Slumdog with an Oscar

Today the whole country is proud on Rehaman. He got his first Oscar award for his original score "Jaya Ho". Though not one of his best, I am at least happy that Oscar awarded for the one who deserved it from quite some time. Rehaman is working with foreigner directors for a while now. All his hard work paid results now. Congratulation to the whole Slumdog Millionaire crew for your great performance.

'A (Hole)iday in Techie’s life'

TV is on, and on the selected channel 'FRIENDS' the famous comedy serial is being beamed. It is Chethan’s favorite serial. He watches it every day. Joe is his favorite character. It is his dream to meet all actors of FRIENDS. He is so deeply involved in the serial that he is oblivious of the outside world.

Burrrp!!

The calling bell sound was so irritating that he almost jumped out of the Sofa he was couched on.

“This sounds like hell” he shouted. “How many times do I have to tell the landlord to replace this jangling bell with something idyllic!” His anguish is justified, for his monthly rental remittance would be accompanied by a demand for the replacement of the calling bell, and each time the latter has promised to promptly comply. “This time I will replace it myself and deduct from the rental amount.” he thought.

“Courier.” Even the summons-like voice seemed pleasant vis-à-vis the jangle of the calling bell. He opened the door. With a big smile on his face, the courier handed him an envelope saying, “Morning sir, Vodafone bill.” He was wearing blue dress and a blue cap that read 'GTDC'.

“Sign here sir." said the boy pointing to the form with a pen. Chethan signed on it. "Your name and phone number, sir?" He wrote that and took the Mobile bill. He closed the door and opened the envelope to see the bill.

“Rs.1782/-! What the Hell!”

“How to keep track of the calls we made”. He thought Vodafone is cheating him by charging him for the calls he had not made. He thought of going to consumer court to sue them. He recalled his friend's words: “Do you know how many cases are pending in the consumer court? More than 1000, man!”

“Justice system in this country is one big chaos,” he thought. He tossed the bill and sat on the sofa again, rolling his eyes back to the TV. Well, everything came at a price: He had to endure a series of advertisements.

“Do you have to burden us with tonnes of advertisements!” he said raising his voice, as if the producer of the show was seated before him. He wanted to switch channels; he looked around for the remote. He couldn’t find it between the books and papers lying on the sofa. He realized he was sitting on it. He heaved his butt a bit and retrieved the remote with his left hand. He pressed the buttons. Nothing happened. He banged the Remote on the sofa edge and pressed again. Nothing whatsoever. He banged again and pushed the batteries and pressed the buttons again.

“What’s wrong?” he said. He tried targeting the Remote properly towards the TV's infrared dot. The channel would not budge. He adopted novel strategies. He now started gyrating his limbs. It appeared as if he were rehearsing break dance. Finally deciding to use the selectors on the TV panel, he got up. But by that time the main program resumed.

His relief was short-lived, for even as he reflected that it was great fun to fumble with different channels than watch the same channel for one full hour, the power was off and TV screen went blank.

“IT city is living in dark,” he thought. It was the fourth time since morning that power supply was cut off. He heard some noise and rushed toward the bathroom. His washing machine was sitting quiet at the corner typically like a dog waiting for his master’s command. Eyebrows locked, he eyed it for a while. “Hell, it will start allover again when power supply is restored. It will be the 3^rd time,” he said to himself. His washing machine was an automatic, which drew water directly from the tap. “Why can’t you resume from where you had stopped?” he said to the washing machine, “Stupid machine.” “Forget it” he said and went to his bedroom. He was feeling hungry. He reminded himself not to miss his early Breakfast. “Not having breakfast is like running vehicle without petrol” he recalled a modern day proverb. With his shorts and T-shirt on, he went to 'Guru Sagar', the restaurant three blocks away.

Approaching him, the waiter placed a glass of water before him, retrieved a soaking finger from it and raised his eyebrows 'Bray'. Deciding not to sip the water, Chethan asked for the menu.

“Idly, Vada, Khara baath, Kesri baath, Rice baath, Tomato baath, plain dosa, masala dosa….. ” His words were faster than a bullet train. Used to restaurant food for quite sometime now, Chethan reflected that they all tasted the same. “Idly vada” he ordered. Waiter went away without saying anything. His silence means “Okay, I will get it”. This is the default demeanour of the waiters in Bangalore's eatouts. All restaurants are doing well these days in Bangalore. Most of these had 'Darshini' suffixed to their names as in 'Upahara Darshini'. But these days 'Darshini' has paved way for 'Sagar'. We now have 'Shanti Sagar', 'Guru Sagar' etc.

Returning, the waiter placed a plate containing the Idly Vada on the table drifted away as if he has nothing more to do with it. You will have to call out to him at least twice if you spotted a fly in the dish or discovered that it was yesterday's leftover. Let's say he will simply take back the plate. If he did the encore of walking away without uttering anything, consider yourself fortunate, for he is wont to argue with you, “This is how we will serve, sir.” Now you are left with two choices. Either eat it as it is, or eat it along with very same words the manager sitting on an ornate chair would dole out to you if you went to lodge a complaint with him.

He silently munched the Idly vada and went home. He opened his laptop and started to browse. He visited indiatimes.com and watched some revealing photos of select models, and then glanced over the gossips about his favorite move star. Then he started to browse websites on stock market to check the share values in which he has invested some of his salary savings. This is what many a software engineer does as soon as he starts his day at office. He will browse websites like rediff.com or indiatimes.com to get some news about movies, movie stars, current affairs and share market. This will be interrupted by his manager who coasts by his desk and will start asking him about the bug, which he was to have fixed by now. He will begin expounding about the logic and algorithms, which he has arrived at to fix the bug. The manager will listen patiently and will give an expression of having understood the situation and appends a bit of his own advice, which will be totally irrelevant to the bug. Eventually he says “Keep up the good work,” and accosts the next person.

“What the Hell” Chethan screamed silently. He immediately picked up his mobile phone and called his friend. “Did you hear that” he said. “I lost money man” he said with panic. “I lost money too” said the voice from other side, “Share market plunged”. He spoke to him for a while and hung up the call. He was relieved some. “I am not the only one” he consoled himself. He visited other websites and noticed that many people had similarly expressed their anger. Some people blamed the UPA government and some others blamed the world market. Web sites are like a virtual Fish market. People were shouting different things in different ways.

Tring! Tring! Tring! His mobile started to ring.

He opened the flip and said “Hello”.

“Hello Sir, am I speaking to Mr. Chethan?” asked a crooning female voice from other side.

“Yes.”

“Sir this is Priya calling from Denmark Bank. We are giving credit cards at zero annual fees. Are you interested?”

Chethan’s Face turned red. This was the time to vent all his anger.

“Where did you get my number?”

“From our database, sir?”

“Who gave you the database?”

“Our Manager, sir”

“What is his name?”

“Sorry sir, we are not authorized to give his name”

“Then why the F*** did you call me? Why are you disturbing me in the morning? Did you get my reference from a contact of mine?”

“No sir”

“I will lodge a complaint against you. You people don’t care for our privacy. What the hell you think about your self? You will shortly be served a legal notice."

“But sir”

“Don’t interrupt. Listen carefully. I will see to it that your agency is closed. I will blah blah blah blah.”

Burp! She disconnected the call. But Chethan is unaware of it and keeps up with his tirade. He realizes it only much later.

He started browsing again. “What a bad day” he thought. He had taken a day off to study for his online MS exam. “I should watch a movie to cool it off” he thought and started to browse to book the movie ticket in PVR. He picked up his mobile and called his friend.

“Hey, what are you doing tonight?” Shall we go to the movie ‘Yes Man’?”

……..This article is edited by my dear friend Ramprasad. My sincere thanks to him.

The White Tiger

I bought this book on the streets of Bangalore where they sell duplicate books for less than half the price of original. Sorry Aravind, this would mean I am promoting privacy. Sorry for that. But I am happy for buying this book not for the cost but for the content and his writing style. With simple English and a humor touch its a good book to read.

The story is about a Village boy who becomes a driver and later an entrepreneur. Most of the story is in flash back. The story starts with Balram writing a letter to the Chinese Premier. Balram, the village boy who is the main character in the the story, was compared to White Tiger by his school inspector. Balram who hails from a sweet makers family, thus with last name as Halwayi. Writer has given a beautiful picture of how the landlords exploit the poors in vllages. His dreams of studying in school was short lived since his brother takes him out of the school and puts him in a tea shop to pay back the loans. He learns to drive a car after over hearing about the payments for a driver while cleaning the tables in the teashop. He comes to delhi with his land Lord as his driver. Delhi and its lifestyle is explained beautifully. The lives of drivers is beautifully written as well. It is in Delhi the writer kills his land road and runs away to Bangalore. I didn't like this part since he has written it as if its not a big deal to kill some one. Later in Bangalore he starts his Taxi service which was a booming industry because of the BPO/IT industry.

Over all the book is nice to read and you can carry this to read while travelling.

What is happening here?

In the recent past we have heard many stories in the NEWS channels about political parties hitting North Indians, women in the Pub, damaging public properties like buses and shops. Parties like MNS is been very active in finding out which North Indian is working where and how ti politicize the issue and gain some cheep publicity. This trend is also in run in the neighboring status like Karnataka where women in the Pub are beaten up in public. Adding more fuel to the fire, some of the news channels where present at that very moment capturing it live in their camera as if its a cricket match. This news was on air in almost all the NEWS channels for quite some time. Things don't end here, Mr Pramod Mutalik is live on TV and says that they have done everything right by hitting those women and would continue to do so in the future. This according to him is against our Indian culture. They call themselves are custodians of our culture. Shivsena's spokes person gives a statement that they are against women going to pubs. What an irony, the chief of Shivsena wants Red wine to drink and Cigar to smoke.

If we dig little deep in to such matters, we fill figure out that these are some trivial issues and have least importence at this moment for our nation. Just because some women in the urban India go to pub, drink wine and dance that doesn't mean we are loosing our culture. I guess the percentage of such women is hardly anything. Even in MNS case, the Maharashtra government reported that more than 80 % of the employed are from Maharashtra. Then why people like Raj Thakarey and Pramod Mutalik are making it a big issue. The only reason is their cowardliness to fight issues like corruption, poverty, child labour, etc. Even today in many places common man doesn't have a proper shelter to live, pure water to drink, and good food to eat. If you look at the urban problems its hell mounting. Slums, Pollution, bad roads, Traffic Jams, delay in construction all have become like part of life in almost all the cities. Why can't our political parties taks such issues and fight against the government or bodies?

Many news channels air such silly news to gain the TRP. The importance given to such news is so much that many of the important news have been forgotten. Some time its raises questions and doubts over the moral duties of such channels. These channels seems to be misusing the freedom. Its time now that Indian government should have a board to control/monitor these media. Media has to play an important role in bringing better governing practice. Media has to use its power in the right direction. Media will be playing an impotent role in shaping the future of this country. Millions of people in India every day eat and breath TV.

Today many people have lost their confidence over the government and political leaders. This is no good for the future of this country. Judicial system has lost its importance. We stand in top 10 for the corruption. We are one the most polluted country. 80% of the jobs are unaccounted in our country. The percentage of people paying Tax is very low. Politicians do you want any more issues? Can't you fight for such important issues? Do we need to leave our jobs and take care of these problems also?