Craziness Personified
Sunday, July 28, 2024
Rants
Saturday, May 18, 2024
New Meaning of Nostalgia
Friday, January 19, 2024
Best Actor
Wednesday, December 20, 2023
Redemption or Perdition
For years I have been trying,
to create for my mind,
a haven of peace.
Alone I have been crying,
I have not been able to find,
from my fears a release.
Each day with dread I face,
Is my fate to be a burden?
Will I ever achieve redemption?
I am not good enough in the race,
Hence I keep myself hidden.
Perhaps I am already in perdition.
Tuesday, September 19, 2023
Questions on God
Tuesday, September 12, 2023
Photographic Memories
Friday, February 17, 2023
The Year That Was
I tried to review the year 2022, but then on January 2nd 2023, my father passed away. That's a strong and blunt opening line, but I have no other way to start describing a year that had me move jobs and cities multiple times and also finally turn my family's world upside down.
Saturday, July 24, 2021
30 Years of LPG
The economic reforms that India has embarked on since 1991 are known as LPG or Liberalisation-Privatisation-Globalisation, abolition of License-Permit Raj and the critic favored Crony Capitalism reforms. Whatever the christening, the reforms were essential at the time and that is where I would like to begin.
Sunday, June 28, 2020
BKC in Times of Corona
Apart from the morning and evening rush hour during weekdays, the place is filled with people out for a smoke during the day and for a drink the evenings. Weekends also attract a fair crowd due to the smattering of restaurants that occupy the ground floor of most buildings. But all these are descriptions of the past- an era before covid made BKC a hub of desolate glass castles. By the middle of March, most of the offices had send its staff home and implemented work from home. The crowds thinned and by the time lockdown was implemented from March 24, the place had an eerie silence at all times. As I stay in BKC and since my office has temporarily moved to another building in BKC, I have been able to observe the place over the last three months. During the days of work from home, I have taken the liberty offered by the desolate area to walk around a bit.
During April, BKC ground was host to the APMC market and it was interesting to see trucks lined up on both sides of the road in the evening waiting to enter the market. During one of my trips to office in the morning, I also saw a lorry full of cauliflower, probably waiting to drop off its cargo in the market at night. Till the first of June, it had been just a few cars and some trucks carrying equipment to set up the covid care centre and ambulances ferrying patients to the centre. Large queues had also appeared in front of the diamond bourse as it obtained special permission to operate during the lockdown, thus becoming the first unit to commence operation.
During my evening walks, I have observed a gradual increase in those using the low traffic and wide roads to practice and hone their driving skills. Perhaps there are not many places like this in Mumbai where you can do these things without crowds and risk of infection and police- the place is quite desolate these days. But the same conditions also provide a secluded spot for those (usually couples) who perhaps lack the space to be alone in their own thoughts and worlds. I guess there is also a limit to what they have to talk about and so that is why there are many such duos who practice driving.
Since June though, there has been a shift in the traffic. There are more autos and taxis plying the roads, but nowhere near the dozens that waited infront of each building and ferried thousands to the nearest railway station on a shared basis. The number of personal vehicles has increased significantly, visible from the vehicles that overflow onto the wide roads due to fully occupied parking spaces in office buildings- a sign that people are resorting more to personal transport- whether due to lack of public transport, especially trains, or out of fear I do not know.
Something that I have not been able to accept, although it is as clear as daylight, is the fact that restaurants that are highly expensive attracted food delivery app based business even during the peak lockdown period and this continues even now with the addition of those coming with friends and families for takeaway which they consume inside the vehicle or huddle around the lugge compartment. It is perhaps my naivety or lack of knowledge about the real world that stops from accepting the fact that there are a lot of very rich people who could afford these previously and for them the situation has not changed except in the form of a few inconveniences that do not really affect their wealth.
Perhaps the disease will go away, perhaps we will find a way to live with it or I do not wish to ponder. I guess there will always be those who will lose a lot of the little they have and those who will lose only a little of the lot they have or even add to it. I am only an observer trying to make sense of the world as it moves on.
Saturday, November 2, 2019
Home is where the heart is
I used to be proud of the political awareness of the people who vote out each government with contempt, assert their rights fearlessly and the strong links maintained by non-resident mallus with their roots. I was saddened by the floods that mercilessly made indelible marks deeper on the minds of my people than on the landscape, but the unity with which the people clawed back from the brink made my eyes well up with hope and pride.
Of late, things have changed. There has been a tectonic shift in the surface- but what has become frightfully obvious is that this is only an outpouring of emotions and fears that were so far tucked away in the dark recesses of the Malayali psyche. That these emotions have always existed is a fact to which I woke up only due to the recent incidents that have proved beyond doubt that Kerala is as susceptible to communal polarisation as any backward north Indian shrine is to political opportunism. These incidents were merely the first signs of black on my mind's canvas on which I had adoringly painted my land.
Until now, the abuses and shoutings that used to happen on facebook profiles of actresses and social activists were considered as a normal process of adjustment of a predominantly middle-aged and old society to the winds of change sweeping through the world. Assertiveness of women on the social scene, liberation of different sexual identities, openness in discussing hitherto taboo subjects like menstruation and sexual health were a progressive trend that met natural reactionary opposition like in any part of the world. I judged that openness and freedom were winning and the trolls and abuses were seen by me as the dying gasps of an outdated and soon to be abandoned conservatism, male chauvinism. Although I was not in favour of extreme reactions like "Kiss of Love" which was very nearly about challenging the other side to a fight and not a sincere attempt to reform, I felt such extreme steps are par for the course when reactionaries also go to the extreme level and contemptuously dismiss the need for any change.
But I was wrong. These reactions were the violent suppression of a much needed fledgling reform movement that could have ensured that women could safely drive their cars without getting abused at any time of the day. These reactions were meant to snuff out any attempt to change and not merely the last vestiges of a dark age. The kind of attack on women and children, will send a chill down the spine of even the most detached and indifferent braveheart. The fact these are coming out with alarming regularity makes me wonder how long "God's own country" has shrouded itself under the veneer of nature's bounty and social progress without revealing the truth that is full of "Devil's own people".
Political activism is just a means for various political factions to capture power at the cost of innocent lives. While celebrating the unity and fortitude of the people in the aftermath of the floods, the revelation by a court appointed investigation that it was the ineptitude of the administration that caused the floods unwinds any claim to administrative and political progress in the state.
This is where Mumbai shows a different path- all the good, the bad and the ugly are laid bare. From the stark economic contrast to the indifference towards both the affairs of other people and environment degradation, the grimful days of communal riots, wounds of terrorism and the darkness of gang wars, the city has accepted it all and not denied or hidden anything. The kind of safety that women and children confidently enjoy, the freedom the city gives its students to pursue any career path- be it commerce or acting (unlike my state where you HAVE TO BE a doctor or an engineer), the freedom to mind my own business and my indifference to the life of others is something Kerala can learn from.
I do not want Kerala or any part of it to transform itself into a city of inequality where trampling the slower ones under the foot mad rush of life is essential for one's survival and creaking infrastructure that makes life just long journeys to and from work filled with uncertainties. But I wish my state would stay green, politically aware, forget religious differences and defend itself from selfish, shameless and crooked politicians, ruthless and unscrupulous businessmen and most dangerous of them all- indifferent people.
We the people need to stop suppressing and denying their own identity and need to confront it head on. We need to come out into the open and deal with all the festering issues in our mind- male superiority, obsession with flaunting wealth, disregard for nature ranging from encroachment on sensitive water bodies to unstable hillsides and lack of respect for labour. As the state with highest literacy in the country, we should also be leading the country in the fight against fake news, sensational reporting by media and fake social media posts and also online frauds.
However, we seem to be faring no better than the rest of the country in handling these issues. As Joseph Alex famously said, all of us need a huge dose of "Sense, Sensibility and Sensitivity" for things to get better. Although a famous movie dialogue, it fits in perfectly as a solution to the current issues we have in our state.
As I write this after a two week holiday in Kerala, I do not miss the place, I do not have pine for a life there, but I do wish things would get better there and that I am able to be a part o
f that transformation.