful to taste pine-nuts after so many years! And Bushy-Brow had chosen him, and him alone, to share in the glory that would follow from the discovery. “No one else can know”, he had said, “because I don’t want to raise squirrels' hopes and have them belied.”

“Is it over the hill?” he asked Bushy-Brow between breaths, hoping that the answer would be a no. “Yes. I think so. Hurry!”.

Wavy’s ears pricked up. A Pine-nut Patch! Maybe he could get one for Ma! She would LOVE that. He dropped his hazel-nut (he was sick of eating them everyday, anyway) and started following the other two squirrels at a distance. If they saw they him, they’d surely send him back to Ma. The two adult squrrels had already disappeared over the top of the hill. Lost in imagining Pine-Eyes’ delight as he hurried after them, he wasn’t prepared for the strange sight that greeted him as he crested the hill, huffing and puffing.

About 30 glides down the other side, he saw Bushy-Brow sitting on a branch on his haunches, barely 10 scampers away from two Long-Legs! What was he doing? He seemed to be chirruping at one of the Long-Legs. One Long-Leg held a wooden box from which he could hear more chirruping - that sounded like Curly-Whiskers. Was he inside the box? The other Long-Leg held a small black case in front of Bushy Brow and when Bushy-Brow stopped speaking, the man brought the case back to himself, holding it close to his ears. Wavy heard strange sounds coming out of the case. The man moved the case near his mouth and made some strange sounds himself. He then held the case close to Bushy-Brow and wonder of wonders, Wavy-Tail heard chirrups coming out of it.“You're doing a heckuva job, Bushy.” He heard the case say. “We’ll see you again after eight suns this time. Here’s your reward” The Long-Leg held out a pine-nut to Bushy-Brow who quickly snatched it from his hand. “Thank you Master. Thank you!” He said in an uncharacteristically servile voice. “I won’t fail you.”

The two Long-Legs turned and walked away.

Click to read concluding Part IV

The Squirrel(s) who Ate Too Much - Part II

An allegory in 2000 chirrups
All characters in this story are fictional. However any resemblance to an alarmingly over-weight population of a stupendously consumption-driven society may not be completely coincidental. (I’m talking about the Yosemite squirrels, of course. No, really! :)

Click to Read Part I first

Part 2: Afternoon

Pine-Eyes was resting in the shade of a buck brush near the edge of Vernal Falls. Her legs ached from all the climbing she’d had to do. She buried her nose in her lush tail and closed her eyes for a well-deserved siesta. “Ma. Can I go play with the other squirrets now?” Uncurling herself, she saw Wavy-Tail sitting on his hind-legs, looking hopefully at her, his whiskers twitching in nervous anticipation. She usually made him sleep in the afternoon – he was still very young. But “OK you can go play today. But no jump-gliding while I’m not there. Its too dangerous.” Wavy-Tail ambled off happily. While she was happy that he'd largely gotten over Red's death, she also felt a little hurt that he'd done it relatively easily. But then he hadn’t known Red for very long – unlike his many older brothers and sisters. He was her baby. Her last one – She’d always known she couldn’t be with anyone but Red.

Dolefully, she tucked her nose back into her curled up tail. How had everything changed so much? It wasn’t just that she’d lost her love of many, many years. The changes had started several years back – around the time that Bushy-Brow had appeared. What was it…six winters back? That had been a tough year. That was the first year that the pine trees stopped bearing nuts and started dying. The older squirrels said it was because the weather was changing. Bushy-Brow had wandered into a Squirrel Council Meeting one day – said he was from Great Yosemite Falls and was looking for a change. He had an air of arrogance about him that turned many squirrels off – but the Vernal Falls tribe were nothing, if not hospitable.

He seemed to spend little time foraging for nuts, whiling away many mornings Tail-Sledding with the older squirrets seeing who could get to the bottom of the mound fastest. He’d disappear towards evening into the deep woods – finally to forage one assumed – and seemed to be lucky enough to never have to ask another squirrel for hard-gathered food. He was like any other squirrel; if a little more irresponsible…and seemingly lucky…than most.

But then 2 full moons after he came, he turned into a hero overnight. That was the night he ended everyone’s food worries for all time…he discovered the Food Patch…the small clearing about halfway up the hill from Vernal Falls where a small smorgasbord used to appear mysteriously everyday. All the types of squirrel foods you could think of - hazelnuts, mushrooms, even some delicious peanuts though none seemed to go grow in the Yosemite valley. There were no pine-nuts but who was complaining. It had been a wonderful meal. Everyone had eaten for two that night. And the next day, the Patch was again full of food. Everyday the heaps of nuts and mushrooms was replenished and soon everyone gave up the daily gathering of food. They’d laze about or play all day and just go to the Patch evening and feast to their heart’s content…eating much more than any squirrel could have needed.

Bushy-Brow said he’d been led to it by instinct, but believed that the Pine Mother herself had guided him to it. He also said no one should go near the Patch except after the sun had set otherwise the food wouldn’t appear. He claimed it was their sacred duty to finish all that appeared in the Food Patch...that if they didn’t, the Mother might get offended and stop providing for them. And of course they did…even though everyday the food was more than enough to feed all of them and then again by half. They also made him a de facto leader, acknowledged as such by the Squirrel Council. Then the strange eagle attacks had started. They’d heard of eagle attacks over in Nevada Falls but Vernal Falls had always been a safe place to live. They weren’t really attacks, at least not that anyone had seen, but squirrels started disappearing every so often. Now it had gotten so bad that one squirrel was disappearing every 5-10 suns or so. Everyone was scared…no one had seen an eagle but what else could it be? Bushy-Brow had rallied the troops, so to chirrup, when the attacks first began. It had to be eagles and Squirrels had to stick together, he’d said, if they were to be safe and survive. The old ways of relatively solitary, independent living didn’t work anymore – there had to be more rules about where squirrels should roam, what they should do and when; they had to have a night patrol to keep them safe and so on. The Squirrel Council had been grateful for his leadership and adopted most of his suggestions. These were scary times but at least they had the Food Patch to keep them fed and the Night Patrolers to warn them of danger.

Pine-Eyes had grown to like Bushy-Brow like most other squirrels. Except maybe the way he’d insist on spending hours everyday clearing the area around the Patch of twigs and dry grass. She found that a little weird. Its not as if he used them to build a large nest to impress a maiden squirrel with. No, he just cleared the brush. Obsessively. There was that time that Droopy-LeftEar had come running to him in tears to say she’d looked everywhere and couldn’t find her twin Droopy-RightEar anywhere. He’d asked her to rest on her haunches and give him five minutes to finish the day’s clearing.

For the most part though, Pine-Eyes (and Red) had felt grateful that Bushy-Brow had appeared just when the trying times started. But today, lying in the shade of the buck brush, she couldn’t help but wish that they could go back to the old days when there was no Bushy-Brow. Because then there were also no eagle attacks, hardly any rules, the Pine-Mother’s bounty came in the form of pine-nuts and not the Food Patch. And then, by her side, there was Red.

Click to read Part III

Part IV to follow

The Squirrel(s) who Ate Too Much - Part I

An Allegory in 2000 Chirrups
All characters in this story are fictional. However any resemblance to an alarmingly over-weight population of a stupendously consumption-driven society may not be completely coincidental. (I’m talking about the Yosemite squirrels, of course. Who did you think I was referring to :)

Part 1 : Morning

“Wavy-Tail don’t go so near the edge.” Scolded his mother, “Come back here and forage with me. Dinner doesn’t grow on trees you know.” Then corrected herself, “Well actually it does. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to work to get it. You have to gather your share of nuts.”

“Oh Ma. Can’t I go Tail-Sledding down Riverside Mount. Long-Whiskers and White-Stripe are going. Its not fair.” Wavy wailed. Pine-Eyes wasn’t impressed. “Well let them go. They can go eat at the Patch tonight, but we’re not going to. If you want dinner tonight, you come back here and gather it, young squirret.” She watched her son scamper back slowly, wavy tail drooping rather non-eponymously. He started clambering laboriously, up the trunk of another hazel tree near hers. Her heart leapt into her mouth for a second as he seemed to slip a couple of feet, then dug his claws into the bark and held on before starting to climb again. He really needed to lose weight, and quickly. Just like his mother did. And his father had needed to.

She looked away, offered a silent prayer to the Pine Mother and gingerly started making her way towards the delicious looking nut that lay at the end of the branch. There was a time, before she, and really every other squirrel in Yosemite's Vernal Falls got fat, when she would have scampered towards the nut blithely; light of feet, tail billowing behind her, cool breeze caressing the fine down on her back. She and Just-Red would sometimes race each other to a nut; she beat him to it more times than not...Red often let her win, especially if it was a pine-nut. They both loved pine-nuts. And then at dusk they’d sit together, their shared body warmth helping to keep the Yosemite chill out, and he’d lovingly nip her ears while she nibbled on the nut.

Red! Red, with the rust red tail he was so proud of. Red, the only squirrel in all of Vernal Falls, without a hyphenated name. Red, who defied all demands by the Squirrel Council to add a noun to his name as per ancient custom…and who said that if they really wanted to hyphenate his name they should call him Just-Red. He knew that choosing an adjective would annoy them even more. Or was it an adverb, she was bad at this! Her beloved Red who’d become so fond of eating, so enamored of the sumptuous delights of the Food Patch that it had eventually led to his death. Only a few full moons back. The sound of his fat body thudding sickeningly into the ground still haunted Pine-Eyes. It was the sound of the world coming crashing down around her. He had attempted to make a flying leap from one high branch to another and had fallen short by several spans…having badly misjudged how, the weight he’d put on recently and his general sluggishness, had affected his Jump-Gliding skills. His beloved tail had been unable to parachute his weight down safely. That’s when Pine-Eyes decided that she and Wavy had to stop eating at the Food Patch. There had been too much eating and too little exercise.

Even after so many moons, the mere thought of Red made Pine-Eyes’ whiskers droop with the terrible weight of her sorrow. She willed them up again with an effort that sent a quiver down her back. Wavy had been hard hit by Red's death and had only recently started coming out of his shell. She couldn't let Wavy see her looking sad again. If only she had lachrymal glands so she could let all her emotions out in one big flood of tears. As she'd sometimes seen lonely Long-Leg hikers do, in the forest, when they thought no one was watching. Perhaps then the sadness would stop gnawing at her – trying to get back into center-stage in her mind from the corner that she had banished it to. She missed Red so!

Click to read Part II

Click to read Part III

Indian Tourism's New Hope?

No these aren't misplaced ads from the Incredible India campaign but maybe they should be. Early in April, Macy's (its a major American retail chain for those fortunate to never have been exposed to this wallet-lightening temptress) held its annual flower show and chose a rather banal slogan Imagine India. But then they went ahead and spent thousands of dollars doing up the interiors to look like an ornate Indian wedding hall bedecked with thousands of beautiful flowers. And they installed a giant Ganesh-ji right above the main entrance on Union Square. Along with a five-storey poster of an anonymous Indian woman in full Technicolor. The whole thing had a bit of an exotic (and cheesy) feel to it...in the Bay Area, I think this isn't necessarily a bad thing from a tourism promotion point of view. A mention of India, here, usually evokes a vision of masses of software engineers huddled in a maze of cubicles. Not exactly something that will start a stampede to the travel agents.

Not sure if Macy's did this in all their stores or just the flagship outlets. If they did it at all outlets, then over the fortnight that the flower show lasted, the campaign probably got as many eye-balls across the US as the Incredible India campaign ads have over the last couple of years. Maybe the Tourism Authority of India should just pay Macy's to keep the theme every year! Hey they could even donate a tiger or two to keep in a display window - they'll probably be safer there than under the auspices of Project Tiger.

Seduced into Exercising

Today is one of those days when the city justifies its high rents. Its also a day when I realised that the reason LA has beautiful, fit people is because of the weather. If I lived in LA, or if SF's weather was more like that - a sunny disposition all year round, instead of weird mood swings that it has), I'd probably have six-pack abs by now.

The morning dawned bright and sunny, the waters of the bay glowi... actually I don't know what the dawn looked like at all. I woke up at eleven in the morning - (Hey, its decently early by Sunday morning standards). But I can say for sure that noon dawned bright and sunny, and hot. Hot enough for the breeze to be warm instead of chilly. In fact as I sit her typing on my laptop, nearly seven thirty in the evening, its still bright and sunny and hot outside. Hot enough for me to be sitting here sweating. That never happens...well ok, it happens...but only about 5 days in a year and usually they're all in October.

I was going to follow my usual Sunday morning routine - read the NYT, have brunch, laze around watching TV, order in if there's no plans and watch more TV. But almost as soon as I stepped out to meet my locationally-named friend Malad for brunch in the Marina I was assaulted by guilt pangs for not making use of the wonderful weather to get some exercise in. As Malad and I walked down Chestnut St we saw hordes (ok not hordes but many) of fitness-freaks running, skating, cycling their way to Amazing Abs. This continued all through our 3 egg-omelette brunch (I skipped the cheese as a concession to my guilt-gods) since we made the mistake of sitting outside in the sun. ..."because we couldn't sit in the sun in India" said my friend, on the one day that it was too hot to sit outside in SF too. :)

After brunch, Malad headed off for a snooze. Propelled by a mixture of guilt and voyeurism (several of the men running or even just walking on the streets were displaying a rather endearing propensity to do so without their shirts), I decided to go for a short cycle ride along the marina. It turned out to be a great idea. There was almost a festival going on there and only part of it was about fitness. The overall effect of all that activity in the marina's beautiful setting was rather energising.

I feel compelled to describe the scene to you, dear reader...Along the ribbon of greenery that runs along the waterfront...there were the afore referenced shirtless men (and shirt-ful women) jogging, skating and cycling; colorful kites bobbing in the blue sky; one of them, a many-tailed monster, was tormenting a black dog (see pics); people were picnicking on the benches near Fort Point and some were even sunning themselves on the excuse for a beach there; a stray blue balloon struggled in the branches of a tree in Crissy Fields; the gold dome of the Palace of Fine Arts glowed in the sun, nicely setting off the view of the mostly white houses behind it; the Acalacia* trees growing along the road that climbs up to the Golden Gate looked like pyramids banded with layers of shade and sunny green; white sail-boats dotted the Bay; kids were playing volleyball; people lazed in the grass amongst the California buttercups reading, dozing...you get the picture. It was a great place to be. Entranced by the scene, I ended up spending 90 minutes cycling up and down the waterfront - must have covered 6-7 miles. Definitely enough to work off that omelette.

Of course, tomorrow the cold, blustery weather shall be back and I shall again have an excuse for not exercising. Sometimes I think the only way I can have a six-pack is to get cosmetic surgery (they put a six-pack plastic board just under your stomach skin) or to go to the nearest corner store and buy beer**. Guess which one I'll pick :)

*Don't bother googling Acalacia trees to see what they look like. I made the name up. Who the hell knows what the trees are called. I'm pretty convinced most authors do the same.

**Shouldn't a set of six beer cans be called a Pot-Belly instead of a Six-Pack? Doesn't make any sense!

The Unintended Economic Consequences of a Daily Arriving Newspaper

Here's my question of the day for you, dear diligent reader - Can the decline in newspaper subscriptions, in the last few years, be responsible for the several quarters of economic growth that the US has enjoyed? What else could explain the growth that the US has had despite an extraordinarily inept administration with a one-tone economic policy ("lowering taxes brings growth")? And conversely, if the economy slows does it make sense to stop your newspaper subscriptions?

Here's where I'm coming from...Sometime late one night, in the last week of March, my fingers hovered over my keypad. Frozen by indecision. Or by the magnitude of the decision they were about to type-off on. I was on the NY Times subscription page - about to fill in the details of my credit card to allow the dead-tree version of the newspaper to start arriving at my doorstep on a daily basis. I was nervous that if seen to be complacent under the assumption that I had cut frequent travel from my life for good (as symbolised by a daily subscription), I'd be served another huge dollop of it by fate.

I'm still getting used to the changes - drastic ones - in my daily schedule, wrought by my recently changing jobs. I actually get to sleep in my own bed, for most of the week, a lot of weeks; can work from home ever so often and actually generally start and finish at reasonable hours. So much so that, actually reading the newspaper no longer feels like an achievement. Procuring it, however, still seemed like solving a daily linear optimization problem - run to the nearest C-store or starbucks to buy a paper before the first call in the morning while also trying to maximise sleeping time. Not easy.

After several minutes of hesitation I decided to tempt the gods of mischief and sign up for daily delivery for the next three months. A few days after that fateful March night, on April Fools Day, to be precise, the NYT started arriving at my doorstep. And its been doing that regularly ever since. Everyday. Day after day. And after nearly a month of this, I've started noticing some rather surprising, unexpected changes that I think may be exacerbating the recent slowing down of the US economy. Its caused me to stop and think - and I shamelessly borrow stylistically from Carrie Bradshaw here - Can gaining a daily NY Times subscription lose me my monthly salary?

Here's three ways in which a daily subscription have lowered my contribution to economic growth:

a) Bringing my coffee consumption down to a trickle: For the last two years I've been spending an average of $150 per month at Starbucks' ubiquitous cafes. No more...I no longer have to start my day running to the nearest Starbucks to pick up the NY Times and also picking up a caramel machchiato and a random flavour of reduced fat coffee cake. Now that I get my paper at home, I've been to a Starbucks maybe 3 times in the last one month. The savings pay for the subscription many times over just on that one count but obviously aren't helping our consumption driven economy.

b) 'Zen'ding my spiritual upliftment costs into limbo: Now I don't have to deal with the stress of finding my daily Times-fix. Combined with the improvements in my work-life balance thats caused me to indefinitely defer my plans to rejoin meditation classes at the SF Buddhist Center. Thats another $100 per quarter saved - even on a sliding scale contribution system! btw I'd highly recommend the Center for non-subscribing NY Times readers :)

c)Tightening my spending on reading material: On days when I was running late for work, I'd have to skip my Starbucks-NY Times stop in the mornings. By the time I got to a news-stand or cafe later in the day, half-crazed by my paper-news withdrawal symptoms, I'd end up buying more than just the Times. The beneficiaries of my addiction ranged from the Financial Times to (I'm ashamed to admit) the right-wing rag WSJ and once even the Spanish language version of People magazine (I thought it would help me practice my rapidly rusting Spanish). Now of course, those medical emergencies don't occur - saving me $10-15 every month (I used to run late quite often :) And this doesn't even include the 50% discount for 3 months I got for the NY Times subscription itself...a $75 hit in NYT's revenues.

There will undoubtedly be sceptics who scoff at whether one person's reduced spending could impact something as large as the US economy. I would respectfully suggest that they read up on the history of the First World War. It took one shot in Sarajevo to start a 4 year global conflict. So if you're in a job that's easily outsource-able in a recession, my suggestion would be cancel that newspaper subscription already! Of course, buying a new house with savings you probably don't have, would help too.

FREE Monthly Bulbs Giveaway: Make-The-Switch

I’m starting a FREE Monthly GiveAway of Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) bulbs where I shall give away 16 energy saving CFLs with a 23 Watt output (equivalent to a 100 watt incandescent bulb) to who-ever requests it - friend, foe, stranger. Every month.

Here's why: I’ve only recently gotten around to replacing all the light bulbs in my house with energy-saving CFLs...even though I’ve known about their great energy saving impact for a few months now. It wasn’t about affordability - PG&E is selling them for 50 cents a piece!! The delay happened simply because replacing incandescent bulbs that were still working was just not very top-of-the-mind for me and so I’d forget to buy them. If you're like me and lazy, not sure if you’ll like CFLs or just plain can’t remember to go buy them, this is your chance to Make-The-Switch and green-light your home. Click here or on the permanent link on the side-bar for more details

If you've already made the switch dear reader, feel free to refer your friends to this offer.

Pigs Without Wings? Too True

Another in the series detailing cruel treatment of animals...OK, I promise to find a new topic to post on soon - I couldn't let this picture go - I initially thought the pigs were sacks of grain or something. They didn't look like living beings.

I don't think I'm going to become vegetarian anytime soon...but I certainly would like not to be a part of this particular food chain. Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish has a great post on how Burger King has decided to start buying free range products. 2% of eggs will be free-range. (Small) Yay. (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/03/thanks_burger_k.html)

Requiem For A Short-Lived Dream

Obscure Topic Alert

She was brave beyond belief. So ran the first sentence of Anna Politkovskaya’s obituary in the Economist. Regular readers of the magazine that likes to call itself a newspaper will know that the magazine is not given to exaggeration and hyperbole – if medieval England’s butlers had been locked up in a room and ordered to bring out a magazine every week, their writing style would probably be very much like that of the Economist.

It takes a lot to win the Economist’s unqualified admiration, the magazine specializes in seeing three or four sides of every issue where a regular person would barely manage to see two. And so, the strong language of the murdered Russian journalist’s obituary served to convey the sense of profound loss and anguish that the magazine felt. It also succeeded in giving me goose-bumps and bringing a few hot angry tears to my eyes – that this happened to such a person and that it will go unpunished.

I’ve been wanting to write about this for some time – just never got around to it…but it keeps coming back to haunt me. Anna Politkovskaya’s death is old news – so if you don’t remember it or never heard of it, its not really surprising. We can thank the localization – a really good euphemism for moronization – of all news for that. Anna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist who was murdered a couple of months back; she was 48, not that much younger than my Mom, a well-known journalist who’d become famous for reporting from the frontlines of the wars in Chechnya. She was respected for reporting the truth…often truth that shone a terrible light on Vladimir Putin’s government. On the night she was shot point blank, at close range, in the elevator block of her apartment, she was working on another Chechnya story that exposed alleged rights violations by the Russian army.

Her death, in my mind, was also the clearest signal yet, that the dream of democracy in Russia is largely dead. It came after several other dissident journalists and editors had been murdered and was followed by the radiation poisoning of another dissident in London and the killing of another journalist just last month.

The government that the immensely popular Putin is running seems to be the offspring of an illicit affair between plutocrats and the mafia. Putin with his quiet purge, is more frightening to me than Zimbabwe’s brutal and clownish Mugabe. It takes a special kind of dictator to order hits on specific, identified individuals versus masses of faceless protestors …you’d have to be cold-blooded enough to be sure that their faces wouldn’t come back, like Banquo’s ghost, to haunt you in your sleep. The fact that Putin seems unperturbed, as ever, is scary. (Of course, none of this is to say that Mugabe isn't the tyrant he is or that he hasn't ordered hits on dissidents)

There are those who will point to Putin’s popularity to justify Russia’s direction and other cynics who will trot out a dictator’s favourite adage – “Democracy is not for everyone – specially not for ________ " (fill in country’s name – Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma, China, Russia etc). The popularity argument is very weak – Hitler’s government was damn popular too in Germany at one point and he led the country into Poland. Or closer home – take Laloo Prasad Yadav who single-handedly ruined Bihar, or even a certain American president who recently won a popular 're'-election (Do I really need to say what happened after that?). Nope - popularity doesn't convince me that Putin deserves being cut some slack.

The second argument might have carried more weight – after all each country is different and the same system (i.e., democracy) need not be suitable to all. But the reason it falls apart is because the people who claim that democracy is not for their country are almost always the ones who stand to directly gain power and money in a dictatorship. Let the whole population – the poor, the dispossessed, the wretched and the depressed – march in the streets demanding a dictatorship and then I might think there’s something to it. Curiously enough, I can’t think of one instance of that having happened. Can you?

But these are theoretical debates. What’s tangible is, is Anna’s absence from the newspaper pages for those readers who drew courage from her (unfortunately I wasn’t one of them) and what's tangible is Russia’s absence from the ranks of democratic countries.

Anna – Rest in Peace – there are those who didn’t know you, who mourn you, even if many of your own countrymen don’t.

Confessions of a Budding Activism Junkie

The case for free-range chickens?

My friend Malad, upon seeing pictures of two kids on my fridge a few months back, castigated me for not talking about them before – since he felt he’d have liked to do something similar months back if he’d only known about it. They were pictures of two orphaned kids that I’d ‘virtually adopted’ – signing up to pay for their education and upbringing but with no other commitment. I found myself remembering that incident as I drove home in my Prius and pondered replacing the incandescent bulbs in house with the 75% more efficient CFL (compact fluorescent lights for the environmentally challenged)

One of the things about living in the Bay Area is that it exposes you to a smorgasbord of activism opportunities that you can pick and choose from and even if you pick only one out of every 10 that comes your way, you’ll probably end up with a cause for every day of February (perhaps even February in a leap year). Nearly every other person you meet will have their favorite cause or eight – that they give money to, spend time on and allow to guide their decisions. Some are commonplace - giving money to Greenpeace - while others were very new to me and very endearing in their simplicity – like men growing their hair ten or more inches long and then donating it to a charity that makes wigs for cancer patients to use during chemotherapy.

In just a couple of years, I’ve adopted several causes, usually quite inconsistently, and find myself making tons of decisions based on them…Here are a few of them

• Stop global warming – I had to buy a Prius instead of a BMW ☹ cos the company hasn’t come up with a hybrid car yet. The CFL to-do item springs from this as well. I was so proud on finding out that my parents and my uncle had replaced all their lights at home in Bhopal with CFL. When even Walmart goes green (its heavily promoting CFLs - kudos) you know climate change is a real possibility
• Each-one-(virtual) adopt-one – I think the world would be such a wonderful place if every family that could afford it, ‘adopted’ one child from agencies like SOS Village or Children International. Really all you have to do is commit a small monthly or annual fee (Rs 3000 per year or $18 per month) to fund a child’s education and upbringing by these organizations. For people who are cynical about Angelina Jolie, Madonna and Mia Farrow (10 adoptions) – ask not why they’re doing what they are, ask why you’re not doing it even virtually. http://www.sos-childrensvillages.org/
  
• Relief Without Borders – The movie Beyond Borders left me with a huge amount of admiration for Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders). I wish I were the type of person who gives up everything and braves the horrors of conflict zones like Darfur to help rescue even a few people from certain death. I’m not…I only do the least little bit…make a small annual donation. Read about them here and see if you want to too…And yes, it is sad that it took pop culture to move me at all www.msf.org/
• Not buying petrol/gas at ExxonMobil – …unless I’m running out and there’s no other station in reach. Because it is the ONLY Fortune 50 Company to not have domestic partner benefits for gays and lesbians. Mobil actually did offer DP benefits but had to rescind them when they merged with Exxon. There’re others I boycott too (like Coors Beer). Fortunately there are many more fair companies nowadays than unfair ones…so I don’t have to do without.
• Free-range food –I try eating free-range eggs/chicken when the option exists. If I’m going to eat chickens I’d like to think they didn’t spend their whole life in a cage waiting to become my dinner but had some time to enjoy life running around in the farm yard
• Not shopping at Neiman Marcus – Because it seems they persist in this day and age in selling real fur. Yes inconsistently, I do wear leather belts and shoes and jackets… but c’mon minks are far cuter than crocs. ☺ Jokes aside I’ve decided to wear only cow-hide leather in the hope that the cow was probably going to be killed for food anyway, while the only reason the mink/croc perish is for the fur/hide
• Breaking Microsoft’s monopoly – Don't get me wrong. I use Micrsoft products all the time - they usually suck, but what's the alternative? Well for browsers, there is an alternative now - Firefox rocks! I use Firefox as my default browser and download it onto others computers when they aren’t watching :) . I think this is our best chance of breaking IE’s monopoly – Firefox now has 15% market share up from 3-5% just two years ago! I'm not against Microsoft but against monopolies – because they stifle innovation – for those who downloaded IE 8(?) and love its tabs, you should know that MS just copied the concept from Firefox! Of course, I love Firefox even more now that I can get paid a few cents every time someone clicks on the Firefox icon on this blog page and downloads it (Hint, hint!) :)
  

Now that I’ve listed all that I do, it doesn’t really seem like much – I’m just a wannabe activist. There’s just one for each day of a week but hey, give me time, its only been two years :). The ‘wannabe’ part worries me sometimes. I wish I were completely consistent all the time – I’m not. But isn’t it better to be good at least some of the time than never? I do believe that each individual action makes a difference, that each individual instance of an action matters as long as its sincere. Not believing in the importance of individual action would make me feel very helpless, very impotent in this world – and that’s not a feeling I wish to get acquainted with anytime soon.

If the price of sheeshas or the difficulty in procuring the Good Herb is getting you down, try adopting a Cause. You’ll be surprised at the kind of (rather selfish) high you get from just a small ‘selfless’ contribution – I get a kick everytime I click on Firefox instead of IE, or each time I get into my Prius. I think I’m definitely getting addicted to it. I think its time I went and found my next cause (conflict diamonds?). As for you, dear readers, feel free to start/add to your humanitarian efforts by helping fund my retirement – click on the Firefox tab, download AND install the darn thing already!

The Golden Gate's 'Beauty Mark'

This Friday, I went cycling with my cousin who'd come down from LA - we started off near Fisherman's Wharf and rode all the way along the Marina, over the Golden Gate, and down to Sausolito - its an 8 mile trip with a couple of uphills and a lot of downhill (once you get over the hump of the GG Bridge)...stopped at a Starbucks in Sausolito before taking the ferry back to the Ferry Building (quite appropriately :)

We chose perhaps the worst day possible to do the trip - it was cold and raining - and we got drenched three times over the course of the day - but it was also very empowering - now that I've done it in lousy freezing weather - I can do it anytime.

While I've only biked over the Bridge once before, I've driven across it many many times - but even now, crossing the bridge feels like a bit of a special event. The Golden Gate's attraction is a little difficult to understand if you haven't seen it - and perhaps even if you have (if you're a philistine :) . it requires a certain ability to buy into mythmaking in addition to just a basic appreciation of beauty. At one point its claim to fame was being the longest single-span bridge in the world - but there are newer claimants to that throne. So today you could see it as just an old red coloured bridge...But I think its so much more - I love it for its simple elegance, easy symmetry. For its incongruous red colour that stands out against the blue water and the greenery on either side but that also seems to make it look like a natural (rather than man-made) part of the scenery. I think the view of the Bay without the Golden Gate would feel rather like a well-formed sentence without a full-stop...it would feel incomplete.

Its probably one of the few instances where humans took a beautiful natural setting, imposed structures that they needed for their convenience and in doing so actually (unwittingly?) enhanced the panorama. Thats quite an achievement really and a pretty rare one. Go ahead and google images of the ugly structures on SF's other distraction, Alcatraz, to see what I mean....or heck, just take a look out of your own bedroom window!

Because it was raining, there wasn't much of a view from the bridge which is really why you would want to do this trip in the first place...and that's perhaps why I noticed for the first time Golden Gate's 'beauty mark'. It is its equivalent of Enrique Iglesias' now-departed mole...or of the mascara dot that doting newly-minted Indian parents - believing their kids to be perfect - sometimes put on the baby's face to ward off the Evil Eye.

Its just two small blink-and-you'll-miss-it sign-boards but the concise text is powerful, disturbing and poignant. The signs show a picture of a telephone to use in case of emergencies...not the kind that Alistair Maclean manufactured in GoodBye California - the US President is kidnapped by a gang and held hostage on the Golden Gate - but a much more individual, personal crisis. The Bridge is the site of multiple (unfortunately successful) suicides every year - and the hotline is to give people a last chance to be literally talked back from the edge.

I cycled on...the signs left me feeling vaguely disturbed...I find suicide and its associated despair and deep sadness difficult to understand and a little scary. But I was also glad that the city was trying to extend help to those lonely, despairing persons who stand on the bridge contemplating and seeking mortal rather than spiritual salvation. According to Wikipedia, "beauty marks were particularly highly-regarded during the Renaissance and it became commonplace to create false beauty marks" if you weren't born with them. SF has done something similar with the Crisis Counselling signs - except that these signs despite not being congenital, in their motivation, are true beauty marks.

I think I'm falling in love...

...with the IPhone. I really thought I could resist it but after checking out the demos on their web-site I don't think I'll be able to stay away when it comes calling :( See for yourself - its looks brilliant - http://www.apple.com/iphone/phone/

Of course, I can see several practical problems with the phone. All that finger scrolling is going to mess up the screen pretty quickly.

And I hope they're building scratch resistant screens for the nailcutter-ly-challenged denizens of the fashion world.

Urban Pools of Meltwater

"While there have always been meltwater pools. There are many more of them covering a far larger area of ice....This meltwater is now believed to keep sinking all the way down to the bottom, cutting deep crevasses and vertical tunnels called 'moulins'. When the water reaches the bottom of the ice, it lubricates the surface of the bedrock and destabilizes the ice mass raising fears that the ice mass will slide more quickly towards the ocean"

- Al Gore in the Inconvenient Truth

Al Gore was talking about innocuous looking pools of melted ice (meltwater) that have been spreading across the surface of Greenland. The adjoining picture is NOT Niagara Falls; its meltwater flowing into a deep moulin. How deep is the moulin? Well, the tiny black dots at the top of the picture are actually people.

While ice-sheets already formed on the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans are also breaking away and melting, this does not raise sea levels. Meltwater on the Greenland's landmass is significant because it may help huge chunks of land-based ice to slide into the sea which WOULD raise the sea levels.

I believe that metaphorical meltwater pools have also formed in urban Indian society...that has an equally large potential to change the climate in India - in this case, the social one. Unlike global warming, this climate change is likely bring positive change to most people's lives (even if they don't think so themselves :)

The meltwater pools can be found in places like Buzz in Delhi where young couples dance, smoke, drink and kiss in abandon every weekend night...or for example in Mocha in Bombay - where packs of barely-teened girls and boys spend horrendous number of hours and huge amounts of deep-pocket money on melted-Lindt hot chocolate and green-apple flavored hookahs.

The signs of climate change are everywhere. Here's a few examples:
a) Rising divorce rates (specially amongst the under-35 age-group) - Ask yourself how many divorced friends your parents had and how many divorced wonderful friends you do
b) Falling rates of pre-marital virginity. The perceived virginity rate in the eyes of parents is probably still at its 1960s level - I know many many couples who've lived-in in India but almost no parents who knew about it :)
c) The laissez faire attitude...fancy way of saying live-and-let-live...of most of my friends and relatives to my coming out. "But even then, why do you have to move to the U.S." I was asked a couple of times. Or the increasing number of gay nights in Delhi - at last count it had doubled to 2! - each, I believe, well-attended.
d) The increasing number of kissing scenes in Hindi films - even Ash did it...yes Amitabh, she did it and even if its cut from the theatre runs of Dhoom2 its probably already on Youtube for eternity. I do think though, that Ash kissing-in-movies is like Microsoft bundling IE with Windows - its a free gift that people didn't expect and thats designed to put wannabes like Mallika Sherawat (or poor Netscape) out of business

Sceptics will argue that there was always a tiny Page-3-population that lived like they were in Malibu rather than Mumbai - I think the difference is that:
a) The people swimming in the thawed meltwater pools today, are overwhelmingly middle class - not the upper-class people Shobha De famously wrote about
b) They don't regard themselves as social revolutionaries unlike the 1960's (1970's in India)
Flower-Power generation - the increasingly blase attitude towards sex, divorce, marriage etc is truly subversive - one that is likely to infect contemporaries in smaller towns, as well as younger siblings, kids and nephews/nieces who are now growing up. Quiet creeping revolution is more difficult to put down than bus-window-shattering protests

I, of course, selfishly applaud the omens of a new social climate - it may allow me to have a dating scene based in Delhi/Bombay before I'm 80 and can't dance anymore.

But there are others who should be worried. Human action has led to the drying up of the Aral Sea (Yeah really - the whole sea literally evaporated into thin air) and left shipping fleets stuck in the sand (see adjoining picture).

Indian conservative political parties - the ones that tend to riot on Valentine's Day - may find themselves similarly left stranded by the wayside along with their Ice Age ideas - if they don't change with the

The One About Rhymes That Won't Stop Running Through My Head

I've been in a bit of a strange mood the last couple of days - difficult to describe - I guess melancholy comes closest...a lot of change seems to be ahead in the next few months and maybe thats what is driving it. I usually find articulation of my moods through song lyrics that then I end up listening to on my IPod or humming incessantly - here's a few that have been preying on my mind the last couple of days:

From George Michael's Older - he's one my favorite artists - wish he'd clean up his act

"Strange
Baby
Don't you think I'm looking older
But something good has happened to me
Change
is a stranger
Who never seems to show"

From Linkin Park's In the End - my brother gifted me an mp3 CD with this song that I've come to love

"I tried so hard
And got so far
But in the end
It doesn't even matter"

The lyrics refer to a failed relationship but in my mind can refer to anything that you take too seriously at the expense of all other things. I definitely want to get far but hopefully will never be at the point where the deep sense of regret in these lyrics applies to me :)

Thankfully I also have in my IPod's arsenal a set of songs that help me climb out of my melancholy moods - lyrics that I've found always help are from Tim McGraw's Live Like You Were Dying:

I went sky diving
I went rocky mountain climbing
I went two point seven seconds
On a bull named FuManChu.
And I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter
And gave forgiveness I'd been denying
And he said some day I hope you get the chance
To live like you were dying

Makes you think about how you're living your life huh? :)

Why Scaring The Pigeons is a Good Thing

Sometime back I wrote about how I thought the alliteratively titled Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was one of my favorite new shows on TV. Disappointingly, the show didn't quite live up to its promise - and being unashamedly fickle about my TV viewing I have a new favorite - Showtime's rather innocently titled "Dexter".

Dexter is probably the darkest show on TV - certainly the darkest show I've seen on the small screen...Its about a sociopath who works as a forensic specialist in Miami's police department
and who channels his urge to kill into murdering other sociopaths. For those who think he sounds like any other superhero in Marvel comics, you've gotta see the show to understand how horrifying and fascinating Dexter the character and Dexter the show is.

I love the show and not just because its so dark but also because it raises a serious, but completely overlooked, animal rights issue. As a kid, Dexter, hones his skill as a budding psychopath, by murdering small animals (like dogs). There is a serious disconnect about how we care for kids and equally cuddly, equally innocent small animals that bring us into their circle of trust. We warn little kids to stay away from strange adults but encourage pets as well as semi-wild fauna like pigeons, squirrels etc to trust strange humans - kids and adults alike. And so, across the world, there are probably hundreds of quasi-domesticated small animals being massacred by mini-Dexters everyday...and nothing is being done about it

Take the example of pigeons...Almost any self-respecting historical monument in the world has several score pigeons floating around - strutting, fluttering, clustering around delighted tourists who throw down pieces of sourdough or baklava or corn depending on which country they're in and how cheap they are. These pigeons are so used to being around people and strangers that they'll trot up to just about anyone...they're perfect sitting ducks (sic) for any cute sociopathic Dexter/Dmitri/Dhritrashtra that scampers along. The show doesn't talk about Dexter visiting Trafalgar Square as a child like the kid in the picture, but you can be sure that if he had, there wouldn't have been quite so much cooing going on there, as there is today

The fact is, its not safe for these pigeons to trust humans. Given the centuries of indoctrination that these birds have gone through, there's a dire need for a comprehensive Pavlovian education program to get them to not trust humans again. And any animal rights activist worth their iodized salt should be doing his/her bit. It can be as simple as volunteering to spend a couple of hours every weekend to jump out at these silly birds from behind bushes while screaming bloody murder (IMPORTANT NOTE: but not actually committing it) to scare the guano out of them. Over time though, I think, more innovative methods might be more effective - ummm - like scattering electrostatically charged pop-corn that shocks any bird that pecks at it.

I spent one summer afternoon in May doing the jumping-out-the-bushes thing to scare some particularly blase pigeons on the lawns in front of Ghirardelli Square. I can vouch for the effectiveness of the method - it cleared the lawns of both pigeons...and people (including my fickle friend :( over a 100m radius within the first 30 minutes. I must admit, the lack of understanding with which my work amongst pigeons was greeted was rather discouraging. However...like Steve Irwin with crocodiles...I shall continue harassing them for their own good

Its going to be a Happy New Year

Sometime on the morning of the 31st, I got this phone call from one of my bestest favouritest friends in India - completely sloshed - and very happy - she called to tell me I was one of her favourite people too...It was a great way to start the day.

She also told me that she was taking responsibility of ending my singleton status - but given the 'high spirits' she was in at the time, I'm not going to hold her to it. :)

And then I brought in the New Year with old friends and some new - we had a surprisingly good time at Chevy's downing margaritas (we ended up closing down the place) - and then watching the fireworks from the wharf. And for once I had witnesses to the fact that there ARE fireworks that look like smileys. Yesterday there were several of them. Here's a picture to prove it.

And if the new year is anything like the last day of last year - Its going to be a very good year.
Here's wishing for many smileys next year for everyone - ones that light up faces not just the sky.