Bangalore Metro was inaugurated on Oct 20, 2011. The first VIP ride with Union Minister Kamalnath, the state's chief Minister and several other important people was reported in all the local newspapers. An equally historic trip was made today by probably the last resident of Bangalore to ride the metro which went unnoticed by the media. You being the lucky people who read this blog are the only ones to hear all about it.
Unlike all those people who have taken the ride before for mundane reasons like commuting to work, I had a very exciting reason for the ride: to travel to Indiranagar Adyar Ananda Bhavan to eat Ghee Masala Dosa! Both the dosa and the ride did not disappoint. Here are some pictures:



Very clean stations, polite and helpful staff, very alert security who wont let you within two feet of the rails ( after that stupid boy who fell on the tracks a month ago), clear announcements. Makes me wonder why we can't have the same in our railway stations.
Best of all, bangalore still look beautiful from that level, and NO TRAFFIC SNARLS!
Any Bangaloreans still left without the metro experience, do try it. You don't need a reason. The pleasure of the experience is reason enough.

Ramble alert:
I have lost touch with blogging so you must forgive me if I hop from one topic to the other. I am on severe antibiotics and they are entirely responsible if this post doesn't make any sense to you.
Read on, but don't say I did not warn you:

Just finished reading a murder mystery “The Indian Bride” by a Norwegian author Karin Fossum When I picked up the book I was impelled by curiosity “what was an Indian bride doing in Norway ?” and my second thought was “ what the hell is an Indian bride doing in a murder mystery anyway since we Indians normally follow all the rules and keep our noses clean whenever we go abroad?” Who wants to get into trouble with immigration. It is ten years now and I am still figuring out why I got shouted at by the immigration guy at Moscow airport. It isn’t my fault that his English was bad. Anyway that’s a different story.

So back to “The Indian Bride”. So this Norwegian salesman , a bachelor at 51, decides to travel for the first time in his life and find himself a bride. He sees the picture of an Indian woman in a book on the people of the world and on an impulse decides to come to India and find a bride. And this woman gets killed on the day she arrives on Norwegian soil. So why did the girl have to be Indian and not German or East European or anything else? Anyway her only role in the story was to marry him and get killed.is this for the romantic ring of the title? Slowly it occurred to me that the author needed a woman from a very poor country. Somewhere this character could find a woman to marry him within a week. A country where you can find a poor woman to marry a “rich” white man without engaging in prolonged courtship/ dating And the guy talks about how poor the country is whenever he speaks about the country.

so he booked a flight to India. He knew it was a poor country. Perhaps he might find a woman there who could not afford to turn down his offer of following him all the way to Norway.

They make a lot of films in India. Love stories with tough heroes and beautiful women. Not the gritty real-life films we make about ordinary people. They dream a lot, Indian people. They have to. They are so poor.

and so on..

So who is the audience for all the brouhaha about India being the next big thing, an emerging economic superpower and that would be ruling the world in the next 10, 20, 50 years? Certainly not the aam admi of this country who is stifled by rising prices everywhere. Not the 400 million officially poor who are struggling just to stay alive. And definitely not the foreigners. You come out of any international airport in India and the air smells of poverty.

And yet there is talk of India as the emerging super power. And probably there are figures to prove it too. It is all about the plot you choose for your narrative – a continuous economic growth at 7 or 8 % or the UNDP Human development Index. which assesses long-term progress in health, education and income indicators where India ranks 134 among 187 countries Either way one can’t deny the fact that about a fifth of the population is chronically hungry and about half of the world’s hungry live in India. Who are we to make jokes about Africa’s starving children? Again of course if you would like an optimistic view of the country you could always talk about how the country has managed to raise millions out of poverty in the last two decades and talk about the number of televisions and cellphones in the country ( taking care to avoid any mention of availability of toilets or clean drinking water.) And the number of super rich this country has and their numbers on the world’s richest list. Patrick French hits the nail on the head when he says that “it is necessary perhaps to think in a different way, and to see that a country like India, like schrodinger’s cat, exists in at least two forms simultaneously: rich and poor.”

Budget after budget, plan after plan , so many schemes are drawn up for poverty alleviation and most of us who have benefited from the economic growth happily or unhappily pay our taxes and yet we can’t do much to see a change in these poverty and deprivation levels. Corruption even in midday meal schemes for school kids. How can we compete with these politicians and try to make a difference? One man thinks he can make a difference – Muruganandham from a village near Coimbatore in Tamilnadu Unable to continue his education after school, he joined a welding shop. Noticing that the women of his family could not afford sanitary napkins because they were so expensive and hence had to resort to unhygienic use of old cloth during their menstruation, he decided to develop a low cost sanitary napkin. After years of research during which his mother left him in protest and his wife stopped speaking to him, he succeeded in developing a machine that cut the cost of napkins drastically and provides livelihood to a lot of women in remote areas in Orissa, Jharkhand and 23 other states and he has exported the machine and transferred the technology to 6 countries. While introducing women in rural areas to switch to the use of sanitary napkins by making them affordable, he also tries to provide employment opportunities fo women by installing these machines in rural areas and training them to manufacture the napkins. You can hear his story from his mouth here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T7qzufEI9U

(Please do me a favor and don’t laugh about his English. the story is not about his language skills.)

If you are Tamil-speaking you can view the videos here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzNcpjLkW_I&feature=relmfu

I am told that he is invited by many engineering colleges and even management institutes to talk to their students. I am sure that they will learn something that their management books haven’t taught them so far. And his zeal and commitment shows that if you want to make a difference you will find a way to do it despite all odds. What our poor need are more Muruganandhams rather than cunning political parties numbing them with freebies. His experience and achievement could be an inspiration for many young people who are far more privileged than he. As he himself says in his concluding sentence “ that Muruganandham, tenth standard, why not I? …that fellow from Coimbatore, he did, a fellow who never speak a word correctly in English, why not I? “

Why not I indeed?

I know that it might be nice to have a smart catchy sentence to restart the blog after a year. But you know that I am no good at those. So let me get straight down to business.

Where was I all of last year? I wish I had an interesting story that accounts for my absence – an important assignment, a book perhaps or at least an abhimaan-style breakdown . But I have no such story.I just stopped writing one day and then It was too difficult to pick it up again. I had nothing to say, no opinions on anything.

There were those very tough six months after Munni went under a speeding SUV. That wasn’t entirely the driver’s fault. On June 11, 2011 She just decided to cross the road at 9 30 a.m when the traffic is insane on our road. The gardener left the gate open and mademoiselle decided to take a stroll and ended up under the SUV with an arm and a leg completely crushed. Several surgeries later she came home with chronic ulcers and a malfunctioning kidney and a hemoglobin level of 6. While sending her home with us the vet had said “ we have done all we could. Now it is all up to your love and care.” He did hint that there may be a possibility of having to amputate one or both the legs and if it came to the latter, we may have to take some tough decisions as she may not be able to manage on two legs only. Those of you who know Munni know that she is bad news and big trouble, very self-willed and totally disobedient. But she is a fighter. She decided to live despite all the odds and on Nov 1^st she decided she had enough of all the bandages and medication. I kept bandaging her legs and she kept taking them out So I decided to leave her be. And by Nov 15^th she was hobbling on 3 legs and by dec 15^th she was on all four. And now she is back to being the master of the house. The doctors at the hospital are so amazed that they want to present a paper on her. Zoozoo was initially traumatized but then she became our helper both for keeping a watch on Munni and keeping us cheerful with her monkey tricks. So all is well on that front now.

But that is no excuse for not writing here. In fact sharing it here might have been a source of comfort for me in those tough days. I guess I was plain lazy. Sometime in Jan 2011, I started working with a group of people running an internet magazine called Solvanam in Tamil . you can access my contributions here. I was exposed to some amazing writing in Tamil and many international writers, some of which I translated. This was one of the reasons that I felt I did not have anything good enough to publish. The bloggers I was reading regularly also wrote so wonderfully that I began to wonder what I was doing here. So I decided to slowly let this die and was pretty sure that no one was going to notice.

And then something happened. Many of my friends from blogdom wrote to ask when I was going to start. That’s when I realized that this blog was never about great prose or highly literary/ intellectual stuff. It was simply about sharing which is as important for me as it seems to be for those lovely people who have been encouraging me to come back via email , blog comments and on face book. So now is as good a time as any and since the blog posts have always been about nothing, what better way to start than with a nothing-post?

So ye all nice people, here I am back with my rambles and the simple stories from my unimportant life. But it is good to know that you will always be there for me as you have been in the past. So welcome back to my blog and let the bonding begin!

Love and hugs

Usha

As usual it was the maid who brought me the neighborhood news.
'Amma, a fifteen year girl jumped off the 7th floor in that apartment complex at the end of our road. She died yesterday."
It took a while for the news to sink in my mind.
'What could possibly be so difficult in the life of a fifteen year old living in a posh apartment complex? Surely it must have been an accident. '
I checked the day's newspaper and there it was "15 year old ends life over exam stress.'
Giving up life over a mere board exam?
I have heard that suicide rate among youngsters peaks around the time of exams and examination results. But it didn't seem real even then.
This was probably a girl who I had seen on my street walking or cycling back from school or waiting for their school bus. Some of them walk their dogs and stop to talk to my Munni and Zoozoo. They all look so lovely . There are times I envy their life - so much to look forward to with the licence of youth to make mistakes and learn, so many opportunities to seize and avenues to explore. A whole life ahead of them.
And one of them actually did this? it is too bizarre to believe.

Initially I blamed the parents. It is always easy to blame people you do not know. May be it was too much parental pressure - all these tiger parents and helicopter parents trying to compensate for their lack of achievements through their children. It is almost like they brought these children into the world as extra limbs to achieve their unfulfilled ambitions. And then the shock. I knew the mother. I have seen her walking their dog and would always stop at my gate to exchange pleasantries and some small talk. A very nice, level headed person who is not the type to burden her kids with her unrealistic expectations.

So where did the stress come from? School? peers? self-inflicted?
Do schools have programs to help children face their board exams without tension- motivational lectures, meditation or even psychological counseling.? Apparently many of them do.

I was talking to a school teacher this morning and she said that ironically it is not the kids who fail that go to these drastic measures but bright kids who fear that they will not make it to the top ranks. She spoke about one of her ex-students who had appeared for the medical entrance exam and was disappointed with her performance. She asked her parents if they would pay capitation fees and get her admission. The mother said that if she didn't get through this year she could always prepare well and get in next year but they could not afford to pay capitation. The girl took her life by hanging and when the results came out she had actually made to the list. And the mother is still blaming herself for her daughter's decision - 'I drove her to her death' she cries.

I do not know the facts about this particular kid from my locality - it could have been a combination of fear, anxiety and depression. But I cannot bear to see the face of her parents anymore - a vacant uncomprehending look as though they are aliens struggling in a strange planet they don't understand. Are they asking themselves why they deserved this or where they went wrong?
This is the fate of parents worldwide. They intend to give their very best to their kids but are never sure what they did is enough or right.

Don't these kids appreciate how much their parents go through to keep them healthy, safe and comfortable? Or do they just think these are just the basics of the job description of parents? Today's children may be much smarter than the earlier generation but they seem a lot more focused on themselves than anyone else. This despite the fact that most families have just one or two kids and hence they get a lot of attention from the adults on both sides of the family. Parents are willing to spend a lot more on their dresses,gifts, birthdays and toys. Has all this attention made them more needy?
I don't remember my parents or those of my friends fussing excessively over us. we were scolded when we misbehaved. They said things like "it would have been better to have nurtured a tree than a useless child like you". When we did not perform well in subjects, our teacher said 'you are only fit to herd buffaloes.' We felt bad about these things but we also knew that they cared for us and said such things only to make us do better. And we were not even as smart and perceptive as today's kids. We just acknowledged the right of our parents and teachers to be cross with us when we did not perform to our potential. We appreciated all the things they did for us the rest of the time and realised that someone who cared for you so much had the right to be upset with you. We never doubted that they cared about us despite the fact that parents those days never expressed how much they loved us.

Today there is a lot more of display and expression of love and lavishing of attention and yet, children feel unloved and unworthy.
An article that appeared in India Today in April 2008 on Teen Suicides has the following figures which are scary:

Every 90 minutes a teenager tries to commit suicide in India. Many of these attempts are half-hearted cries for attention, help and love. But every six hours, one succeeds.
More adolescents die of suicide than AIDS, cancer, heart disease, obesity, birth defects and lung disease. In 2006-07 5,857 students took their own life, which works out to a stunning 16 suicides a day, says the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

While the global teen suicide rate is 14.5 per 100,000, a 2004 study by the Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, reported 148 for girls and 58 for boys in India.

If globally, suicide is the fourth leading cause of teen deaths, in India it is at number one in some pockets and is the third largest killer all across. Over 150 students ended their lives across the country last month.

Why is there such a high level of depression among young people?
The same article has this answer:

It’s a problem of plenty, say psychologists.

Recent studies show that children who have been given too much too soon grow up to be adults who have difficulty coping with life’s disappointments.

“They have a distorted sense of entitlement that gets in the way of success both in the workplace and in relationships,” says Dr G. Gururaj, head, department of epidemiology at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMHANS) in Bangalore.

“They often grow up to be selfcentred and self-absorbed, and those are mental-health risks.” India’s economic success story has resulted in escalating aspirations.

“Young people feel they can achieve anything and want instant gratification. When they don’t get it, they become impatient and frustrated,” holds Gururaj. A suicide survey which he conducted in 2004 found that 57 per cent of youth suicides were sudden acts of frustration.

Perhaps scrapping of board exams for class X and the new grading system in place of marks will ease the pressure on these children to some extent.
Parents must begin by not taking these board exams too seriously. I have known so many families that go into a year of austerity when one of their children is in the board exam class. No cable, reduced television viewing, less outings, restricted visiting hours, stop all extra curricular activities blah blah. Come on, it is just a board exam. Do not send the wrong signals to your children.
OK I hear you: There is indeed a lot of competition for the few good institutions and opportunities reduce as you go down the grade pyramid. But you cannot make your child feel less if he/she is not the brightest academically. They must be encouraged to give their best but must not be punished for not being the brightest. Today there are many opportunities for people with a basic degree to enroll for specific trainings and qualify for jobs. We need to give them the encouragement and soft skills to feel confident.
The important thing is to help children withstand these pressures. And to make them understand that their life is far more precious than anything else.
Lack of alternatives or choices is perhaps a major reason for people to despair and take such drastic measures. They feel they have failed and see no other door open.It would probably help if they can be given choices in terms of what they can do. Those interested in sports and arts can be encouraged to develop their talents in these areas. Actually it is such people who end up in professions that give them satisfaction and hence lead a happy life.

It is easy to analyze, pontificate and prescribe. Every parent means to do their best by their children and yet such things happen year after year.
Finally it all boils down to making our children stronger to face the pressures of life. How? What is it that our parents and grand parents were able to do that we seem to have missed?

Mu aunt's husband was an extremely cautious man. While leaving the house he would lock the house and practically hang from it to check that it is properly locked. Same with the boxes during train journeys. He would lock them, pull the lock three times and hang the key on a thick thread around his neck and then chain the boxes to the hooks provided in the trains. We used to find his ways hilarious and also bordering on the paranoid. But I wish I had learned some lessons watching him rather than just imitating him behind his back and having a good time at his expense.
Last friday I had to travel to Coimbatore for a function and since it was a short trip I had packed a small box and securely placed it under the lower berth. I had been allotted the upper berth on the aisle side of the coach. The passenger in the lower berth had gotten off at an earlier station and walked away with my box.
At my station, I picked up the only box under the lower berth. At this stage I did not realise that my box was gone. I must admit here that although the box felt strange I did not double check it. Despite all the warnings we are given some of us do not really believe that some things could happen. Bad mistake!
Lesson #1:Precautions are advised for a reason. Such things happen ( not just to others. They can happen to you. Yes, you, yourself.)

Anyway all this gyan is from hindsight. At 7 o clock that morning I sleepily got out of the station with a stranger's suitcase in my hand and was not aware of it.
As soon as I reached my destination, reality dawned and we called the Station Master immediately. He listened to the facts and promised to call us if anyone came to him with my box.

I had already caused enough stir in the house just as the function was about to start and so I decided to play it down and was hoping to trace the passenger's details over phone.
Lesson #2: Phone calls do not help under such circumstances. Immediately lodge the box and a written complaint with the Station Master. Otherwise it will not be acted upon.
The best part is that when we called him the SM did not advise us about the correct procedure to follow. I am sure his shift was due to end and he was happy to avoid the unnecessary paperwork..
Irctc helpline was more helpful but they said they could help us trace the details of the passenger if we could furnish her pnr number or passenger name. The station master would not pick up the call which meant we had to make a trip to the station personally which had to wait till the function was over.
What is impossible for ordinary mortals like us is possible for a select few in this country. Help came from an unexpected quarter - My uncle's neighbor, a retired chief engineer of railways just dialed a few numbers and was able to get the complete details of the erring passenger in matter of ninety minutes.

Now that I had the lady's number and I thought I just needed to call her and that she would apologize, come over and exchange the boxes. You think so too? Nuh huh, such behavior is passe. Now things happen differently. (what? you didnt get the memo either?)

I dialed her number and a man spoke - her husband- and this is how the conversation went:
I: hello, I believe you have my box. do you know the trouble you have put me through because of your mistake?
(All my clothes, jewelry and cosmetics were in the box)
He: What mistake are you talking about madam? We reached home, found that the box was not ours and immediately came to Tirupur station? what more can we do?
I: what use is it if you are in Tirupur station? Did you contact Coimbatore station?
He: We have done what we could. Ok speak to the railway policeman Mr.Ramesh.
The railway Policeman came on the line and asked me to verify the contents of my box. Then he said, 'Ok madam, it is your box. Please come over to Tirupur and collect it. And make sure you bring their box intact."
I was dumbstruck. Now I have to go to Tirupur and collect it? and also take their box and hand it over?
I asked him why they could not come and hand it over to me in Coimbatore since it was they who started it all.
He said that the lady is old (60 years) and so it would be difficult for her to travel. (Why? she surely travelled from bangalore to Tirupur?)
I was shocked but checked with the people around and they said a taxi trip to Tirupur and back would take me about 4 hours and 1200- 1500 rupees.
I tried to reason with them saying I was not familiar with the town and it was my only day in Coimbatore as I had a return flight to catch the next day.
No, they will not come.
Ok would they at least share the taxi fare?
The lady said: 'oh you might want to hire a plane. we cannot bear your costs. We will leave your box here at Tirupur station. If you want to, you can leave our box in Coimbatore. we will pick it up later."
And then, they. switched off. their. phone.
(yes, such people exist. And they walk amongst us, so beware!)

They lived near Coimbatore. They could come and take their box any day they wanted.
Their box had 5 tee shirts and 2 old saris. Nothing of value. So they could afford to take this stand.
And they had a railway policeman taking up their case. And all this was fine according to the railway rules.
But what about the fact that it was their mistake? what mistake? and who cares?
What about the fact that I did not even have a change of clothes? Too bad indeed, but not their problem.

If I lived there, I too could have done the same. Lodged a complaint with Coimbatore station police and then waited while the boxes would have been brought and sent through trains at our cost and delivered in a day or two or nine depending on how convenient it was to the railway system. The lady was absolved of all her sins by the very act of having brought my box to the nearest railway station.
And I became the culprit because of holding on to the box and not filing a written complaint.
Because I did not have the time to go through their leisurely processes and my contents were more valuable, I had to spend my time and energy in tracing my box and undertaking the trip to retrieve it. Since my box was to be delivered only if I brought her box intact, that idiot passenger got her box prettily sitting in her house and without spending a paisa. (well, I am not even sure who was the idiot in the whole deal finally!)
For the railways all is well that ends well.

Lesson #3: Right and wrong are irrelevant in railway rules. Procedure is of supreme value to the system. So follow Procedure. Be aware of the correct procedure. ( why do you think I am writing this long story for you?)

Lesson#4: Always secure your boxes to the hooks in the luggage space using a chain.They are there for a reason.
It is not only thieves who can make your life miserable. There are plenty of stupid morons traveling with you.

And oh yes, you can walk away with any box you like. There are no penalties for that provided you know how to follow the correct procedure.
And what about right and wrong - come on, which planet are you on?

Did you know there is platform no 9 3/4 at our own Chennai central Station? Only it is called platform number 2a. The notice board shows Platform no 2A against your train. You follow the signboard and reach the platform between 2 and 3 only to find a few shops. No tracks!So you stand there confused as people either point to platform 2 or platform 3 as 2A. There is comfort in numbers as a few others are also looking to board the same train. Then a porter tells you to keep walking and voila!


If you have to leave home by 6 a.m and hate the food available on Brindavan Express - idli vada/pongal-vada/masala dose/bread-omelette/soupu-soupu/masalavade/ molaga bajji/ veg biryaani/ boli-obbat - there is a tastier option. You can pack tasty takeaway food from Hotel Saravana Bhavan at the station . Sambar sadam + VAT @ 2% at Rs.38.24 with a packing Charge of Rs.2.50 along with banana chips. Yum and filling. Of course you can opt for curd rice, puliyodharai, idli-vada or khichidi!
And if you have to buy food from IRCTC, make sure you are charged right. Have you ever noticed the price list nailed near one entrance to the coach? I hadn't till yesterday and I have always paid Rs.5 for tea while I should only have been charged Rs.3!

You are welcome!

If you know where to find the standard luggage charges to be paid to the porter based on the number of boxes please do share. And is there a place where you can fill in a complaints form about the status of the coach - snack tray falling down, backrest adjustment lever not working, bathroom taps leaking etc? Where can one find the guy who walks with a huge screw driver before the departure of the train?