P. Chidambaram has released this official statement in response to yesterday’s Naxalite attack which led to 76 CRPF personnel losing their lives. Couple of paragraphs:

The State has a legitimate right to deploy its security forces to resist, apprehend and, if necessary, neutralise militants who are determined to strike at the very roots of our nation.

It is the Naxalites who have described the State as the ‘enemy’ and the conflict as a ‘war’. If this is a war – and I wish to say that we have never used that word – it is a war that has been thrust upon the State by those who do not have a legitimate right to carry weapons or to kill. The State – the Central Government and the affected State Governments – are discharging their legal and Constitutional duty to protect the people.

What do you think of that?

It is a late Sunday morning and I walk out to inspect the damage done by a mob of monkeys that has started visiting our area off-late. Not their fault. Their only habitat in this part of town was a 300 year old banyan tree that split apart under its own weight a few months ago. The monkeys, who earlier used to swing from one of the numerous branches of that tree to another, now have no sky over their heads. Fending for themselves from one concrete abode to another, they are now leading a life which will be in perennial conflict with man.

One flower pot was smashed to bits by them while they carried out their procession with part fear and part aggression. I move the pieces of the earthen pot to the side and greet the watchman of the neighbouring apartments.

“Where were you?,” I ask him since I hadn’t seen him around for a few days.

“Madras,” he replied back.

“Why?”

“To fix marriage. Of daughter.”

“Ok. All final?,” I ask him with a smile and in a Kannada that he pretty much understood.

“Yes.”

I decide to not impart the opinion that he shouldn’t get his daughter married so early (she is around 18 years old now). But my opinions are sometimes hard to keep, so I tell him what I think of it anyway.

“What can I do? Everyone else has already committed in this meeting,” he replied back with a sullen face.

“Committed?”

“Yes. In front of everyone, my wife agreed to the relation. Now we cannot go back.”

“Ok,” I say.

“How old is he? What has he studied?,” I venture to ask.

“He is 26,” he shot back with pride. “8th Standard pass” was his response to my second question.

“Ok,” I say. I am now thinking whether I should prevail upon this man that marrying his daughter so early and to a person who doesn’t have much of an education or career is not a good idea. Yet, who am I to decide whether this is a bad thing for the girl? There is a chance that this guy with little education may become very successful in life and give her all that she needs. I conclude that I cannot decide what is good and what is bad for others. In short, I definitely can’t play God.

“Congratulations,” I tell him.

“Thanks sir,” he replies back. “Now I need to give him a bike, he has asked for it,” he continues.

Dowry! Clearly this alliance should not go through. I blurt this thought out to him.

“What to do sir. Everyone has already committed,” he repeats this like a frequently used excuse of a late-coming student.

“Committed?,” I ask again in disbelief.

“Yes sir. People from my family have already agreed to give the bike to him,” he said.

Now something like that cannot be reasoned against, can it.

“Ok. Which bike?,” I decide to venture into other details.

“Hero Honda sir. Hero Honda Splendor,” he shoots back instantly with a smile and adds “Even if he doesn’t know how to ride a bike, we need to give him a Hero Honda.”  The statement breaks his face into a wide grin, his mind perhaps taking pot-shots at a future son-in-law.

By now, the monkeys have returned from their sojourn in the next street. The watchman forgets about the Hero Honday, picks up a long lathi and chases a few of the monkeys away. But some refuse to leave, and tower over us by hanging from the cable TV wires and phone lines.

The monkeys hung around at the top, carefully skipped across the electric wires and headed straight to the kitchen windows of neighbouring homes and stole what they could through the small iron railings.

“Not all monkeys can be chased away sir,” the watchman chuckled as he threw the lathi on to the other side of the road. The monkeys, seemingly in response to that statement, threw bits of eggs and bread down onto the road. The Sunday morning was well through its mid-life by now and I cocooned right back inside home, remembering past images of me riding my bike during my college years. For the record, I used to possess a Hero Honda Splendor of course.

Taksh is now 4 months into this world. He has been doing all things that babies of his age do, including waking up the parents at odd hours and making them fret and fuss over his every move.

One fine day we observed that Taksh had a slightly warmer-than-usual forehead. “Fever”, the Mrs announced with eyes that had already begun to sulk. “Uh-oh,” I whispered to myself. A digital thermometer was drawn out by the Mrs. (who doesn’t believe in the good old Mercury thermometers, the only ones that I had ever seen until this moment).

After sticking it into Taksh’s mouth, the digital thermometer began its painstaking measurement process. The digits raced from 90 to 97 degree Fahrenheit in a matter of seconds. I was impressed already. After 97 however, every decimal point took an era. Taksh was holding the thermometer in his mouth pretty well so far, not breaking into his customary agoo-goo-goo yet.

97.1 97.2 97.3 – time was ticking on.

It reached 99 in about 20 minutes. The Mrs and I were left aghast to see that the counter didn’t stop even at 99.3! Finally at 99.4 the digital thermometer sucked up all the energy from its tiny cell within and gave a tired beep sound. So, 99.4 was Taksh’s temperature. We had freaked out by now. This is not ‘normal’, you see.

So, the Mrs. drew out another digital thermometer (she has quite a few of them, as you can never change the cell in them anyway, so you need to keep a few handy, you know. Of course it is rational). We started yet again. The numbers raced forward, stopped, sputtered and finally settled at 99.4 yet again. I was impressed with the consistency of these gadgets before coming back to the issue on hand.

“Is it really too high?,” I asked.

“Not sure. Perhaps it isn’t?,” said the Mrs.

But then again, we are new parents and new parents in this new age don’t take chances do they? So we rush to the paediatric (I got that spelling right the first time!).

“Does he have fever?,” asks the doctor while he finishes writing some notes about the previous patient.

The Mrs. and I look at each other screaming in our thoughts “Isn’t HE supposed to check and let us know?”

“Yes,” replies the Mrs.

“Is it too high?,” queries the Doctor.

“We don’t know. His forehead is a little warm though. Perhaps you can check?” I, the man of the house, decide to take charge.

“Ok. Most likely it is nothing. But if the fever persists, perhaps you need to get his urine tested for infection,” the Doctor casually replies, scribbles with his blue pen on his white letterhead, tears the paper in a flourish and hands it out to me. He didn’t even touch his thermometer! What gall! Perhaps gall wasn’t the right term to use where matters of urine infection were being discussed.

So we go back home and we figure out how to get Taksh to contribute his watery excesses for a test. The Mrs and I both get on the internet (after all, even God comes after the internet) and go through a million web-pages, half of which were filled with Google advertisements. Finally we learn of a small bag that can be used to achieve the desired goal.

Leaving aside the details on what we did next, we manage to submit Taksh’s contributions for a test.

Two agonizing days later, the tests come and the report says that our 4 month old has a case of serious infection. Infection which left untreated can lead to a failure of kidneys! We run to Paediatrician number 1.

Paediatrician number 1: “Oh-oh. This is too much. We have to go for ultra-sound, 10 days antibiotics and perhaps even an operation”

So we rush along with Taksh and his bag of accessories (read diapers and many spare clothes) to Paeditrician number 2.

Paediatrician number 2: Takes a while staring at the report. Removes his spectacles and says “This is very unusual for a 4-month old. I cannot take a call. You need to consult a specialist. A paediatric urologist  infact. Here, this is his name, he is a friend of mine, take an appointment.” He mumbled has he wrote some doctor’s name on a white notepad, tore it with shaky hands and gave it to me.

By now the Mrs and I were scared out of our wits. However, we didn’t want to give up now did we. So off we again went running to Paeditrician number 3. All this while Taksh has been perfectly happy with the goings-on and urging us to smile and laugh at life. “What character my son has!,” I think to myself, visibly impressed.

Paediatrician number 3: Looks at the report in a calm manner, turns it around, looks at some other parameters. He then takes his pen and circles a few parameters and explains to us “While this report states that the bacteria count is so high, none of these other parameters confirm it. You see, if the bacteria count is so high, then Ssdfhsdfs, Tesdfoidsfs and Qerewrposd should also indicate some numbers. But they don’t. So what I suspect is that the bag in which you collected your sample was most likely contaminated.”

The Mrs. and I are all smiles now. Taksh is bawling as he hates being put flat on a doctor’s bed. Cutting the rest of the details short, we repeat the test and much to our liking the test comes negative.

But after all this, I wasn’t really happy. What would have happened if we had not gone to Paediatrician number 3? What if we weren’t able to afford consulting 3 doctors? Isn’t that the case with most people? How many people out there even have access to a second opinion? Third opinion? What about the ability to go to so many doctors? The ability to get information? Why is there such a vast asymmety of information and access to healthcare in our country? And aren’t doctors supposed to be a whole lot more responsible?

I shudder to think that if we hadn’t visited the third doctor, Taksh would have undergone a 10-day antibiotics course, perhaps even an ultra sound. And later a new test would have affirmed that the bacteria was gone. Then we would’ve heaved a sigh of relief and thanked the antibiotics and the doctors, whose status would’ve now elevated further in our eyes. And we would spread good word about such doctors and they would become famous.

Scary, isn’t it?

Yesterday’s Times of India, Bangalore edition, carried this article on how a chain-snatcher was caught by the public.

No doubt its good that a chain snatcher was nabbed, but what got me thinking is this excerpt:

“…some passersby caught hold of one of the chain-snatchers . He was thrashed by the public before being handed over to the police” [emphasis is mine]

Why is it not even a concern for us when we read this? Isn’t thrashing anybody an illegal thing to do? Isn’t the law & order system supposed to take care of the punishment? Yet, why doesn’t the police or even the journalist reporting it raise this as an issue? Or is it that we are happy to have dished out justice as we no longer trust the state and its ways? And this has become a part of our lives. Where does this lead us?

Vir Sanghvi’s article on Manu Sharma and the parole issue.

In the case of Manu Sharma, parole was granted for a reason that is already so unusual as to raise eyebrows — Manu wanted to check how his business was doing. Two other reasons were tagged on. His grandmother had just died and his mother was unwell.The Delhi Police, which was asked to investigate the reasons, reported entirely accurately that a) Manu’s business was doing okay, b) his grandmother had died a few months ago so the rites were over and c) that his mother was fine.

Vir makes an important point with this paragraph of his:

Can it be a coincidence that even after the case hit the headlines, Opposition parties offered only a tepid response? There were no calls for the chief minister to resign. No demands for fresh elections. No jail bharo campaigns, etc.When it comes to its children, the political class is united. It’s them first. And it is the rest of us afterwards.

What is needed the most right now? A political reform? Or an improved judiciary and police machinery? Where do we even start from?

One of the evident side-effects of the Metro construction in Bangalore has been the incessant cutting of trees across all major areas of the city.

If you now take a look at Seshadri Road, Nanda Road and roads around Malleswaram, you will see how a once-lush-green canopy has given way to a bare concrete view. Is there really a need to take away a portion of Cubbon Park? Was there a necessity to chop trees in Lalbagh (which even today stands as one of Bangalore’s integral identity)? The planning and development of the Metro has taken quite a few people by surprise. There has not been enough information shared in the public domain by the concerned authorities. The benefits of the Metro were never really listed out in comparison to other cheaper modes of transport (bus services being one of them).

What has happened so far is that the Metro juggernaut has rolled on, sucking in millions of rupees on its way and destroying the very fabric of Bangalore that had made it a preferred destination for many in the recent past. Democracy, in its definition, somewhere does include the phrase public participation. And voting is just one part of this public participation. The other and more significant part is to ensure that our public servants are questioned on their policies and to have a say in everything that affects us.

Today there was yet another protest against the haphazard construction and destruction taking place in Bangalore in the garb of urban transport management. We gathered at the BMRCL office (on K H Road) and protested with placards and slogans. Leaflets in Kannada and English were distributed to passers by, highlighting the glaring lapses in the Metro execution.

The group Hasiru Usiru has filed various RTIs (Right to Information) and the information obtained is quite far away from what the initial plans of the Metro were. For instance, the Phase 1 initial cost was Rs. 5800 crores and the present Phase 1 cost estimate is Rs. 11500 crores! Add to that the fact that the Phase 1 project is only 25% done and you get a scale of things to come. While the initial plan stated that around 400 trees would be cut, the actual number of trees are more than 1200 – a number that is only going to increase.

While I do not possess the acumen to judge whether the Metro will be beneficial in the long run or not, what I do know is that a lot of this destruction could be saved or at least handled in a better manner. If you are interested in meeting the group and taking part in the protest, please attend the next meeting at Tagore Circle on 4th November at 5:00 pm.

You can find resources and information regarding the Metro at the Hasiru Usiru website.

On one of the fine drizzly rainy misty weekends of Bangalore I walk into a fancy music and books outlet. One of those huge places which have rows of CDs/DVDs/Books all expensively priced with pretty looking customers carrying pretty looking baskets filled to the brim with pretty looking CD and Book covers.

Everything pretty all around, I walk into the store through the white metal detectors, wiping furiously my slush stained shoes on the black porous wired mat below. We don’t want to disturb this pretty scene now, do we?

I walk through the aisles of books and movies, occassionally catching a pretty face or two – on the covers of these of course.

A couple of kids come running from behind, overtake me from both directions as I amble along, and run to someone they call “Daid” in a heavy American accent. Both of them have a few game CDs in their hand, with a lot of blood and gore and monsters on them.

“We don’t have this one Daid”, the older looking one drawls in a squeakish manner.
“Yeaaah”, the younger one concurs.

Daid looks at the heap of CDs and nonchalantly slides them into the pretty basket he is carrying. The CDs find their respective places amidst a pile of books and settle down comfortably. The kids rejoice, jump a bit and run along to some other corner of the store. More blood and gore there I suppose.

I haven’t been listening to much music off-late so am pretty (that word again!) clueless about what is good these days and what is not. After much thinking and walking up and down various genres, I settle on a couple of old Hindi songs CDs. The rain outside continued to pour and the sound of the pattering would occassionally find its way into the store thanks to some customer walking in.

Armed with just two CDs, both in my hand and not in a pretty basket, I walk up to the cash counter and wait patiently behind a lady who is carrying a pretty bag and a pretty basket too. While the cashier is summing up her purchases, along comes her kid with some fancy looking Playstation CDs. She doesn’t bother to look at them, unlike Daid, and passes them on dutifully to the cashier, who sweeps his bar code reader on them. The numbers tumble forward on the cash screen and the lady dishes out her credit card. I am still waiting with my two CDs in my hand.

A cashier at the other counter finds himself free and gestures me towards him. Feeling like a rather low-value customer, I walk up to him and lay down my CDs on the white counter. He picks up the first one and sweeps the bar-code reader on it. The numbers appear in green on the cash screen. He picks up the second one and sweeps the bar-code reader yet again. But nothing happens. No beep, no numbers increasing. He repeats the act. Nothing. He then looks closely at the label on the CD and keys in some numbers. Again, nothing happens.

He looks at me for a moment and then calls another cashier. The other dude comes around, sweeps the bar-code reader on the CD, then peers into the reader, taps it a bit and tries again. The thing refuses to read anything anymore.

Then, taking me by complete surprise, the cashier announces, “Sorry Sir, we can’t sell this. It is not present in our system.”

“What?” I ask out of disbelief, and the cashier thinks I hadn’t heard him so repeats himself.

“You are not selling me this CD because you don’t have it entered in your system? You are willing to lose a sale for this?” I ask back in further disbelief.

“Yes sir, we cannot help it.”

I laugh it off in a rather smirking tone, but no expression registers on the cashier. He is waiting for me to get the hell out of there and service Daid who is right behind me now.

“I think this is quite absurd. You are losing a customer because of your system. Just write down the code for now on paper and enter it later,” I suggest to him.

He looks at me for a moment and then disappears into a door behind the counter. Daid grunts a little. I prefer to believe it was because of all the blood and gore his kids are excited about.

The cashier returns and tells me, “That’s a good idea sir. I will write it down on paper”.

He jots down some digits, gives me a hand-written receipt and collects the cash. He then starts packing the two CDs in a small white plastic bag when I butt in to tell him that I don’t want the plastic bag. He looks at me for a moment as though there was something definitely wrong with me and then gives me the two CDs without the bag.

I take them in my hands, walk towards the exit, still wondering how a store could be so dependent on technology that its main focus of selling would be overshadowed.
In the background I hear the noises of Daid’s two kids who seem to be on a morphine-influenced drive up the technology curve.
I think to myself how even essential childhood fun is now being served by pixel-image creations magically served by bits and bytes. Are we just going to have more and more people who are comfortable to replace common sense with technology?

I walk out to my car, dodging the drops of water falling gently and eagerly play the CD that the store had refused to sell. The music submerges all random thoughts and I am finally able to smile at life through the fuzzy wet windscreen.

It is 7:45 am and I have just jumped out of bed, staring in horror at the clock which wasn’t supposed to be so ahead in time.

I squint my eyes and double check the chrome minute hand before my brain finally registers and confirms the time. It is indeed 7:45. Suddenly, my cellphone starts beeping. It takes me a moment, just a fleeting moment, to understand that this is not an alarm tone and instead it is someone wanting to communicate.

“Hello,” I say in my modified non-sleepy voice so the other person doesn’t really think I wake up this late.

“Dude, can you make it to the Egg Factory for breakfast?” says the Devil.

A pause before I can comprehend. He continues “We shall have an omelette dude”

The Devil calling this early in the morning? I couldn’t believe that he, of all the people in this world, had woken up this early. There is usually one thing that you could always win your bet on – The Devil not waking up early in the morning. That myth has now been shattered.

“Sure man, I will try to be there by 8:30 or so,” I reply, still maintaining my non-sleepy voice.

“Dude, I am already on my way,” he announces with, what seemed to me, a flourish of victory at having woken up earlier than anyone else in this city.

“Oh ok,” I say and hang up. A mad rush follows and I manage to get out of home by about 8:30. I wanted that omelette, of course.

I look back in the rear view mirror as I exit one of the traffic signals leading from the front, with the entire herd of metal and fuel closing in on me. I feel the traffic build around me and slowly ensnaring me in its ever expanding embrace. After dodging a few small cars and many not-so-small cars, I finally reach Brigade Road, that former heaven of a 20 year old me.

I pick up my cellphone and call up the Devil. No response. What ever happened to my omelette, I wonder, as I move towards the end of Brigade Road.

The parking lots are empty and suddenly I get the urge to park my car in one of those empty lots. Now, you may not appreciate this urge of mine. But trust me, parking on Brigade road is a joy which you can only understand when you go on this road on busy Saturday evenings and fail to find a single parking spot for over an hour. So yeah, I slide my car between two slanted white lines and halt a few inches before the yellow and black striped pavement. A security man in uniform appears out of nowhere with a bag of five rupee coins. He asks my car number, punches in a few keys in the parking meter, which does its gargling sound and sputters out a white ticket. I place the ticket back in my car, cross the road and walk up to the coffee shop in the basement.

When I order my coffee, the Devil calls up and asks “Where are you man?”

Before I can answer he informs me that he was done with breakfast and was already back in his office. I didn’t want to do without my omelette for the day of course. But heck, this coffee shop did not serve omelettes.

“Anything egg based?”, I inquired trying not to look too inquizitive.

“Egg puff sir,” replied the lady at the counter, who was wearing a white coat similar to those worn by junior doctors in pathology labs.

I throw out the pathology bit from my mind and order one of those egg puffs with my coffee. Omelettes can wait, but I can at least aim to get a part of the deal with an egg puff.

My coffee arrives and so does the egg puff, which for the un-initiated is a half-boiled egg covered with some spicy gravy and finally wrapped with flaky stuff that is usually found in, well, puffs.

I finish these two and as I get up a young man approaches and starts cleaning the table making me seem like a baby who didn’t know how to eat a flaky egg puff. I rush back out on to Brigade road. The traffic has increased but the parking lots are still empty. A thought of coming here on a Saturday morning and parking my car for the entire day strikes me. An evil thought I decide, also slightly influenced by the amount of parking money involved in that plan.

I drive my car back into mainstream traffic and 20 minutes later swerve into the road leading to my office. Right ahead of me, a car had managed to brush a TVS-50 (which, for the uninitiated, is a tiny scooterette with 50 cc of power. The uninitiated take up a lot of my time explaining) and a card board box had fallen upside down on the road. When the TVS rider walks up and turns the card board box around, a few things from the box fall on the road. To my extreme surprise at concepts of probability and coincidences, those things are nothing but egg puffs.

“What is with this stuff and me today morning?” I think to myself and then I notice that the rider was picking each one of those puffs from the road and putting them back in the box.

Someone was going to have an egg puff today that had touched an asphalted road. A road which many cars had passed over. Cars which had driven over slush and mud and sundry other things. Someone who had an evil thought of blocking parking lots in the city might end up eating that egg puff. Who knows?

I pass by the flaky crumbs which were strewn on the road and enter office, with thoughts of karma and omelettes mixed in a heady combination readying me for the day.

Once in a while when summer is in full bloom, a lot of new things appear around you. On a Sunday warm afternoon, I walk out into my balcony with a cup of tea in one hand and a current affairs magazine in the other.

I don’t really read current affairs in these magazines even though I start with the idea initially. But within about 5 minutes I find myself on the Bollywood gossip pages and before I know it I am done with the magazine. Now, its not that the Bollywood gossip really interests me. It doesn’t. But I can’t really do all that heavy reading about current affairs and Bollywood gossip makes for easy reading, especially the pictures.

So, while I am finishing my last minute scan of the magazine, I hear voices of kids on the street fighting over something. I flip the last page of the magazine, glance at Katrina drinking a mango drink, pick up my cup of tea and lean on the railings of the balcony to see what the fuss is all about. I see 4 little kids, all neatly dressed in bright summery colours holding badminton racquets. The racquets are as big, if not bigger, as the kids themselves resulting in they becoming unweildy in those tiny hands. The fuss is over who should play next and whether the current player was ‘out’ or not. There is such a thing as an ‘out’ in street badminton which refers to a player making way for another due to not having struck the shuttle. The kids speak fluent English at an age when perhaps I wasn’t speaking even my native language coherently. I suppose this is what the information age is all about.

The kids then decide to stop playing badminton and instead announce loudly that they shall play “Colour Colour”. This announcement is followed by wide flourishes in the air with the racquets and the two girls in the group do a little bit of a hop and a skip in glee. I didn’t know what “Colour Colour” was all about, so I stayed on at the balcony overlooking this plan.

One of the boys, dressed in dark maroon shorts, a chequered tiny half-sleeve shirt and a colourful Mickey Mouse adorned watch (at least it looked like Mickey Mouse to me), moved away from the group, looked around, closed his eyes and said “Ok, ready.”

One of the girls screams out “Green”. And the boy shakes his head and says “No”

“Blue”
“No”

Red”
“No”

“Pink”
“No”

“Orange”
“No”

A little hop and a skip by one of the girls and then the guessing resumes.

“White”
“Yeah”, the kid smiles and feels sheepishly disappointed.

So that was what “Colour Colour” was all about. The other party had to guess what colour this boy had in his mind. While to you and me it might seem that it is so easy to fake by just changing the colour in your mind all the time, it wasn’t quite the case for these kids. They were honest in admitting what colour they had in their minds. Nice and simple. Perhaps just how life should be.

A couple of rounds into this game and now it is the little hopping girl’s turn. She thinks for a few seconds and says the customary “Ok. Ready”. The other 3 guess perhaps at least 20 colours between them but to no avail. This one is a tough one to crack and now even I start thinking of all the colours that I know of.

The 3 are now tired of guessing and they just don’t know any more colours. So they ask the girl to reveal what is the colour in her mind.
To this, she says, “Transparent” and starts doing her hopping and skipping bit in a victorious manner. The kids were not quite sure what to make of it and the little boy attempted to start an argument but stopped soon after the others readily agreed to this “colour”.

Transparent! I couldn’t help but smile. Technically this might not be right but I don’t really care. I was amazed at the amount of intelligence that these kids had at such a young age. After a few rounds of this game, they just sit down on the side of the street and start chatting in general.

The hopping and skipping girl overhears someone call her a copy cat. And she raises her badminton racquet in a gesture asking the others to keep quiet.
And then she says, “Do you know why there is a word called copy cat?”
The others just shrug, with the little boy dismissing the question by looking away from the group.

The little girl goes on to explain – “See, a cat does meow”
“Now, any other cat also always does meow and nothing else. So, all cats say meow. Therefore every cat is copying each other. That is why the word copy cat.”

The rest of the kids, except the little boy, acknowledge this sudden enlightenment with a joint “Yeah, you are right”.
The boy stands up, holding the badminton racquet in one hand, and says “What ok? A dog does bow-bow and every other dog also does bow-bow. Why is it not copy dog then?”

The other 3 kids submerged his question by shouting at him and saying he doesn’t know anything. The boy just turned around and started walking up the street, dragging the racquet along with him. The little girl did a hop and a skip and the other 2 kids started doing the same.

I was done with my tea and turned around, picked up the magazine from the balcony floor and went right back inside. The things I had just overheard were far more interesting than reading the current affairs magazine, which I promptly flung on to the corner table. And then suddenly,without any warning, a feeling of being quite old in this world came over me. This world which was teeming with bright ideas and brighter questions. There was a time in my youth and early professional life when a few veterans had to make way for youthful employees like me. And it dawned on me on that Sunday afternoon that not too far from now, there would be a time when I shall have to move over and make way for something more fresh and more inquizitive. Heck, I am still on the better side of 30, managing to cling on, but I do know deep inside that the inevitable will catch up soon. The kids outside return, start playing something and then get into an argument. That brings the smile back on my face for no apparent reason. Perhaps the inevitable is not to be feared or protested against. Perhaps.

Jaypee enters the world of blogging and his starting post is quite insightful and thought provoking.
Click here to read his observations on tea and the recession.