Beautiful Sunday Morning

I'd forgotten the feeling of being home on a Sunday morning. As much as I enjoy the Italian classes that are a mainstay and take the lion's share of my weekends, it's good to be home. The weather's getting better these days  and there is a hint of cooler mornings and evenings. I, for one, can hardly wait.

November and December are particularly good months in the city.

One more exam to go

I kind of don't like the fact that I have been placed on a such high pedestal by my professors. I haven't disappointed any of them by any means. Aced all the exams I have had this October. It all comes to an end with the Italian exam domani  :)

The next big test for me is the Delhi 21k. I've started my training and feel like I am in decent shape.

No pressure = Lots of Fun

From the Secret Scrolls

"Any words you speak have a frequency, and the moment you speak them they are released into the Universe. The law of attraction responds to all frequencies, and so it is also responding to the words that you speak. When you use very strong words, such as "terrible", "shocking" and "horrible" to describe any situation in your life, you are sending out an equally strong frequency, and the law of attraction must respond by bringing that frequency back to you.

The law is impersonal, and simply matches your frequency. Do you see how important it is for you to speak strongly about what you want, and not to use strong words about what you don't want?"

 

- Rhonda Byrne

My Vietnam Chronicles

Over the next few days, I'd like to write about my wonderful week in Vietnam. You can follow it all on http://ajay78.livejournal.com/

Take the bus stupid!

For the last 3 months, I have been coming home exhausted after French class every evening. It isn't so much the class that gets to me or even the train travel from Bandra to Andheri. It's the dreadful walk to my apartment from Andheri station. 

Through 75 percent of that walk, I have to encounter massive crowds, pot holes, hawkers and vegetable vendors of all kinds, bikes, rickshaws, broken sewer pipes and open sewage, all in the backdrop of construction activity for the metro. The walk, often on rainy days, zaps me of every bit of energy I have. But yesterday I decided to do something different and what a difference it made! I took a bus from Bandra and came home another way. Instead of the chaos of Andheri station, I walked through the tranquility of the Bhavans College Campus. Greenery, peace, and a nice walker's path replaced my daily dosage of madness. I managed to get home the same time as I would have if I took the train. 

This doesn't mean that I should be an ostrich and not take on the municipal authorities to fix up the area around the station. But for the next 5 weeks, I can have a peaceful walk home. 

Apathy is India's greatest curse

An old Indophile diplomatic friend of mine once told me that the only thing that he didn't like about the country was the absolute lack of a sense of responsibility that people have here. And since then I have heard all sorts of excuses for this from genetic make-up to the equatorial heat.

A couple of months ago, my building wasn't getting an undisturbed water supply despite the fact that water cuts had come to an end. I asked the managing committee of the society if he contacted the municipal authorities and he deftly said that we should wait a week or two and then request the services of a water tanker. I furiously replied that I would approach the municipal authorities with or without his help. When I did call the authorities, they sent someone across to check the underground pipes and found a leak. Problem solved.

Why didn't anyone else in the building think of doing anything similar? We can put it down to the fact that their sadistic mindset prevented them from taking an initiative that would have benefited people living in 16 apartments but I think it just boils down to not having the slightest sense of responsibility.

So it is the case with residents of Andheri who make no demands from the municipal authorities to evict hawkers from sidewalks or to make sure that sewage pipes don't leak and turn the suburb into a giant open sewer.

Rights and responsibilities go hand in hand and at the end of the day, we all get exactly what we deserve.

Fiddler in the Train

There was nothing particularly unusual about my Monday evening train ride from Bandra to Andheri or so I thought when the train crossed the first station. It wasn't a particularly hot evening and the crowd on board the train was bearable. 

Then all of a sudden, as the train stopped at Khar Road, a teenager walked into the first class compartment with an Indian violin in hand. Within the next 10 minutes, the compartment was electrified by the quality of music he played. This handsome young man had the features of a Rajasthani gypsy and there was definitely wear and tear on his face. He was in the city to escape a life of absolute poverty in his culturally-rich yet materially-poor and backward state. 

As he played on, the passengers in the first class compartment stopped talking and listened to the wonderful music. For once, I was rather sad that the train reached Andheri and the music stopped. The musician was rewarded by almost everyone on the train. I so wish that some Bollywood somebody discovers this young man and his life turns around like a perfect Hindi film script. 

Bye-Bye Ricky

I get back home to find out that Ricky Ponting's Australian cricket team were comprehensively beaten in Bangalore. I also heard he was very gracious in defeat, so I won't mock him. I did read about some people from the Aussie contingent at the Commonwealth Games village throwing a washing machine out of the window after watching the second test... Sigh!

I am really proud of the Indian test cricketers and can't wait for the series vs South Africa.

Exam season

Alritey. Now that my feet are firmly grounded, I have 2 huge exams to tackle over the next fortnight. Starting with a killer of a French exam on Friday and the Italian exam on October 30.

On the bright side, I get a month of "Diwali vacation" after the exams. That will give me the time to prepare for the Delhi 21-k. At the moment, I am not in bad shape but I need to start running.

Back in Bombay

Although I was away for just a week, it felt like a vacation of 15 days or even a month! I had a fabulous time in Vietnam with a couple of short but sweet encounters in Kuala Lumpur.

I always get bummed with the pathetic infrastructure that I see when I get back to Bombay. One of the terminals at the airport smells and is decrepit. They say it's under renovation but surely they can at least change the dirty carpet that greets visitors outside the sky bridge.

I am not comparing Bombay to a place like KL but how sad is it that Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) or small towns in Vietnam have far better roads and better paved sidewalks than the financial capital of the "next superpower"?

They should all be like this

Sporting prowess is just something India isn't famous for. This is a country that had its most successful Olympics in Beijing by winning 3 medals. A lot of this has to do with the much-maligned politicians who run sports federations in the country.

October 5 wasn't just any other day in Indian sport. It was a day that few of us can forget. First of all, there was the India vs Australia test match. I personally can't stand what's known as 20-20 cricket. I like cricket in its purest form- that is a 5-day test. I won't be glued to my tv for 5 days but it's great watching contests between great bowlers and batsmen. The test match that ended on Oct 5 was one of the best matches I have ever seen. India snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in what was an unbelievably tense encounter. And when India finally won, the ecstasy is something that lasted for days.

Here's what the Australian press had to say about the match.

"It was hard to watch, impossible to look away." The Australian


"The thrill-a-minute versions of the game were put in their place by this slow-burning contest." Peter Roebuck

This was a day that other athletes brought glory to India. Our talented and hard-working athletes managed to win 5 gold medals on that day. I wouldn't do them justice unless I mentioned them one by one. 

Abhinav Bindra and Gagan Narang won the 10 metre air rifle competition

Rani Sarnobat and Anissa Sayeed won the 25 metre pistol event


Ravinder Singh (60 kg), Sanjay (74 kg) and Anil Kumar (96kg) made a clean sweep of all three gold medals on offer from the wrestling.

And the icing on the cake was the Indian hockey team's come back from behind victory over Malaysia.

What a Day! They should all be like this. 

The Second Summer

Now that the monsoons are gone, we are officially into the second summer thanks to Bombay's famous October Heat. The second summer doesn't give the city mangoes, the flowers are not in bloom and there is little relief in the evenings. However, the sunsets are beautiful and it's nice to see the twilight on cloudless skies.

The heat in October has the complete ability to wear down the most energetic of people. My take is that it feels worse as the body is used to the rains and cool breezes of the monsoons. By the end of the month, the weather starts improving and we have "relatively" cool evenings to accompany warm days. Until then, I'll just have to brave this weather and stay as energetic as possible.

In memory of a great man born on October 2 - Lal Bahadur Shastri

In India, we mark October 2 as Gandhi Jayanti, the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi. Another great man was born on October 2: Lal Bahadur Shastri.

Shastriji was the second prime minister of India and was a human being of unmatched integrity. He was an incorruptible and hate-less man who personified Gandhiji's principles of austerity and honesty in public service

Here are some excerpts from Wiki on his life.

"Following India's independence, Shastri was appointed Parliamentary Secretary in his home state, Uttar Pradesh. He became the Minister of Police and Transport under Govind Ballabh Pant's Chief Ministership. As the Transport Minister, he was the first to appoint women conductors. As the minister in charge of the Police Department, he ordered that Police use jets of water instead of lathis to disperse unruly crowds."

"He served as the Minister of Railways and Transport in the Central Cabinet from 1951 to 1956. In 1956, he offered his resignation after a railway accident at Mahbubnagar that led to 112 deaths. However, Nehru did not accept his resignation."

"Shastri was known for his honesty and humility throughout his life. He was the first person to be posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, and a memorial "Vijay Ghat" was built for him in Delhi. "

A lot of mystery surrounds his death and his family insist that he was poisoned in Tashkent. For more on that please see: http://www.ndtv.com/news/india/clear_air_on_fathers_death_shastris_son.php I have heard "talk" about how the Soviets poisoned him to put Indira Gandhi in power. Mrs Gandhi aligned India with the Soviet bloc.

Now that the USSR doesn't exist, the Indian prime minister's office needs to come clean and let the country know what exactly transpired in January 1966.

Shastriji is hardly mentioned in history books and is almost a forgotten figure. The Congress has done its best to deny the very existence of leaders outside the Nehru-dynasty.

And finally a wonderful tribute paid by Pakistani journalist Javed Choudhury

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PifBawxDsxI&feature=related

Open spaces and freedom

As much as I love my city, there's one thing that I know I'll never have if I live here: open spaces. I long for the open spaces of Inner Mongolia, the savannah of the Masai Mara, the plains of Buryatia and the Russian Far East. If only, I could spend a week in Patagonia or by Issuk Yul in Kyrgystan!!!

October is a hot month in Bombay and a necessary evil to be endured before the more pleasant months of the so-called winter. A good rainy season this year, will ensure that the weather will be lovely from late-October all the way till March.