Alarming SPEEDS

I have often wondered about SPEED. I know it has druggy connotations. But what am worried about is the acronym that stands for Socially Petrified Entities Evolving Disastrously.

Most western countries and their social systems have evolved over a few centuries. Scarlett O'Hara still managed to shock people. Barbara Cartland often had , what we call "forward" heroines, fooling around with dukes and lords etc.

This country is 62 years old. She and I almost grew up together. If you think back to the sort of society that existed around our independence (and earlier), and that which exists now, the rate of change of societal standards is mind boggling.

In 62 years, we have covered several centuries of western social development, with interesting results.

As a child, in a reasonably forward thinking educated home, the last time I remember playing with wild abandon with a boy or boys is when I must have been 7-8 years old. We played lots of outdoor games, exchanged story books, had fights, and life was very innocent. Somewhere a couple of years later, the acquaintance continued but the playing and company faded away. Social activities were almost always with one's girl friends. Younger brothers were occasionally allowed by us, subsequent to angry glares from mothers. But catch a girl talking to some guy repeatedly, and the word would reach the concerned parents. Those of us who did sports had it a bit easy as there were practice days which were common, and so we learned to have great healthy friendships with the opposite sex. Regardless of anyone having a special interest in someone, socialising happened always in groups.

College was co-ed, and there was some slack. I lived in a college residency, with roommates. We always looked upon in wonder, awe, and sometimes, disapproval, at some girls, who from day one, had all kinds of fellows coming to see them. Room visits were simply out, and so there would be pairs standing at the gates and talking. Then there were what we called the Modern types, who had armed forces family backgrounds. Between attending social functions in the Regiment Mess, "at homes" hosted by the Commanding Officer, and several left over relics-functions from the Raj days, we would watch open mouthed as they organized themselves to dress up for New year balls, and Divali Balls, and smart fellows in ties and blazers would come to escort them. To us middle class types, the height of interaction was exchanging Physics practicals journals and notes. If we ran into these guys outside college, we sort of looked through them. Occasionally, there would be a class picnic, and we would learn a little bit more about our classmates on these days.

For those of us whose sports activities necessitated a male partner , like in mixed doubles, any communication outside the badminton court was keenly observed and analysed by some folks. A Sikh student who was my partner, was in touch with me to organize a partner for his friend who was also participating in the doubles, and by the time one of my friends could agree to partner the guy, word had reached my mother 200 kilometres away, about a "sudden interest in a Sikh guy". Unfortunately, the person who relayed this to my mother in a "Psst, hear this" kind-of-manner, got an amazing telling-off from my mother since my letters home were full of my college activties and stuff.

Many of my classmates, had arranged marriages in their senior year. Some of us went on to study further and work. I later on had many boys in my circle of friends, and they always came home, and knew my folks. Some of them even kept in touch with my folks in my absence.

Phones were rare. No one had personal phones in college. Even landlines. You used the rector's land line only in a dire emergency. It was letters all the way.


During the first 30-40 years of the life of this nation, social interactions proceeded at a sedate old world pace.

Cut to 2009.

The world reels under the onslaught of the social networking sites. And the cell phone. The big thrill is to talk to someone who you know only as a word on a screen. The smarter you are the more outrageous spellings you write. Overall, your vocabulary is not that impressive.

The Mmmm... generation. And my own, the Hmmmm... generation

Dressing patterns in life have changed in India. Earlier you dressed for yourself, in the safe approved style. Today, you pour over fashion manuals, an inch here and a cut here is supposed to change futures, and boys unabashedly comment in a way that would have gotten them beaten up in the old days. In the last 30 years, girls have been wearing many more boys clothes, and boys have been sporting hair and earrings a la girls. Not that anatomy is a surprise to anyone, but there is a tendency to display parts of one's anatomy, hitherto considered coverable. Picnics in college have become more worrisome for parents, and like some folks tell me, with a boring tired look, standing with your arms around a girl's shoulder is tres casual and doesn't mean a thing.


Some girls get pressurized into altering lifestyles as they don't have the strength to beat their own path. Magazines are full of folks talking about live-in relationships. How parents have no option but to accept things, as the child is financially independent.

And how, today, 62 years on, no women's magazine sells, unless it has some outrageous announcement on its cover using certain three letter words . Check out the last 7 issues on Femina.

(When I was in grad school in the US in 1970, a room mate's friend was visiting and my jaw dropped open hearing her say that she was very happy with the way she had organised her life and her daily pills; vitamins, calcium, and the birth control pill. They were discussing boyfriends, and she didn't appear to have a steady one. They probably wondered which planet I came from.)

Birth control pills and their TV ads. in India, were earlier of interest to those just married and waiting to stabilize in jobs, families where going on leave was not an option for the lady, or rural women, whose lives needed this control, in a world where more was considered great, regardless of family resources, and the mother's health.



Today, television in India, is replete with ads showing young urban single girls, involving themselves in relationships, and having to undergo the trauma of abortions. All this , secretly away from the knowledge of parents. There is a pill called the I-pill, which is carelessly advertised as a stroke of genius in a life irresponsibly lead. It shows a young girl at a dining table, who suddenly realizes the date, and something rings a uterine bell which makes the girl rush off for an abortion with all the associated secretive desperate behaviour. And then it says this wouldn't have happened if the girl knew about the I-pill. Click above to watch.

This massive gradient with which society has changed today, has other repercussions. Very fast changes, do not give us realistic ideas about how these affect our lives. There is an underlying stream of thought, that suggests that there is a pill for everything. And everyone wants it now, or even yesterday. Young minds are unable to handle delayed results, rejection and failure. And lack of visible money. And so we have teen suicides, depressions, addictions etc. Something that was not so when we were young.

I continue to wonder if we are going too fast. Every social custom, needs to live out its life, till society learns exhaustively about its good and bad. Things need to naturally evolve.

But we seem to have squished everything into a period of the last 30-40 years, what took the Western society, several centuries.. Funnily these coincide with the advent of IT. We seem to be in a great hurry but no one seems to know where we are going. We seem to be deaf to entreaties that ask us to slow down, think, and plan our life.

I am told I am ancient, and the world has changed.

I fear.

Should we continue to speed along the same graph with the same gradient, I just hope that things come full circle again.

The western world will start idolizing old styles of behaviour and societal interaction. What the western world does, we in India, slavishly absorb. It's happened before. It will happen again.

Then some guys write books saying the World is flat.

Please.

Issue a correction.

The world is round. And things must come full circle.

They'd better.

Which was more fun ?

The day after Christmas in 1969. I was 19, leaving Mumbai for grad school in the US of A, and also flying for the first time in my life, anywhere. It was a BIG event. Lots of people had kind of hinted to my folks that sending abroad a daughter at the ripe young unmarried age of 19, was a very bad idea.

Nevertheless, they were intrigued, and the few days prior to my departure were like a festival , with relatives, well wishers (I like that word; and I often look for the opposite to appear : someone who has the guts to stand up and say I am here, and I am an ill wisher. So!), friends , neighbors etc, landing up to wish me.

An entire bus was hired by the relatives, all on their own, to come to the airport. In those days (as opposed to now), you could go right up to immigration and customs, to wave at people. There were no airline "gates" at Mumbai's airport. (The domestic Santa Cruz airport functioned as an International airport whenever needed). You came on to the tarmac, and either took a bus to the aircraft, or you simply walked.

My entire departure was fairly dramatic as I played a sitar in those days, and I was carrying the instrument with me. One of my father's cousins who worked for Customs walked down with me to the plane. The Japanese stewardess who met us was told that I was his niece and she should take good care of me . (She did). That I was leaving, gradually began to sink in, and after climbing up the steps to the plane entrance, sitar and all, I sort of turned to look back, only to see the entire collection of relatives and friends on the terrace of the airport, waving desperately to me. I gulped, and waved back. You know, how the PM, GWB, Obama etc wave ? Except they don't gulp, I suppose.

There was no email and chat in those days. There were no PC's , period. International direct dialling had not started in India, and one had to book calls. On reaching the US, my brother who worked there, arranged to inform folks at home about my safe arrival. Many times when we booked calls from India to the US, we used to make a list of what we wanted to discuss, and actually kept a ticking clock near the telephone, so as to avoid outrageous spending on saying Uh-uh-Hmm, and the like. It was also the fashion then to shout on the telephone, because you were convinced the person wouldn't be able to hear across so many continents and oceans.

My folks in Mumbai, first heard details about me settling into my university, after 15 days, when my detailed letter reached them. (An airmail letter would take 10-15 days).

Cut to 2005.

August monsoons were on, and we had just emerged from the worst flooding on 26th July . The runway was spoiled by the flooding Mithi river, flights were being rescheduled in the daytime . (For some inexplicable reason, flights in India leave and arrive at exciting times like 3 am, 4 am etc.). There was huge uncertainity about whether the flights would go at all.

My son was leaving for his grad school in the US. While he had made a special trip a fortnight before to see his uncles, aunts and aging grandfather in Pune, only his immediate family of parents and sister went to the airport to see him off.

No one, other than passengers could enter the airport concourse, and so he went in alone to check the baggage and then came out to wish us goodbye. Of course we now had cellphones, and I reminded him that just outside the flight gate they had courtesy phones from where he could call us free. For a while we peered through the glass pane interspersed with big cutouts of welcome signs,bank ads, and the like. Followed him as he spoke to someone, sat down to fill some customs and immigration stuff, and then he went where our eyes couldn't see. So we left to walk back to the parking lot. Before we could get into the car, the phone rang. He was sitting at the gate,waiting to board, and would email us from Singapore.

He did. The next we heard was a call from my brother from the airport in the US, saying that they could see my son arriving, and would give a call when he came out after completing the formalities. Phone calls now were so easy it was like speaking to someone in the next room.

Email and chat have certainly removed a sense of anxiety that would pervade earlier when children left to go to far off lands. The Internet has also made the world a closed loop for news. So very often , I get some news about something in India. from my son , who has been reading it. Laptops have become de rigeur at school, and when you are not working (or sometimes even when you are), you have a chat or a news site in an alternative session. Hardly anyone writes letters these days.....

In the old days, there weren't so many families with children studying abroad. Even the postman was thrilled when he brought you blue "air mail" letters in those days. Children collected stamps, and stuck them in albums and exchanged them. Today, almost every family I know has a child studying either in the US, or UK, or Germany or France or Australia.

In my time, when I got back 3 years later to Mumbai, several relatives were a bit upset that I had not drastically changed, causing them to miss out on practicing their smart comments. I didn't wear frocks, hadn't turned blonde, didn't even wear lipstick, and what was worse, I had started driving in Mumbai , the day I landed, after 2 years of driving on what they called, the "wrong side ", in the US. ( This is actually a feat, requiring more than automotive knowledge and understanding of driving rules. In Mumbai, it is not a science, but an art ) .

Whats more, I remembered my mother tongue, Marathi, and was still comfortable speaking it. (It was fashionable then to go to the US for 3-6 months and come back unable to speak in your own language, and such folks were a target of constant ridicule and humor, which, amazingly did not bother them ....)

I often wonder how the world has changed. Today, information is available at one's fingertips. If you don't hear about something in some expected time interval, you get into a panic. If the Network conks out, you agonize over missing emails. There are so many sources of News, (all telling the same thing), but you read all, to make sure whatever it is, is true and happening.

Has it gone too fast ? Too slow ? Is all this instant communication really required ? Is all that effort , (required in attending to instant digestion of, and response to information), reducing and even overburdening some of our other mental faculties ? Is that the reason young people today are seen to be stressed out?

Is there a mean speed at which our brains function in an optimum way, so that the EQ is taken care of along with our IQ?

Does anyone know? I would love to learn more.......

Going nowhere, very fast ? इतकी धावपळ ?

My parents got our first telephone (early sixties), when I was in class 8. The typical Tring-tring of the black rotary phone threw my friends and me into technologically superior raptures. Mahmud of Ghazni, East India Company, Crops in Africa, Shakespeare's Tempest, Scientific reasons, short notes, long notes, theorems etc were discussed endlessly over it, till an unseen hand (I actually know whose hand it was), came and pressed some buttons to disconnect us, following that up with a disapproving stare, some angry words, and a hint that someone else would soon be home.

The middle eighties heralded the advent of TV in our house. Black and white. 1 channel. And "surfing" was something you saw in Hollywood movies.. We got our first color TV in the early nineties. Cable television in late nineties. Cell phones entered our life about 3 years ago. With the advent of IT, desktops and laptops started being a "required" item for anyone being "educated".

It has occurred to me that this excessive technicalization, and ability to communicate with machines, has actually been a setback, and instead of evolving our brains to a version 2.1, we have probably regressed back to something like version 0.5.

Why else have we regressed from parents who knew "mathematical tables" of 0.5. 1.5. , 0.75. all the way up to 30, to my generation that considers it an achievement to know the tables up to 16, and the new IT generation that doesn't know tables, but starts tapping away on their keyboards or cellphones , at the slightest hint of an imminent two digit multiplication or division ?

Why else have we given up on writing letters as a means of communication, while some of us still preserve , even in tatters , old letters written by those longer there, because reading them makes us feel that they are around us ; and today's communicators excel in speaking in abbreviations and emoticons, (despite the fact that electrons are free ), all the while missing out on an actual wink from someone, a secret smile, a ringing laugh, and a quiet hand on someones shoulder, saying "don't worry".... all this being available for the asking, if we only took the trouble.

Bus travel is no longer fun. Smiling at your neighbor in the next seat is a suspicious activity. As soon as you get in the bus, out comes the cell phone, and everyone starts tapping the keypad, either to play asinine games , or to read messages about earning fortunes by answering pachvi-pass questions. Some like to make calls continuously indicating their whereabouts along the bus route, even if they are 20 miles away, giving updates every now and then in so detailed a manner that it would teach the various pilot cars of political dignitaries , a lesson or two.

Sometimes you learn a lesson or two you don't need to learn. Such as , two college girls , standing beside our seat in a crowded bus , talking to folks back home saying they were busy in extra practicals , at their college, actually fifteen miles back westwards. Or a gentleman who mistook his cellphone for a loudspeaker, and publicly spoke across the bus about how he was fibbing to someone about some price.

So, while a mother calling out to a teenage son in the house may get no immediate response, verbally or non verbally, thanks to the earpiece of the cellphone sticking into his ear, various typed out responses continue to emanate forth from his cellphone, relating to random questions regarding hollywood,bollywood, cricket, one lakh in prizes , who is your ideal soul mate, what your name means etc etc.

Notice the unwillingness of today's teenager to attend a social function in the same space-time as his parents. Notice how most teenagers who emerge out of their rooms to meet family guests, have really nothing much to say, completely enamoured as they are of all the language killing communication vocabulary prevalent on wireless contraptions today. Bus stops are not for awaiting buses, or noticing new interesting people waiting for the same bus as you. Bus stops are for staring into your cell phones, tapping away to chase some snake on the screen into some imaginary hole, or a ball away from some imaginary bat. Bus stops are also for sending messages to your friend standing 10 feet away from you , in what is sometimes called, the bus-queue. (What stops them from shouting a full blooded hello is beyond me).

It amazes me no end to recall, that we never had any of these contraptions in our childhood, but were never at a loss for anything to entertain us. Hide and seek , chor-police, land-and-sea, there were so many games just waiting to be played. Sports classes to be attended, music to be learnt, birthdays to be celebrated. We even attended social functions with the family, and made unembarrassed decent conversation with folks we met, related or otherwise.

So, it is very strange that in an effort to go higher, faster, quicker ( and I am not referring to the Olympics), we keep acquiring so called smarter hardware, which is, all the while, making us dumber and dumber. Unless I have a TV that shows Wimbledon, the World cup and the Asia cup finals in the same screen, I am not getting anywhere in life. And it is now easier to shout and shake your head,hands etc at Dhoni, Sehwag, Venus,Serena, not to forget Nadal and Federer, than it is to have a decent conversation with your neighbour. And I deliberately don't mention the football types.

Stupid , technologically disabled me. I still use the old telephone. It still rings with the old tring. I don't need Enrico Iglesias and Himesh Reshammiya singing to tell me I have reached someone on the phone. As if the excessive attention to cricket is not enough, some people even have a sample cricket commentary , (complete with stadium erupting in joy etc). playing when you call them.

And I have never understood the need to combine the camera with the phone . You never see a reputed photographer, with a camera that rings and you never see him talking into his camera . So why this combination ? If you are soaking wet in the rain and trying to squeeze your clothes to get the water out, someone can click you from a moving bus on a camera phone and you might just see yourself in the pages of a local tabloid the next day, under an article saying "Soaking wet woman trying to squeeze out water next to Mumbai's second largest pothole".

Are we accelerating too fast in our surge towards becoming what is defined as a "developed nation"? Everyone in a big hurry to get nowhere. A Google search taking seconds makes you restless, because on some other machine it takes milliseconds. Downloading speeds of several thousand bytes per second are stone age speeds, and BSNL, our desi service provider has commercials on TV with geeky types dancing to celebrate 2 Mbps "super" speeds on offer.

Personal computers become obsolete much before your stored yearly supply of rice gets over, and someone like me who sticks to an ancient P3 while blogging is considered a misinformed dud. But. The heart still beats at the same speed, trees and flowers still follow the seasons, a full term pregnancy is still 280 days, and you still stir the milk at a slow speed on your way to making a kheer. Our minds have a fixed bandwidth. With so much information trying to force itself in at such fast speeds, essentially attention spans have reduced. Television has abused eyes into becoming a sort of viewing brain. You see and react. Thinking be damned. Takes too much time.

Nevertheless, succumbing to the "caller tune" lobby, as it were, I once downloaded an old Marathi devotional ****song (click to play), that implores the Lord to accept the singer as a someone looking for a key to the "treasury of devotion" and asks Him to open the door to the treasure chest . A wonderful old Marathi classic, and my daughter , completely freaked out on calling me. Why blame her, so do many other people. "Such a slow song !" and "How many times must we listen to someone going on and on, imploring God to open the doors ?"

But the crowning episode was when once, on my way home, i spotted the son of some acquaintances, walking with his head down ahead of me. On the campus where I stay, the people density is low. Suddenly he shook his head and laughed. Touched his ear. On going closer, he appeared to be having an animated conversation with himself. I wasn't trying to eavesdrop, but this kind of behaviour , was hitherto considered by me to be prerogative of geniuses immersed in their own world. Since this discovery, I have seen various individuals ,regardless of age,sex or economic strata, behaving similarly.

I just wonder, if this rush to basically go nowhere fast, is to hide away from the real problems that face us. Overpopulation, lack of meaningful education methods, lack of primary education emphasis , dwindling infrastructure, pollution..... the list is endless.

Maybe we seriously need to slow down, a bit, and start thinking about Brain version 2.1 ?

****देहाची तिजोरी , भक्तीचाच ठेवा , उघड दार देवा आता, उघड दार देवा ......
(Click to listen to the song )

The value of so many zeros.....

Zeros.

India discovered zero.

Some ancestor of mine, n generations ago, where n is improbably huge, went ecstatic over it in a scholarly way.

Carved as they are into one corner of my DNA, too many of these zeros , generally cause a sense of unease and anxiety.

They still boggle the mind. Mine, that is.

I have always looked, mouth agape, at people who talk about crores and millions , with a level of familiarity that I have with , say, tomatoes and potatoes.

Inflationary life has brought me into a certain level of familiarity with up to 5 zeros, but anything beyond that tends to cloud my already operational macular degeneration as I trudge towards completing the sixth life decade.

So it is with a sense of some frustration as well as derisive wonder that I read all this news about various cricketers across the world being "bought' for millions and crores by the Indian Premier League, otherwise considered the moneybags of the BCCI.

What does a million dollars mean to someone as ordinary as me ?

Maybe its the funding from the worlds leading IT company for free computers for India's municipal schools; it could be a much awaited funding for creating much needed transport infrastructure for the disabled; or it could be a very sorely needed finance for running the Learning Disabilities Clinic in Mumbai's premier public hospital, which actually would have had to shut down, till an industrial house temporarily pumped in some green adrenaline.

But NO.

To some industrial moneybags, who crib continuously about corporate taxes, while placing orders for their 5th personal aeroplane, being able to say "Dhoni, bought for a million dollars" , is an avidly anticipated "high". Having cricketers of "iconic status" advising them, kind of makes it fine in the eyes of the potential game audience.

Buying and selling dedicated cricketers, between sips of celebratory champaign, in plush 5 start environs, has further increased the myopic ignorance of these people who never read newspapers that report on the unavailability of badminton shuttles aborting the Indian team practice, or a 25,000 Rs shortfall stopping a carom champion girl from attending an International meet.

And lets not talk about hockey teams having to bed down on airport floors, and runners running with thighs scalded by boiling tea that spilled when too many people were accomodated in a place meant for half as many. And what do you say about someone who spends millions of Rs and minutes organising a swimsuit calendar with folks emphasizing everything else but swimming, while swimmers' parents are asked to fork out airfare for meets outside India, with a vague promise of reimbursement , and never mind that they represent the country...

That cricketing sportsmen, who came up through small towns, (still valuing their ordinary coaches who had extraordinary dedication), will now shift and play in towns with completely arbitrary culture, as "products" with a sell-by condition, is probably a confirmation that globalization is alive, well, and raring to take over .

While a nation came to a cricketing standstill as a result of Australian cricketing types abusing and falsely implicating one of our own, the main Australian culprit today is probably having the last laugh after hearing that he is the second highest "priced" player, over whom our moneybags fought.

Abuse ? Turning the other cheek ?

India's richness is its diversity. It is what makes things interesting. This mixing of cricketers from various regions, like the the Agricultural Produce Market Committee bidding for tomatoes from 3 different places, , ultimately reduces the price of tomatoes, but takes the zing out of allowing the consumers to enjoy the different tastes.

It's all happening in the name of money and speed. These guys are not playing test matches. They play the T20. Fast games, quick results, quicker money. The players, hitherto having cribbed about a crowded playing schedule leading to inadequate rest and injuries, have even signed away their wellbeing in medical clauses as part of this league set up. Play for 44 days for us every year. If you don't perform we will trade you like Harshad Mehta stocks.

What was wrong with playing as a country team ? Why negate the sense of national unity the team had naturally developed ? There are reports of some parents of players even cautioning their children about keeping their mind on the game and not on the money.

But it's difficult to take a position in a society which supports doing everything bigger, faster, and applauds its heroes who are paid by oil companies for appearing in their commercials ,saying a single word, "speed" , and then revving up those cylinders to race across the country, and the overall costs be damned.

One of India's greatest sons, way back in 1940's led the populace innovatively towards independence; no dictators, no flinging around of money, it was more "we" than "me"; and fifty years down the line, we enjoy the fruits and preen ,as folks call us the world's most successful and biggest democracy, while our neighbors still struggle to spell it correctly.

The effects of our money centric attitudes will be clear 50 years from now, may be even sooner.

The Great Man said "There is more to life than increasing its speed..."

He also said something else . "Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever"......

In this great hurry to reach somewhere very fast, we, typically, are half learners.