deponti

It seems to me that overpopulation lies behind most of the troubles we face in India today...the over-burdered, groaning, decaying infrastructure of our cities...the rampant corruption as high demand chases low supply..the wildlife-humankind conflict...the greed, and the need to make money quickly...road rage as everyone tries to get past quickly....

When I was young, the average school class consisted on 20 to 30 children...today, to send one's child to a school with that kind of student-teacher ratio, one must cough up a fortune.

Even where the system *tries* to be transparent, sheer numbers dictate cut-throat survival tactics....I was standing in the pre-paid auto queue at Chennai today, and was told by two or three auto drivers who approached me, that the queue would be long, autos would not be available, so would I like to take their autos...? Such blatant lying only means that the need to survive is a matter of great pressure.

The auto I got into went down a narrow lane...filled with stagnant water, and in extremely poor shape...I appreciate the pre-paid auto initiative, but the pathetic condition of the auto area made me feel very bad.

I will no longer travel by second class coaches; they have become crowded and the toilets stink...

My country seems to be sinking in the mire of its own inefficiency and corruption...

Our Indian culture seems, to me, to be excellent at one thing...keeping down the sense of self-worth in individuals who are meek in nature to begin with.

And most of us are not militant in-your-face egotists; we might have some appreciation of our talents or strengths, but in general, we are very much aware that there are others who can run rings around us in any department we care to name.

As long as this gives us a healthy attitude of humility, things are fine. But what seems to happen is much worse...the person seems to feel that s/he is not interesting/intelligent/whatever to "match up" with others...and tends to retire into a shell from which it is difficult to extricate hem. All the more, this person *appears* boring when s/he is NOT.

This feels even worse, to me, when I see others, far less deserving of the spotlight, hog it with great glee, while the people who probably know more about the subject stay in the background because of several reasons: a natural disinclination to push themselves forward, a feeling that probably the other person IS better than they are, and sometimes, the feeling that they don't really care! (This last instance doesn't apply to my present peroration, as they are the people, in Isaac Asimov's words, who are "so intelligent (substitute interesting or good-looking or rich or whatever) that they see no need to advertise the fact." They are happy in themselves.)

We then have the amusing spectacle of the less-knowledgeable holding forth in style to an audience of people comprising those who actually know MORE than the speaker! (this could be a speech or a meeting of people, or whatever.)

I find Indian women particularly prone to this complaint; they have, traditionally, a lifetime of being casually considered second-grade persons, to the point where they take on the attitude automatically.

When I was teaching music, I found that with women, most often it was not so much a matter of teaching them to sing, as of boosting their self-esteem to the point where they thought that they *deserved* the one hour of the music class as time devoted to themselves, and also, to the point where they would open their throats and sing uninhibitedly. "What will the others say or think?" seems to be the guiding force of SO much inhibition and self-repression that I see around me.

It took me, too, a long time to throw out (not always successfully, alas) the "I'm not worth it" attitude that I grew up with. All my life, I was compared with a cousin who was studying to be a doctor. "You are studying ENGLISH and PHILOSOPHY! Of what use is that?" was often openly asked. It was only later that the term "liberal arts education" came into use. Until then, I could not convey to others that I was thoroughly *enjoying* my studies (that was also a no-no..one was supposed to study HARD and STRUGGLE and SUFFER to do well academically!)....and when I first met KM's IIM-A group, I had this big chip of "I'm only a lowly housewife" on my shoulder...but lo and behold, I find that those who are comfortable in their own skins, have NO problem in appreciating things about others. My singing... and even my lousy jokes were appreciated..and I really do think I grew up as a person then, and I too have learnt to look for what is interesting in a person without discarding hem too easily. And...there is always SOMETHING that is interesting about each person I meet!

Self-esteem (not to be confused with mock modesty or veiled arrogance!) is a very necessary part of one's personal happiness. I've been very, very lucky to be able to get some measure of it (though it still fails me occasionally, when I quail at meeting a new group)...and I wish everyone I know gets enough of it, too....

In Chennai...

One, the Corporation building:



And two, the Central Railway Station:





There are many, many more...some are falling to ruins...

One, while waiting at Central Station, Chennai:





I can just imagine the criminal innocently sitting in front of the camera which, of course, knows immediately that this person is a criminal, and starts watching him...


The next delightful thing was in my coach.



It says, "Hammer for breaking the window glass during emergency".

Now to find a hammer to break the glass of the window in which this hammer is kept...


And the last...make no mistake, there will be no teetotallers on this train...

We want to find our way through a city? We buy maps, we look up Google maps, or... we ask for directions. Especially in India, we do this as we stand...or park...in the middle of the road, generally getting the person with the lowest IQ in the area, who either gapes at us or confidently gives us wrong directions.

But our politicians have better methods.


On my way back from the walk, I noticed these rounds on the side of the road:




I was curious, and when I found this man making those rounds by tapping a basket full of lime powder on to the road




I asked him what he was doing. "The CM and another leader are coming this way," he explained.


Here's one of several posters of the CM (of Tamil Nadu)...with the usual paeans of praise:



(this one says, "Oh, Kalaignar (artiste) who gave us the meal scheme, welcome, welcome!"...referring to the noon meal scheme for children in Corporation schools, perhaps)

Here are some flags of the

DMK
with the leader's face on them:




....for a wonderful exposition on how to make a political poster in Tamil Nadu, visit

this blog entry by Krish Ashok

The other leader is G K Vasan, the son of Karuppiah Mooppanar. (his photo, too, is up there in the second photograph.)

And the round markings? When the driver of the leading car in the political convoy sees them, he (you think there will ever be a she-driver in a Tamil Nadu politcal party convoy?) knows where to turn off the main road!

Isn't that a great navigational method? I would be rushing, right now, to buy my "chunA" powder and my basket, but I don't have someone from the Chennai Corporation to do this for me, alas...

I also found a police car



and some police (or some other enforcement agency) officers going around, checking the route:



No, I didn't talk to them for fear of being told,

I can't take photographs

The man making the rounds (I carefully didn't ask his name) has been working for the past 26 years, he said, and was doing his duty diligently, on a wet and chilly (for Chennai, 25 deg is chilly!) morning.

The occasion...was the 80th birthday of Mr.Mukta Srinivasan, the well-known film producer.

So all you techies with those fancy GPS gadgets....all you need to do is become a politician in Tamil Nadu...navigation is a piece of cake...and several round markings!

Apparently the lime powder also acts as a kind of anti-bacterial agent, and is often sprinkled on garbage heaps. So there's multi-tasking for you!

http://forestparkowls.blogspot.com/2009/11/peregrine-falcon-lecture-at-st-louis.html


A lecture on Peregrine Falcons...half an hour walk for me in St.Louis...of course it's a little longer to walk to St.Louis Zoo from Bangalore!

Today, I was photographing the I.G's Office building to add to my walk collection. one of the women constables (or inspectors, I don't know her rank) came up behind me as I continued my walk, and kept insisting that I should not take photographs of the building.

I found this utterly ridiculous. The building is in an open space, and there are literally thousands of people going past in their cars who can take photographs. Any of the pedestrians with a mobile camera can take pictures too. But since I had an identifiable camera, I was targetted.

Worse, when I said that I was taking photographs for myself, the lady said nothing more and let me go. In case I had been a terrorist, I would have said exactly the same thing, and would have got away with whatever it was that the authorities are scared of.

So what on earth is this stupid policy of always going around telling the public that they can't do something, which the authority in question has NO way of enforcing? Why do we seem to live in the British Raj still, in so many ways, where it's always an authority vs. general public attitude? Why do we still have obsolete, futile rules which it takes the lower orders all their time and energy to try and (unsuccessfully) enforce? It seems to be harassment for harassment's sake.


I also fail to understand in what way my photograph would have posed a danger to the building or the people within, that an image from Google Earth would not.

"You can't do X, you can't do Y" is the anthem song of our bureaucracy,government, culture, and police....when are we ever going to get rid of this mindset?

Happiness...is getting something to eat when one is hungry.






Unhappiness..is not being able to eat.





I wonder how that crow manages with that broken beak...certainly the bird looked woebegone in the rain.

http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/articles/view/1543-bengaluru-photographers-to-shoot-leonid-showers

However, the title I had chosen was...Shooting Stars Shoot Shooting Stars".

Very long post, read only if you have some leisure.

I do love my country, which often has its flag represented in unique ways:



And I like walking through its cities.

Each city in India is quite distinct from the other; not for us the bland homogeneity of a skyscraper downtown and sprawling suburbs...I find Indian cities totally fascinating.

Like all Indian cities, the architecture in Chennai is an often astonishing mixture of old and new idioms, which are radically different from each other. It's fascinating to watch...and there are also the this-es, the thats, and the others as I walk. I decided to take my MLC for a walk, too...and we went together, through a few roads in

Mylapore (town of the peacock), now called Thirumylai or the place of the divine peacock

( walk with me through Mylapore )

Think about the beauty of seeing a small temple, that's traditionally built under a spreading young

Peepal Tree



...and make my way home....


Some more on Mylapore

the walk without photographs

Mylapore Tank


New Year in Nageshwara Rao Park

Chennai vignettes

Mylapore Tank

And if you STILL have patience for more,

here !

See this



The only thing I can cavil at is the reference to a "little lady"...but other than that..

premkudva, can you insert that oversize smiley of yours here?...

You know you've spent too long abroad, when....you sit in Chennai and find yourself trying to calculate what time it is in Bangalore!




I tried out

tree-climbing


...and a couple of days ago, I snapped this:





It struck me forcibly that what was just a pastime for me, and a sport for others, was a livelihood for some people. (You can see that the man in the photograph above is using a sealant on the windows.)

This morning, when I opened

The Hindu

I found

this article by Liffy Thomas

Talk about high living....these people, like Microsoft, make their money from...Windows!

and we have a new proverb...people who live in glass houses, need their windows cleaned.

The Marina Beach in Chennai

is one of the public open-air spots in the city that gets a lovely sea breeze in the afternoons, and is a popular spot to visit.


It has a line of statues, that the wiki link above lists; and here's the sunrise on the statue of


Kamarajar (kAmarAjar)






The beach faces east, and sunrises are beautiful...when there's a sunrise, can thoughts of asakiyume be far behind? :)

Here's the "Gandhi silai" (statue of Gandhi) that stands at the junciton of the Beach road and Radhakrishnan Road:









True to his reputation for simplicity, Gandhi walks, while all around him, the rich park their cars to come and walk, too...!

I will be documenting that morning walk of mine...yes, I did take along MLC2 yesterday.

But some things are even more eye-catching than others...


As I turn from Santhome High Road on the Marina, into Radhakrishnan sAlai (erstwhile Edward Elliotts Road), I find that I am suddenly in New York!

( see New York in Chennai )


Well, I was not in a militant mood, I was...affable...!




In Tamizh, the sign says "appapuL" (in Tamizh, "f" sound is written,somewhat awkwardly, with a "therefore" sign written before the "p" consonant...but that wasn't the case here). So, I was appapul instead of affable.



I do enjoy taking my MLC along!


It's beginning to pour with rain again...I'm going to enjoy going to get some vegetables now...

A friend of mine asked for mango-ginger recipes after my mango-ginger rice last week was a hit. Mango-ginger is available everywhere now and my friend Mythreyi had given me some, so I made some more.

If you want to make a nice batch of chutney:

peel and grate mango-ginger. (about 250 gms of it.) Add 5 tbsp oil, sputter mustard seeds, and switch off the gas and add chili powder to taste (I usually add about 4 tbsp to that much of ginger.) Add a pinch of asafoetida powder, and half a tsp of dry-roasted and powdered methi seeds. Switch the gas back to low, add grated ginger, and also add a little "gud" if you like (I do) close the vessel, and cook till slightly soft. It should not need blending...but do that if you like. Refrigerated, lasts a month...unrefrigerated...3 days.

It can be eaten with phulkas or parathas...or mixed with cooked rice.

Instant, crunchy pickle to go with thayir shaatham: Chop the ginger small, and put in a vessel. Make a kind of depression on top and put chilli powder and asafoetida powder. Heat 2 tbsp oil, sputter mustard seeds, and add the hot oil on top of the chilli powder and asafoetida. Add salt, and mix well. It's YUMMMMMMY.

Some people (like me) are instantly allergic to raw mango-ginger. However...I still LOVE this pickle. :)

You can add finely chopped mango-ginger to thayir shaatham itself, too.

....what about onions, ask the Jains....

Amrita Bazar and Ananda Bazar Patrika ...and of course the prim-and-propah Statesman...all delivered by flight to upper-floor flats, rolled up and thrown with practiced wrists, by cycling delivery boys

A well-maintained and run Zoo

( you think that was A to Z? No, some more here )


Oh...this list will never end....

My father...I've never written about him, for some reason. Like all caring and resposible fathers...an amazing guy. Born to easy affluence as the son of someone who was the Financial Advisor to the Government of India, and who earned an OBE, or Order of the British Empire, he really enjoyed a princely lifestyle, shuttling between Delhi and Shimla,going to the best schools..and he decided to study Electrical Engineering at the

Benaras Hindu University

(Just take a look at that link to see the eminent Vice-Chancellors they had!)

( more about Appa )


I just went through some old newspapers yesterday, and found a very telling illustration of the troubles he must have faced....

Here's a cutting from the Amrita Bazar Patrika of April 21,1976:





From another cutting, I learnt that a computer to help with billing and systems had been earlier installed in 1969, and then *removed* because of pressure from the staff and the United Front Government...this cutting asks the then Chief Minister of West Bengal, Siddhartha Shankar Ray, to "take steps to prevent the installation of a computer" as it would take away jobs, and since the "existing tabulators and calculators are under-utilized", it is "not understood why a high-powered computer should be brought in".

There is also a request "not to allow a new power project by securing external assistance."


Oh, the progressive outlook of our politicians...and what an ironic situation in a country that would become the spearhead of the software revolution!


Appa...I love you and appreciate you more as I grow older...

One of the things I have been introduced to lately, is

Wheat Grass

and wheat grass juice....

I am hoping that this has a very beneficial effect as an ill person has this every day with two spoons of

honey

I have learnt how to grow this on the balcony; soak the wheat grains overnight, let them drain in a cloth until they sprout, and then scatter them in a pot which has mud and fertilizer....


Here, you can see the various stages of its growth:




The wiki says spinach is just as good, but the green of that grass is definitely soothing to the eye as well!

She's known to us as ...simply...Dadda...which was my sister-in-law's childish way of saying "dAdi mA" (paternal grandmother).

She's approximately 90 years old; I'm not sure she knows when, exactly, her birthday is. She's as spry and perky as a sparrow. She still makes most of her meals herself; she was married to a freedom fighter, who won the tAmra patrA for his struggles, and still earns a freedom fighter's pension herself.

She's a repository of wisdom, tales of long ago, stories of her family, and is a superb cook.

She keeps up her pooja-pAth (rituals of worship) but accepts me as I am....and though she is rigid in her own discipline, she's incredibly modern in some of her views...when her grand-daughter wanted to marry a south Indian, and the relatives were against it, she said that her husband had fought for Indian independence, not north Indian independence!

She'll be travelling by train tonight, on her freedom fighter's pass... to Kanpur, Lucknow, and then to Haridwar, where she lives in an ashram, where, every day, she can see her beloved "gangA ji"...Mother Ganges.


Here she is, with our maid, Chitra, braiding her hair...which is snow-white, long, and curly as a baby's!





She's so affectionate...she travelled all the way from Haridwar, just to attend my daughter's wedding, and took a star part in the festivities....

Dadda...a dearly beloved lady.