Wayward thoughts in this cataleptic winter

These winters of no discontent

In December and January I will not leave Bangalore, for I cannot have enough of this gentle chill in a cocktail with the warm sun, capped by this clean blue sky. The dreariness of the daily commute is somewhat muted, and sitting in the back seat of my car I can laugh at the traffic than rage at it, with music in my ears, which this week has been Metallica and Neil Young and Feist.

And so my thoughts regarding the new posters that are splashed on my path to work are more charitable than they'd have been in another month. Sreeramulu is again elected, and his victory is not a matter of who won, but what won. With him, several things have won again, and the things that are defeated are beaten to near-burial. But I am far from Bellary, and those who elected him took what he gave and gave what he wanted, and they are at peace with each other, and these thoughts of someone like me, for whom politics is no more than a piece for conversation, are a bitching waste of time.

Thinking so, on a morning this week, I decided to join the posters, and welcome with them the triumphant hon'ble re-elected Member of the Legislature to Bangalore. And I quickly realized that this man from Bellary owns Bangalore significantly more than I, and I can no more welcome him than he can tolerate me and the category of the electorate I belong to. So now I see the posters in respectful silence, and I am not at all peeved at myself, or at the world, thanks to this lovely December.

---

The don's den

With such thoughts regarding the state and strongmen, I watched The Godfather today, Saturday, for the third time in my life. The Godfather died outside in the sun, while playing with his grandson, and with his death Michael was free to take the revenge the Godfather had in a brilliant move put on pause, having pledged with enemy dons that he wouldn't be the first seeker of vengeance. Until the end, in every meeting in his dark study Don Corleone had shown no love for the drugs business, each time he was offered it, whereas he held out a whole lot of love for his family and, among them, the most partial love for Michael. I was moved and inspired by the Godfather, and when he danced with his daughter at her wedding I envied him even, for Don Corleone was so much a man, and such a father, and such a don, and he was so noble in the way he moved and spoke and danced, and in the way he gestured to people with his hands.

How is life in the inner coterie of the Bellary brothers? How moving a movie would their life make? But the brothers aren't the silent type like Corleone, if you consider the shouting they've done in the legislature, and the gross abuses they've traded on the floor of the house. They cannot have a Brando or an Al Pacino playing any of them, even in an Anglicized version. Still, I wonder, how deep does a meeting get in the study of Janardhana Reddy? Would it move my heart, watching the play of long loyalties and the alleged honor among men in his business? Would I draw inspiration from some part of it?

Such wild thoughts! But they say that it is normal for the mind to be choppy on a day like this, when the moon is in eclipse.

---

End note

On the street before my house, the magnolia are falling. They were a flaming red in November, thick in a canopy over their tree. Now when I step out for a stroll at night they squelch beneath my feet and pull at my soles, like they want me on the ground with them. After I pass the tree the fragrance from my neighbor's sampigé is so sharp, I look to see the smell that has hit my nose. Every day.

The moon has been out and about all week.

pardon me, but, your honor…

The view from the courts, Bangalore

I had to accompany a lady to the criminal courts recently. She is close to me, and is the wronged party in an incident that happened twenty years ago. A man forged her signature on a document and took a bank loan on its strength and didn't pay back his fraudulent debt. The bank approached her and it was quickly established that they had been duped and the culprit's guilt in the matter was recorded and the lady put the man out of her mind and went on with her life and work and, last month, an officer from the COD knocked on her door and asked her to present herself as a witness in the courts. She is a self-assured lady, but she was shaken a little at having to remember the events of so long ago. I thought I should go with her, though she was her usual confident self when the day arrived for her to appear in court.

The man who committed the crime was alone—tall guy, in white salwaar and a yellow kameez with gold-colored bead-buttons. And brushed-back fair hair. His eyes were placid, always looking ahead, not seeming to see anything. He walked about, scuffing the concrete floor, taking support from a wooden cane, clutching tight its curved handle. He could have been a retired professor, a former civil servant, or a businessman who has transferred his business to inheritors. He could've been any kind of successful man, such was his demeanor, such was his carriage, such were the lines on his clean fair face. He became aware of my watching him after a long while, and thereafter our eyes met and turned every few minutes.

His crime is petty by today's standards. The loan he had deceitfully taken, and defaulted upon, was some six lac rupees. He seemed to have settled the account in his mind long ago, and appeared to be at peace with the sum of his past deeds. My fears were for the lady. What mischief might the defendent's lawyer spring on her, so as to free his client? Indeed, his questions were as frightening as they sounded foolish: "Madam, you would have been signing so many papers daily. Might be you signed this one different?" He asked the question while knowing the court already had a forensic report confirming the forgery!

But the lawyer needed something, anything, to make himself worthwhile for his client. "Madam (maydum), did you sign to help my client, because you had taken pity on him?" But maydum hadn't seen the man until after his crime.

The courtroom was small. The hon'ble judge was a lady with a strict air on a girl's face. She sat on a dais, there was a second chair next to her for a clerk to type into a computer. After a time she asked about me. "He is not necessary," she announced, and I had to leave the room and stand outside and watch the man and my lady from outside, where I stood resting my back on the parapet. My lady had received the old files from the COD, which she leafed through rapidly, and by now the old man was seated right next to her, casting casual glances at the papers in the times the lady halted from leafing to read what she had found. The man had no paper in hand, his lawyer had merged with other people in the courtroom, and the public prosecutor, my lady's support, was flitting between adjacent courts, fulfilling parallel tasks.

It was a busy court. Even as our issue was in session, a posse came clanging into the corridor, two men in chains bound to four men in khakhi. The men were unchained and the cops dropped the metal in a heap right by me. One of the men, a lean swarthy chap with inquiring eyes and restless limbs, lounged next to me. "What is your case?" I asked him after a while. "Letter of credit," he said, taken aback at being asked, at being spoken to at all. And the manner of his answer signaled loud and clear that he wanted no more questions. Letter of credit? I was just as astonished, because the man didn't even appear literate.

My lady emerged triumphant after an hour, and told me I could leave if I wished, because she would have to wait a while to sign the proceedings. All had gone well. She was laughing about the defendent's lawyer. "He says he will note that I signed the papers to favor the man's brother!" That brother was a senior civil servant at the time of the crime.

Today, for no reason but that I must be in touch with her, my wife and I will have dinner with the old lady. I am thinking about the man who has walked free for twenty years after his crime and will probably go to jail now. It is clear where the wrong lay then, but I am not at all sure if that wrong is still wrong after all the time that has passed, and if that frail old man should really go to prison now.

Why don't I?

I’m in Bangalore. I enjoyed the days of Diwali last week on account of the traffic having thinned to maybe some 50%, but the nights were terrible with pounding sound. Somewhere on my street someone lit a string of crackers at 3:00 AM Friday morning. Back of my house they played music until 3:00 on Thursday. A jeep arrived and the music stopped. But the streets were clear, proving that a good portion of today's Bangaloreans have moved in from other places. Driving around last week, it seemed that our city hasn't lost all its charm.

Work goes on at its own pace for the underground Metro, at the Cauvery Bhavan Road, Bangalore

The papers say the shopping was great this Diwali, but my eyes were on other news. A stray dog came on to the F1 track, which news came as-it-happened on the Straits Times feed via their iPhone app. Fans turned rowdy after a Metallica event was postponed at the moment when the performance should have begun, and the embarrassment trended at the the top on Twitter. I searched for Yeddiyurappa’s pulse in the papers but they were cool to him, and I thought, “it is okay, his matters are between him and his gods, and may God bless him.” In the meantime the papers confirmed that more ministers are being herded to the line that goes to jail. Their leader from Delhi—the valiant Advani—came to town, undeterred by a bomb in his path and the deeds of his best men in his “gateway to the south.”

A debate raged regarding a post by an Indian software engineer which appeared in the New York Times. It is a touching account on why he quit India a second time, and this time for good. It is a well-written piece and though it seems a justification for a decision that is personal, it has stoked vigorous debate and, with a follow-on post from the author, some drama as well. "While I wait," he says in the title to his second post, choosing to take seriously some Indian who has said he will hunt him down.

I am not done arranging my thoughts regarding this, reflecting on some good NRI friends, and some (most) other NRIs who tend to lump every Indian who has stayed behind with the India mess. "Why don’t you…" is a prefix with which an NRI who is a senior executive with a multinational customer asks me questions when we meet twice a year and sit for dinner after work. He is not too different from other NRIs I bump into—on the plane, in a conference, in a hotel somewhere, in India, abroad. Why don't I stop Indian corruption? Why don't I build roads and ports and buy more planes? Why can't I remove the beggars at the stoplights? Why can't I be tough like the Chinese in Indian policy making? How can I be so callous regarding Indian food shortages? And this raging inflation? Why can't I install a better Prime Minister? Chief Minister? Any minister?

Once, while some folks were opposing the hosting of the Miss World competition at the Windsor Manor Hotel in Bangalore, I was stranded with an NRI at the Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. I was young then. Maybe I would have liked to see those women; I don't know. But the NRI had a question for me on the subject: “Why do you want to stop that show? Can’t you see how you are damaging the reputation of India?" I searched his face; the man was sincere. I still haven't an answer for him.

How much effort does it take a man, me included, to move his life from anywhere in the world to the United States? To Australia? To England? To Singapore? What does it take to live in India and take the blows? To accept the challenge to contribute here? Can I lecture an NRI? Should the NRI lecture me?

I apologize, dear reader. I have digressed from that nice post by that software engineer. Please go there. While there, please see how in the logo of India Ink the folks at the New York Times have solved the Kashmir problem with one blot of ink. Which a million guns couldn't do!

---

BBC: Why I came 'home' to India

a Bangalore beyond business-class

Caveau de la Huchette: Click through to the WSJ Magazine articleMany businesspersons will travel from India to Paris to seek opportunities for their products in things that fly, at the Paris Air Show. Many will combine business with the pleasure of hiking in Parisian streets. But last week I came upon an article in the Wall Street Journal Magazine (WSJ Magazine), that points down, down below ground, to the tunnels and caverns and catacombs interwoven beneath Paris. Down there is adventure, to the degree of your choosing, and history as far back and as deep as you are willing to go. It is safe to wander there, the places being free even of rats, though an occasional wanderer has been foolish and has died there, but many more have died, of course, on streets above. Will I like it there? I'll find out, beginning safely with the jazz in Caveau de la Huchette.

They have a fine mayor in Paris, they say, and the man is in office since 2001 and his current term lasts until 2014. He is more popular than even the president, but they say that popularity over Mr. Sarkozy isn't much to trumpet to your town. The mayor of Paris brings also to my mind the mayors of New York City, Giuliani specially, and the Daleys of Chicago, and Hazel Williams, the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, whom I saw last year in Liverpool when I went to watch a memorial service for Lennon. When she rose to speak Liverpudlians gave her a genuine applause, and a fond shrill whistle. I'd been walking the town the last two days and I'd seen enough to know that she deserved all praises. But her term isn't long like the terms of Daley of Chicago, or of Bertrand Delanö of Paris. Hers is a short one-year term, like that of the mayor of Bangalore.

Bertrand Delanö, Mayor of ParisExpectations are low of the earthy lady who sits in the mayor's chair in Bangalore. She has been a month on it, and in eleven months, by the time she has read the mayor's job profile, she'd be gone with her term ended. Expectations are low because she hasn't been much to school, and Bangalore, it is argued, is now home to the world's top professionals. The interviews with her are in that tone. Do you know the problems facing Bangalore? She knows, of course. Garbage, street dog menace, water supply, she has said. That has made me happy, but is it very difficult to address the first two at least? Isn't a single diktat and a tough follow-through enough to clean a city and dispatch the dogs? Can it not be expedited in three months or less?

What about the larger issues? Of people pouring into the city daily, and the number of cars daily sold? Should we start building high? Have you considered the population of Bangalore in 2020? 2050? Have you imagined how the concentrations will be regrouped when the metros begin to run and the flyovers are all built? It was unregulated unbridled private enterprise that brought Bangalore to this height and this mess. That spirit hasn't waned and if you don't run in step with the entrepreneurs the gap between the lush private campuses and the systems that interconnect them will be starker still.

In the last week I read in the papers that the Municipal Corporation will not collect garbage from the areas where taxes are not paid. The news brought to mind a term Edward Glaeser uses in his 2011 book, Triumph of the City. He mentions externalities. An externality happens outside your neighborhood but still affects you. Garbage uncollected next door will bring disease also to you. Anyway, at the moment the Corporation isn't collecting garbage from anywhere. I learnt something new when I read the interview. A mafia is in control of the garbage removal business. And I wondered: using muscle is the core competence of our leadership. Can they not break a gnat of a garbage mafia? Then it hit me that I don't know where the mafia operates from. Is it operating from the inside?

We have some work to do before we go beyond merely the size of London or Paris or New York City. And it is work for us, the citizenry. If we want to be a city like those cities, can we be citizens like theirs? Can we throw up great leaders as they have? Shouldn't we start right now?

Dogged by damn garbage

Garbage in RMV 2nd Stage, Bangalore

Last week I looked benignly at the lady on First Main as she stepped out in her nightgown with her mongrel on a leash. The two tended toward separate ways but her arm prevailed even as it shook. Still, the dog did his thing against her wishes, which she barked shrilly to him in the calm of morning: "Chee, chee, no, no! Not there! Cheee!" English is the local language for dogs. Two days ago, in the morning after a rainy night I heard another lady express herself to hers: "What man, where can I find a dry place for you?" With the already bemused face of a mastiff and the body of some other indeterminate breed he looked about for a place to end his suffering and gave up and sought to distract himself through staring at me and I gave him back my best hard look which had no effect. Later, during the same walk, I smiled as I passed the house behind my street where a little white expat girl commanded her Labrador to "Come here!" but the fellow merely dashed about, flashing his beige coat here and there between a sedan and an SUV in their open garage.

But I am writing to complain regarding street dogs: On this morning's walk, when I came to the top of the famous 80-feet Road, near where our Chief Minister lives, three strays came running up to me and one of them snapped at my shin and tore my track pants and bruised my leg, and when I shouted at the fellow he fled to the other side of the street and watched me sidelong. I looked at him two moments and accepted defeat and went on. Two hours later I took a tetanus shot and an anti-rabies shot and a prescription of four more anti-rabies shots and another one of immunogloblin which costs 40,000 rupees. And antibiotics for five days, thrice daily.

I am asking myself if I am worthy of a shot which costs 40,000 rupees and because I haven't got a good answer from in me, I won't take it. It is the only medicine with a 100% guarantee of safety, the doctor told me, generous in her sympathy. "Patients want to go and shoot the dog when they hear this. You only have a scratch; but you can't say."

It occurred to me to ask at the in-house pharmacy of the hospital how many of those anti-rabies shots sell in a day in their hospital. Two were sold today besides mine. That is the daily average as well. The shot is light—you feel only the press of the nurse's firm hand. No more. But you feel the burden of inconvenience. I am surprised that I feel no anger toward the dog, but I am nursing many emotions for fellow Bangaloreans who dump garbage anywhere and lack both desire and initiative to keep their neighborhood clean. Dogs come to town hunting for garbage; when they find it in loads like here, they settle, and are soon sovereigns in their streets.

---

An article in the Times of India on the subject.
Another one in the same newspaper.