Please raise your hands to take responsibility

Rains bring Mumbai to a halt. Nothing new in this news. We hear this every year at least once, sometimes twice. There are some spots in the city which are prone to water-logging after every shower and brings unforeseen challenges to all in the city. 

This year we had a few days like that again. I happened to be returning to Mumbai after a business trip earlier this week and courtesy rains and a stuck aircraft on the main runway, a flight of two and a half hours was delayed by three hours. The ordeal did not end there. After landing in Mumbai , we were informed by the hapless pilot to the equally hapless passengers that the airfield was full of aircraft in view of the cascading effect and it may well take some time to find a parking slot. This some time finally became one hour and fifteen minutes and the fact that this was unfolding at the wee hours of the morning added to the trauma.

Heavy rains are nothing new, in a city whose average rainfall is 2metre in a season. Flight and train delays are also nothing new in these times. But the fact is that this airport , which is the busiest airport in the country , is continously operating at 120% of its capacity which no machine, mechanism or system is designed to sustain. And therefore , one incident of a runway closure brings the whole airport to its knees, the secondary runway being far too short to operate all the flights.

A new airport was conceived in 1997. In about 20 years , ie in Feb 2017 the bidder was finalised. The expected completion of this project is anybody's guess. We are sure by the time the work is completed , the infrastructure will be too less for the traffic load.

Successive governments of various political combinations in this country have ignored infrastructure, paying more attention to class, caste, creed, religion to keep people engaged. We aspire to be a modern nation but get stuck in the same loop of self destruction by procastination. Political parties have been talking big before elections and repeatedly under delivering. I would love to see the persons concerned raising their hands and taking responsibility for the lack of accountability that they have been demonstrating for years together.

This day that time !

There are some days which transports you to the past like a memory fly past with such clarity that you wonder whether it is really past or present. There is once such day , ie 17th Sept. 

For some obscure reason not fully understood to me , this day is the fixed day for Vishwakarma Puja in Bengal. Although all the Hindu Gods and Godesses always follow Hindu almanac, this particular God of engineering keeps his appointment day with the mortals fixed on 17th Sept, irrespective of anything else. I have not understood this fixation with the Gregarian calendar, inspite of the dhak and the bhog and the dadhikarma and all else Bong !

Having grown up in an industrial town Durgapur, some 160 odd kilometres from Calcutta, now Kolkata, this day was a special day during my childhood. This was the day we got to see festivities all around, and multiple invitations used to come for my dad and we used to go in tow. This was the day we got to go inside the coke oven/power plant premises and gape in wonder at things which actually were far beyond the childhood brain to comprehend. I recall this day as the day when the evening invite was fixed at one such electrical substation where my father had been attached to for some time , and the folks there never missed to give him an invite till the last year of his employment. We children uses to frolic around in the otherwise sombre substation premises, of course under the watchful eyes of the elders , lest we touch or go near something dangerous. 

Many many years later , having graduated in electrical engineering and then taking up a career in that stream, these equipment are part and parcel of my daily life, but these memories stay etched in my brain as the fragrance of a flower long withered but still lingers in freshness. Now out of Bengal for many years , I try to my best to explain to my daughter the sights and the sounds long gone by. The memory stays afresh while the clock ticks and the years go by, the bad taste in the mouth remains when we hear that most of the industries in that town are past their prime, fallen prey to abject trade unionism and misled ideologies which have not withstood the test of time.

Hope is a real word

Something in me was missing as I had not posted a single post for last couple of years. Whether the reason is sheer lethargy or running for the roji-roti which keeps your passion in the back-burner I am not too sure, but what the heck, its better to do what I want than what I do not !

Lot of things happened in between in this hiatus, with de-mon ( demon ?), GST, blasts , cacophony of phony politicos, booze ban , 500 metre highway, heinous crimes, godmen to say a few.... 

Wonder what has changed in this interim period ? We wait for the acche din as a parched earth waits for the rain, but yet to see the economic recovery hit the ground running. At least do see its not in deep slumber...that is the hope. Hope is a big word and we cling to that last straw in these lacklustre times.

Oxymorons for the morons

When I was in school my good teachers taught me a lot of grammar , some of which I could learn and retain. One of things I recall having learnt was the oxymoron. We had various examples of it also.

But never knew that sometime so much later, we would have a new example to contend with. And a real life example at that !

As per the dictionary meaning of Subsidy is “A benefit given by the government to groups or individuals usually in the form of a cash payment or tax reduction. The subsidy is usually given to remove some type of burden and is often considered to be in the interest of the public”

Another term we have is VIP. Although not a word to the true sense of the word, it means “A person of great importance or influence, especially a dignitary who commands special treatment “

Now the question comes – can a person who demands treatment and enjoys privilege as a VIP (the stress here is on the word “demand”) can also qualify for a subsidy ? And is that in the interest of the public ?

Our parliamentarians declare their assets before elections which for most run into such astronomical numbers that you sometimes misinterpret it as turnover of a company or business. Once they become parliamentarians they become VIP, throw their weight around (sometimes both figuratively and literally ) and demand privileges which are not for the common man. And then they have subsidy for their meals ! The subsidy bleeds the exchequer by Rs.60 Crores a year !

In a country where millions do not have enough to feed their families, where babies die out of malnourishment, where families lose their loved ones as they do not have enough to pay for medicine, where death is sometimes welcomed to get rid of this life of penury for some ! In the same country, we have people coming in BMW, Toyota Fortuner and eat meals at this kind of subsidized prices.

VIP Subsidy- the new oxymoron ? The ultimate moron becomes the tax payers !

Definitely maybe !

Who is a VIP ?

There are currently a lot of discussions on the media regarding the rampant misuse of facilities by politicians , their kith and kin and entourage and the VIP culture. I fully support this campaign and wish well for the media in their crusade against this obnoxious practice that people in power of all hues and kind abuse in this country.

In one of the recent debates, there was a politician who was arguing about the status of the position making him VIP. Well I really wonder who actually is a VIP ? When I look at myself in the mirror in the morning after a shave the narcissistic bit in me actually throws back an image of the biggest VIP in the world. So I should also get all the privileges rather than waiting at endless queues and paying endless tolls and other taxes !

While on the way to office I see a mother escorting her small child to school. To her the biggest VIP in the universe is her little child. The street dog waits for the kind soul across the road to throw bits of last night’s dinner and scraps of bread- his provider of food and therefore the biggest VIP in his life.

So the status of the VIP is such that every one of us is a VIP at a given circumstance. But we neither get any privileges nor need any favours. But then why do the elected representatives , by virtue of their position , choose to behave as if they are from some crazy monarchy and behave like King Canute ? Any slightest hint of taking away these privileges sends them into a tizzy as if they cannot live life without crutches. Obnoxious to say the least and given that ultimately the law makers are these who actually abuse the law the most, this lal-batti menace is not easy to wish away. Many such crusades will be required to bring some semblance of responsibility in these Very Inadequately-educated Persons- a new type of VIP indeed. This society would well deserve a few lesser of them.

 

Time Machine

School days – the very thought of this today ignites a blast of memories from the past in me. And the good thing about old memories- we generally forget the imperfect , the unfortunate and gloat over the good. Good. The older I become , which we all do with certainty every passing day, the fonder the school becomes.

 

Those were really the halcyon days: days of gay abandon, days when we could do anything and everything with carefree spirit. But the funny part is , when I think about it now, at that point of time we all wanted to quickly grow up and become adults ! To come out of school and become adults in this serious grim world !

 

Talking now about those days today brings back glimpses from the labyrinth of my memory, some hilarious, some shocking, some pure adulterated fun. These parts of my memory was numbed in these decades and are brought back to the fore as I bump into school-mates whom I have not met for decades ! Hours pass by as we dive together in the past, out comes black and white photos , now yellowish with age, photos where sometimes I cannot even recognize myself.

 

In such deep dives, one of the commonest subject of our discussion is our school headmaster, Late Rev Fr. Wautier. From those days in kindergarten till almost we were out of school we had this magnificent administrator, a man whom we have always respected, feared at times, fond as we grew up and idolized in our own way. We saw him from close and feared his strict discipline but admired his vivacious energy. We can almost see his Vespa parked in the corner, the cigar in the corner of his mouth and the key-bunch dangling on a chain from his pocket as he walks past.

 

And such millions of other memories flash by, big small and sundry.

 

The past has come back to us now, with technology uniting a handful of old (young?) balding school-mates pushing fifty, who are now dispersed in various sections of the world and the first thing that they do after brushing the teeth is wishing Good Morning on WhatsApp. We share memories , present problems and sometimes fight as if life has transported us in time back three and a half decades. And gloat over splinter reunion pictures and dream of a grand reunion some day !

Digital Trail

The other day I had an experience which began all and sundry. I am a member of a professional network on internet and like all other networks, this gives continuous recommendations of adding someone else to your network.

They pop out of nowhere every time I Iog in.  Mugshots of people whom I know or once knew and also of some I have never seen come on the screen much like the Wanted column of newspapers ! Honestly it is a little irritating but at times but it does lead to getting connected to someone whom we really need.

I had logged on to this portal and these so-called recommendations for joining the network started popping out. Suddenly one such recommendation made me freeze. A face, familiar came out with the name and last held position etc. All this was fine. The only thing out of place was that this particular ex-colleague of mine had passed away some months back (God rest his soul in peace !).

It was such an eerie moment or two when I looked at the screen and wondered. What happens to us with all our digital trail when we move to the next world ? How does this digital trail get cleaned up ?

And do these departed souls get networked to each other in the next world ?

Definitely, maybe…………