Maybe the Wall has some answers.

Monday, March 29, 2010

24

Hmm. Decisive, completely sorted out and raring to go.

One hundred per cent. Well, almost. Rounding-off is a scientific mathematical practice.
(But didn't Lorenz say it's responsible for the butterfly effect?)

Oh wait, this is my 125th post.

Now I'm happy. :)

Friday, March 26, 2010

Moving On

It was on a March morning similar to this one that a classmate said something that I have, since, given more than occasional thought to. We were both standing outside the cafe, where we had bumped into each other at a late breakfast. With the Univs less than three weeks away, we had ended up talking mostly about this chapter and that reading. But on our way out, I stopped under the Dhaba tree, mesmerised, for the millionth time, by the sight of the Cross against a clear, blue sky. So perfect, it seemed unreal.

"You're going to miss College, aren't you?" he asked.

"Yes. Yes, I will." I replied, still overwhelmed by the enormity of the simple fact that I was about to end three years in three weeks.

"I will, too. But I'm glad I'm leaving now", he said, and I turned to look at him.

"You know it's time to leave when people and things that you have always liked begin to annoy you just a wee bit, don't you think?" he said, frowning absent-mindedly as he leafed through his notes, checking for a CED tute. Then he looked up. "Even for College, which I love so much. Especially for College, which I love so much."

We were friends, but not exactly bosom buddies. It was more a cordial acquaintance, a natural result of studying in the same class, living on the same campus and running into each other in the Dining Hall every now and then. Inevitably, we fell out of touch as we moved on and got busy with our lives over the years that ensued. But the closer I get to each finish, and the more I think of his words, the truer they seem to echo.

I'm at the end of several phases at once. I may not have loved every bit of it as much as I loved College, but I'm glad all this happened, I'm glad I learnt so much. But I'm also glad I'm leaving now.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

I've rattled my brain about, turned it inside-out, and scoured every inch. No inspiration. Absolutely none. If you're looking for some place to wander to, Muses, right here would be wonderful. Thanks.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

It pays. Or does it?

Now here's something that made me sit up and take notice. With a total of five years of economics behind me, I am, academically, considerably acquainted with the concept and the mechanics of taxation. There's a faint personal acquaintance, too - the sort engendered by eleven months of paying taxes and a week of running around like a headless chicken when it is time to file returns. And, of course, there's Marketing, the other love of my life. But this is the first time I have seen the two coming together, and to call the phenomenon merely interesting would definitely be an understatement.

The first thing we were taught about taxes was that there is no quid pro quo involved. Taxes are unilateral payments made by households and firms, which are meant for the government's coffers. That they form a substantial portion of the government's revenues goes without saying. And while it is implicit in Public Finance that proceeds from taxation are used for the benefit of the economy, no individual is entitled to ask for anything specific in return for the taxes he pays. That's what theory says, and that's exactly what is borne out - more emphatically than is needed, if you ask the average citizen - by the actions of the government.

So I'm sure we have all either been - or seen - the person who wonders exactly where his hard-earned money is going, every time he drives over a potholed road or glances at literacy or health-related data in journals and papers. There are ways of questioning the government about its measures and policies. But if Household A paid Rs 60,000 in taxes this financial year, they cannot go asking for benefits worth that amount, or even question the use of the funds.

Which is why I did a double-take when I first spotted a half-page ad in a national daily, reading "Have you paid your taxes yet? You pay - the country pays back!" Of course, there's absolutely no implication that there is any quid pro quo. But what is fascinating is the attempt to address the cynicism that has come to characterise the attitude of the average tax-payer, some of it justified, some not. There have been attempts and platitudes before...this one is a novelty simply because it has been put down in black and white. Positioning taxation as an activity with moral and patriotic appeal - that's a first! Undoubtedly, there are several reasons - the moral and patriotic included - why one should pay one's taxes. There is also, by corollary, an equal number of reasons why that money should be put to honest use by the exchequer.

That is what makes this campaign intriguing. One hopes to goodness that those who designed the campaign will also remember that the job isn't complete till the promised value is delivered. If, after a colossal exercise like this one - it must have cost them a pretty penny; guess where the money came from! - tax-payers don't get to see exactly how the country is "paying back", the campaign will backfire on a similar scale. Public memory, usually notoriously short, is not equally forgiving when money from its pockets is involved. One recalls a certain campaign that claimed India was shining. Appalling people with the enormous wastage of taxation money, it succeeded only in eroding goodwill away from the ruling coalition. So, yes, while it is great to be told that the country will pay back, some evidence that the promise is being kept will go a long way. Do I sound cynical? I'm afraid that's how I feel. :)

Friday, March 12, 2010

For the Love of Beans...

I fill a saucepan with water and set about looking for matches. There's no time for anything fancy today. Everything dumped into one big mug is how I'll have to have my coffee. I begin to tear open a sachet of dairy creamer. Something makes me pause midway.

It has been a while, hasn't it, since I had black coffee?

Black coffee. For a person who thinks in terms of pictures, there can't possibly be a more powerful stimulus to the imagination. The last three months of twelfth grade, I woke up to a steaming mug of black coffee every day. My aversion to milk was the stuff doctors' (and mothers') nightmares are made of. So mornings found me hunched at my desk, reading or doing the daily crossword, black coffee at my elbow. Months later, the beverage was to become a habit an addiction. If I didn't know this then, the kick I got out of sniffing at my mug every morning should have given me a hint.

The water begins to bubble. A quiet, familiar, comforting hum.

This is a sound I would know anywhere, this low humming of water being brought to a boil. It used to echo over the staircase in Allnutt South when I went to use the hot plate to make coffee in the middle of the night, or at two in the morning, when the entire block was silent. Coffee calmed me down, cheered me up, was the perfect accompaniment to Systems or Policy, made Micro II bearable, and was the best company I could ask for on breezy, rainy evenings, when all I wanted to do was to sit on the ledge of the verandah and stare at the sky.

The water bubbles louder, more insistently.

It makes me think, for some reason, of the rich, bitter black coffee in the white ceramic pots that sat on our breakfast tables in the College mess. If that didn't wake one up for an 8:40, nothing could. Because the marmalade was both sweet and tart in a way only marmalade can be, it accentuated the bitterness and strength of the coffee that I washed my toast down with. And I know I can tell that coffee apart from a million other brews any day.

There's something warm and homely about a good, old-fashioned cup of coffee made the traditional way, I think to myself as I take the pan off the flame.

The process of making it is as therapeutic as the beverage itself. Not that the 30-second method - set water to boil, empty sachet of instant coffee into mug, take now-boiling water and pour into mug, enjoy! - is a bad substitute. Vending machines - now those seemed like an insult to coffee.

An outrage, I thought, till I found myself employed 10 hours a day researching M&A transactions. Looking back, I realise I owe my sanity to the 8 cups of espresso I helped myself to from the dispenser in the pantry every day. I breakfasted on espresso practically every morning for about 10 months. It isn't the healthiest lifestyle option, but I was too young and always too hassled to know any better. By the time I left the place, though, I'd kicked the habit, coming down to two cups a day, refusing to allow myself to depend on anything that badly in the long run.

It's been a while, but the smell of espresso still automatically triggers a small attack of nerves - will I finish all that work before noon? Is that report error-free? Why isn't this godforsaken transaction making any sense to me?...you get the drift. :) And black coffee and economics are married to each other in my imagination; through eight years of association, and of one accompanying the other, I now instinctively think of demand curves, inflation and development (in that order) each time I smell black coffee. I suppose it will remain like this for a while, if not for the rest of my life. Truth be told, I hope it will.

I tear open my sachet of Nescafe, smiling at the memory of a kindred soul from College, whom I share a love of coffee, economics, EcoSoc, books and Asterix (among several other things :) with.

Ruch insists that Bru makes for better black coffee than Nescafe does. The coffee table in D-8 was always piled with ribbons of bright green, and the occupant of the room always more than willing to make giant mugs of soothing black coffee for friends going cross-eyed over the Phillips curve or Public Finance.

I stir the instant coffee into the water, all these images in my head coalescing into one glorious, earthy ripple as the smooth brown powder dissolves into a mugful of the best thing in the world.

The dairy creamer doesn't belong here. :)

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Breaking Spells

When the veil has fallen
and the mists have cleared
there's nothing but disbelief;
endless, incredulous laughs.

Another new experience,
a new lesson learnt
another long recollection
for vacant, querulous hours.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Moment of Truth

Today, I have realised something. I have realised that I have become nothing, done nothing, achieved nothing in my 24 years, because I was powerless to do anything about that man on the road. Good upbringing, a degree in a social science from one of the country's most hallowed institutions, and another in Human Resources - and I couldn't help that man in the brown shirt, couldn't do anything about the humiliation he was being dealt so unfairly. That I wanted to is immaterial - I didn't; and so my good intentions didn't make a difference to his situation. I have failed, and I feel ashamed of myself.

It happened rather suddenly, at the juncture where Chhatra Marg turns right to become Bungalow Road. From about fifty metres away from that point, I only saw the road curving right, and the usual stream of traffic. The next second, a motorbike and a rick had collided at the turning. It wasn't, technically, a particularly ugly collision. The rick and the bike both fell on their sides. The bike-rider was a portly man - from a well-to-do background, if the sunlight glinting off his gold chain and expensive watch was any indication - and the rickshaw-walla a scruffy man in a brown shirt; fairly young, thirty maybe.

Our rick had drawn abreast of the site of the accident by now, and I could hear and see everything clearly. As was inevitable, a crowd gathered there in under five seconds. A couple of people helped the men up, and then the passers-by stood uncertainly on, looking undecidedly from one to the other. Honestly, I suppose I could say I'd seen the whole thing happening, and it really was impossible to say whose fault the collision was. And seeing as nobody and nothing was particularly damaged, I entertained, for half a second, the foolishly sanguine idea that they would dust themselves off, maybe shoot each other a couple of annoyed glares, and then go their separate ways. It didn't even occur to me that what followed was capable of happening.

The owner of the bike got up, reached over his bike, grabbed the rickwalla by the collar, and began a succession of blows, punches and slaps on the man's head, face and shoulders, shouting abuse after abuse of the filthiest variety in English, Hindi and Punjabi. Ten slaps, twelve, fifteen...I lost count when I realised, with a shock of disgust, that I was still on the rick and my rickwalla was slowly circling his way past the spot. "Ruko bhaiya", I said, digging money out of my bag and thrusting it at him as I leaned sideways to jump off the rick, already sticking an arm out in a reflexive but useless attempt at holding the violent man back.

"Nahin, Madam!", the rickwalla hissed at me, pushing my hand away, "yahaan mat utaro. Dekh nahin rahe ho yeh bheed? Aur us sahab ko? Aap rickshevaale ke liye kuch nahin kar paoge Madam. Chalo yahaan se. Aap khud bhi phasoge aur main bhi phasoonga."

His warning didn't make sense to me. Of course I could do something. I could talk sense into that man's head, pull his hand back. I could ask the others - now standing like so many statues, witnessing the incident with a fascination borne partly of horror, and partly of - this sickens me - entertainment, to help. I could do something to halt the mindless beating, the stream of profanity.

Or was I just another well-meaning, but entirely impotent, witness on a rick?

Maybe that is what I was. As my rickwalla pedalled furiously into Bungalow Road, I found myself turning around to stare at the two men. The rich man with the bike was still yanking the other guy by the hair, still delivering slaps and blows left, right and centre, still shouting things that made my blood boil. And this man in the brown shirt said not a word, not one word. His hands hanging limply at his sides, his eyes lowered and back stooped, he looked up at intervals only to stare contritely at his attacker. Apologising, as it were, for the accident that was, technically, nobody's fault; apologising also for having had the audacity to use the same road as his well-to-do fellow-human being; for his audacity in existing, in all his poverty and misery and lack of influence, in the same world as this other man, who, clearly, had the greater right - the only right -  over everything good that life and the world have to offer. The sunlight that had glinted off the rich man's gold chain now glinted off the wetness in the rickwalla's eyes, the one sign of protest by his body that he didn't have the power to suppress.

There was this man, this violent lunatic, beating this guy up. And there was this guy, submissively taking every blow, every cuss-word. And there was the crowd, watching silently. And there was me, on a rick, looking at all this from a steadily-increasing distance. It made me physically sick.

There was no point in going forward like this, so I asked to be dropped off then and there. Now at what he assumed was a safe distance from the site of the trouble, the rickwalla pocketed the fare and pushed off. I ran back to the spot. By the time I had elbowed my way into the middle of the circle, two of the posse of policemen who patrol North Campus had arrived there, too. It didn't take the crowd long to disperse after that. Both men were led away. I turned back and walked home.

And that is when I realised how completely and utterly I failed today. What great things have I any right to aspire to if I can't pull a hapless victim of road rage away from his attacker, whose sole right to attack stems from the fact that he is burly, knows enough English to be able to abuse in the language, and rides a Hero Honda? All my good intentions notwithstanding, how was I any different from the forty people who stood there watching everything in stony silence, the forty people I had stared at in shock, disgust and disappointment? Didn't I just let down every person and institution that has had any hand in the building of my values? I let that man down. I have never, in all my life, felt so angry, so helpless, so useless. It makes me want to cry, but I'm not sure I deserve the privilege of release.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

What I learnt this Holi:

1. There is such a thing as too much good food. Yes.

2. There is, on the other hand, no such thing as playing 'a little' Holi. You either play or you don't.

3. A chubby, curly-haired eighteen-month-old dozing off in your lap, her fists clutching your sleeves - the biggest rush of affection on the planet.

4. If you are given to dancing in rage, do not do it on the staircase.

5. Wilde had a point. People are not to be classified into good or bad. They are either charming or tedious.

6. I have more willpower than I credit myself with. Hooray for me. :)

7. I have developed a propensity to talk in bullet-points. I'm going to have to tone it down.

Hope you had a great Holi, World! See you in a bit.