Confessions of a coward

I am writing this finally because I read one more tweet about that Delhi gangrape case today (*and probably couldn't control my emotions...call it anger, call it resignation). I woke up in the morning and made the mistake of looking up my twitter feed and that news was up there, staring at me, tweeted by some media outlet.

I do not read the newspaper anymore. I do not have the courage to. I cannot bear most of the news that comes to us, these days.

I do not have the courage to read the newspapers because most of what I read before I stopped reading them told me that I was living in a country, in a world, even, that has far, far too many wrongs to be corrected. It was not a loss of faith. It was much worse. It was a loss of hope.

And even then, I get news. Through my twitter feed. On my email. Via messages. Conversations. A casual ‘what the fuck is going on in Haryana’ from a friend. I try to blot this all out. Because I know I cannot change that. I will not be able to. I will most probably not be able to try to.

Next time I am walking with a lady friend of mine, and I meet five, or even three or two, goons who attempt to whistle, cajole or otherwise ‘eve-tease’ her, my response will probably be to wrap my arms around her and walk faster, maybe dial 100 in the hope that the arriving protection will hurt us less than the oppressors. I do not know what I will do if matters become physical, if someone attempts to touch that friend of mine. I like to think that I will have the courage to man up, and that things will end up not too bad. But that is a kind of courage that is as yet untested.

And then, there is the other kind of courage. What will happen when I see that happening to someone I do not know? I would like to think that I would stand up for them as staunchly, and with as much conviction as I would for someone I would care about. But I am your normal, middle class man. I do not know if my courage will hold then. I do not know if I will have the guts to balance I everything I have in life at that moment, and have the guts to choose the right way ahead. I hope I will, but maybe I will not. It is a scary thought.

There is only one thing which I can be sure I can, and will do. Sometime in my future, I will have a kid. He or she will learn from me to respect others. To value the distance that needs to maintained, the respect that needs to be given, the dignity that needs to be accorded. The only thing I can ensure is that I will pass on to my next generation a courage which I will only know I possess when I have proven myself.

Till such time, I will just pray I have such courage in me.

*added later

Sportsmen, role models, and belief

(I wrote a longer version of this as a comment on @sidvee's blog, and lost it trying to log in. Don't think can recreate the entire comment, so here goes a paraphrased version.)

The other day I was part of a twitter discussion about why the minor misdemeanors of sportsmen get the most stringent scrutiny, while even the wildest acts of other celebrities do not seem to affect the barometer of public affection. Case in point: the Lance Armstrong issue. The claim is doping, and I do maintain that in a vicious world which has a so much injustice strewn around should you care to look, the breaking of a few million people's faith should not really matter all that much (it does not to, me- I think there are maybe a few billion people who have never heard of Armstrong). And there
are guys like Salman Khan who was accused of running over actual, physical people (an act that usually results in death, unlike hurt emotions), or a Sanjay Dutt (accused and convicted of worse- naivete or not), and still their movies run to full houses and nobody seems to make any noise about their histories. It is a cynical world.

I used to believe in sportsmen once, I have been chewed out and spat back in an interview for saying that if I had to look at one person for inspiration in the world, I would look at Steve Waugh (which, given my background, the interviewer thought, was a stupid choice). But I believe that when we are choosing our role models, the context plays as big as role in the choice of the person and the strength of attachment we feel towards him. So, when we are looking at an SRT play in an India/Mumbai jersey, we are not just looking at him as a sportsman, we are looking him as a manifestation of what we stand for (the belief of how the country should be, how the city should be)- sublime, resilient, able to come back from behind, able to be heroic in defeat...choose your faff. Same, I feel, would apply for sportsmen who do not play for countries, but play for clubs, or teams like footballers or F1 racers- all of these entities stand for something- we like the team, we associate values to it, and when the favored child shifts, he still carries some values attached to the team (does not have to be real, can as well be perceived).

By comparison, when I watch the white shirt tear itself of Salman's body in a Dabangg almost as if it hates being wrapped around it, I do enjoy it; but neither I, not most of us imagine being locked in a battle to death with goons on a vengeance trip in an obscure place. (The context thing applies here too, remember how AB of Zanjeer or Roti, Kapda Aur Makaan or Deewar was expected to live to higher standards- his context was closer to the real world-does that sound funny?).

And that is the long and short of it, I guess, we pick heroes based on how we attach to them, and that, in turn, is based on context. So, I would say we are doomed to gaze on those stars and pick out 'our' heroes among them for so long as we live, because we identify with them- if we didn't, we wouldn't patronize what they did. Think about it, at its crudest, cricket is just one man throwing a ball hoping to hit a stick while another hopes to hit it with another stick, and ten other guys wait to chase that ball. Not the most urgent problem facing us, is it? But we need metaphors to live, and that is as good a metaphor as any.

As far as as Karl Malone's article about the responsibility of sportsmen is concerned, in an ideal world, everyone would be like that. In the real world, we have people like Charles Berkley who don't have any obligation to 'raise our kids'. To these guys, I only have one thing to say: you had talent, but that talent did not make you famous. You could always chosen not to be famous- so top taking it as a freebie and start seeing it as a responsibility, because like it or not, people are going to look at you. (I grew up in a world where being a grown up was a responsibility- where grown ups tried to behave properly in front of kids, or at least as properly as they would expect kids to behave- where the ability to behave as you could: to live life as you could, was not a responsibility, not a privilege).

I know my idols do not have to feel the same way, but they do have the choice to. And as far as I am concerned, I will always believe, simply because not believing is far more easier, but that much uglier.

PS: Any articles I refer to are all linked to in @sidvee's post, and I am being just lazy, but you must read that post and chase the links.

Depression

Some of these evenings, there is just too much brown around, almost like a dirty slush which is a composite of the shambles of conscience and an electric righteousness: a mixture of your bright white hope, and bleak disappointment and the sandy shades of your ennui mixed with the sunshiny bright laughter of your past and the golden shades of the promised future that looms on your horizon like very bright smily clouds that promise a cold, sterile, formica clean comfort...those evenings when you look into a mirror and try to sell the idea of smiling to yourself and all that stares back is your own ugly, flyblown, inconspicuous face which seems vaguely familiar-those eyes carry shades of something you trample on, everyday. You try to remember when you last saw green, when your feet last felt the sensation of walking on grass and not smoking it, when you actually ran through the golden reluctance of a field of ripe wheat, when you last stared sun in the face as it was sinking and your horizon was brighter and more alive than the coming night- when you met hope, and could promise yourself that she would be going home with you.

Look at yourself, what you were, are and will be; look at your bright future, and weep for what you do not even know you have lost.

Oh Airports, You Damned Nuisances

Dear Mr. Bestselling Novelist,

I was thoroughly illuminated by your post on the stupidity that goes on in Indian airports. Brilliant analysis and clever solutions, and I am grateful to you for offering them. But as a well educated, logical person like you would accept that the best solutions have all one thing in common- they are feasible. So let us see how your solutions measure up to small feasibility tests. Let us start with the most obvious one first:

The Printed Out Ticket Nuisance: Let me start by agreeing with you that printed tickets are troublesome to carry around. You have to run around looking for printouts, you have to remember to carry them, if are on a multi-city trip, you have to hunt through sheaves of tickets to find out the right one, and you are not being very eco-friendly. But should we do away with them totally? Printed tickets are convenient for the guy who checks them. There do not have to be phones passing from hand to hand, there is no time wasted in searching for tickets every time a back button is pressed accidentally (it happens all the time, remember, even with highly tech savvy people) , there is no stress on the guy checking the tickets to familiarize himself with different kinds of screens-an A4 sized paper is a uniform screen. And let us face it, an A4 size document, or even half of it. And the relevant parts- your name, the name of the airline you are flying, the number of your flight, date of your flight, departure time usually do cover almost half the page- this can be remedied and standard formats set, but till then, think of the poor chap who is supposed to check all this on your 3 inch blackberry screen. Hell, I dare you to do it on the smartphone you use day-in day-out, in a time faster than the time it takes for him to process all that information from a piece of paper. Another small point- phones pass on from hand to hand, they drop sometimes. When they drop, sometimes they break. Who pays for such incidences? In 2010-11, nearly 30million people passed through Mumbai airport alone. That is a hell of a lot of phones to check. Can you imagine the level of damages that will need to be paid, and the suits that will be filed if even a fraction of a fraction of those simple phone-dropping-and-breaking mishaps happen? (We are, of course, in even considering this line of thought, going by the assumption that those 30 million people were all owners of smart phones capable of showing e-tickets on their screens. Pretty big assumption, don't you think?)

So, the point, Mr. Bestselling Novelist, isn’t that the terrorist is going to make a spelling mistake. It is to check if a ticket is valid, and the person carrying that ticket is the person for whom the ticket was issued. You would agree that it is required, and I would say that yes, when available, phones ‘should’ be allowed as display devices for tickets. But your argument to do away with the paper entirely? Oh well…

The Baggage Tag: That big-bag, small-bag example, bwahahahaha! Thank you for making my day.

The Food: I agree with your point about the snack shop. It is inconvenient, it would be best if we could order food on the ground. The airlines do take food orders, on the ground, you know. Or during ticket booking. 

The Missing Runways: This is a very interesting one. I like where you are going with your argument, here. Aircraft land on runways, too many aircrafts take too long to land during peak hours because runways are not clear. Ergo, we need more runways. Preferably, one for every aircraft that lands at an airport. I know this is an absurd, overly simplistic distortion of your line of thought. But who started it?  I am sure Occam’s bones are shrivelling in whatever crypt they lie in. 

There is a word in English, called optimization. It is a heavily overused word in business circles, and causes lots of sniggers, but you know what, it makes a hell of a lot of sense to optimize. Here is why: You can make more and more runways. But they require something to make. Got it right the first time- they need resources to make. You know, land, money, labour- the kind of stuff that is not in infinite supply. And it doesn’t really stop here. Aircraft do not live on runways. They live in hangars. People do not get out at runways, they get out at terminals. So, things like more terminals, more access roads, more buses to ferry people, more people to tinker around all the aircrafts that are on the ground. And, most cussedly, more ground itself. Land. Very limited. And the worst part is, your resource requirement is not over once you have them. You have to pay to maintain them in working order. So, while it would be nice to have those extra 20 minutes to tweet if I land earlier due to absence of air traffic congestion, it might not be the best use of resources.

There is another thing: the problem is congestion, not lack of capacity. (I understand that there might be a lack of capacity, but to make that claim requires much more analysis of data and more detailed thought in how the resources available can be best utilized). So, congestion. That is a problem that can be reduced by some smarter thinking instead? Maybe more flights in the off peak hours would help? I know airlines wouldn’t like it initially, passengers wouldn’t like it initially, but none of them like the congestion either. And you are talking about running an airport, not winning an election.

I will leave it here, but I would like to make a disclaimer: the point I was trying to make above was not about your arguments, your complaints and the validity or non-validity of them. My point was about the thought process that needs to go behind solutions that we propose. The most simplistic way might not always be the smartest, and what mostly seems like an inconvenience forced upon us, might sometimes have good reasons.

And one last thing: If millions of people were going  to read what I write, then I would put some thought behind what I wrote, so that I did not end with my foot in my mouth too often.

Thanks and love and all that.

Rant. Against Everything

Evenings are cumbersome affairs- almost like an overly large, unwieldy, brown colored trunk which is left from your schooldays that is stored up in the attic, grimy with dust, handles covered with ropy cobwebs, its insides probably lined with a yellowing newspaper, and smelling as musty as the naphthalene tablets which are undoubtedly there, pervading its insides with that dreary, bone tired stench of sterility.

Come home; throw the bag with its electronic drudgery in one corner of the apartment, change. Shoes in the shoe rack, socks rolled tightly inside them, clothes nicely hanged up in the closet or unwieldily thrown in the laundry basket, open a bottle of beer, and listen to the sounds of the city outside your window, a desiccated murmur which sometimes accelerates into an angry buzz, sometimes recedes into a distant thrum. But never silent. Never ever silent, this city. It emanates a disquiet greater than you could ever imagine, the accreting delusions of a million people vibrating through your lethargic frame, roiled in the very sinews of the buildings you live in, a discontent which feeds your discontent, and feeds on you at the same time. It is a monster city, feeding on your fears, and feeding your fears. This is a city which cradles your dreams softly, croons to them, feeds them the poisoned nectar of its bosom, grooms them, and when they grow up, grabs in them in a ball-crushing grip and never lets go until you scream and whimper and cry and pray for mercy and lay prostrate, ready to abandon everything. But you cannot abandon this city, this emptiness which still will continue to grow inside with, evening after evening, as you grow ever more lethargic, return home every day a little more tired, a little more depressed, a little more soul-sucked. Every day this city will send you off with hope. Every evening it will sandbag you with a force that will throw the everliving shit out of your senses until you are just happy to be alive, and content to face another day.