My Baby

26 Feb 2016

Missing my baby. Seeing her in my dreams everyday. On the verge of crying...

Saree Love

Feb 26 2017

Sharadhi's love for the sari. Just like her aunt's when she was a little girl... 

That Red Man in a Nuclear Reactor Accident in Japan...

26 Frb 2018

Over an year ago, I read, on fb, of this youth who suffered fatal burns in a nuclear reactor accident in Japan.

I was warned of disturbing images and yet I clicked the continue button and immediately regretted it. 

There was the picture of red flesh resembling a human body that had been freshly skinned. 

All of the limbs had been suspended from the roof of the white bed only the torso and head were on the bed. The limbs looked longer than they were because of how thin they had become with the layer of skin gone.

The insane hospital had kept him alive in that state for 80 days, instead of letting him go. He was allowed that privilege after pleading for it.

I was in California at that time, and all alone in my hotel suite, with no white lights but dim yellow lights. For a few days after, I continued to feel dull and depressed. 

I don't know why, but last week, with absolutely no provocation, the memory of that image came back and stayed for a while. What made it worse than before was, it was a family member in that state. Don't know how and why my mind conjured up such an image. But I felt sick again. 

The thing about having good memory is, you are unable to dislodge even unpleasant and disturbing images from your mind and the result is, recursive suffering. 

Or, is everything alright with me?

Small Town or Big City?

My uncle. My favourite person in the whole family. God give him long life.

For all those who flock to big cities because they offer ample opportunities for growth, education and recreation, here is someone who lives in a small town and lives a very big life.

I had read in an article years ago that most of living in big cities only means having access to abundant options, though very little or no actual availing of those options. How often do you attend the music concerts in the townhall or watch a play in the theater or attend the book club or cycling or gardening club, or go to lalbagh or cubbon park, the availability of which made you choose this city over others for permanent settling?

This uncle lives in a small town in Coorg and has a dozen events or plans up his sleeve, spread over a number of domains. 

He exemplifies the saying, don't try to add days into your lives, add more life into your days. 

And what more, unlike other men in the family who delegated the wife to the kitchen and washroom, he took his partner along with him and educated her in every domain he dabbled in. A true gentleman. 

For security reasons, I will not reveal further specifics about him...

Jallikattu

Right wing or left wing, national or anti-national, will never ever support Jallikattu or the similar sport in Spain. 

Its barbaric, morbid, dangerous, voyeuristic and cruel. A mockery and trifling of animal life.

War of the World's (2005)

Watched ‘War of the Worlds’ (2005) on Netflix.

Sci-fi by Steven Spielberg based on a novel by H G Wells.

Lots of sound of fury. But significance absent.

The same old fear of the unknown and never ending chasing and dodging dressed up in new gear. 

Giant metallic tripods tall as skyscrapers with probes, who annihilate everything in their way and drink human blood. All of US army tanks and airplanes cannot destroy them and when they fall of their own in the end, it is because of microbes in our blood, for which their immune system is unprepared. 

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Usually dystopian movies, movies of catastrophe are a pain to watch. Grey and dull and desolate and squalid. 

This one has some interesting litter. Debris from plane crash. Engine and wheels and the body with all the seats intact and wings spanning the large area...the kind of debris you haven't seen before. 

But in the end it seemed pointless. Without meaning and purpose and motives explained. 

It was just one long chase. Running running running and then, just like that, being saved, without having done anything about it, without fighting, without even understanding what it was for, what just happened, what hit them…

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Lines noted…

‘What's the matter?’

‘Got a splinter’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘On your porch railing’

‘Lightening doesn't strike twice in the same place’

‘I have been around death plenty. I used to drive an ambulance in the city. You know the people that make it? The ones that don't flatline before the hospital? It's the ones that keep their eyes open. They keep looking at you. Keep thinking. They're the ones who survive’

#westerncinema

Saving Snakelings

Last week, I was in Gaza on a UN mission.

I saw a boy wearing torn clothes roaming on the streets with a teddy bear 

I asked him, "Are you a Muslim, Jewish or a Christian?"

"I am hungry" he said, "How does religion even matter in such a situation? Make humanity your religion."

I was deeply moved and gave him a packet of chicken biryani.

The boy asked, "Is the chicken Halal"?

360 Degree Feedback. IT Industry Could Learn from Uber

An FB post from Feb 2018

Uber, a taxi services company is far superior to any software firm/scum. (Look how well they rhyme.) 

A few days ago I received an email from Uber intimating me that my rating was 3.5 out of 5. 

Curious, I read on. 

Just like customers were allowed to rate drivers, drivers were allowed to rate customers. 

The messaging was so subtle. 

'it may be the small things like the way you close the door, or slam the door unthinkingly, polite treatment of the driver, etc. Higher your rating, slower the wait time for a future ride ... And so on. 

This is 360 degree feedback in the true sense. 

Ratings from both customer and driver accepted, no questions asked. 

The underlying principle is, the rating may be based on reality or perception. 

If it is reality, make corrections where needed. 

If it is perception, then do what it takes to change the perception.

Most of the software firms don't have 360 degree appraisal. Meaning, mangers get to evaluate their team members but team members don't get to rate their managers. 

Even where there is 360 degree feedback, it is a sham. Mostly. 

Most of the managers get away with the help of their 'connections', having acquired them over a number of years they have spent in the firm.

To understand why you should be allowed to rate your managers, you must know two bits about these managers. 

Most of the managers, at least in the services industry, became managers because they couldn't become anything else. Most of them. 

If they were excellent in technology, they would have become tech leads and then architects. 

If they were good at analysis and understood businesses and processes, they would have become business analysts and consultants. 

Since there was nothing they excelled in, and spoke poor to okay English, they became managers - supervisors. All you do then is to learn how to use a few tools and remind other people to do their work, while you... 

(mis)Manage, demand subordination, play politics, engage in power struggle, favouritism, pass the buck, cheat the client, show delinquency in establishing processes, discredit performers, misogyny, tight fisted during appraisals... 

Their nuisance is unending. 

Like I said, a taxi service business is better than software scum.

Make Up or Break Up ?

Priya Rajvansh. 

A handsome woman, if not beautiful. 

And in that song, 'milo na tum to hum ghabraye milo to aankh churaye', the make up and costume make her look like a smudge, a mess, a cosmetic surgery gone wrong. I can't bear to watch it and since the sound of it brings up her repulsive images, I can't listen to it either.

Second Best (1994)

Watched ‘Second Best’ (1994) on Primevideo.

A British film based on a novel by the same name.

A grim, bleak and sad movie. I wouldn’t say poignant or moving, just a sad movie.

The gray climate of England doesn’t help in the uplifting of the mood.

Graham (William Hurt) is a 42 year old unmarried man who wishes to adopt a son. James (Chris Cleary Miles) is the one he chooses. 

Where he lives in England, the adoption process is a long drawn one, where an agent from the children’s home will supervise the meetings between prospective father and son and decide whether the adoption must go through.

While Graham is making the best effort, its not easy, because James is a troubled child because of memories from childhood, and memories of a father he absolutely loves, and is unable to let go of. The father was taken away by the police after he was allowed to spend some memorable quality time with his son.

Graham himself hasn’t had a normal childhood. His parents loved each other a lot but they were so full of themselves that they barely had time for him. Because f this, Graham is not very expressive of his feelings; in fact, he hasn’t experienced deep or intense feelings because of the distance there always was between himself and his parents and the little or no opportunities that the small town offered to socialize.

Graham clings to the memory of one time he spent with his father on a beach and loves his father entirely with that memory and nothing else. The father is bedridden with stroke and he cares for him.

The film shows how the two, Graham and James, get to accept one another. Graham gropes his way towards the child, coping with emotions he hasn’t quite felt before. While James must get over the resistance he feels to loving someone else as his father, especially after his own father had exacted a promise from him that he would love him and no one else.

A miserly and taciturn screenplay that hides more than it reveals, or reveals in scraps. Even in the end, it is not clear what it was with James’s mother, what led to her dying in the bathtub. 

The theme of adoption provides enormous scope to portray the coming together of an adult and a child, each trying to win the other’s heart, trying to accept one another; it could have been very touching, moving. But it ends in what seems like a very reluctant compromise…like a debt that had to be paid, there being no choice.

For all it's critical acclaim, I was waiting for the movie to be over.

Lines I noted…

(about adoption) 

‘Sometimes, you have a child of 9 or 10 who is stuck emotionally at 2 or 3 because he may have been caught up in social services' favourite game - pass the parcel’

‘You do realize that as a single man, you'll only be offered the older, most difficult to place, emotionally disturbed boy?’

‘The department will allot someone to assess you in your own home’

‘8:59 on the dot, I take up position behind the reinforced counter screen’

‘Married bliss! Doesn't it want to make you throw up?’

‘I'd expect you to look after me when I'm old and decrepit. You realize that's the only reason I'm doing this don't you?’

‘The sense of being beholden to me, must be very painful to you’

‘Did you know that the moon moves further away from the earth by a foot every 20 years?’

‘Anything is possible Jamie, except feeling nothing’

#westerncinema