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…………

Icons

What is common between Dettol , Cadbury, Lux, Surf, Colgate, Burnol ? Well a concoction of all these will be pretty funny to say the least.

These are all brands with which I grew up in seventies and eighties and these brands are still as relevant as they were. In fact they have assumed a generic state. In villages and small towns Colgate is the synonym of toothpaste and the actual toothpaste being used may be of some other make but it is still referred to as Colgate. Same goes for Lux and Surf when it comes to cleaning self or cleaning clothes.

Dettol is the first first-aid that we all come to terms with. And for a small burn, I never knew in those days any other substitute of Burnol.

And when it comes to chocolate, in my childhood did not know of any other chocolate which was not a Cadbury. A Cadbury was for small joys, for small celebrations like scoring good marks in exams, for birthdays et al. I recall one Geography teacher made us memorize the capitals of various countries and in the impromptu test at class the best three crackers got a Cadbury each. I was also one of the recipients once and I still remember the capitals of the countries fairly well even today.

In those days the Cadbury came more or less in one packaging- the standard violet one with Dairy Milk Chocolate written on it. A few years down the line came the other variants in other colours and tastes.

Today we know that Cadbury has been sold off and the company renamed to Mondelez. Currently the brand names will remain is what we are told.

However some years down the line will the small town grocer be asked by a child for a Cadbury or a Mondelez chocolate ? Only time will tell.….! But they have been icons in their own right !

Pollution Tax for Politicos

Today morning the newspaper headlines scream that one of the top office bearers of one of the top national parties have stated that English is the main reason of the doom of this country. Almost every other day some politician or the other will make such inane , stupid , imbecile statement and now with the elections round the corner the frequency of these will increasingly increase. Of course after each statement there will be some debate and there will be another statement stating that he/she has been quoted out of context.

The fallout ? We waste newsprint (ie cut more trees) , spend more electricity while showing the news and the debate that follows on TV (ie burn more coal, gas whatever) to bring these inane, stupid, imbecile, useless, non-sensical statements to the masses and then retract creating useless and needless tension and stress. Only to then wait for the next one.

Due to this, actual issues that the country is plagued with is swept under the carpet. Why then should our great politicos not pay a pollution tax (sound pollution is the very least of the problems that they are creating by this...) for this farce ? They should pay this every time they open their mouth in front of the gaping media and since they open their mouth much more often that they deserve to do , they should pay an annual tax like poor salaried guys like us pay income tax. 

Ok, Mr.PC, when can we hear about this tax scheme then ?

Still there is hope

I had taken a virtual hiatus from writing on this blog.

Partly because of pressures of earning the daily bread and partly because after reading the newspaper in the morning and watching the news in the evening, the mind used to be almost toxic with the unending series of scams- of yet another useless politician swindling people’s money and being unabashed about it or yet another sordid case of rape of a hapless young girl, of some crocodile tears by our powerful ministers ( that would make even a crocodile squirm with jealousy).

Today morning seems to be bright. Two news items caught my attention.

Newspaper vendor from Bangalore walks into IIM-Calcutta

Sruthy Susan Ullas, TNN | May 15, 2013, 01.05 AM IST

BANGALORE: As the alarm goes off at 4am, N Shiva Kumar is up on his feet, stacking his bicycle with newspapers. He has to deliver them before the sun appears on the horizon. A habit since Class 6, Shiva's life is set to change now. Come June 16, this newspaper-boy-turned-vendor will walk down the corridors of the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta as a PGP student……..

Rickshaw driver returns Rs 1.90 crore cheque

Bharat Yagnik, TNN | May 15, 2013, 02.52 AM IST

AHMEDABAD: An Ahmedabad auto rickshaw driver has returned Rs 1.90 crore cheque issued in his name in lieu of three bigha land acquired for Tata's Nano plant in Sanand.

Raju Bharwad could have pocketed the sum, but gave an undertaking that he was no longer the land owner. He ensured that the names of the new owners are entered in the official records……

After reading these two articles, I feel that still there is hope for this country, our utterly worthless political class and the widespread corruption notwithstanding.

Maybe I am yet another glazy eyed optimist, but unless we are optimists, can we make things change in this garbage dump that this country has been led to ? 

Apps - What ??

I use a mobile , a smart one at that- smarter than me by leaps and bounds. However my usage is limited to some photos, email access and occasional navigation. Of course this is apart from calling people, other people reaching me and messaging, which are what phones are meant for. Or what a dumb guy like me thinks that they are for ! Definitely I could use a dumber phone but like it or not, today’s phones come with a lot of smartness and each of these smart moves cost a bomb.

I do not use most of the apps. The other day when I mentioned this to a member of the younger generation (who is quite a geek) that I do not use these apps ( or for that matter have little idea what to use them for), his jaw dropped as if I have mentioned spotting a penguin in the Rajasthan desert. He was zapped : how can this zombie even lead a life without using apps ?

There are apps for everything he explained and these are mostly freebies so they have to be used ! He explained with patience that there are apps for everything from the minutest things to the most complicated. I am sure there are millions of web pages devoted to same and how to download, use , share etc.  Just browsing through the plethora of information makes you crazy….. There are apps for reminding  the disorganized to stay organized the non-networked to stay networked, the overweight to stay hungry, the forgetful to brush their teeth etc etc etc......

Oh…what’s that beep ?

Oh well, it’s an app reminding me that I must stop writing this nonsense and get back to some serious work....

Cheerio !!!

Das Capital

Lot of gigabytes and sound-bytes and reams of paper are getting spent on the recent capital punishments given to two people charged and proven in the law courts for organizing terror in this country. The mercy petitions were rejected by the President , thus triggering the executions.

As if by trigger, immediately parallel debates have opened up on the media on the need to have capital punishment in this country and counter-arguments of the need to abolish it and convert same to life imprisonment.

Let me make it very clear that my knowledge of law is similar to an Eskimos knowledge on habitats of camels on the Sahara desert. However my memory is sharp. And I would not like to have two things to happen. One, I would not like my income tax to be spent on feeding terrorists in jail. Instead I would like that to go feeding the poor and unfortunate. (It is perhaps another matter that the same too does not happen due to the lackadaisical nature of our government). Secondly I would not like innocent Rupin Katyals to lay down their lives in hands of some more terrorists so that a few more can be freed from our jails.

Strange that it may sound , taking another human life may not be exactly civilized even if it is for the execution of a hardened criminal. But we have to also remember that even if it means being crippled for life, a surgeon amputates a limb infected with gangrene and does not apply antiseptic on it instead.