+ The Day My Life Changed

The other day, I was flipping through the channels late in the night, which is when I usually relax with inanity on TV, when I came across a Tamil channel playing a film. I stopped for a while, and – I don’t know about this, but sometimes I think I invite things on myself – there was this absolutely mindblowing sequence.

There is this woman (Madhavi, I think) tied to a tree. She has a horse and a dog for pets/companions, and the horse unties her. She gets on the horse and rides away and the villain shoots and injures the horse. Heroine gets down from the horse, looks at the wound (let me not get too much into the details here), and then I think the villain who is following comes up and shoots the heroine.

What followed was straight out of a bloody fairy tale. The dog sniffs around, spies a visiting card on the ground, notices that it belongs to a doctor, goes to a public telephone and – you won’t believe it – dials, and barks loudly into the receiver.

It took me a while to gather my wits around me and to convince myself that I wasn’t dreaming. The next thing I know, the dog is walking into a house – presumably the doctor’s house. Once inside, the dog, that divine creature, goes straight to the typewriter and – I swear I’m not making this up - types out an SOS in the Tamil script. That was the fastest I’d seen a paw work on a typewriter. Hell, that was the damnest thing I ever saw a paw do. Going by hunt-and-peck standards, this dog was good enough to compete with humans – and win by a mile.

10 minutes later, after I’d recovered....

I am humble. I accept that life is strange. I concede I don’t know what could be. I know now that what I know not to be is actually what I haven’t known to be. I should believe...I should believe. I am in awe. I would like to meet these extraordinary people, the filmmakers, the story writers, that creative ocean that came up with this...this...this (please provide a suitable word – I am completely chastened and at a loss for words).

Whether I may or may not believe more in God, let me assure you, I already believe more in DOG!

+ I Met Life Today...

I had this bizarre conversation three days ago with someone who called me on the phone.

My mobile rang. I picked it up, and said hello.

“Sir, I am calling from Metlife(-something). I wanted to talk to you about our financial services (blah-blah).”
My stock response: “I am sorry, I’m not interested. Thanks.”
“Ok, thank you, sir. May I know your name?”
!!!!!!!!!!
“You don’t know my name??!! You just called me and spoke to me!”
“Yes, sir, but I don’t know your name.”
“If you don’t know my name, why did you call me?! Where did you get my number from?”
“The number is there on our company database, sir. That’s why I called you.”
“You have my number on your database, but you don’t have my name!! How can you just call up someone without knowing who they are...??!!”
“I’m sorry, sir. Goodbye!”

Have you met life today?

Oh, yeah, I have. And I didn’t like the experience one fricking bit!

PS” A point to ponder. All sorts of your personal, professional and financial information is floating around. Do you have any idea who knows what about you, and what they are doing with it?

+ It's Safe...See, I'm Even Putting The Bottle To My Mouth!!

I had written about the righteous indignation in the Pepsi ad (It's Safe...See, I'm Holding It In My Hand!). But then, I don’t watch the usual crap on TV (except the really bad movies) and I heard only when someone told me about the similar Coke ad. But I realized today that watching crappy movies on TV has its benefits – I got a glimpse of the Coke ad!! :-D

A visibly concerned Aamir Khan – understandable, after how he was pilloried for zipping up his mouth during the cola controversy – makes a visit of the Coke factory and is explained the awe-inspiring safety procedures that go into making a bottle of Coca-Cola (no pesticides, nothing harmful, absolutely totally completely mind-bogglingly safe!). Aamir then faces the camera, spouts the lines about the utter safety of Coke, takes a bottle off the assembly line, flips off the cap, puts it to his mouth, and tilts it up.

Why did Aamir just tilt the bottle up? His adam’s apple never moved a millimeter. Why didn’t he just gulp down the cola in the bottle and give out a contented burp? Why don’t these ambassadors of the myriad soft drinks of dubious value ever actually drink the stuff? At least the Pepsi CEO looked honest, even if stupid....

I guess Aamir put his mouth where the money was – no reason to put his entire intestinal tract there, is there...?

+ Rant on Civic Behaviour - 3

More traffic nonsense has been perpetrated on Bangalore in the last one month or so. Autorickshaw lanes. This is actually Act 2; Act 1 started quite a few months back with Bus lanes. After the initial media hullabaloo from the guys in charge, it was given a quiet burial – as usual.

The pattern is always sickeningly similar. Talk initially as if it is the most revolutionary thing that has happened in India in the last few decades. A month or so on, it finally dawns on everyone that it was just another daft idea.

To digress, about three months back, they had dug up the “free left” part of the junction near the Indian Express office. It lay dug up for a few weeks. Then some commissioner or someone from one of the departments responsible for the thing spouted in the newspapers that it was just a niggling little problem with supply of materials of something of that sort, and that the surface would be ready for use in the next 15 days. Two months, I thought. And it was!

Going back to autorickshaw lanes, a few issues:

Are autorickshaws the only slow-moving vehicles on the road? I constantly see slow moving trucks hogging the middle of the road.

How do you tackle junctions? As it is, you have all sorts of idiots turning routinely from the left lane to the right, and from the right lane towards the left.

Why would anyone on earth earmark an entire lane for autos, while leaving only two for all the other vehicles together? On Cubbon Road, close to two lanes have been given over out of a manageable four – including one for parking, I presume, though how anyone would reach that lane is anyone’s guess.

Bangalore’s traffic will never improve. Because, one, drivers don’t care a hoot for rules, and there is nobody to make them. There is a pedestrian in front of Wockhardt Hospital on Cunningham Road, and in the last six days, I haven’t seen even a dozen vehicles - in all the time I have stood to cross the road – I haven’t seen even a dozen vehicles stop for a pedestrian green signal. This happens routinely at the Cantonment railway station pedestrian signal, too. Every pedestrian green signal at Queen’s junction on M G Road sees at least 20 guys driving on even as people are crossing the road. On top of this, there is generally a twit of a traffic constable who turns a blind eye, or horrifically worse, actually waves the vehicles on.

The less said about the pathetic flyover projects, the better. This is one of those fantastic places where a flyover takes two and a half years to complete. And ditches take forever to be covered. And two-wheelers always get the better of traffic jams because they take to the pavements by the dozens.

The only way to rectify the situation is to go back to the basics and force people on the road to follow the fundamentals.

Slow moving vehicles on the left
No talking on the mobile phones while driving
No cutting signals
No waltzing across lanes at junctions
No parking at junctions
No double parking
And so on...and so on....

But who the hell is listening?!