10 things I miss from TV in the 90s

This discussion actually started off as a minor chatter on the balcony of our hostel a couple of weeks back. As our academic calendar draws to a close and every body is reminiscing about the good old days, we decided to really step into the past and pick up 10 things from the 90s television we would love to have in our lives once again. This is the list which we discussed after 2 hours of non-stop, non-utilitarian discussion and does not appear in any order of preference. So here goes: 

1. Chitrahaar and Rangoli:

Our weekly dose of Bollywood was limited to these to programs. My guess is Chitrahaar was on Wednesdays and then moved to Fridays.. and then again moved back to Wednesday evenings but Rangoli was part of Sunday morning breakfast ritual. Dahi-jalebi with Rangoli... yummy!!! or in winters... watching Rangoli while hiding inside the razai.

2. Byomkesh Bakshi:

The baap of all "who-dunnit" serials in the world. The serial involved a complicated mix of medicine, chemistry, logical analysis and intuition, all the while keeping the audience on the edge of their seats. While many people might consider it as the Eastern rip-off of Sherlock Holmes.. with the doctor accomplice but to me it is probably one of the best detective series ever made, with a very simple production backing strong stories and some great acting.

3. Surabhi:

The Sistine Chapel of Indian TV's cultural revolution. Only person who could have rivalled Siddarth Kak in popularity might have been Arun Govil (who played Ram in Ramayan) but Renuka Shahane with her broad grin and emphatic namaskar was miles ahead of any female on Indian TV at that time in popularity. The show brought many cultures, many cuisines, sight and surroundings into the Indian middle class household for the first time, taking us on exotic travels and fuelling dreams of far and wide for many of us. That and of course, the huge number of postcards they used to receive for their TV competition, leading to the launch of the Rs3 special postcard by the Postal department. Some oppurtunism that !!!

4. Potli Baba Ki, Baloo (Talespin) and Duck Tales:

Bachha time now. Sundays 10 to 11.30 am were reserved for the kids of India, with the dubbed versions of Disney cartoons playing out on the small screen. While Baloooo was serenading his boss, Uncle Scrooge and his 3 nephews were always out on some crazy adventure involving mummies and genies, making our Sundays all the more fun.
This generation was followed by legends like Daanu the Danasur..of chipkali ke nana fame!!!
5. Alif Laila: 

The pre-cursor to all those special effect serials that we now see on TV. Ramanand Sagar was immortalised by Ramayan, which was said to have brought the whole country to a stand still. But Alif Laila has a charm of its own. Right from its opening soundtrack to all those crazy sounds and special effects. Not to mention the fact that it had some of the more scantily dressed female protagonists for its times. With all the djinns, pari and shaitans, the serial would take us down a never ending path of fantasy and magic, with the good triumphs evil message splattered all across the storyline.



6. Shanti:

UTV Pictures presents Shanti...Shantiiii... Shantiiiiiiiii.....
After the baap of who-dunnits, we have the grand momma of all the modern day tear jerkers. In a convoluted plot of an illegitimate child, avenging a rape on a decaying family housing an underworld don as its servant, while the family itself is in self-destruct mode, our country's Lady Cricket Mandy Baby rocked the world with her reporter-giri and badle ki aag for Kamesh Mahadevan and Raj G J Singh. Bhandari with his crazy underworld act and finger-tapping dialogs and Nanu Jasoos were essential props to the Shanti success story.

7. Nukkad/Mr. Yogi/Mungeri Lal ke Haseen Sapne:

We hark back to the time when comedy did not mean stand up comedians dishing out corny one liners full of double entendre. Good clean humour, involving Mungeri's day dreaming, day to day happenings at the nukkad or the eteral search for his bride for Mr. Yogi (unsuccessfully ripped off in Wats your Rashee!!) is still a treat for the mind after a taxing days work.


8. Archaic ads of Laxman Sylvania, Link Locks and Nirma Detergent:

Everytime I see a bikini clad woman walking ashore for advertising JK Cement (the seriously WTF ad of the century!!!... if only sex and sleaze could sell everything) I am reminded of the Laxman Sylvania ad .."arre wo Ram Laxman wala bulb dena" or else the legendary Nirma gal or Link locks... featuring never seen before animation..where a filing rod is being used to break the lock and instead the rod breaks with lots of sparks flying around it!!! Simple, almost laughable and yet we are able to atleast relate the ad to the product.. Some times I wonder if we people have progressed o degenerated mentally!!!

9. Dekh Bhai Dekh/ Sarabhai vs Sarabhai/ Tu Tu Main Main:

 









The second generation of comedy serials, featuring up market families and primarily aired on the DD Metro network. DBD was a legend in itself with Deven Bhojani and Shekhar Suman pulling of comedy scenes with aplomb while Rosesh Sarabhai ki sadi hui kavitaon ka kya kehna.  Sachin created the first ever saas-bahu item on Indian TV and all Indian male population would agree that it was million times better than the stuff being dished out now. Goooooooooooood ollldddddd daysssssss of laughter Momma!!!

10. Ajnabee:

My favorite army serial, featured Danny and some other leading actors and was about the life in terror stricken Kashmir... one of my favorite characters was a terrorist name Shakoor Rana, who could generate enormous hatred and revulsion through his cool attitude and devilish dialogs. No over hyped, false bearded terrorists as in Sunny paaji's  movies. Just plain and simple story.. and yeah the opening sound track was good too.

So this is my list of 10 things which I hope would come back on TV and I can be happy again. Ofcourse, we discussed many other candidates like Hum Log and Buniyaad ( of which I have no great recollection!!), Vikram Betaal, Shaktimaan and Chandrakanta, Captain Vyom (I am sure this suggestion was more sarcastic than genuine!!) and the legendary Ramayan and Mahabharat. But I am sticking to these ten things... do let me know in case I am missing something else!!!

One-tip Cricket and Management Fundas

This one originated right this evening.
  It was started by my bro GuGu ofcourse, with whom I have the pleasure of sharing many intellectually intense and invigorating debates... and all this while watching a dismal game of cricket. No, I am not refering to the 'ordinary' India-Bangla test match but to a game of cricket commonly known in the balconies, passages and verandahs of India as one-tip, one-hand cricket.
 As to the origin of the name, there have hardly been more to-the-point names in the world, which leave you in no doubt as to the game ( I wish human names were as useful!!!). However, the debate did not rest on the mere nomenclature of the game rather hinging on a more intriguing part of the game. How is it that the rules for 1t1h cricket (1-tip 1-hand cricket..inspired by T20) are more or less the same across the country?
As is often the case, I began my answer in all earnest abstraction and hoped to end my monlogue with the famous "Elementary, my dear Watson" look. However, ever since I have been solicited for services by a name sake of the Jaya Prakash Murugan Chettiar Bank, the time on my hands has enabled me to delve deeper on entirely useless things!!! ( You might wish to argue that it was the case earlier too but let save it for later.)
So I took up the development of 1t1h cricket as a management problem and this is how I guess it must have worked out:

•  Need Identification: In India everybody wants to play cricket but hey, where is the space!!! So every possible quadrangular (or not so quadrangular space..) is put to good use. Now we Indians are competitive people and no cricket can happen without elaborate scoring systems and even more ritualisitc methods of getting out. Thus, the birth of 1t1h cricket owes itself to the space-strapped cricket maniacs of the country.
• Early Adopters: Early adopters are the people to whom any product might give reasonable amount of credit for shaping usage patterns and augmenting product features. So while 1t1h started out as a simple variant, the early adopters to the game decided to add rules for hitting on the wall, hitting the tubelight, minimum runs in an over etc etc etc and more... thereby increasing the ability of the game to handle various tricky situations and obstructions.
  
• Critical Mass: Many new product innovations have perished because of their ill-timed launches. While market timing is as much an art as a science, the rise of  1t1h cricket has coincided with the emergence of housing complexes, having more parking space than playing space (infact substitutable spaces... these two!!!). More controlling parents, who figure children are safer playing cricket in the balcony of their 8th floor apartment than on the ground and of course, the simple truth that any playground is hideously anti-social compared to filling the coffers of some builder bloke. Add to this the stereotypical picture of a cricket field in India.... 5 parallel pitches and close to 100 fielders packed into a regular size field. While the batsman's concerns are not limited to the opposition fielders alone but expand to include the pitch invading goons from other teams, the poor fielders have the additional worry of protecting their nether regions from a well directed pull shot. Hardly a pleasing sight you would say!!!  Thus, the new baby in the cricketing world couldn't have come at a better time.
  
• Standardisation: While many sports in India have secured an elitist status, its just impossible to keep any form of cricket away from the masses. Though in essence this penetration of the product into new market segments should be a good news for most firms, it also brings in the additional burden of standardisation. And I guess, we have no one to thank more than the kids of Defence personnel & other folks in transferable jobs for bringing about this standardisation of procedures/rules/rituals and other gimmicks in the sport of 1t1h cricket. These people have travelled far and wide, carrying with them the best practices in the sport and spreading it across the various parts of the country. Thus, many of the rules in the sport are now universally (read "nationally") accepted.
  

With this my analysis of the evolution of the sport has been concluded and all I now worry about is the survival of the game. You see there was this game we played as kids, it was called book cricket but with the advent of PDFs, laptops and Kindle the children of today have been deprived of the sheer thrill and adrenaline of playing the great sport of book cricket. I hope 1t1h does not meet such an unceremonious end. Amen!!!
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The above gyan is written without any backing of management studies. It is just a intuitive piece of imagination of how things might have worked out at a micro level, at the same time causing a sea change in the cricketing behavior of an entire nation. Believe it at your own risk!!! 

Mummy... I want a state!!! Plz can I have one too?

The post was written on the day Govt declared creation of the Telangana state. The delay in posting was caused by lack of access to Internet.

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This is the third consecutive day when I am posting on my blog. Understandably the amount of time on my hands is worrying for both me and the Saptarishis. Infact in relation to my previous post, I confided to a close friend that becoming a writer is a serious career option. But then that was yesterday.
 Today, of course, India and the world woke up to one of the boldest blackmail heists in the history. As if right out of a Calvin & Hobbes strip, an unruly kid foregoes his meals to get a better Christmas gift and the hapless parents agree. And, of course, that carving out Telangana will motivate other such power-hungry ruffians to go on a fast and demand smaller states from the existing ones, is none of the Central Government's business. 
 I guess given the current state of 'bovine excrement' the Centre has landed itself into, is the perfect impetus for all the separatist movements. An the potential outcomes of their 'humble' requests can be quite interesting, coming primarily from some of the most productive lunch table group discussions. Lets have a look at some of them:

• Possibly, we'll end up 545 states, where each constituency is a state in itself. We'll hv a small matter of 500+ state governments, potentially be renamed "The United States of India". Sounds cool, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's hardwork done to dust!!!
  
• How about a spate of Union Territories, acting as regional headquarters and you can form whatever number states you want. So Mumbai is separate from Maharashtra, Hyderabad is separate from AP (Telangana..go figure this one!!), Bangalore is separate from Karnataka. I am sure the kids in school will hate it.. Imagine the enormous amount of gyan they'll have to memorise because of our politicians, some of whom actually never bothered going to school anyways.
• Third, and this I find to be the most plausible, is the case for dual citizenship. I am sure this gives one Mr. Thackeray a smile on his face. People moving between states will have visa interviews and will have to clear exams with fanciful names like Test in Tamil Speech (who's acronym can't be written here!! Imagine if you had a guidebook to the exam saying "Ace your T&^*") or Test of Marathi as Professional Language.
• What if the motivation for creating states changes? Currently states are formed according linguistic, cultural and of course, political considerations!! Imagine what happens if professional considerations are taken into account. What if the huge mass of software engineers strewn across country goes on a hunger strike demanding creation of niche states only for IT professionals? What will be the name of this state ... Soochna Pradesh will be unacceptable to the Madrasi anna while IT Nadu will be indigestible to the bhaiyaji!!! Some problem there. One thing is for sure Mark Zuckerberg will be proud!!!

Probably we could also pack up all these useless separatists into one state and build huge fences around it so that no one ever escapes from there to more conundrum in India. In the meanwhile I am planning to go on a hunger strike demanding creation of a state for all Priyanka Chopra fans!! Can anybody tell me if this wish will be granted?? Plz Mr. Prime Minister!!!!

India: The Hindu Nation

There has been a sincere effort from my side to keep this blog apolitical and hence, before you read any further, you would be well advised to take the following paragraphs as a comment on the social philosophies prevalent in our times and not link them to any political ideologies.... Thanks in anticipation

This weekend really began well for me with a good, albeit long, walk around the fairytale landscape of South Bombay. While my romance with the place might form part of some other post, I was at loss when I quizzed myself on one of the people, after whom a landmark was named in the area. Then interesting enough I encountered the same name in an article I read today. It was then settled that I had to find out more about Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, and subsequently, Veer Sawarkar.
It was intriguing for me read about these people, who had sown the seeds of Hindu nationalism and in the context of the article I had read, I could understand why these people appear to be, or are made out to be, hardline fundamentalists. Of course, these leaders form convenient ideological benchmarks to classify people in to secular and communal citizens of India but viewed without the lens of political manipulations and hippocracy, they also represent a truth that we are unwilling to accept.
To say that India is a secular country, will be a gross contortion of ground realities. For a country that is the cradle of 2 major international religions and has a huge following of 2 others, which were brought to it by the rulers of the times, we can not be serious when we say that India doesn't identify itself with any religion or we, as Indians, are ambivalent to all religions. Given the fact that so much of religion is intertwined with our social fabric, it is impossible to keep religion out of daily life, the way we eat, the way we greet each other, the way we celebrate birth, enjoy weddings, mourn deaths or almost anything we think. This obviously goes on to affect our interactions with other members of our society, depending on whether their habits are same or different, or if their actions are guided by the same principles as ours. This eventually gives birth to affiliations to some groups while giving rise to discomfort about certain others.

Now that the whole "secularism" rhetoric is out of the picture, let me talk about the Hindu nation. Mind you, a Hindu nation is not a country of Hindus or one practicing Hinduism alone, it'll be completely unethical, and most importantly unHindu, to deny other sects a rightful place to prosper and rightfully propagate but what it also must, and does, emphasise is that India consists of 80.5% people following Hinduism as a religion and a recognition for this fact is long overdue. As promised at the beginning at the post, this is a completely unpolitical post but the social scenarios that have resulted because of the political hubris, has left many Hindus bruised and disaffected with the whole concept of Hindustan.
The concept of a Hindu nation doesn't mean painting the whole country saffron, as has been routinely promoted, nor is it acceptable. A Hindu nation just reinforces the belief of the majority of people of the country that they haven't been converted into eternal sacrificial lambs at the altar of socio-political appeasement in the country. Too long have we been hearing our "secular" social beacons talking of the rise of Hindu nationalism, much in the same vein as the rise of an epidemic and have been warned of religious genocides, that will ensue should the nationalism take hold.
I wish to ask these great luminaries, what good has been their pessimistic acknowledgement of Hindu nationalism? If nothing, it has deepened the gulf between the majority and the minorities and the resultant chasm has been taken up by pea-brained "idealogues", willing to exploit every situation for their petty gains. The Hindu nationalism plank has till now only been used to paint a bleak picture for the minorities and present a "you are atleast better off now than in a Hindu state" excuse to cover up the spineless administrative shortcomings. Any possible constructive implications of a Hindu state have never been examined neither advocated and when such voices do rise, they are invariably branded as marauding fascists, whose sole aim is to create another holocaust and "cleanse" the land.
My closing statement, if at all there is one to this debate, dwells on the "how" and not on "whether". It has been oft said that Hindutva is a way of life. Thats as good as teaching my mom to operate the Hubble telescope. Its time that the advocates of Hindutva operationalise it, put down every inch of its components in tangible form and freely express the intangible ones. Only by practicing it, can we propagate it and remove apprehensions regarding it, among other members of the society. Lets keep in mind that no model or philosophy of life can sustain itself, if its intolerant and rigid in the face of change and amalgamation, thus Hindutva will evolve, should evolve and accomodate other parallel philosophies.
The success of any great nation always hinges on its people... and people means ALL people, not majorities neither minorities alone!!!

The Next Generation Boom in Services Industry

An article originally intended for L!VE, our student magazine @ SJMSOM:

Working in one of India’s leading software services exporters, what will be your reaction if you were to be transferred to Belapur? Confused. You shouldn’t be, if these are any indications of the times to come. Welcome to the next generation of expansion in the software service industry. The software industry of Bangalore, Mumbai and Gurgaon is now moving deeper into the country. The new centers of information technology are no longer the big metros but low cost centers like Jaipur, Trivandrum and Chandigarh.

Unsurprisingly, the high cost of operation in the metros coupled with the high rates of attrition prevalent among the leading companies has made them look other places for a better option. The Tier II cities have a distinct advantage in this regard for many companies. The reported cost differential is around 10 percent for non-voice based services and higher for voice based services create a huge margin of operational profits for the firms. Also, thanks to the large population of the country and increasingly effective education system, the number of university graduates coming from these cities is enough to take care of the major manpower requirements for the companies.

All major outsourcing companies have scouted out new locations, away from the hustling bustling metropolitans to locales such as Kochi, Baroda and Coimbatore etc. These include companies like Wipro Spectramind, Infosys Technologies and Cognizant Technology Solutions. Kochi and Coimbatore are coming up as feasible alternatives to Bangalore and Chennai in south, while Pune has already cemented its place in the outsourcing pantheons because of its close proximity to Mumbai and its rich educational system, providing close to 1,00,000 graduates every year, acting as an essential resource pool for the companies.

One another reason associated to moving to Tier II cities is the low cost of transportation involved in the cities, because of their small geographical stretches and comparatively low count of vehicles compared to outsourcing hubs. The average employee starting out in the service industry is a college graduate, who mainly relies on public transport for commutation to the workplace. As an unwritten rule, the companies have decided to include transportation costs as part of the compensation packages, providing for company buses and cabs, which again hit the operating margins of the companies. Though the outsourcing industry has funneled in loads of money into the metropolitan cities, the infrastructure development has been unable to maintain pace with the rapid growth and the lack of development in transport facilities are not helping the cause of these cities.

An additional impact of the gradual shift towards Tier II cities has been the entry of many smaller service providers, specially the ones catering to niche sectors like high-end data analysis. The Tier II and Tier III cities make the entry level costs of these companies substantially less and are fostering the entrepreneurship ventures of many technology specialists. The presence of sufficient talent pool in these cities helps these firms by reducing their attrition rates and hence, their training and recruitment costs are also going down, further promoting the cause of the Tier II cities.

However, all is not well with the migration plans of these companies. The primary concern of all the companies is the infrastructure related issues that generally accompany the Tier II cities. The doubt that whether the smaller cities will be able to rise over the infrastructure handicap and dicey connectivity, to actually make the small city boom happen still looms large in the minds of the senior management of many companies. It is estimated that 30% of the workforce of all leading IT/ITES companies is going to be based in these Tier II and Tier III cities. Hence the onus is on the respective public bodies to develop the amenities in these places to provide for the large workforce.

Another area of concern for the companies is bringing quality talent to these cities, especially with respect to the senior management and experience middle management employees, to these smaller cities. Obviously the promise of better work-life balance is not a good enough reason for these executives to relocate to these new situations and hence, companies might be forced to offer relocation bonuses or other such perks to facilitate the shift of work force to the new places. Also, an interesting trend that has been observed in the recent recruits is that, they do not want to leave the glitz and glamour accompanying a metropolitan city for relocation for some nondescript city offering little or no life outside office hours or during weekends.

Another major impact of this relocation to smaller centers in the country will be a more symmetric distribution of the outsourcing pie between the large hubs and the fast catching up wannabes. The recent years had seen a skew in favor of the metros, with the retail and real estate booms in the city projecting them as the face of modern India. These recent developments will enable the smaller players in this field to develop their own identity in this market and present a more representative picture of modern India. Already signs to this effect are visible with an increase in spending by real estate giants in these centers and the entry of retailing giants like Reliance and Big Bazaar in these cities. The development of these new consumption centers is also good for related sectors of manufacturing and allied services, giving them further impetus for growth.

However, none of this is going to happen in near future. The challenges are still clear for all of us to see. Firstly, the infrastructure needs a great impetus from the government. It is heartening to see projects like the Golden Quadrilateral being visualized because they will improve connectivity of the smaller cities with the outsourcing hubs. Also, the telecom revolution in the country should help ensure that the network and data connectivity are maintained at requisite levels for the companies to show confidence in these cities. Finally, the public amenities need to be improved to attract the skilled labor into these cities rather than switching jobs in the major cities themselves. The rise of latent talent and potential in the smaller cities is not under any sort of doubt, it is just the timing of the event that is debatable. The sooner it happens, the better.

Should we put constraints on media for national security?

Hi all,

Been very busy with usual stuff that i have not been able to blog at all. Couple of times it was so bad that i abandoned posts midway.... so here i thought i'll put up something for the sake of continuity, and of course for you to ruminate... this is my speech for the PG Cult'09 elocution competition.

Our Preamble states that India is a sovereign, socialist, democratic, republic and as citizens of a free country we are endowed with certain fundamental rights. The most prominent among them is the right to free speech and therein resides the premise of an independent and strengthened media in the country. Of course, it would be inessential to exemplify the virtues of free and fair media in democracy, a debate long settled by Edmund Burke, when he said looking up at the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, said, 'Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all.’

However, in this cacophony of freedom and fairness, a growing section of the populace has started whispering another word too. That word is: Accountability. The world of media and information has changed dynamically from the good old days of Doordarshan and Akashvani. Predictably, the internet is at the forefront of this revolution but there has been enormous development and repackaging of existing channels, with news channels mushrooming overnight and tabloids raking in readership numbers unheard of. The media has undergone an era of crass commercialization and the emergence of 24x7 journalism has guaranteed that anything and everything under the sun is breaking news in India.

The recent Mumbai attacks revealed this dirty underbelly of Indian media, with each TV channel, tabloid and news forum competing with each other to bring the latest piece of action, much in the same vein of reporting the live scorecard of an India-Australia cricket match. Of course, it didn’t occur to them that revealing key operational details of the mission, committing diplomatic farces like commenting on the nationality of attackers 2 hours into the attack, would compromise the diplomatic and military actions taking place on the ground. If you have the guts to pompously announce that the attackers are watching your channel to get ground level information then where are your sensibilities in regulating what you reveal on the show? When it comes to national security, free and fair reporting is a flimsy garb for sensationalism and irresponsibility.

Unfortunately, it seems that the media has entered into a vicious cycle of generating news and creating hype, for sustenance and only external hands can rein them in. If we can have regulators for content on movies then shouldn’t we ensure that the way the sensitive information is presented to the world also be guarded closely and monitored. Lest of course, ladies and gentleman, the next time you want the attackers to have a free and fair chance at fighting back, the media should indeed be constrained when reporting about issues of national security.

Mera Bharat Mahan!!!!!!!!!!

Well, I am holidaying here at home and that’s the reason why I am away from blogosphere. It’s a week since those darned exams got over and I had an uneventful journey back while Mumbai has had an eventful week, which by the way it could have done without.
I was watching this crazy series on HBO titled “Mumbai Calling”. It ranted for an hour about domineering Indian parents and I found it tough hiding a smile whilst all this mummy-papa bashing was going on. Funny the series should worth mention here except that my parents have been fussing over me all this time and I am literally hiding from them, to pen down my thoughts. And yes, I just finished an iconic battle with a couple of cockroaches for territorial supremacy in my room. Full of bloodshed, like a Bruce Willis movie, so lets skip the gory details.
My thoughts are extremely scrambled right now. Unsurprising, you would say but it’s probably got to do with the huge backlog of events or the enormity of the events that actually happened. I have been in Mumbai for 4 months only, having come to love the city for whatever little I have seen of it and this attack (or the set of attacks) left me shocked, searching for contacts frenetically and trying to find out the ground situation. I wish to express my heartfelt condolences towards the deceased and salute the spirit and courage of our security forces, whose efforts thwarted the terrorists from carrying out any more heinous acts.
While I am trying to read a book side-by-side, the events that took place today still jangle my mind. Oh the shenanigans of Indian politics and democracy!!! A major security lapse has been represented as a government failure, used by dysfunctional spokespersons as tool to grab airtime and converted into a mega serial of the “saas-bahu” genre by our venerable news networks. I am left wondering if the Indian people have actually become so gullible that feeding them so much of noise in the form of news will make them forget the actual issue at hand. If so, then God tussi great ho.
While nationalistic jingoism was at its peak when the commandos killed the terrorists and emerged victorious from the “battlefields” and the past few days of frustration against the political classes, I am pretty sure that all this will die down in a couple of weeks. Blasphemous eh?? Well it’s just a question of time before the necessities of life and the challenges of succeeding in a billion-strong populace take hold of us and back we go on our daily pursuits of roti, kapda aur makaan. That this compulsion will be repackaged as the Mumbai or Jaipur “spirit” or the “resilience” of Ahmedabad, telecast back to us and will make us feel proud, has no consequence for us.
We have become institutionalized, and that is the root cause of our bull headed behavior. We are expected to live from one terrorist attack to another. Each time we hope that we are not at the wrong place at the wrong time. Feel bad and forget it, it’s a mantra we have practiced with perfection. But what happens when the luck runs out? Simple. Someone else takes our place, expresses sympathies and goes back to their 24x7 struggle for survival.
Till this attitude remains I have only one thing to say. Mera Bharat Mahan!!!
Now let me get back to my book, need to finish it before the terrorists find me.