Mukul from Gopalganj, Bihar.

This is Mukul from Gopalganj, Bihar. He works, like many of his friends, as a contract labourer. He currently installs Air Conditioners for the Anna Centenary Library in Kotturpuram, Chennai. Before this he worked in the Indira Gandhi International airport in Delhi. He moves wherever his contractor takes him. His wage is Rs. 200 per day (around $4), a part of which again goes to the contractor as rent for the place where he stays. He says he takes some money for his food and sends the rest to his family in Bihar. He has two elder brothers and a younger sister. Obviously, he doesn't have the privilege of choosing his profession. Before coming into this vocation, he worked in his brother's barber shop in Assam. After three years there, he and his brother had to confront the fact that the shop wasn't doing well. So his brother, being the elder one, goes into unskilled labour work and Mukul follows suit. He works hard for long hours without any security for his job or life (four of his colleagues died during the construction of this library by falling from the top floors, according to one of the watchmen here. So the authorities organised a pooja, sacrificed a goat and fed the others meat and other delicacies, then resumed construction from the next day).

Right. So that's his square as of now. I ask him if he has an idea on what he wants to do in the long run. Studying is not an option, he says, even if he starts right away, it'd be too little too late and also too damn demanding (financially and psychologically). When I ask him more about it, being a cheerful lad and having that rare air of naivety around him, he smiles, shrugs and makes some vague hand gestures. And I smile with him too. We part ways when we reach the entrance of the library. I go into the glass walls, he remains outside and starts arranging sacks of sand.

Pani puriye sivam

Pani puri is divine. Among all the celestial chaats found in the universe, Pani puri reigns supreme. Made up of that crunchy crispy crust, a delicious potato mash mantle and a tangy, hot pani core, this chatpata explosion will rock your palette and will mutate your sense of taste forever. If you believe in the holy powers of Pani puri and hail HIM to be the supreme prophet to have ever come into the world and frequently visit any of HIS places of worship (I'm a regular at the Pani puri shrine in Nungambakam High Road outside Karishma sarees showroom, Chennai), then you're in the right path that leads to Nirvana. That fuzzy halo which comes around your head when you munch on the golgappas would one day turn bright and lead you to enlightenment. I do strongly recommend all the devotees in Chennai to take a weekly pilgrimage to the Nungambakam High Road shrine.

While it is acceptable to pay your obeisance to HIS cousins bhel puri and dahi puri, do not ever incur the wrath of the Almighty by favouring the Satan trinity of Caesar salad, Arugampul juice (Bermuda grass extract) and Protein shake.

Remember also to chant this secret prayer once a day, O' faithful ones:

Golgappaooo akbar illahee,
Protein shakeee-il-shaithaan;
Pani puryaha kamal hassan shivam,
Arugampullaha nasser rakshas;
Watery Indian Bread, hallowed be thy name,
Caesar salad shall thee burn in hell.

...Amen... (open your mouth wide like eating a pani puri while doing this!)

I hereby also call upon my faithful brothers and sisters who worship HIM in varied incarnations such as Pani puri, golgappa, phuchka, gup chup, watery indian bread, crisp sphere eaten etc., to unite and start a Jihad (for militants) or Satyagraha (fast by eating only pani puri until death, for moderates) and condemn all the faithless blackguard-ism in the world.

Time to take a LOOK around!

In line with the blog's preamble of being a secular, sovereign, democratic, republic page, by the authorities vested in me, I've decided to change the directive principles of the post policy from 'appreciate and communicate beauty' to 'scratch, become aware of, appreciate and communicate beauty, raves & rants, and out of the ordinary issues' with effect from the 12th of January, 2011, by amendment 31A of the Blog's constitution.

Justification:

There are so many fantastic things that happen right around us. Things we fail to REALLY see. Recently when I had this assignment in my office with the theme of getting to know the city, I realised that there are so many heart-warming things and deeply disturbing issues happening right around us. Even after completing the official assignment and moving on to other things, I couldn't help but notice the very many extra-ordinary things that are there dead-right before our eyes. So from now on I've decided to put posts especially on things that I consider 'out of the ordinary' or lovely things that I often take for granted. This I hope would help in my self-development as a person with a better social and aesthetic awareness and understanding.

Mission-ary

Background - It is circa 2050 A.D. The whole world is mechanised and is highly result-oriented. Children are genetically modified with desired traits even before they're born. There is no fun, nor any wisdom. People are lost in information gathering and pursuit of excellence. Men are turning into machines. Homo sapiens (wise man) is extinct and the earth is inhabited by Homo machina. Words like 'leisure', 'dreams', 'arattai', and 'pot-belly' do not exist.

There is a huge commotion in an MBA (Mission Behaviour Analysis) class and people are arguing animatedly over a chapter in their book which has just been covered. Cut.

Same time period. Same chapter. Students in an MBBS (Masters in Behaviour of Bygone Sapiens) class discuss and argue heatedly. Cut.

In their desks, there is a document with a controversial chapter. And the chapter reads as follows:

In the year 2011 A.D, a man belonging to Homo sapiens, a blasphemous loafer who didn't believe in machine-like work, managed to achieve a target with an amount of focus that only machine-worshiping Homo machina are capable of achieving. This was because he had a queer illness called 'emotionalia' (caused by the now extinct species Mycobacterium emotionalisis. For MBBS students: The illness might take an aggressively violent turn, especially in aged female Homo sapiens after 6pm when they watch serials).

Excerpts from his journal:

I've started on a mission to achieve 'A$%^B%$#@C'. But I've found that I'm unfocused and inconsistent because I find routine, machine-like work boring. So I've decided to make my journey fun-filled (Students scratch their head at this new word!). When I start working hard, there are a few symptoms that keep troubling me which might lead to procrastination (students gasp in horror as this is an illness in the Homo machina world called cancer) and laziness (which is AIDS!). But I've found some medications and plan to make use of them as soon as these symptoms rear their ugly heads out.

'Can I get there?' Symptom:

You see, being on pursuit is always tricky. The question keeps coming back to you whenever you rest a bit - Can I get there?

Medication:

Get to work. Whenever in doubt, work. At the end of a power session of work, all those tricky endhorsefins will help get your confidence back. If this doesn't work, think of how Magellan must've felt when he was going around the world. He must've asked himself 'the question' more times in those three years of voyaging than we'd ever ask ourselves in forty lifetimes - Can I get there?

Symptom: Work related dreams. Grrrrr...

Medication:

For those absolute dreamers, meditation is the best medication. If you're new to serious work and these work-related dreams (when the cat says meiow-sis and the duck quakes in Richter scale, you've become a victim of the syndrome!) psyche you out, don't run to a psychiatrist for remedy. Not that I have anything against those spooky gentlemen who've been sending millions to mental health institutions through their therapies, it's just that work-dreams might actually be a good indicator of your progress. Let's look at it that way. Mission-men are supposed to eat, breathe and think only of their goals, right? Dreaming about your mission is a great you're-on-track indicator. Dyslexic cracks like me, moreover, have this advantage of getting breakthrough ideas through dreams. This way, you work even when you sleep! You can even start a dream diary and record your dreams. Many interesting ideas might pop up and it'll make a good story for your grandchildren years later.

I believe:

A mission man need not necessarily be a machine man.
A mission man can be a little ignorant and learn new things about his mission from time to time and it's okay for him to have some fun on the way.
________

Students gape in amazement.

THE END!

Yelelo Ailasa - Hauling up the moottais!

Again, a post about what happens right around us. Why do construction workers in Chennai, and I presume also other parts of India, (especially women, often with no slippers) climb many many stories carrying loads and loads of bricks and sand in baands? (for those who don't know chaste urban thamizh, baand = a concave metallic carrier instrument used for transporting building materials like cement and sand).

Why can't they use a pulley (which is a primitive iron age tool) from the top of the building to pull these loads? Is it to generate employment and use the excess unskilled human capital that India has in abundance? Nope. Surely, the building contractors don't give two hoots about such stuff. Then is it that pulleys are costlier than manual labour in India? Negative, again. This certainly can't be the case. Has the thought not occurred to the construction guys till now? Nobelium, yet again! After employing all those limited probability skills at my disposal, taking into consideration 5000 years of India's civilisation, over 1.2 billion brains inhabiting it at present, this seems highly improbable.

What then is the reason, I wonder. I can't figure out the reason. May be I'm again being that ignorant superficial onlooker who doesn't really understand why things work the way they do. But I was relieved to see that such a machine (do forgive me for my lack of imagination in civil/mech. engineering terms), obviously more advanced than a pulley, was employed in the premises of the Anna Centenary Library. I managed to get a snap of it in operation, though it meant waiting for some minutes and enduring some awkward glances.

But what didn't change was this.

Why is there a coin shortage in India?

I have often wondered why everyone is stingy with their coins here, in our India. Can't people just go to the bank and get desired coins for the desired amount of money and live in peace? Especially people whose profession demands daily dealings with a lot of change, like autokars and vendors. As ever, it turns out that I've been this naive, idiotic on-looker who whinges without understanding the way things really work.

Going into the details, Shyam's committee on the Indian Currency System Today presents the following data on the topic:

Here's why India is short on coins. The volume of rupee coins and notes is controlled by the RBI. Under its direction, the total number of rupee coins in circulation in India is around Rs. 9984 crores! (as of 2008-09)

Now coming to Rupee notes, whose printing is also the monopoly of the RBI (Issue Dept.), currencies worth around Rs. 7,88,279 crores are issued (as of 2009-10).

This explains why we're always short of coins here. Too many notes, too little coins. As simple math would point out, the note-coin ratio is atleast around 80:1. Now, I did get curious as to why the Reserve Bank has this partiality towards currency notes, but me being just a Shikari Shambu and no Sherlock Holmes, couldn't muster up the courage to go deeper and read more boring documents to get the answer. However, the wise, enlightened, economic crocodiles who read this post are welcome to give their thoughts and justifications.

Recommendations of the committee:
Let's not anymore whinge about the helpless autokars. Let's form one auto-passenger union to go and jointly whinge before the gates of the RBI!