40

22nd September 2022, Rajiv Gandhi Stadium, Dehradun

It had already been 9 years since he had retired but the stadiums had not forgotten. In Dehradun too, they turned up to watch old aching bodies turn up and for one in particular. Chants of "Sachin, Sachin" reverbated through the stand, no matter who was actually playing. A roar of approval from the boundaries that he patrolled acknowledged with an ever so polite wave. Middle-aged uncles shouting "Maar, beta, maar" delirious in joy and sense of ownership through all the 40 runs that he scored. Some classic shots, some classic poses. Rosier memories for all in attendance would be hard to come by. That India won exactly by the margin of runs he scored added an additional sheen to the evening.

Non-Bucket List

13th January 2008, Kalyani

For certain places, there will always remain a special regard. These are not once-in-a-lifetime bucket list destinations or did they provide boast-worthy holiday stories. They are simple places, where familiar faces gathered and wandered in the winter sun. Flowers were announced and commensurately appreciated. The food was warm and soulful, the conversation lined with personalities from within the family itself. No larger world vision, no decay of politics discussions. Generations and geographies brought together by a few dozen kilometres of local travel away from home yet carrying its glow within.

Larger Than Life

Before heading out to South Korea, I had made cursory attempts to familiarize myself with the Korean wave of pop-culture, Hallyu. I had been largely insulated from it as part of the generation that had had a few years of pre-liberalized India experience, just enough to keep us domesticated in our tastes. In that flimsy preparation, I had heard about the South Korean government's visionary plan to use the soft power of popular entertainment initiated in the early 1990s which had eventually led to this current domination of the arena in the 2020s. The most fascinating bit about that story was how the tremendous success of Steven Spielberg's first Jurassic Park movie was the inspiration for this government policy.

5th July 2025, Jeju Island, Republic of Korea

When I did land up in Jeju Island, this prehistoric origin story had submerged itself under a deluge of new experiences that overran my mind once there. Food, colours, landscapes and oranges of that island in the sea were keeping me busy enough. Until I started talking to the Korean geologist seated next to me at the training I was at. Turns out that he himself had become a geologist only because of the movie. Not only that, he was the proud third-hand owner of a Jeep Wrangler of 1990 vintage, maintenance costs not withstanding, because of the vehicle's prime role in the 1993 story. Like the T-Rex rampaging through the museum at the end of the movie, the Jurassic Park connection came roaring back.

Persistence

 

Jolyon Wagg - A frequently encountered side-character in the Tintin Series by Herge

Of all the professions in the world, the enthusiasm of a salesperson (probably) needs to be the most indefatigable and deep rooted. Not being fully invested in her work is not an option she has. Whatever be the product or service and its relevance to the customer, her only job is to push the sale to an often less-than-interested client. No wonder the salesperson is a favoured character in comedies, dramas and tragedies alike. We have all encountered a character like Tintin's Jolyon Wagg in our daily lives and our irritation with them is tempered with the fact that they have been given a tough job to do.

While all of us have some part of our professional lives that we struggle through, it is eased by a formal separation from the selection/rejection whatever it is that we have been giving at least 8 hours a day towards. We mostly work on a small part of a larger impersonal project and rejection, while worry-inducing, is not borne alone. The salesperson on the other hand is handed a product or service that she hasn't designed or built, convinces herself of its distinction from all other similar products and pitches the same to strangers whose interests and motivations may be universes apart from even the best features of Product X. 

I understand that sometimes the product sells itself and sometimes even the customer has an active interest. I remember the time when a door-to-door salesperson brought little plastic lights, blue and white and shaped like spaceships (as per an industrial designer and an imaginative child), that could be tapped on for a warm friendly night light. My mom and me were equally enamoured and at the price at which she was selling them, the sale was a foregone conclusion. Those lights remained at use in home long after I had ceased to qualify as a child.

In some respects, I suppose that sales can also be viewed from the frame of just another job where strategy and selection yield 'results' with the right 'execution'. But the biggest challenge in my (ignorant, inexperienced and unsolicited) opinion would be in how to make the rejection not feel personal. When you have approached someone with all your charm and conviction only to be told "Not interested", sometimes repeatedly, how do you keep the fire going?

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2023/06/persistence.html]

Kriti Arora Profile - A Post on Orkut

 

This is interesting. 

I swear I don't know who Kriti Arora is and what her Orkut profile looks like but the Blogger team seems to have decided that I should write about her. An 'Ideas' panel has automatically popped up on my Blogger homepage and among the many AI-generated blog ideas for a post most of which were about cricket and cricketers, this one seemed the most outlandish as I had not the slightest notion of why such a thing was suggested to me. 

May be I have written about the long dead Orkut social network in the past thereby triggering the AI to suggest something guaranteed to give me more views? Thank you, Team Blogger, for taking pro-active concern at the state of my decade long stagnasis on my blog and suggesting some motion. 

I now have one more opportunity to learn something completely new and have the luxury of not writing about it. 

In all fairness though, I did find it interesting that the original Googler, after whom orkut.com was named, has brought the defunct domain name and is now using it to promote another social networking site named Hello. Quoting the first paragraph

"Hello,

I’m Orkut.

You may not know me but 13 years ago I started a social network called orkut.com while I was working as an engineer at Google. I'm the guy orkut.com was named after. In 2014 when Google announced that orkut would be shutting down, it was a sad moment for us. orkut had become a community of over 300 million people and was such an amazing adventure for all of us. Nobody wanted to lose what we had created together. We met amazing new people. We went on dates. We found new jobs. We even got married and had kids because of orkut. We made it happen, together."

His thing, the baby that brought the world together, actually mostly India and Brazil, may be a faint blimp on our generational memory but that it lived for a short while, back in the day when all of these concepts were brilliantly new and shiny and Google Chrome still needed to promoted, is reason enough for its happening.

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2021/11/kriti-arora-profile-post-on-orkut.html]

Always With Me

Sunday, 8^th August 2021

Dear Ma,

I write this to you in mild disbelief. I half expect to walk into you tidying up the next room. That you would tell me of today’s must-read Indian Express article or order me yet again to abandon my decade old T-shirt. This I understand is no longer possible and I am here to talk about my memories of you instead.

My first memory, from long long ago, is your laugh, humming the eternally popular Ripon Street baaraat band tune “Tequila”, and a just-learnt-to-walk version of me stumbling along to it. You don’t drink and I can’t dance so this is a strange thing to recall. At the same time, it is so you. Your giggle and your endless stock of made-up games put you up as a firm favourite of generations of children, three your own and everyone else’s. The ease with which you engage a child’s endless energy is sure proof that you did never grow old. It is our privilege to have grown up under your joyful and imaginative attention.

My second memory of you is sombre. The impact that moving to Bharuch had on you, an out-and-out Kolkata girl uprooted from its urban bustle to a small back-of-the-woods town in Gujarat, into a world so different from what you had known. Your initial shock and your subsequent rising to the occasion were something that even a 3-year-old me could appreciate. As hundreds of your students and acquaintances from two-plus decades there will attest, Kolkata’s loss was Bharuch’s blessing. Adventure is often shown as conquering distant hills and forbidden valleys but the wonderful, protected life that you and Baba gave us 3 kids in a land so different from your own was no less exciting and brave.

My chosen third memory of you is more a running film than a specific span of time or incident. A camp-fire, a relentless passion for doing the right thing in the right way, which comforts greatly but occasionally burns. You do not appreciate half-heartedness in any form. I think you’ll agree that filtering your emotions isn’t your forte. You laugh as hard as you roar. You are a rock of comfort in critical times but don’t shy away from letting the tears flow either.

I remember the roasting you gave me when I, in teenage ignorance, ridiculed your favourite poet Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill”. I recall your thirst for knowledge, a core trait shared with Baba for 49 years, which kept you learning and inquisitive all through, in your own words “up-to-date”. Cable TV, vacuum cleaner, washing machine, microwave oven, PC, laptop, smartphone – you negotiated through them all, living it up virtually as much as IRL. Your sudden revelations of knowing the latest Guru Randhawa song or the exact details of a Jason Statham fight scene leave me wondering who is the older among us.

I worship your energy in all that you do – host of a ridiculous amount and variety of get-togethers, most opinionated road-trip participant, queen bee of your Brahmo Girls school girl gang, painstaking saver of money for incremental improvements, teacher of history and English in all their nuances, writer book-lover librarian extraordinaire, setter of impossible standards for pet care, denouncer of political extremism and sloppy dressing (phew, that’s only about 10% of your abilities) – all with a warm heart and a booming voice. Your beloved parents, Dadubhai in his meticulous perfection and Dimma with her emotional core, live on and spread their goodness through you. Hope your reunion with them and waggy tailed Putputti is even more perfect than I can imagine.

You could have aimed for the stars with your intellect, education and capabilities but then you wouldn’t give yourself any relief from your duties as Mom either. Through sincere work in whatever life I choose, I hope to respect your ambitions and make a few amends for your sacrifices. I never got to tell you this while you were still here, but you are my hero and your life-story is the stuff of legends. Maybe I will write it all out someday, in all its pain and all its glory. Much as I will miss the immeasurable comfort that you gave me as Mom, I will also remain in awe of the relentless perfection that you sought as a professional.

The greatest regret of my life will remain not being right next to you when your time came. Those stories of my travel which will now remain untold to their most eager audience. That long list of your planned food items during my visits home will now each hurt in their own way.

“Kutush, don’t be selfish” was your one advice in life and I try to follow that within my own limited capacity. But I’ll make this one exception by claiming your time though I know that you’ll watch over everyone that you loved, not just me. In what seems to be the only consolation for your absence from this world, when roaming areas with limited mobile connectivity or on busy days, I no longer have worry about you worrying. Now I know you’ll be there with me, on every mountain trail, in every urban jungle, on every motorcycle trip. Friend. Judge. Guide. Mom. Always with me.

Lots of love,    
Kutush

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2021/08/always-with-me.html]

One Shake of Many

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2020/01/one-shake-of-many.html]

A Dark Kind of Art

"Luna mein hain no tension -trumpety music-

Chalane mein hain no tension -trumpety music-

Maintenance mein no more tension"

[Luna gives you no tension, in riding and in maintenance]

That's the one. Or something like it.

This was the first advertising jingle to find permanency in my head. A very humble two-wheeler, the 50 cc moped that was the Luna even gave its rider an option of pedalling to the next petrol station with its radical in-built cycle option. Back in its day, it wasn't without its quota of cool and the fact that my older brother, 11 years my senior, commanded one was no small matter of pride. This, I need not remind you, was in pre-liberalisation, single TV channel India.

To date, I am yet to ride the Luna except as a passenger (it was sold long before I reached riding age). I have had the unhappy and possibly unique experience of being dragged by one, knees scraping along the road, for a good 10-15 metres as a bump on the road dislodged me from the pillion seat and unlike Jack of Titanic fame, I refused to let go. I have also been sent flying by one, on a routine road crossing to catch the school bus, at a tender age (early primary school) when it was still physically feasible for a Luna to send me flying as it ran into me. The central message being that there is absolutely no reason for me to look upon it fondly but even then, that jingle... it never quite left me in the three decades since.

Advertising, at its dark core, is mass mind manipulation. It is designed to stamp an impression on impressionable minds and at its most nefarious, force us to buy things that we don't need at all. Want is created where there was none, greed where there was peace.

Be that as it may, advertising is also an outlet for storytelling which tries to tap into the moods of the time. The underlying wish to push their product notwithstanding, it is difficult not to appreciate the genuine effort put into channeling the right notes. 

The fruit drink company, Paper Boat, for example, seems to have mined that rich vein of nostalgia for those of us who remember a time when long railway journeys were a family institution, and a pocket-friendly adventure rolled into one (Read aforementioned 'Luna Days'). I wouldn't waste words on why these images work. They just do, and for that generation at which these ads are targeted, any explanation is superfluous.

I, for one, am yet to buy a Paper Boat product but I think the universe is a happier place if, after all the dust from the board-room meetings, sales targets and distribution networks has settled down, a creative managed to sneak out a story and a smile for someone who isn't even a customer.

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-dark-kind-of-art.html]

Everyone's Favourite 2nd Favourite

By the time I was old enough to follow West Indies cricket, it had already passed its golden age. At that stage, though seriously competitive with Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh, Richie Richardson and Carl Hooper in their ranks, they did not seem worthy of the whispered reverence that our parents' generation treated them with. The Windies only waned further as I added to my cricket watching years. Simultaneously, via cricket writing celebrating the supreme sportsmen that had made up the West Indies cricket team in the 1970s and 80s and rivetting documentaries like Fire In Babylon, I couldn't fault the starry eyes that the name West Indies produced in the most casual of senior cricket fans. 

However the fact of *this* West Indies team being nothing compared to *those* West Indian teams hasn't stopped me from being a lifelong fan. This cricketing nation, which isn't actually a nation but a collection of separate countries united for the sport, still has way too much elan to let minor things like winning or losing come in the way of appreciation for what they are.

If individuality was the sole criteria for cricketing success, West Indies would be still be the undisputed kings. From the shabbily crabby Shivnarine Chanderpaul to the supremely elegant Brian Lara, the main attraction of watching the Windies play is their artistic interpretation of textbook techniques. The basics still adhered to - note how Lara's head stayed rock steady while batting, even as his feet distracted, dancing the bele around the best bowlers in the world - but with an effective panache that can only be classified as West Indian.

Cricket board politics and drastic inconsistency haven't helped their record in the past couple of decades but whenever snooty robot-promoting coaches are about to dismiss them as mere entertainers, they serve up a dose of their surprising brilliance. Having won the 2004 ICC Champions Trophy and the ICC World Twenty20 twice (2012, 2016), the West Indies make it clear that those who write them off, do so at their own peril. As the impotently angry Glenn McGrath of Steve Waugh's legendary 2003 side found out, on their day the Windies can chase down a unprecedented 418 in the 4th innings of a Test Match, no problem.

The West Indies bring that sparkle and joy to their game, which tells of cricket on the beach and the happiness of a life beyond the game. The reason why a quiet and polite middle class Bombay boy named Sachin Tendulkar can idolize, without contradiction, a bowler destroying force like Vivian Richards. Yes, there is the swagger on field but there is clearly a barbecue, a beer and a beaming smile behind it all. 

Former West Indies captain, Darren Sammy, once claimed that the West Indies were everyone's 2nd favourite cricket team, ranking only behind their home country's. Very few would disagree. In a game where national pride is often misdirected for ugly political purposes and aggression frequently turns into disrespectful bullying, a group of islands in the Caribbean united only by their flamboyant use of bat and ball represent the sunnier alternative.

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2019/05/everyones-favourite-2nd-favourite.html]

Prehistoric Halwa

You won't find me singing praises of the "simple" days of childhood anytime soon. I remember, in far too much detail, that phase of my life when the world was a very limited place, buffeted between expectations of those who thought that they had life figured out a.k.a adults and the confused dreams of the one who hadn't seen enough of it to counter them effectively a.k.a me. All the same, it has to be admitted that friend circles were definitely smaller and so was the list of things that you liked - 'simple' if you choose to call it so.

Dinosaurs were on that small list for me. These were days before Jurassic Park brought them to jelly quaking, kitchen stalking cinematic life. Across the street from our little house with a little garden lived Gupta Aunty and her two sons, Pratik and Akshat - the centre and the boundaries of my social sphere then. Dinosaurs roamed their house through the stacks of hard bound, half as tall and twice as heavy as me Encyclopedia of Something or the Other whose colourful photographs and fast facts informed me of fabulous beasts like the palm tree shaming brachiosaurus or the rhino gone wrong stegosaurus. Quite unlike Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes, I found the leaf munching oddities much more fascinating than the toothy T-Rexes and Velociraptors who also stalked those pages. It may also have been something to do with the diet I was on when in the Gupta Brothers' company.

Growing up in a Bengali household, I already had enough deep fried, unhealthy, tasty food items to look forward to but crossing the street meant some vegetarian specials unlikely to be found at home. The fantastic ghee soaked lighter than air rotis with a dry subji were top drawer stuff but as far optimal use of ghee was concerned, the pinnacle was Gupta Aunty's Gajar ka Halwa. Ghee as pure as the driven snow, carrots stolen from the garden of heaven and sugar from unfulfilled childhood fantasies combined to produce this sweet dish par excellence. I did share a lot of common ground with the brothers including blind fandom of Amitabh's superhero movie "Ajooba" and a tendency to challenge each other to "Punjab", a childish mispronunciation of the noble sport of panja a.k.a arm wrestling but I must honestly admit that the Gajar ka Halwa did not hurt the cause of our lifelong friendship.

Childhood, simple or not, did present some interesting possibilities. Beyond a gate and up a flight of stairs past another roared magnificent monsters and confections of my dreams.

[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2018/07/prehistoric-halwa.html]

Mob

It was only a month into our first semester of engineering, at the peak of the collective ‘Seniors must be obeyed at all costs’ spell cast on us. The spell would dissipate in a few weeks and it would surely be attempted on subsequent newbies in newer batches, it would never ever have as much power on us greenhorns as it had then. We believed.

In this environment, Dubious (all names including this changed for privacy purposes) and me found ourselves roaming the campus at 02:00 AM, roughly hewn heavy wooden sticks in hand. We were part of a battalion, a few dozen strong, entrusted with the protection of our engineering college from possible attack by the enemy.

The enemy in this case were Kurukshetra University (KU) students. This was all part of an endless cycle of insults and avenge-of-insults that KU and engineering college students were engaged in, possibly just because they needed something to do in this semi-agrarian town in Haryana.

With soldiers like Dubious, a short dreamy literature fanatic and me, a skin and bones contraption wearing telescopes for glasses, the future of this battalion if it chose to engage in any kind of physical battle was bleak. As it happened and as indeed happened on many a night, the KU chose to sleep off their insult while we patrolled the perimeters. Dubious and me weren’t above looking relieved at this turn of events.

The obvious lack of action in combination with the ache in our arms was leading us back towards our hostel and peace. We nearly made it when Jhamelaa from the leading dozen announced “This Popat has been showing off too much in class. Isn’t it time someone put him in his place?”

Just like that, the KU threat was gone but a visceral hatred for Popat replaced it. The mob had turned.  Now Popat, a batchmate I barely knew from a different branch, must be sought and taught.

What this Popat had done was something I had no idea of, yet it was truly astonishing how the focus had shifted on what was a cool October night. The mob had already swarmed towards Popat’s ground floor room before logic could step in.

Luckily for Popat and the extremely confused me, a baritone voiced negotiator friend of his managed to send us all back to where we should have in the first place, our rooms and our beds. The immediate unavailability of Popat, who had wisely decided to make a speedy exit towards safer climes before his lesson teachers showed up, also helped.

Whenever I read of mob mentality, I always go back to that night in Kurukshetra. I remember how Dubious, until then as much a passive participant as me, declared “Yes, Popat must be taught a lesson!” and merged into the crowd at Popat’s door. The very night air, it had seemed to me then, carried the perverse ability to turn thinking off and frenzy on.

[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.in/2017/10/mob.html]

Eternal fire

My trip to the Olpadwala Community Hall on Chowringhee today was to learn more about one particular Indian community which has long intrigued me.

My first encounter with the word was when I heard what the oldest section of the town I grew up in was named. The stately ancient houses and the narrow twisty lanes had a name – Parsiwada, the area of the fire worshippers.

Whether there were any Parsis left in that neighbourhood by the time I first saw it is a matter of debate but that they did sail there, escaping persecution in Iran, a few hundred years ago back when Bharuch was still a port town is certified history.

The exhibition which I visited, named “Threads of Continuity”, was peppered with bookmarks from my formative years in Gujarat, port towns and stories as to how Parsis had first found refuge to launch the incredible Indian chapter of their 3000-year history. I became aware, even more than I had been earlier, of how this tiny community had always punched far above its weight giving India some of our greatest freedom fighters, scientists, industrialists, soldiers and rock stars.

These factual updates and the current crisis in their community notwithstanding, that first image that I had of Parsis, of ship sailing families carrying and protecting their sacred flame, braving stormy seas and uncertain fates still holds strong in my head. The fire that they saved - the fire of faith in better worlds for those dared.

[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.in/2017/10/eternal-fire.html]

Rainy runs

For we lived for the rains. Not that cricket on the terrace was not fun any other time of the year but the monsoon twist was its ultimate variation. The fundamental "fun"ness of football in the rain is frequently referred to but rain & cricket do not sound like compatible partners. Yet if the grass and the mud is left out of the party by having a concrete "ground" on top of apartment buildings, who's to stop magic from happening?

-

The "stadiums" at Gayatri Flats had good drainage for the most part barring the little mossy puddles at the corners. A sprint to those parts of the arena usually ended with a skid and a thud but when juveniles wilfully courted physical damage, a burst of stomach straining collective laughter was all the medicine needed. The long straights of the terrace A-1, the perfect symmetry of B-4 and the long square boundaries of A-3 - everyone had their favourite grounds 4 storeys further above the already quiet roads of (then) small town Bharuch.

-

Past these terraces, only a 10 minute walk beyond, the waters of the Narmada were already turning muddy under the influence of silt borne out of lands Madhya Pradesh onwards by the rain. The Arabian Sea was close enough to Bharuch and the river could have easily chosen to not make so much of a fuss about this rain. But it would still manage to swell with flood waters every year. Me thinks it did that only to provide entertainment for fellow citizens of Bharuch, who would dutifully gather at the edges and gaze on its turbulence as if they planned to stare it down into normalcy sometime soon.

-

True that the river absorbed most of the rain but we did our bit too. Soaked to the bone, shivering half in cold and half in anticipation of that one-tip-one-hand catch that could seal the match, we were unmindful of the grumbling clouds and their steady deposit. Washed clean as it were of any other roles responsibilities and requirements, we fought, we focussed. A cheap bat and a rubber ball, conquerors of syllabi & tuitions & time tables, architects of concrete memories.

-

[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.in/2017/07/rainy-runs.html]

Living with differences

***This is an accidental repeat post :P. Since a 100 odd people have re-read it, I'll let it be***
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[Not a Republic Day post this but I thought the above WhatsApp forward says what I want to say too. This is the article for which I won an all India essay writing competition organized by the Indian Express & Citizens For Peace in 2008 and thereby my first love, the blue Pulsar 180. Quite long it is... so apologies in advance. But today in a world of increasing divisiveness - on food habits, on language & on what is "patriotism", it does seem relevant. In a famously complicated country like ours, diversity is not a problem... it's the solution]

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I can’t help feeling a little cynical as I pen this down. After all, the only people who would want to read an essay on “Living with differences” would be the ones who are already aware that there is no viable alternative to it. For those who are convinced that standardization-be it on the lines of religion, caste or class is the way out of the entire world’s ills wouldn’t bother making the effort. But in times when a moderate opinion on any issue is panned and reviled by both warring camps, this is an important exercise in self-motivation.

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It’s been over a year since I passed out of Regional Engineering College (REC), Kurukshetra (Now that’s a real place in Haryana, in case you thought it is something on the lines of Rama’s Bridge). It’s been grandly re-christened National Institute of Technology (NIT), Kurukshetra, but we alumni persist with the REC short form rather than the new fangled NIT. RECs represent a unique kind of Institutions where people so markedly different are put together in some kind of weird social experiment. Students from every state have just got to be there, unlike the IITs where only the ‘cream’ shows up (more often than not resulting in states with great competitive environments dominating the numbers). But in RECs, it was a case of state boards, Delhi boards, vernacular medium, English medium, competitive exam based selections and board marks based selections, all tossed together in a mixed salad of sorts. And to the great surprise of everyone involved, manage to function quite well in their own hopelessly complicated sort of way.

-

As one would expect, stereotyping was everyone’s favourite pastime. Guys from the North are bruising and crude, the people from the East are pseudo-intellectual snobs, the fellows from Western India- oh, ready to sell their souls if there was any money involved, students from the South never looking beyond syllabus books and their ‘own’ kind and finally the North-east- drunk druggies! And this was just stereotype level 1, the data and pre-conditioning for which our upbringing in our respective domicile states had already groomed us to believe. The next level would crop up when passionate as the youth must be, battle lines would be drawn over a minor argument or scuffle. Regions would blend into temporary coalitions and you would discover that:

# Up-ites were all scheming politicians

# Biharis were vicious fighters ready to plunge into battle at the drop of a hat

# Telugus were basically spineless and wouldn’t ever take a stand

# Tamils were out on a mission to subjugate all other South Indian cultures

# Bengalis were so full of themselves that it was impossible to stand them for more than a minute

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and a million more such previously unstated accusations that were always hiding in a dark corner of the mind waiting for an oppurtune moment to spring out.

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All prejudices and pet hates now out in the open, a tangible bitterness in the air and one would be forgiven for thinking that national integration was a lost cause even after 60 years of Independence. Tense and difficult, moments like these were indeed but in retrospect they bring a smile to my face.

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I smile because there is a fact that drifters like me knew. Being a Bengali schooled in Gujarat, and thereby gaining admission through the Gujarat quota, my domicile state was just one identity. We call them State GTs (Get Togethers) and Gujarat GT was something like a degree which was affixed to my name as and when the situation required. I had the good fortune/misfortune of being termed too Bengali or not Bengali enough by different groups at different times. I knew that despite all the cribbing and finger pointing some things would remain unchanged.

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When mess food in its vile form was served on our plates, all hands would stretch to that extra large jar of spicy South Indian pickle carried by a benevolent soul. When the Telugu guy next room would be really sick, it would be his Haryanvi classmates who would rush him to the hospital. That the common room would be packed to the rafters with every eye on the TV screen whenever “The Matrix” was on or when Australia was on the verge of losing a cricket match, whether the opponent be India or not. That the precious matchbox doing the rounds to light cigarettes had no regional loyalties and neither did a freshly filled bottle of cold water from the cooler, the furious look on its owner’s face notwithstanding. Xeroxed notes on the night before the exam would have a geographical distribution worthy of a thesis and that the look of shock after a particularly tough exam hardly varied from face to face. The dissimilarities between us were far too many to note down, but it was the most unlikely similarities that invited bemused contemplation.

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But of course, not everything was hunky-dory in life at an REC. Some of my fellow students by way of being in the wrong place at the wrong time walked away from 4 years of engineering with regional stereotypes further re-inforced. Some of them gave up the fight to defy the labels of their region, finding it much more convenient to behave the way certain people expected them to, helped in no small measure by constant heckling and jeering. The 50% local strength of the Haryanvi students in our REC frequently saw ‘Us and them’ situations crop up with Haryana-non Haryana tensions simmering. This feeling of insecurity against the majority populace seemed to be a common feature in most RECs if reports from friends in other RECs are anything to go by. Any kind of majority always exerts an unseen and mostly unintentional pressure on the others, and in an atmosphere of distrust, it only requires the proverbial spark to burst into flames.

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This is where I realized the sincere need for just inane conversation. By virtue of my network of friends, I always knew that the rumours and whispers about the ‘rival’ group had minimum basis in truth. Some of the people I talked with hardly had anything in common with me, but just by interacting with them I knew they couldn’t be half as bad as the alarm raisers claimed them to be. Sadly for others who were completely out of touch with them, anything anyone ever said about them was as good as true.

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Having grown up in Gujarat, I wondered even more how much a little mindless banter could have made a difference. During the 2002 riots in Gujarat, a Muslim classmate and I laughed over the fact that identical stories about a Muslim girl/Hindu girl being abducted were doing the rounds simultaneously in the respective communities. But when put in context of the horrifying violence that rumours like these generated, it hardly seems funny any longer. The fact that virtual LOCs between the two communities in most cities still persist, its sadly evident that peace achieved in such conditions is just a makeshift arrangement.

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At the end of the day we are all flawed, emotional beings who have a set of prejudices and dislikes which have evolved out of our immediate environment. Some of these prejudices cannot be shaken off in a lifetime but we can surely do better at preventing them from hardening. Every time one makes a sweeping statement about a community or a caste or a class, its important to rein that in. Situations may yet force them out but keeping those words in for a few seconds more robs them of their sting and in many cases makes one realize the purposelessness of it all.

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It is only human nature that we turn to a group that is closest to our way of living whenever we feel the need for security and identity. But reaching out is so much more important even though mutual agreement may be a distant dream. Just by knowing a person with a set of values which we find odd, comes a revelation that we are similar in some ways however few they may be. This similarity is a surprise and lessens to a great extent all our apprehensions about something completely unknown. And of course the all important fact that for any correction of supposed ‘flaws’ in the other, the kind word of a friend is so much more effective than the hate filled invective of a stranger.

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It’s a strange world that we live in. The rich/privileged seem to hate the poor for not being able to fend for themselves and the poor/disadvantaged hate the rich for purposefully keeping all opportunities to themselves. The religious hate the ‘modern’ for being too flippant about their God, while the ‘modern’ hate the religious for being book-bound bigots. And so on and forth, rage a variety of differences. I am not idealistic enough to see the world join together in a celebration of our differences in the near future, indeed coming together has its fair share of acrimony. But just knowing our differences and accepting them, before pushing for any kind of compromise is the first and inevitable step in the long, arduous path towards a world which is a saner, more livable version of its present sorry self.

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Originally published at http://www.citizensforpeace.in/secular-rethink/130

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[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.in/2017/03/living-with-differences.html]

Music Sir and the Goddess of Nerdistan

Sometime in the late 1990s, in a narrow lane near Silver Sea Chinese restaurant, Bharuch, Gujarat

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Music Sir (as we called Nitin Sir) began first, in his deep and beautiful voice. "Saaaaaaaaa..." he sang and then we, his students followed in chorus "Saaaaaaa...". Outside the little room where about 6 of us were packed in for Hindustani classical singing classes, a donkey (Yes, there were donkeys that roamed the streets of our little town by the river) joined in too "Haychoo haychoo haychoo". Laughter all around and the loudest laughter came from Sir himself.

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He could have been angry about a donkey finding a common chord with his students. But that wasn't the way of Nitin Sir.

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A little over a week ago, I heard of Nitin Sir's passing away from my sister, who along with my elder brother and me, felt blessed to have had him in our lives, both as a classical music teacher and as a personal inspiration. It had been more than 15 years since I had last talked to Nitin Sir or even seen a recent photograph of him but the sadness was immediate & personal.

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Nitin Sir was already well over 70 when he taught me Hindustani classical music. Diminutive, seated on the floor with folded legs and wearing his trademark crinkly white kurta, the harmonium in front of him looked like it would overshadow him. That was until he began singing.

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For in his voice, there was power and grace and soothing melody, developed over years of riyaaz and hundreds of public performances. It was hard not to be taken in by the surge of emotion as he launched into "Shyam Sundar Madan Mohan... Jaago Mere Lala" in that small room where we had just inspired a donkey to dream big. We all wanted to sing like Nitin Sir, natural abilities and limitations be damned. He was our rockstar.

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He was our rockstar not only because he sang so well. He was our rockstar because he drove in the message repeatedly that "Music is music" and that everything is connected, even the most popular music. He could have stuck to the raags Yaman Kalyan & Bhairavi but he would spend serious efforts in explaining how songs from Govinda's Bollywood No.1 (Coolie, Hero etc) series could be based on ragas too.

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Not for him, the whole "We must protect our culture from Western influences" theme. This from a man steeped in the best traditions of Indian classical music. Like every Indian who understands what being an Indian means, he knew that there is no demarcating line where Indian culture stops and "foreign" culture begins. It is one continuous, dynamic, evolving thing and for that, we his students are ever grateful to him.

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That brings me to the other part of this write-up, the part which deals with the Goddess of Nerdistan. 

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Another very strong memory linked to Nitin Sir is the red hardbound notebooks that he gave to all of his students to make their music notes in. Red hardbound notebooks with bright ruled paper and an image of Saraswati with her veena and swan on the cover. Just to think of that notebook makes me happy. It just felt so right for the purposes it was given to us for.

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If you are the religious or the hyper-patriot type, I suggest that you stop reading right about now because this is where I am about to venture into "sacrilege" and "anti-nationalism". 

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I think it is really really really cool that we have a Goddess of Knowledge, a lady who can stake a very strong claim to being a Goddess of the Nerds. I think it is really really really cool that while the world was full of conquerors trying to dominate and defeat the known earth from sea to sea, we Indians were busy being nerds, philosophizing, writing, painting and singing - in our Nerdistan protected by the Himalayas.

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Saraswati, more accurately the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, arts, wisdom and learning, is IMHO quite the ideal representation of the nerd. Spends time tinkering with a musical instrument? Check (the veena tuning). Spends time buried in books? Check (out how even her DP has one of her hands holding a book). Spends time with animals? Check (her DP again and you know that she is the type who has bread crumbs ready in her hand when she sees the swans in the lake and the swans know... they wade in towards her as well).

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Now am I being disrespectful of my religion when I refer to Saraswati so casually? Actually, I feel proud to be from a religion which allows me to view my gods and goddesses as living people. It makes my religion more real and relevant and if I may say so... "hip".

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This would be a good time to bring up those b***-hurt folks who have felt nothing but shame for India from the time period of 600 AD to May, 2014 AD. They are glad that the great 

56-incher is finally here to deliver us from the darkness of the past 1414 years. I feel sorry for them but as you can see, I also feel angry at them. For they... they do not understand.

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They do not understand that history is a mixed bag, it always has been and the past 1414 years were not 1414 years of Hindu defeat - that Shivaji had Muslim soldiers in his army and Aurangzeb had Hindu generals. They do not understand that India can never be a one language, one culture, one religion country because it never was and it was never meant to be. 

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They do not understand that seeking peace is not weakness - that the rest of the world is 2000 years LATE to the ideas implemented by Ashoka - that mutual respect & tolerance is the only sane possibility which remains in the times of ISIS and Donald Trump... or we all lose. This is India's place in history, this is India's role in history, this is India's importance in history - not Let's-Ruin-Everyone-Else-So-That-We-Stay-Somewhat-Happy-Superpower ambitions.

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Well then, I have been all over the place and back again. 

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Much like music & art cut across barriers of language and culture, so does basic goodness of human nature. Hate & insecurity always circle around and understanding & acceptance. In Music Sir, we saw an ideal, a man tied to tradition but ever willing to accept the new. For he had already seen a lot in his life and saw no sense in denying change. Yes, there was much that was great about the past but not all of it. Yes, the future holds promises of grand possibilities but it is very important to remember what brought us here.

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For both to happen, central to retaining the past and resolving the future is knowledge. Central to retention of knowledge is the nerd - of every kind - including (but not limited to) the history nerd, the math nerd, the science nerd, the painter nerd, the singer nerd, the writer nerd and the sport nerd. Where would we be today without them?

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So be happy that someone long ago thought that there should be a deity for the nerds, someone they could call upon in times of dire need, like that tiebreaker question in that epic trivia quiz finale. 

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Never be ashamed of being a nerd because as you well know "the geek shall inherit the earth". Someone up there when not trying to pick up a new tune on the veena is always looking out for you.

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[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.in/2017/01/music-sir-and-goddess-of-nerdistan.html]