Jhumlasana, Hanko and Hypotenuse

“Accha, look,” my 11-year old son shouted from the tatami room. I turned back to see him lying supine on a pile of pillows with his head, arms, and legs stretched and dangling down. “Modiji’s yoga pose,” he said. He was doing Jhumlasana, a signature move that was conceived and popularized by Indian PM Modi. Modiji, we all know, performs his stunts on rough, inhospitable terrains such as on rocks and stuff, which is possible only through years and years of practice posing in front of cameras. So, ideally kids shouldn’t be trying those at home, but it has been a tough couple of months for my son. Ever since the coronavirus-related restrictions came into place and the consequent lack of entertainment, he has been restless around the house and frankly quite a handful – riding his RipStik blade inside, playing hoops with a small ball and toy hoop in the bedroom, making a metre-long straw to drink his juice, burning old birthday candles, remodelling his RC cars, and creating his own hip-hop bling jewellery with gem clips, one of which I had to wear on my neck for a few hours while working.

It’s been more than six months since $#it hit the Chinese fan in Wuhan, and almost four months since I started wearing a mask when going out. Back in early February, I remember driving my niece to a concert in Shibuya. On our way, we saw the infamous COVID-19 infected cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, quarantined in Yokohama port while crossing the Rainbow Bridge. Once we reached Shibuya, and after ensuring that my niece was safely inside the concert hall, we whiled away the time by strolling around the district taking in the sights, had coffee and cake at a café crowded with fashionable youth, and later just sat outside the concert place waiting for my niece to come out. The area was bustling as usual with hordes of people, many of them tourists, and mostly young. But one thing stood out. Most of them had masks on. 

This was in early February, as I said earlier. The pandemic was yet to overrun Italy and other European nations. Modiji, the masterstroker was planning to fill up a stadium later in the month for his phrend Trump the Two Dick (an honorary title bestowed on cowshed/stable geniuses; from the Hindi word Dho Lund). In fact, he won’t take out his next masterstroke, the one for saving India’s middle class, for another month and a half. However, based on a titbit of information released strategically in June, we know that Modiji was aware of the COVID-19 pandemic much earlier than anyone else on the face of the earth. Not only that, he had prepared a secret plan to tackle this crisis as early as January. He then secretly buried that plan under a neem tree in his backyard and, as is his wont, shot off a poetic letter to his mom. Neem tree, as per our ancient texts, has magical powers and on full moon days, when Jupiter is near Uranus and you feel the urge, dogs will pee on the tree at the stroke of midnight, imparting special powers on whatever is hidden under it. Anyway, after almost three months of keeping it hidden, Modiji pulled that magically-charged plan out on March 24 at 7:45 pm. That time 7:45, you see, is important. According to numerology, 7 + 4 = 11, and 11 + 5 of course is 16. Now comes the interesting part. 1 + 6… Voila, it’s 7. What comes after 7? Eight, obviously. So, at 8:00 pm on March 24, Modiji came on TV, secret plan in hand, and said “Mitrroon”. The rest, as they say, is history, as the country went into lockdown and slew that virus in 21 days. But, then there is the old Swedish Gir jungle saying, "Modiji hai to Moomin hai (Modiji is Moomin)," or something like that.

Sorry I got carried away by the Indian story. I was planning to write about what has been happening here in Nippon. The Japanese PM, perhaps taking a cue from Modiji, ordered a lockdown here in Japan in April. Well, not exactly “ordered”. Given his boob size, which is nowhere near 56 inches, all PM Abe could do was make a request. “Please try and stay home and do not go out if it is non-essential…”. So, many people kept going to work on crowded trains and buses, because they have to do this very essential thing called pressing a hanko on papers. The hanko is your personal seal. Everything in Japan needs a hanko. You may be tattooing 命 on your butt cheek or you may be buying a smartphone. All the relevant procedures will be completed digitally, but then they’ll print everything out and you have to press your hanko in at least 10 places to make it official. So, in modern, digitally-savvy Japan, workers trudge to offices in the midst of a lockdown to do this extremely “essential” act.

Anyway, we, as a family, decided to practice self-restraint and limited our trips outside to once a week to buy stuff. We switched from shopping at different neighbourhood shops to shopping at a big supermarket a few kilometres away. In the first week of lockdown, the place was crowded with people buying up things, and the checkout queue snaked around inside the store with waiting time of up to an hour. There I was, standing in a queue, thinking whether I should fart loudly if I have to cough for some reason, when a lady in the adjacent queue coughed. I immediately began making calculations – we are about two feet apart; she is four and a half feet tall; I am six feet; How do you find the frikkin’ hypotenuse of a triangle h = 1.5 feet, l = 2 feet? Fortunately, I’ve been teaching my boys and knew the formula for hypotenuse, ⇃(h² + l²)  i.e.  = 2.5 feet. Now, convert it…c'mon... my mind raced… 1 foot is about 30cm. Shit, the government said a minimum of one metre in social distancing and this is only about 75cm. Does the coronavirus float up like helium? Does it know about government guidelines and refrain from attacking sideways? I was not sure. Fortunately, going against Murphy’s law, my line moved and I heaved a sigh of relief. The next week was pretty much the same, but the shop restricted entry to one person from a family or group. And by the fourth week, nobody cared (except for masks and some social distancing). 

Right now, things seem to be under control. However, many new cases are being traced to hostess clubs, pointing to some guys losing control. Well, can’t help it, as they have been atmanirbhar (self-reliant) strokers for a while now. Meanwhile, nobody seems to know how this is all going to end. I too don’t know how to end this rant other than by chanting Go Corona, Go! 

Whats Appi Syndrome

It’s almost a month now since I resurrected my life in Japan on Easter Sunday. On April 1, I moved into this small apartment, a few minutes from the school where my kids are enrolled. Japan is one place which teaches you that you don’t need humongous space or thingies to be happy. All you need is … an electronic potty. So, first things first, I went and got myself the cheapest electronic potty available and installed it. Heated seat and warm water butt wash for the winter months.  With that done, we moved on to other essential items - a table and few chairs, some home electronics items, a gas table, a few futons, etc. – and we were all set to start our “minimalist” life.

There were, however, couple of major items left. Mobile phones and Wi-Fi. In fact, I was on the verge of experiencing withdrawal symptoms without access to the virtual frikkin’ world 24/7. I missed the daily dose of inspirational doo-doo from bad gurus. I wanted to read fairy tales that start with I’m not a bhakth, but*. My body yearned for fake news and memes. To put it in a nutshell, I missed my Wi-Fi, something I never expected to happen to me. You see, I have this habit of taking the phone to the potty in the morning to catch up on the WhatsApp messages from the previous night. There are usually a few of the aforesaid inspirational and other such posts in the list. These messages, believe it or not, have a laxative effect because of the convulsions you undergo while reading some of the gems, all the while trying hard not to fall off the commode. It could be convulsive laughter or just plain epileptic ones, but whatever it is, it smoothens the passage of doo-doo from your body. Plop!  Things, obviously, were getting difficult. The appi, as turd is called in some parts of Kerala, was creating problems without WhatsApp. Dang! I had the dreaded WhatsAppi syndrome.

So, my wifey and I went shopping for Wi-Fi and mobiles. Now, in most countries, I’m guessing, this should be a breeze. Not in Japan. We first went to one of the top two companies, where a smartly dressed young man with a tablet (computer, not pill) sat with us and explained, with the help of various charts and diagrams, the stuff they have. Then he listened to what we wanted – two phones. Well, with Google and WhatsApp, if possible. Here, in Japan, you can’t just buy a sim card and insert it in your handset. You have to buy the phone/sim as a bundle. Anyway, the guy gave us a few printouts of the quotes for the different plans he had, and then escorted us courteously to the door.  

Outside, we walked straight to the competitor’s shop. Another well-dressed young man -could have been the first guy’s twin brother or even the same guy- appeared and the same routine was repeated. Deja-vu. We finally decided on this guy after he kinda impressed upon us, with some convoluted logic, that we’re getting the handset free if we use it for two years. He then passed the baton to another dude who sat behind a counter. We were expecting him to produce a paper and show us the dotted line to sign. Totally wrong. He started off by asking our address, and was almost professorial in the way he went about explaining things. He printed out certain papers, brought them to us, and explained the contents. In between he was marking some crucial places with a yellow marker, perhaps for us to study for the test he’ll conduct at the end of all this. Then he printed out some more papers. The process continued. Did he just say “the Company reserves the right to cleave off the left kidney of the user if he/she exceeds 2 gb data”? Nah. Maybe I dozed off.  When I looked up, he was again printing out stuff. I was feeling guilty and personally responsible for destroying a few hundred acres of Amazonian rainforest. Anyway, after a few hours, my wife signed the various papers including the kidney one, I think, and we were owners of smartphones. But…the Wi-Fi won’t come for two more weeks. What?!   After all the bureaucracy and signing and stuff!  

Contrast this with India, where you can go into a mobile shopeee (the more ‘e’ s, the better), flash your Maine Pyar Kiya underwear tag (which, of course, is linked to your Aadhaar) as identification, throw 500 rupees on the counter, get a SIM card, and before you can say “I’m-not-a-bhakth-but,” you’re  a man with a plan.

All thanks to the ****nis and ****jis who rule the country.

* - ”I’m not a bhakth, but” is a new genre of fairy tale similar to the “Once upon a time” stories. These tales have gained in popularity in the past three or four years, and is especially popular during election seasons. Here’s a sample.

I’m not a bhakth, but the other day I was talking to this dude who is the illegitimate son of my grandfather’s brother’s, now-deceased wife. This guy - I can’t reveal his name - so, let’s call him Jai, was employed as a senior janitor with executive powers at the Exalted One’s abode. Another thing is that, he and all his family members, legitimate as well as illegitimate, were Biju Janata Dal voters for hundreds of years, even before Biju was born. So, you can guess their dedication. That night Jai had woken up to go to the loo to pee out the gaumutra he had consumed before sleeping. It was about 3 in the morning. He saw a light coming from one of the rooms. Out of curiosity he went and peeped in, and to his surprise he saw that the light was not coming from any electrical light source, but the Exalted One was emitting an aura so powerful, the entire room was lit up. Then, the Exalted One picked up the phone and called this scavenger in Kendrapara and instructed him to clean up the sewage in two hours. Great or what?

If you agree, forward this to all the people, in particular to those with WhatsAppi syndrome.    

Year-end Ruminations

 

Sometimes, even though you don’t want to, you end up thinking of the year that went by. So, here are some random thoughts that crossed my mind, sitting in snowed-out north-eastern Japan, -15°C outside, WhatsApping with friends around the world; something which I wasn’t planning on six months ago. I have been trying, often without success, to keep technology at bay. A phoneless cord? Maybe. A smartphone? No way. That used to be my policy.

 

Things, however, don’t go as you planned, especially with kids around, and I ended up with a smartphone, knowing well that it was a slippery slope. One good thing that came out of it, though, was getting back in touch with long-lost friends over the last couple of months.

 

For Trivandrum, it was again a continuation of the disappointments, neglect, maltreatment, etc. from the ruling class. The Mayoress, the government and its umpteen ministers, including one representing the city, all have conspired to crush the soul of this city. The Mayoress, by failing to find a solution to the city’s garbage issue, into its fourth year now. The government, by actively scuttling any development that matters to come here. And to rub salt in the wound, they have built a monument to ineptitude that stands like a middle finger being wagged at the citizens' faces. That is the “newly inaugurated” central bus station at Thampanoor, which resembles Fallujah after an US bombing raid. The contempt is palpable.

 

Which makes one wonder whether a win for the BJP guy in the last parliament elections would have made a difference. Now, that is another slippery slope. Already there are signs that I may have to read the Gita every day (instead of, say, the Kamasutra) if Madame Sushma has her way and makes it the national scripture. Or, worse still, I may have to reconvert (Ghar Wapsi!) to Hinduism in the near future. Where would I start? Perhaps as an untouchable and work my way up the caste ladder, if that is possible in one lifetime. I don’t want to go through all those karma, reincarnation cycle till moksha. Reminds me of the movie dialogue “What does a snail have to do to reincarnate? Leave the perfect trail of slime?”

 

Despite trying their best, the ruling class (who have suckled at the teats of this city, living here, sending their children to schools here, drinking the water from one of the oldest water supply system in the country, pooping into a sewerage system, which again is one of the oldest such systems in the country) has not managed to kill the city’s spirit...... yet. I believe, it is still one of the best places to live in this country.

 

Speaking of poop - I am now in Japan, where pooping is a pleasure. Here is a rehash from a piece I wrote almost a decade ago. The system was new at that time, but I won’t be surprised if the Japanese have come out with a system that measures the amount of doo-doo you make and flushes the appropriate amount of water. It is all eco-friendly nowadays, you see. Save water.

 

Some 74% of houses in Japan now has high-tech toilets. In comparison, 53% households in India do it in eco-friendly, natural settings, upholding the spirit of being one with nature (nice positive spin, eh?). The potty I have been using here in Japan allows me to set the seat temperature (important in winter) as well as the water pressure, position and temperature. You can set it for automatic flush, so that it flushes when you raise your washed, rinsed and cleansed bum off the toilet seat. Women can also use it as a bidet.

 

I sometimes dream of having one such potty in my house in Trivandrum, but then good sense prevails as my brain reminds me of how fried nuts would look like when the voltage shoots to 4000v unexpectedly in a lightning storm. Have to safeguard the family jewels!

 

Finally uploaded the pictures of potty control panels! Hope you all have an un-constipated New Year.

 

Above - the panel I use

Panel at my in-laws place (Added later to a regular potty)

The one at a hotel I stayed recently (attached to the toilet seat).

Well, this blog also seems to have run its course, looking at the recent output. Wish you all an interesting 2015 and beyond.

 

Quarterly Musings?

 

Well, 2014 is into its second quarter and here I am sitting in a place that is so far removed from Trivandrum, the election heat as well as the real heat there seems surreal. It is -1°C and snowing outside where I am now. The year started off crazily for me, when I was woken up at 6 am on January 1^st by a distress call from Kanyakumari. I was sleeping at my friend’s place, where I had gone to welcome in the New Year, saw the city explode into colours across a 180° arc at midnight from his apartment balcony, drank and played cards till the wee hours. The call was from a group of Japanese college kids, who had gone to celebrate the New Year at the land’s end of India. “We have been robbed”, the girl said. And I felt relieved. Nobody drowned! So far, so good. She said the police just came and went and did nothing.

 

So, there I was, in Kanyakumari at 9 am, Jan 1, 2014. The police station is less than 100m from the hotel (Shivas something) where these kids stayed, but it might as well have been in another planet. They were robbed of couple of Macbooks, 2 smartphones and a watch, probably by the hotel staff who were watching them getting drunk and sleeping without locking their door. The kids called the police, who came after some time and asked a few questions to the night clerk and left, and refused to register any complaint. The kids were dumbstruck! Why in the world would policemen refuse to file a complaint and investigate a theft? Well, welcome to India, I said.

 

I took the two guys who lost the stuff and went to the police station. Only acceptable language is Tamil! The police and the hotel guys all seemed to be in this racket together. I somehow managed to impress upon the SI and ASI the need to file a complaint and give a copy each to the two kids, which they gave by noon and we left the place. They lost stuff, but stuff can be replaced, and I was surprised at the speed at which the kids recovered and decided to enjoy their rest of the vacation in Kerala. (As I was leaving, I also saw these same police guys totally ignore a man from Meghalaya, who too was robbed, and who couldn’t speak Tamil. In hindsight, I should have helped him out too, but I was hurrying to get the kids out of that place, partially driven by the shame I felt as an Indian, and partially by hunger.)

 

So, that was my New Year. A reality check of how things work, rather don’t work, in our country.

 

I was not planning to write about the election, nor anything else, for that matter, but since I started writing I might as well throw my two cents in. Last time, I persuaded at least one person to vote for Mr Tharoor. Here was a man of international stature, famed author, journalist (I used to enjoy his articles in the International Herald Tribune) and above all, a man with experience living in international cities. The only negative I could think of was his involvement with the mother of all inefficient, ineffective bureaucracies, the UN! Just kidding.

 

The expectations were quite high. He did perform well compared to all his immediate predecessors. But, was that enough is the question. I, personally was expecting a Rolls Royce, but think we got a Honda Accord. To be fair, the Honda Accord is an excellent upgrade, especially given the Ambassador and Standard Herald models we had before that. Still, I must say I was a bit disappointed. And, though not his fault, the fact that the State government didn’t care about our city hurt too.

 

So, how is the field this time? The positives, stated above, are still valid for Mr Tharoor. The controversy (controversies?) surrounding his personal life, though, is a bummer.

 

The BJP candidate could spring a surprise, as they have succeeded in creating lot of hype, similar to some states and cities. It could also end up as usual – all fart and no $hit.

 

The only thing everybody know about the Left candidate is that nobody knows him. It is a tragedy, and a pointer to the sad state of affairs in our State, that the Left is resorting to caste-based politics and pandering to mullahs, bishops and living gods for survival. He might win, if that particular group vote en-bloc for him, as it is wont to do.

 

A message to AAP – get rid of those ridiculous caps. You started off well by ridding yourself of that Anna Hazare clown. Now get rid of those caps. And, get some people who can speak the lingo, i.e. Malayalam, like the common man to be your spokespersons.

 

All said and done, the buttons have been pressed, the machines have been packed and we have a month to find out who will eventually disappoint us.

 

I am, however, not so sure of the voting machines. Did we have a transparent process for introducing them? Was the technology verified independently? Some did malfunction here and there. Could these be tampered with?

 

Most of us would like to think it is all fool-proof, but this is India and anything can happen.

 

Here’s a story. Long back, in the 1980s, if you were a Mallu in Bangalore trying to take the Island Express back home urgently and needed a reservation, you went to the railway canteen on the 1^st floor of Majestic station and checked out Mr N, a waiter there, and he would give you a ticket, at least an RAC seat, for a small extra. Then, at the turn of the decade, going into the nineties, Indian Railways began computerizing their reservation system. Everybody thought Mr N would go out of business. He didn’t. He just moved his base to Krishnarajapuram, a small station near Bangalore, and continued with his merry ways. You had to travel that extra mile to see him. That was all. 

 

 

P.S. I would have voted for only one person (perhaps two) this time. Her name is Sheeba, and she is a candidate from Alathur. She, it seems, asked her staff not to put up any flex boards as part of her campaign. I hope she wins. Just go to Vellayambalam and take a look at those huge faces sneering down from ugly flex boards on what could have been one of the most beautiful roundabouts in Trivandrum.

Xmas Star, High-speed Rail, Lit-fests, Nurses

The other day I was walking out of my gate with my two sons. A guy passed us by, looking intently at my face, and then retraced his steps and asked me my name.  I looked at him for a few seconds and gave my name. He followed it up with “Are you Christians?”  I said no. “Hindus?” Again I replied in the negative. He seemed to be a bit confused whether to go on to the next religion in his list or not. You see, I have this secular, religion-neutral name common to mallus born in the 60s and 70s and he was not sure whether that name worked for Muslims, etc. I decided to help him out and said, “I don’t believe in any imaginary being or in any religion.” He seemed offended by my answer and told me that my response was uncalled for, I have no right to ridicule god, and how did I think we were all here, blah, blah. I cut off the blahs and told him, “Look pal, you’re the one who came to me and asked me my religion. So, if you don’t like what I have to say about it, get lost.” He mumbled that I was right on that point and went away. He must have been a member of one of those Jehovah’s Witness or some such cultish group attracted by the Xmas star still dangling from my porch.

Anyway, the point is, religion is always in your face here in our country. Kerala used to be slightly better, but even here it is getting out of control. So much so that, even the Marxists have inducted Jesus into their pantheon of revolutionary leaders alongside Marx, Lenin, Che, et al (they also have Kim Jong-il, which I find interesting). Most of what Jesus did would fall under the communist concept of things and some fair-minded priests have acknowledged as much. Note to capitalists: Jesus ‘distributed’ whatever bread he had to the thousands who followed him. He didn’t tell them, “OK guys, this is how you make bread. Now, go and find yourselves some wheat and get to work if you don’t want to starve.” It didn’t matter how many bread molecules each person got. All that mattered was that they got something.

Well, now since Jesus is in there, the next logical step for the Marxists would be to incorporate Mohammed into the scheme of things. That is not going to be easy. For one, you can’t have any imagery (google “Jesus and Mo” for a weekly take on deep religious thoughts and some images). The maximum you can do is replace the sickle with the crescent, which would go well with the cross that replaced the hammer.

When did we reach this stage of fear of religion? The last and only person I could remember saying anything was C Kesavan, a former chief minister who died more than 40 years ago.  He was supposed to have said “good riddance, that much less superstition” on hearing about Sabarimala temple being gutted by fire. He probably knew, by virtue of being the CM, the ‘secret’ of the divine fire makaravilaku and would have wanted to save the many that die in stampedes every year trying to watch that fire.    

Now, you have women sitting on the street named after C Kesavan, inhaling photochemical smog, making offerings, flavoured with exhaust fumes and garnished with dust, to a goddess in a temple situated 4 kilometres away; all as part of the biggest congregation of superstitious women in the world. Now, you have obscure mullahs threatening to make $hit-fests out of lit-fests prompted by the devious media. Oh, for a C Kesavan!

A brief look at the ongoing theme of rail-related humbug in Kerala: The govt. has decided to go ahead with the high-speed rail and the pods. There was a report that Japan even promised their 700-series shinkansen for the high-speed rail project. Wow, I hope they are giving it for free. The only thing now left for Japan will be to offer to pay for the tickets of travellers. I'm sure our railway god can get that and more from JICA. To give you an idea of the shinkansen ticket price in Japan - a one-way ticket from Tokyo to Osaka is about 12,000 yen (Rs. 7,600), whereas a cheap airline ticket is about 9,000 yen (5,700). That is more than what an enslaved nurse makes a month in the enlightened, progressive, red communist Kerala. Let’s hope we all strike oil in our backyards (don’t have a backyard? tough luck.) and become rich like the Arabs to keep up with this govt’s dreams.   

Talking of dreams, I like this government’s slogan “athi vegam, bahu dooram,” which can be loosely translated as “at great speed, going a long way”. And that is what they are doing –at high speeds; going far, very far away from realities.  

P.S. It will be good fun to keep track of the money trail in these dream projects - the consultancies, the feasibility studies, the real estate deals… yummy!