It is the latest headline-grabbing crime story in Chennai: a banker who had recently opted to retire voluntarily, had his throat slit open by a gang of three young men he had befriended. They killed him after sharing with him a meal he had cooked for them...
All for 12 sovereigns of gold and a little money...
While the neighbors slept on...
And it is only a few short weeks since the city was in the grip of a psycho killer, who attacked security guards and rag pickers, slit their throat and cremated them without a sound.....
While the neighbors slept on......
Security guards all over the city immediately stopped sleeping on the job!!!!
They bonded with one another..
The sound of incessant whistling and counter whistling rent the night air....as signals in Watchman Code went back and forth...it made sleep impossible.......
That and the feeling of guilt...that we were dangling live bait in front of a crazed killer.....
We just could not sleep on...
For a few brief weeks...
Thapa Bahadur our own watchman, gave his ninety winks a miss...he turned down all offers of security behind grills in verandahs...took to sleeping in the open air...stake-out style...until swarms of marauding mosquitos...a quintessential feature of Chennai's night life forced him to take cover in Amma's abandoned old Fiat.....the locks still worked...so he could sleep again.....
And we too could....at last...
Who is this weirdo with a vendetta against watchmen??..we wondered...
We did not have to wait long for an answer...
The police nabbed not one but a gang of psycho killers.... boys who attacked ragpickers and security guards to rob them of their money!!!
Jeeze.....how much money did they think a rag picker or even a watchman would have on him????
Some loose change??? Less than ten bucks???!!
It would have seemed more plausible if they had said they did it as some sort of perverse blood sport... a macabre quest for gore...but no...money it was they said they were after...
Like THIS was their idea of a get-rich-quick scheme???!!!
Dense????
No, psycho!!!!
So too in the case of the murdered banker...He was a banker right?....Would he stash his retirement funds under his pillow??? He, of all people, would keep it in a bank, you'd think??!!...Right!!!
So all they got was Rs 14,000 in cash and the 12 sovereigns....not more than 100,000 Rs....not even a number that is easily divisible by 3....about Rs 33,000 apiece......
Dense???
Again???!!!!...
No, psycho....
Again!!!
Should we blame the state of our education system that it does not even develop logical thinking in crime-prone youngsters???!!!!
Or is it a reflection of the terrible times we live in???......
Anyone??..
For even small change??!!...
Madras in its heyday was a very safe place...its denizens turned in by 9 pm.....leaving the roads deserted... ..the police patrolled the empty streets in their cycles.......
That apart, brave young Gurkhas descended from their Himalayan homes.....
With just their kukhris and their boundless courage, they roamed around.. patrolling the streets at regular intervals...in twos and threes...all through the night..for a small charge..
If anything went amiss...the gurkhas were called in...but usually nothing did...but it is not so now....
A geographical relocation in terms of criminal activity is underway...crime is no longer restricted to those few pockets of the city which you entered at your own peril...it seems to be hitting the heart of Chennai...
Localities like Tambaram, T Nagar and Kilpauk....once considered safe....are now proving otherwise...
Add to this the release of hardened criminals to celebrate the birth and death anniversaries of political leaders....what can the average citizen do???......other than feel like an endangered species...
Also, to add to the confusion, a new-look criminal is doing the rounds...
Abandoned are the thick mustachioed, scarred, warty, thugee looks...that is reserved for the reel life villains..
The real life ones tend to look like more your average every-day Joe...
As did the banker's killers...two of them were working.....the banker got one a job!!...the third was a student...
Gosh!! I could make friends with them...they look so...what's the good word???....yes!!!.... decent!!!!....they look decent!!!!
Heck!! even the banker's Doberman didn't smell a thing!!!!
So young..and yet...
Why did they put such a low value on their freedom???
It is a beautiful world out there...and there is always hope...
Why would anyone want to spend it..shut away among hardened criminals and other deviants....forever..or until another political leader's birth or death centenary arrives...just for a little money..
Or did they think they would never get caught???...So little faith in the ability of our cops to track them down??
Indeed one hopes that the police has water-tight evidence.....that it is not of the circumstantial or the forced confession variety, stemming from a katta-panchayath type investigation....
Surely, the dead banker deserves better...
Some hard irrefutable DNA type proof that would stand up in a court would be good...of the kind one sees in Bones or Criminal Minds or NYPD Blues....
Or even one of those Discovery Channel crime serials.. the kind that have inspired a generation of nieces and nephews...and made them yearn to study forensic science...
One hopes.....
There is also a lesson in this for VRS-optee bankers who may be reading this piece...do not spread the word about your VRS...you may have a Swiss Bank account...but if the word hits the street then the kidnapping brigade will put you on their hit list!!!!!..definitely!!!
So take care all you beautiful people out there..
Do not befriend strangers...
If you must, then at least abstain from inviting them and their cronies for sleep-overs..especially if you are old...or middle-aged...or even young...
Adios...
May you be safe from all throat-slitters, psycho killers and their kind forever and ever.....
Even if you live in Chennai....
Friday, September 26, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Just take my breath away...
These forwards which flow in from cyberspace will be my undoing...
In my inbox last week was one about a Chennai-based hospital...patient with non-life threatening condition flies in from the UK.....doctor suggests emergency procedure and bungles it...money is snatched from husband...condition worsens..patient who is the mother of two young ones dies....the hospital doctors the case sheet...literally...
Sad....but it seems to keep happening.....that forwards are the only available form of retaliation is a reflection of the dreadful state of things...
It was against this backdrop that Spouse was sent off by his employers for his routine annual checkup at a leading Chennai corporate hospital....
I was anxious..naturally..
The rumor mill had it that if someone so much as fainted on its premises, this hospital carted them away to the ICU and stuck them with a whopping bill when they returned to reality.....enough to make them faint again....
I was anxious..naturally..
The rumor mill had it that if someone so much as fainted on its premises, this hospital carted them away to the ICU and stuck them with a whopping bill when they returned to reality.....enough to make them faint again....
Nowadays, getting access to sound medical advice that one can trust is often possible only if your aunt went to medical school with the doctor or your brother plays tennis with him...you have to be just plain lucky to find Dr Right on your own...
Those days when doctors made house calls are ancient history..
In Chennai today, the only people you can count on to call at your door are donation seekers, dictionary salesmen, psycho killers and the occasional axe murderer.........
In the Madras of my childhood, the visiting doctor, almost a family member, prescribed vile pharmacist-made up mixtures in red and green for your run-of-the mill illnesses... an injection was resorted to if things looked serious...if he suggested hospitalization, it meant that he could likely see the shadow of Death hovering around....
And then there were home remedies, homeopathy and ayurveda...
Spouse's mother believed in faith healing...she gave the children sangu thanni from the Mundakakanni amman temple...to cure most illness...and it worked for them...
Those days when doctors made house calls are ancient history..
In Chennai today, the only people you can count on to call at your door are donation seekers, dictionary salesmen, psycho killers and the occasional axe murderer.........
In the Madras of my childhood, the visiting doctor, almost a family member, prescribed vile pharmacist-made up mixtures in red and green for your run-of-the mill illnesses... an injection was resorted to if things looked serious...if he suggested hospitalization, it meant that he could likely see the shadow of Death hovering around....
And then there were home remedies, homeopathy and ayurveda...
Spouse's mother believed in faith healing...she gave the children sangu thanni from the Mundakakanni amman temple...to cure most illness...and it worked for them...
But now, technology has taken charge and diagnosis based on symptoms and case history has flown out of the window...a dead art...so one gets sucked into a battery of tests...even those clearly on their last legs are subjected to tests, tests and more tests...
Chennai's biggest corporate hospital has now emerged as a hospital of last resort....a central hospital.....akin to the RBI, our central bank, the lender of last resort.....
When the private and mid sized places see that they can do no more, the patient is moved there...kept alive through ventilators and the like...
Release often comes only when the family says: "Pull the plug"...and most families do not want to take that decision...
When the private and mid sized places see that they can do no more, the patient is moved there...kept alive through ventilators and the like...
Release often comes only when the family says: "Pull the plug"...and most families do not want to take that decision...
Not realizing that their loved ones should be allowed to die with dignity...
While cutting edge technology makes it possible to save lives, and these big places do their bit in this sphere, the pressure to keep the bottom line a bright shade of green often turns them into predators....
They create hope when none exists...and that is unforgivable..
So...I do what I can..
Add a few more lines to my daily prayer:
In the evening of my life..
When the time comes for me to shed my mortal coils...
I want to be lying in my own bed at home..
I ask that He should then...Gently....
I ask that He should then...Gently....
Just take my breath away..
Only then am I truly Blessed....
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Whose time is it anyway?
I get battle-ready on the first day of every month....
To join pensioners and sundry other unfortunates at the queue at our friendly neighborhood Post Office..
The pensioners come armed with their tiffin boxes ..wife in tow with thermos in hand...for back-up support...ready for the Long Wait ahead...
I arm myself with patience, steel myself to boorish behavior and sharpen my tongue in readiness for repartee....
Truly, there can be no greater leveler than the Post Office queue.. other than Death of course...
I watch as Prince and pauper are treated alike, with equal contempt..
"Pass-book update? Look at the queue behind you...no time now..come at 3.30," the counter clerk tells the old gent ahead of me after he has waited a whole hour in line..it is only 11.30 am now...he walks away...to fight is useless he knows....
"Next"...
My turn now..I approach the Bench..
In trepidation...
Anxious..
Prepared to answer all questions.....
With my flawless convent English accent...that should throw her..
And I will be firm... Verrry FIRM.....
She searches through three ledgers until she finds the moth-eaten page with my accounts.. makes an entry, signs it..passes it on to the Post master...who by some strange miracle is not in the middle of his tea break..he initials it...enters it in his little red book and then it is all over...the deed is done.....
Phew!!!!
50 minutes to withdraw Rs 5000/- of MY OWN MONEY!!!!
I have the math done in my head.. that's a wait of 1 minute for every Rs 100 withdrawn...
And this does not include the 35 minutes I waited until the clerk bustled in...late as usual...or maybe this is her usual time..
Hey, I am a GOVERNMENT employee, not your personal servant...I help run this country...it's a tiring job......I cannot always be on time........you want your job done??...then wait for it...I'll show you who's boss here...take up my time will you? I'll have my revenge by squandering yours....the counter clerk's body language seems to say..
It is the last thought that irks me the most...my time..I have to waste large swathes of it every time I come in contact with officialdom..
The time-work correlation as well as attitudes to time have changed and will keep changing as a brief history of time will tell...
Family saga has it that in the early 1900s, my Paternal Grandfather, stayed at his own wedding just long enough to tie the thali around his young bride's neck.... the groom quickly shed his garland, adjusted his turban, wore his overcoat and made it to First Line Beach to be at his desk at Ye Olde Bank of Madras when the counters opened for business that day....he gave his Time and his commitment to the Bank...willingly...it was his life...nay his very soul..
Fast forward to the fifties, my father worked for a bank too..he was always at THE BANK...interesting things happened at THE BANK....interesting people came to visit him at THE BANK..like a Geiger counter he detected the frauds, tricksters and cheats and threw them out of THE BANK ..every day brought a new challenge and he came home to regale us in the evening with his exploits at THE BANK that day...
It was his life and by extension, ours too...
So much so that as a child I thought that boys grew up, studied and then went to work at THE BANK...
And girls grew up, studied and married someone who worked at THE BANK....
Needless to say, it was quite a shock to me at age four, when I heard that there were career options other than the bank...some of my nursery pals had fathers who were doctors, teachers, lawyers, police officers, landlords...but of course THE BANK was the best of all...Amen.
And now me!!!
I was a true child of the Seventies, in spirit, if nothing else...
The Beatles sang of Revolution..
At the convent school that I attended, I along with a group of other 15 year olds rued the fact that we were not born in that great land, the US of A..
Then we would been at Woodstock.....definitely...
Then we would have hung out with other groovy people at Greenwich Village...
Then we would have hitch-hiked to Haight-Ashbury...this from girls who were not allowed to even ride a rickshaw alone!!!!...
Smoked pot...when the only kind we dared have access to was definitely of the clay variety!!!!..
Hooked Paul McCartney....at a time when good girls from good families were not encouraged to laugh out loud!!!
Or at least had his babies..
Out of wedlock???!!! Of course!! This from babes who just did not get it until told by their peers in rather crude terms: the v-g--a is the middle of the three holes we girls have down there STUPID!!!
Dressed like hippies..nay become hippies and toured the world in a hippie style caravan...
Freedom..Freedom...sang Richie Havens and we sang along
Time was all ours..
We could do with it as we pleased...
Strangely, Indira Nooyi, now CEO of Pepsico also attended school in Madras at about the same time...she came away without imbibing similar woolly-headed notions of life...needless to add, she was not a student of OUR convent...
I took this work for the love of it to my work place.
Work was everything.. it had to be perfect...creative...reflecting the superiority of my mind....an end in itself...
Time???...you took as much time as the work needed....besides I loved the work...
At my first job, which I joined on the the 25th of the month..I couldn't believe it when they paid me for those five days...
Keep the change..I almost told them....now giddy, in addition to being woolly headed!!!!!
Articles in magazines extolled this idea of working for the love of work alone and pay be damned...
It took me a while to figure out that these articles were actually put out by the Skinflint Employers Association and their minions, whose numbers were surely legion...I then tried my hand at hard bargaining...time was money...and my time was certainly a lot of money...or at least should be!!!
In Chennai today, in BPOs and sundry other outsourcing establishments, employees are not only aware of US time, UK time...but also of Company time and how it is so different from Personal time..
At the Sweatshop,
Employees are subjected to weekly and monthly lectures on such fine differences.....nine to five fifteen at least is certainly company time....every micro-second of it....
So we frown on personal phone calls received on personal mobile phones in company time...even if your house is on fire...
We frown on lingering over lunch...
We frown on extra long pee-breaks...
And we watch your body language..
And we hear your thoughts..
Quantity is everything..
Creative juices?? You can just go and can those...if you can find some tins!!!
And so we come back to the old question..Whose time is it anyway???
I think:
Time belongs to whoever takes charge of it...
QED....
Gotta go take charge of it...Just be there and do that...yeah!!!
To join pensioners and sundry other unfortunates at the queue at our friendly neighborhood Post Office..
The pensioners come armed with their tiffin boxes ..wife in tow with thermos in hand...for back-up support...ready for the Long Wait ahead...
I arm myself with patience, steel myself to boorish behavior and sharpen my tongue in readiness for repartee....
Truly, there can be no greater leveler than the Post Office queue.. other than Death of course...
I watch as Prince and pauper are treated alike, with equal contempt..
"Pass-book update? Look at the queue behind you...no time now..come at 3.30," the counter clerk tells the old gent ahead of me after he has waited a whole hour in line..it is only 11.30 am now...he walks away...to fight is useless he knows....
"Next"...
My turn now..I approach the Bench..
In trepidation...
Anxious..
Prepared to answer all questions.....
With my flawless convent English accent...that should throw her..
And I will be firm... Verrry FIRM.....
She searches through three ledgers until she finds the moth-eaten page with my accounts.. makes an entry, signs it..passes it on to the Post master...who by some strange miracle is not in the middle of his tea break..he initials it...enters it in his little red book and then it is all over...the deed is done.....
Phew!!!!
50 minutes to withdraw Rs 5000/- of MY OWN MONEY!!!!
I have the math done in my head.. that's a wait of 1 minute for every Rs 100 withdrawn...
And this does not include the 35 minutes I waited until the clerk bustled in...late as usual...or maybe this is her usual time..
Hey, I am a GOVERNMENT employee, not your personal servant...I help run this country...it's a tiring job......I cannot always be on time........you want your job done??...then wait for it...I'll show you who's boss here...take up my time will you? I'll have my revenge by squandering yours....the counter clerk's body language seems to say..
It is the last thought that irks me the most...my time..I have to waste large swathes of it every time I come in contact with officialdom..
The time-work correlation as well as attitudes to time have changed and will keep changing as a brief history of time will tell...
Family saga has it that in the early 1900s, my Paternal Grandfather, stayed at his own wedding just long enough to tie the thali around his young bride's neck.... the groom quickly shed his garland, adjusted his turban, wore his overcoat and made it to First Line Beach to be at his desk at Ye Olde Bank of Madras when the counters opened for business that day....he gave his Time and his commitment to the Bank...willingly...it was his life...nay his very soul..
Fast forward to the fifties, my father worked for a bank too..he was always at THE BANK...interesting things happened at THE BANK....interesting people came to visit him at THE BANK..like a Geiger counter he detected the frauds, tricksters and cheats and threw them out of THE BANK ..every day brought a new challenge and he came home to regale us in the evening with his exploits at THE BANK that day...
It was his life and by extension, ours too...
So much so that as a child I thought that boys grew up, studied and then went to work at THE BANK...
And girls grew up, studied and married someone who worked at THE BANK....
Needless to say, it was quite a shock to me at age four, when I heard that there were career options other than the bank...some of my nursery pals had fathers who were doctors, teachers, lawyers, police officers, landlords...but of course THE BANK was the best of all...Amen.
And now me!!!
I was a true child of the Seventies, in spirit, if nothing else...
The Beatles sang of Revolution..
At the convent school that I attended, I along with a group of other 15 year olds rued the fact that we were not born in that great land, the US of A..
Then we would been at Woodstock.....definitely...
Then we would have hung out with other groovy people at Greenwich Village...
Then we would have hitch-hiked to Haight-Ashbury...this from girls who were not allowed to even ride a rickshaw alone!!!!...
Smoked pot...when the only kind we dared have access to was definitely of the clay variety!!!!..
Hooked Paul McCartney....at a time when good girls from good families were not encouraged to laugh out loud!!!
Or at least had his babies..
Out of wedlock???!!! Of course!! This from babes who just did not get it until told by their peers in rather crude terms: the v-g--a is the middle of the three holes we girls have down there STUPID!!!
Dressed like hippies..nay become hippies and toured the world in a hippie style caravan...
Freedom..Freedom...sang Richie Havens and we sang along
Time was all ours..
We could do with it as we pleased...
Strangely, Indira Nooyi, now CEO of Pepsico also attended school in Madras at about the same time...she came away without imbibing similar woolly-headed notions of life...needless to add, she was not a student of OUR convent...
I took this work for the love of it to my work place.
Work was everything.. it had to be perfect...creative...reflecting the superiority of my mind....an end in itself...
Time???...you took as much time as the work needed....besides I loved the work...
At my first job, which I joined on the the 25th of the month..I couldn't believe it when they paid me for those five days...
Keep the change..I almost told them....now giddy, in addition to being woolly headed!!!!!
Articles in magazines extolled this idea of working for the love of work alone and pay be damned...
It took me a while to figure out that these articles were actually put out by the Skinflint Employers Association and their minions, whose numbers were surely legion...I then tried my hand at hard bargaining...time was money...and my time was certainly a lot of money...or at least should be!!!
In Chennai today, in BPOs and sundry other outsourcing establishments, employees are not only aware of US time, UK time...but also of Company time and how it is so different from Personal time..
At the Sweatshop,
Employees are subjected to weekly and monthly lectures on such fine differences.....nine to five fifteen at least is certainly company time....every micro-second of it....
So we frown on personal phone calls received on personal mobile phones in company time...even if your house is on fire...
We frown on lingering over lunch...
We frown on extra long pee-breaks...
And we watch your body language..
And we hear your thoughts..
Quantity is everything..
Creative juices?? You can just go and can those...if you can find some tins!!!
And so we come back to the old question..Whose time is it anyway???
I think:
Time belongs to whoever takes charge of it...
QED....
Gotta go take charge of it...Just be there and do that...yeah!!!
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Those Old Funnies...
How funny are those old funnies??
As a child I used to wait for that evening newspaper - The Madras Mail - only to read "Mutt and Jeff", the comic strip that ran at the bottom left of the last page....the Mail disappeared from circulation and with it went those two funny men...
When I heard that the newest newspaper to hit Chennai carried that old strip..I bought a copy.. turned the pages eagerly...there it was... all slapstick...wham! bang! crash! ...only it did not really tickle my funny bone any more..
And the "Archies"......all in there too....
Jughead chomping through mountains of burgers, transfat n' all
Archie, Veronica, Betty and Reggie still at their old courting games...
Their world remains pristine, unchanged...
Even after the school shootings?...the Columbine massacre???
...the drug problem???..
...the crime wave???...
...teen pregnancies????...Get outta here..
And obviously, these guys haven't heard of Nike, Adidas, Aeropostale, American Eagle, Levis.... which must be wonderful for their parents!!!!!
No wonder Winner's generation gives them the go-by......they just cannot make the connection....
And neither can I...
Dennis the Menace was right there in his element in his root beer and cookie world...but it is strange to see him playing video games...Na!!!...not so menacing...not so cute...not for me...
Perhaps if Dennis had grown up and morphed into Calvin's dad....he, of the "Calvin and Hobbes" fame... that would have seemed like karma ...don't you think??
Come to think of it, Calvin is the Dennis the Menace of the twenty-first century.....in the same tradition...but rooted in our world...
The action heroes have done better..Batman, Superman, Spiderman.. in their movie versions...but not so the Phantom...ghost who walks..man who cannot die...he seems to have died out...and taken Lord Greystoke aka Tarzan with him
Also missing are Little Lotta and her friend, the polka-dot obsessed little Dot in her Dotland....Casper too has been rather quiet after his Hollywood debut..and as for Richie Rich, whenever I hear his name, I can only think McCauley Culkin!!!
The funnies have to be funny about our world..they have to grow and evolve with us, catch the flavor of our lives....maybe some of the old funnies do need a rest...perhaps we should just let go......gracefully.....
Now, I'd rather be reading "Marvin" or "On a Claire day".......
Or look at life in India through the eyes of RK Lakshman's ubiquitous common man..
How about you?
As a child I used to wait for that evening newspaper - The Madras Mail - only to read "Mutt and Jeff", the comic strip that ran at the bottom left of the last page....the Mail disappeared from circulation and with it went those two funny men...
When I heard that the newest newspaper to hit Chennai carried that old strip..I bought a copy.. turned the pages eagerly...there it was... all slapstick...wham! bang! crash! ...only it did not really tickle my funny bone any more..
And the "Archies"......all in there too....
Jughead chomping through mountains of burgers, transfat n' all
Archie, Veronica, Betty and Reggie still at their old courting games...
Their world remains pristine, unchanged...
Even after the school shootings?...the Columbine massacre???
...the drug problem???..
...the crime wave???...
...teen pregnancies????...Get outta here..
And obviously, these guys haven't heard of Nike, Adidas, Aeropostale, American Eagle, Levis.... which must be wonderful for their parents!!!!!
No wonder Winner's generation gives them the go-by......they just cannot make the connection....
And neither can I...
Dennis the Menace was right there in his element in his root beer and cookie world...but it is strange to see him playing video games...Na!!!...not so menacing...not so cute...not for me...
Perhaps if Dennis had grown up and morphed into Calvin's dad....he, of the "Calvin and Hobbes" fame... that would have seemed like karma ...don't you think??
Come to think of it, Calvin is the Dennis the Menace of the twenty-first century.....in the same tradition...but rooted in our world...
The action heroes have done better..Batman, Superman, Spiderman.. in their movie versions...but not so the Phantom...ghost who walks..man who cannot die...he seems to have died out...and taken Lord Greystoke aka Tarzan with him
Also missing are Little Lotta and her friend, the polka-dot obsessed little Dot in her Dotland....Casper too has been rather quiet after his Hollywood debut..and as for Richie Rich, whenever I hear his name, I can only think McCauley Culkin!!!
The funnies have to be funny about our world..they have to grow and evolve with us, catch the flavor of our lives....maybe some of the old funnies do need a rest...perhaps we should just let go......gracefully.....
Now, I'd rather be reading "Marvin" or "On a Claire day".......
Or look at life in India through the eyes of RK Lakshman's ubiquitous common man..
How about you?
