Paramour of the Nation, Earth Hour, etc.

When you live in what is essentially a police state, clumsily camouflaged in democratic garb, you have to be doubly careful about airing your views. Especially when that police state is slowly but steadily going down the theocratic path, as is happening in India. I think almost all countries are police states to a certain extent. Look at the USA, the biggest “spreader of democracy” in the world. Look at how a black person was shot dead from behind by the police recently in South Carolina. If it had happened in India, there would be big hue and cry about human rights violations, blah, blah by the foreign media. In the USA’s case it is just an officer “executing” his duty.

Well, I’m least bothered about countries whose democracy spreading fervor is largely dependent on access to oil reserves and other self-interest factors. It is the theocracy that is spreading its tentacles in India that has piqued my interest now. Every other day a new swami or swamini comes out of the woodwork with wacko solutions for the problems we face, and not all of them are from the fringe. Some are reigning ministers in the central cabinet. One guy, Baba Ramdev, who was caught cross-dressing once, has a cabinet rank in Haryana. His yoga apparently can cure homosexuality and even AIDS! I hope the Indian government lobbies for a medical Nobel for this guy.

Another guru said we have to make the cow as the mom of the nation. That raises interesting possibilities. We already have a guy as the pop of the nation. Now if a cow is going to be the mom, where does that leave the bull? The paramour of the nation? The bull excrement is hitting the fan and scattering around the nation rapidly. And no one can stop it.

Maharashtra recently banned beef based on questionable interpretations of our religious and cultural traditions. The Aghoris, who could perhaps be considered as the real spiritual guys in India for the way they renounce all worldly things, are said to eat human flesh. They smoke ganja and drink liquor too. They are a part of our culture, whether our globe-trotting, a/c-loving gurus and matas like it or not. An Aghori (harmless in most cases), eating human flesh, can roam around free with his skull and other ghastly paraphernalia, while a Malayali (harmful at times!) in his lungi in Mumbai might end up in jail for five years for eating some heavenly beef ularthiyathu. Go figure.

I hope one day we get a prime minister who is a devotee of an Aghori guru. National weed – Ganja; National flesh – human; National plate – skull.

A few weeks ago, Rinpoche, a close friend, posted a message in our WhatsApp school group asking to turn our lights off for one hour on March 28. Rinpoche, a bleeding heart liberal if ever there was one, always wanting to help the poor, the destitute and the old, posted that with good intentions, because, you guessed it, he is also worried about the environment. He was taking part in a global movement called the “Earth Hour”. This is one of those highfalutin ideas about which I am always sceptical. A group of guys in the developed world get together and do something symbolic accompanied by big hype. Then it becomes a global movement. The resources, not just energy, that these countries consume (waste) is what gets my goat every time I hear such gimmicks. Conceited grandstanding, that’s what it is, by a bunch of people who have wrought more than enough damage around the world through their imperialism and their meddling in other countries’ affairs. Per-capita power consumption in most developed countries are 5 to 10 times that of India. We are already enduring many “earth hours” a day in scheduled and unscheduled power cuts. So, let us know when you are ready to do an Earth Month, or at the very least an Earth Week.

Aisatsu-mawari – In Japan, when you move into a new location, you go around saying hi to your neighbours with a small gift to introduce yourself. A new person taking charge of a company or a department also does something similar by visiting clients and all other departments. This is called aisatsu-mawari. Our prime minister has been on an extended aisatsu-mawari, and at times it seems he is on a permanent aisatsu-mawari. Our man was recently sighted in India preaching to his choir. He said his government was for the poor. Well, we know that, don’t we? All governments are for the poor; i.e. the poor corporates and the poor oligarchs who fund their elections. In his speech, he asked whether it is wrong to think that each citizen should have a house to live in. I don’t doubt his sincerity (if it was a Congress PM, we would have laughed our freakin pants off). However, like his exhortations on toilets (see potties in Gujarat), his track record in tackling homelessness during his 13-year reign in Gujarat is nothing to write home about. Gujarat ranks 6^th by population and 2^nd by percentage of homeless people among the major States. Maybe, he would be better off adopting the Kerala model for everything else other than sucking up to industries and swamis.

 

P.S. In the meantime, back in God’s Own Cakkoos, the railway god appeared to complain that the high priest (our CM) and his coterie are denying him the chance to shower his metro blessings on the people of Trivandrum and Kozhikode. This blog knew that nearly four years ago in 2011 (see monorail, yay!).

Had Enough of Monorail, Now Suck on Some Light Rail

Three years ago, people in Trivandrum (and Calicut) were thrown a bone by the Chief Dream Merchant (CdM), which we all lapped up (see Monorail for Tvm, 2011). The Railway God had appeared to him (maybe in his dream – him being the dream merchant – or maybe in person; nobody knows) and said a monorail is what these people need.

Lo and behold, there were colorful images of monorails in all newspapers warming the cockles and other unmentionable parts of Trivandrumites. We were glad that the Lord upgraded us from MEMU trains and buses to this modern contraption. Soon, the coffers of DMRC, the temple trust looking after the Lord’s interests, began filling up with consultancy offerings. DPRs (not related to DPR Korea) were prepared, alignments were marked, and historical buildings were threatened – all in paper. People were given controlled doses of euphoria-generating news featuring unauthorized copies of monorail pictures from the web, which kept them baying for more.

But this God is a playful one. He likes to toy with his devotees. And so it came to pass after three years – no, not the monorail, but the reappearance of the Lord. He suddenly revealed himself again, appearing through the monorail woodwork, to the CdM, and said, “#$%! monorail. I’ll upgrade them to a light metro rail, whatever that is”. The CdM said, “Thy wish is my command. I’ll immediately convey it to the suckers. They’ll be grateful to you for not smiting them”. Both of them sneaked a peek at the consultancy coffer and laughed maniacally (ref: Consultancy fees to DMRC).

The people were happy that their prayers and offerings have “paid off”, just like with the other gods. In the meantime, unbeknownst to man, the Lord has different plans, which he revealed to the CdM (and to me). Three years from now he plans to upgrade the plan to a full-fledged metro. And in 2020, it’ll be upgraded to a subterranean maglev bullet train, and in 2023 he will smite us all because a few of us will sin by not going orgasmic about the newest plan. The Lord moves in mysterious tracks! So, beware! You might get run over!

 

 

G’bye Annus Stupidus, Allo Annus Ridiculus

It’s festive season again. The air is filled with the pungent smell of burning rubber, plastic and waste.   People are singing paeans to the new messiah - “His Royal Highness, Benevolent, Right Reverend Excellent Chief Minister and Royal Disburser of Alms to the Poor, the Crippled, the Lame and the Blind, and the Royal Shower-er of Riches on Rich People”.

People on the streets are also singing paeans to the Royal Opposition for royally protesting the disbursing and showering while wearing crowns and holding sceptres, symbols which they despise.

People are singing paeans to their MP tha Roor for clearing the environment regarding the deepwater port (the thought behind it is what matters; i.e. the afterthought, after an airport gets all the clearances in the blink of an eye).

They are also singing paeans to the Mayor-ess for triggering a renewed interest in physics, especially the study of inertia.

People are so much into singing paeans, they don’t realize the pains in their nether regions caused by the actions (no, I don’t want to spell it out) of the above royalty.

2013 has been an “annus stupidus” by any standards, but as G. Carlin says, “Inside every silver lining there is a dark cloud”.

And that dark cloud is the New and Improved Kerala Model of Development (NIKMOD), pioneered by the new messiah who is travelling at warp speed to far away destinations. The people are yet to catch up with him. Well, how can they? They are singing paeans (with their heads up their *****)!  

NIKMOD envisions airports at every nook and corner of the State, like bus stands. And this would usher in all-round development. New roads will be built, shopping malls and high-rise condominiums will come up, and international schools will sprout. It would also bring in high-end hospitals with magic ventilators that create illusions of life in the dead to console the relatives and relieve them of the corrupting influence of money.  (I didn’t make this up. This is something I read in the Inter-webby about the benefits of Aranmula airport, though, I admit, he didn’t specify the ventilator part).

And the good tidings don’t end there. We will have bullet trains, monorails, ports, seaplanes, regular planes, convention centres, 5-star hotels, and not to forget helipads at places where we can’t build airports (no $hit!). Ooh! I can’t wait for 2014 –which I hope would be an annus ridiculus- to roll in.

A Happy New Year to Y’all!

P.S. A few days ago, the statue of a former CM was unveiled in Trivandrum. At the time, the government said it will allot land to a foundation in his name. Voila! 48 hours later, the foundation has 37 cents of land in Palayam. This land, mind you, is not in Palayam, Calicut, but in Palayam, Trivandrum - a city with no land for any development, if you believe the current “His Royal Highness, Benevolent, Right Reverend Excellent Chief Minister and Royal Disburser of Alms to the Poor, the Crippled, the Lame and the Blind, and the Royal Shower-er of Riches on Rich People”.  And that too for a man whose loyalties lay elsewhere and who had no love lost for Trivandrum as such.

Back in GOC!

It’s been almost a month since I landed back in GOC capital, and I don’t even know where to start ranting.

First up is the garbage issue. We’ll soon be celebrating the 2^nd anniversary of our hard-fought “freedom to throw garbage anywhere” rights. I am sure our Mayor-ess Moonlight will come up with some novel ideas for celebrating this in style, given her stellar (lunar?) track record.  And hopefully, the state government would chip in with its own stuff, given its deep, anal-expulsive love for the city. Can’t wait for the s#&t to hit the fan. Oh, wait! It has already hit the fan.

Today, Mr. O “Quicksilver” Chandy opened an office for building monorails in Trivandrum and Calicut, which some people say could be run using solar power. Anyway, this man is awesome. One day he is in some Middle Eastern country receiving some major award specially created for him, the next day he is in some other Middle Eastern country with some major “businessmen”.  And then he is in Delhi meeting with the High Command before going back to his ancestral land for some good, clean adulation involving elephants and stuff, and before you could say Jack Robinson or Jose Thettayil, he parachutes into Kawdiar to open an office. You are almost tempted to think that he is somehow deriving all his energy from the “Sun”.  Meanwhile, his office staff members were also making hay while the “Sun” shines. Good for them!

I’m pretty much certain that he parachuted in because there is no road connectivity between Trivandrum and the most important city near it – Kollam. This, unlike what you think, is part of a grand scheme of building waterways connecting major urban centers. In the 1^st phase they have converted a 2-km stretch of the highway, from the IT-hub Kazhakootam to Kaniyapuram, into a waterway. The only problem was, as usual, the authorities didn’t notify the people. Nor did they offer any ferry service. So, people like me, who would have otherwise hired a boat, had to drive on the narrow, muddy banks of this canal jostling for space with other vehicles of the non-seaplane variety. It took me two hours. Next time I’m taking my inflatable dinghy.   

By the way, how did the Brits come up with the Quilon spelling?

1^st Brit: Hey, where are you stationed?

2^nd Brit: Kollam

(Mind you, this is all happening in Morse Code – K is Dah-di-dah; Q is Dah-dah-di-dah. Maybe one guy just wanted to say Po-Dah)

1^st Brit: How do you spell it?

2^nd Brit: QUILON. And you?

1^st Brit: I’m in Koilandi, spelt QUILANDY

1^st and 2^nd Brit: Ha, ha, ha. Aren’t we brilliant?

 

Trivandrum Monorail – “To be or not to be a Paara”

When god speaketh, man shuts the f$@k up-eth. That is the norm. But unbeknownst to god, there are a set of people called rationalists who ask for logical, plausible explanations. These people raise uncomfortable questions, which usually bring any discussion to an abrupt end with, “that is our belief, you can’t question that.”

Recently, railway god E. Sreedharan spake and spake and spake a lot to his devotee chief minister. And then he spake and spake some more.  And everybody bowed and prayed. He spake about the wisdom of building a monorail for a growing city like my hometown. And, everybody nodded in agreement, “sorry lord, we forgot your advice on widening the roads in Trivandrum and using the existing railway tracks and buses. A thousand apologies.”

The railway god apparently had no recollection of ever saying such things. Do gods get dementia? He now wants to build something bigger and better than a monorail. A metro, perhaps, as the city is growing. On the other hand, I guess Calicut only needs a monorail as it won’t grow. What about the other two cities “larger” than Trivandrum? Malappuram, if you believe the stats, is the Shenzhen of India – growing from a hundred thousand to a million and a half in a few years. At this rate, it could be a megalopolis pretty soon. Obviously, the people there deserve a modern “maglev”. We are yet to hear god’s thoughts on that.

This god-speak, however, raised alarms. And surprise of surprise, a dissenting voice came from the devotee group itself. Mr. M. A. Vahid, a ruling party MLA, boldly came out as an atheist and suggested, without naming names, that somebody is trying to torpedo the project. There were some mute denials from the government. And I patted my back for predicting this – see Did you just Wink?.  

To be or not to be a paara, that is the question on the railway god’s mind now (paara, പാര is a Malayalam word used to describe someone who slyly tries to #$ck up something). He definitely seems to have an axe to grind as far as Trivandrum is concerned. I could never understand the deification of this guy (or anyone for that matter). He didn’t invent or create anything from scratch. He used existing technologies and equipment to build something for which a blueprint has been in existence for 150 years. The world’s first frikkin' metro started running in London in 1863, for (railway) god's sake! The Delhi metro is reasonably good and he should be complemented for good administration and execution of a project. An Indian world-class, if you may, like the Trivandrum “world-class” International Airport or the CWG village, (see Our Standards) which are a big improvement on existing facilities. That’s about it.

In the meantime, the stink continues in Trivandrum, with our Mayor-ess Ms. Moonlight and our MP Mr. Moon Tha Roor throwing muck at each other. Interesting times ahead.

Gateways, Monorail, Tender, Amakudari

Over the past few years, there was one thing that struck me while going around Trivandrum. Our obsession with gateways, and I have been trying to guess the reason for this obsession.

I remember my mom’s ancestral house in rural Trivandrum which had a small gateway –the kottiyambalam- built onto the compound wall. Nothing fancy - just a simple door with a wooden bolt opening out to a small ledge with places to sit on both sides, and steps leading down outside to the pathway and the railway track about 50 feet away. As kids, we cousins used to sit there and wave at passing trains and then as teenagers we sat there and smoked and drank. Sadly, the kottiyambalam is just a memory now. In its place, rather near where it stood, stands a regular iron gate stuck in a concrete wall (which replaced the mud kayyala). The kottiyambalam as such is experiencing a revival in Kerala with rich blokes incorporating it in their designer homes. But, I am not talking about those gateways.

I am talking about the gateways that are there or are being built at the entrances of government buildings such as hospitals or this or that directorate. There is one being built in front of the Corporation Office, two in the General Hospital and one at the entrance to the Eye Hospital. Then there are the existing ones like the one at the Medical College entrance, the DME office, the Science and Technology Museum. There is one thing common to all these. These are all equally ugly, serve no purpose and are a colossal waste of money.  Well, at least that was my initial reaction. Then on deeper analysis I regretted doubting our government. Guess what? The government has a vast checklist of priority stuff, which it goes through before making any such spending decisions. It roughly looks like the following:

       Item         Status

          Poverty                  Alleviated

          Roads                    Built

          Schools                 Constructed (some even have pools during monsoon)

          Water                    Supplied

          Garbage                Removed

          Healthcare            Universal (the general wards in the aforementioned General
                                        Hospital even have some broken toilets!)

          Criminal gangs      Wiped out

          Crime                    Unheard of (ever since said gangs were wiped out)

          Corruption             Being institutionalized (oops!)

And the list goes on and on.

The government honchos poured over this checklist and saw that everything was good. “OK guys, now since everything seems to be taken care of let’s use the spare money to build some gateways. Y’know, concrete, fake traditional stuff and use colours that are in vogue now among mallus –pink, parrot green,” they decreed and lo, we have gateways.

P.S. The monorail saga continues – Recently the railway god paid a visit to the Calicut monorail site and gave his approval. He said it was viable in Kozhikode and probably agreed with the government proposal for a global tender. It warmed the cockles of my heart and made it tender. He is ready to give approval to any two-bit town that needs a monorail as long as there is a global tender. I am not saying that Calicut is a two-bit town. It’s every bit an 8084, 8-bit town like the other two “huge” cities in Kerala.  I’m digressing. The point is about the global tender. Here was a man who just a few weeks ago bullied and blackmailed the government against a global tender for a metro. He said the metro would get JICA funding only if it went through him. Nobody asked anything. The media, the politicians, the academicians, no one. Zip, nada. Why was that? What if, say, Hitachi had won the bid? Would JICA have refused? I don’t think so. Still, there is an explanation for his actions.

Japan, despite the overall good image, is not that transparent in many of its dealings. It is not corrupt in the way we experience it here. A common man need not bribe a government official to get a certificate or some such thing in 99.9% of the cases. Corruption there is more at the higher end, institutionalized and subtle. Companies and government are all in it together. Bids are rigged. Everything is shared. Everyone is happy. Worked for quite a long time too, but has run into trouble with globalization. There is a practice called Amakudari in Japan where senior bureaucrats join private companies after retirement. Gratitude for favours received. This is the word that popped up in my mind when I read his threat on not receiving funding from JICA. Here is a powerful retired guy in a private position and the Japanese could relate to that.

And, for him, he got what he wanted for his former company and didn’t care one way or the other about global tenders for other stuff. Stuff he is not interested in. The worrying factor for me here is the total lack of spine from anyone in questioning some of the things he said including the double standards in global tender. He is definitely a rare specimen in our country (people like him are dime-a-dozen in any reasonably well-run democratic country including Japan), did some great things and deserves the accolades, but that doesn’t mean everything he says is sacrosanct. His comments (or at least stuff that the media have attributed to him) related to the maglev and high-speed trains are ridiculous to say the least. He is for building the high-speed rail and said that Japan will give its 700-series shinkansen to Kerala. Of course they’ll give it. And you’ll pay for it with the money they lend you so that their corporations stay afloat while you drown in debt for eternity. All for the benefit of a few rich people who may or may not travel in such trains.  Incidentally, Japan built its first bullet train line between Tokyo and Osaka, which are Intel Core i7, 64-bit cities unlike our 8-bit ones. Ideally, the left should have questioned this absurd idea, but they don’t want to be seen as anti-development, it seems. They appear to have lost their you-know-what somewhere and they are not even aware of it.