Affidavits, notaries, and keeping your cool....क्या कूल है हम

For some time now, my time has been dedicated to perusing various forms and documents , and getting guidance from various offices and entities on legal and not-so-legal procedures. A lot of my researching time is spent in the environs of courts. Lest you think that I am currently defending myself against a plethora of accusations, I hasten to clarify, that good-old-middle-class me, is involved in doing very simple things like getting things notarized and preparing affidavits, subsequent to a family death.

Cut to the very narrow lane leading to the Andheri court premises. As I turn into this lane, a bunch of guys in black coats, and sheaves of important looking papers kind of sidle up to you in a Pssst kind of way. The low tone chants of "Affidavit, affidavit", " notarize,notarize" draw my attention. I silently salute the bhajiwallas for their patenting of this approach, and half expect someone to say, " Today only !", "Notarize 2, one free" , or "Do one affidavit and get one notarization free" etc.

Back to the present....

I state my requirement : notarizing a bunch of copies of a death certificate. One of the chaps, (his judicial brethren watching the fun from the background), eyebrows raised, desperately trying to look important asks to see the original. I show it. An imperceptible shake of the head . Eyebrows shoot up further. A look trying to ascertain my stupidity. "This death has happened in Pune . " , he said. Trying to look my stupidest, I ask , "So" ?

"That will cost you more to notarize. 125 Rs a copy".

Its time for me to look up and raise my eyebrows (which are much better than his anyway). "Pune is in India, a citizen is free to live and die anywhere, I think you are misguiding and overcharging, and if you have a problem with that, let me have your registration number ", I said. I ask for my papers back, ready to look for a more ethical lawyer.

There is an amazing change . He is troubled by my non-stupidity. A bunch of his aforementioned brethren, vanish, and head down, my documents in hand, he asks me to follow. In my best running-behind-the-coolie-on-the-railway-platform-lest-my-lugguage-disappear style, I sprint after him, to land up at some broken concrete structure, next to a tree, all this in the paan-stained environment of the court. There is another man leaning filmy style, sunglasses and all, against the tree, pen in hand. He is the, notary ! In an amazing display of co-operative work, one guy stamps , one guy sticks, another guy makes some entries, and the stuff is given to the notary who signs it , changing his angle against the tree, as he endeavours to look important,wise and superior , simultaneously.

The notary has not even asked me to show the original, even once.

Out of sheer compulsion, I have become a great fan of "affidavits". Particularly when done in Pune. I was directed to this place by a well meaning gentleman, who saw me repeatedly looking unsuccessfully for stamp vendors in the official set up in Pune, after being told that they exist under various trees and behind courtyards within the official premises.

Far from the madding city crowd, on the other bank of the river, stands a ruin of an old hotel. Broken staircases creaking up three floors, flapping cracked and loosened window frames, assorted clothes drying in unexpected places , maybe they use it as a film set at night. Then there is a huge courtyard, where of all things, a large number of huge Volvo buses are being cleaned and washed. If you follow the various resulting streams and trickles of water that converge on to, what may be called a reasonably level piece of land , you reach a stamp vendor, a lady. A fine professional, she follows all the required procedures, gets you to sign at various places and in various registers, shouts at people who try to bypass the queue, and you get your stamp paper. The uneven rocky terrain is studded with multicoloured beach umbrellas, under which are guys in black coats and collars, sitting/standing next to typewriters, which would have delighted the late Mr Remington . (I assume Mr Rand is a different person, and I suppose he would be delighted too).

You show them or dictate the affidavit text, sitting next to them on a stool which always has uneven legs, and you inadvertently do Kegel's exercises, and exercises that tone your abs and quadriceps, as you try and balance yourself, sitting on a stool that is actually meant for a child. They ask you some very pointed questions as they do the needful. Ten minutes, a few angry glares at the muttering neighboring advocate, a few requests to the next customer to wait, a confident swish of the lever, and my affidavit is done.

Notarizing the affidavit is so much better here than in Andheri. You sit in front of an elderly gent, who sits with a pen in hand, while assorted minions affix various stamps, seals, , make entries, and do everything short of holding the gentleman's hand while he signs. In the meanwhile, the old gentleman makes small talk with you about big things. What the world is coming to, how bad the politicians are, how everything is expensive, how the oil companies that give us the cooking gas cylinders are being unnecessarily difficult about transferring names , even though connections are now much easier to get, etc etc. Just when he is cursing someone orally, his hand sort of flies across your affidavit, and lo behold, it's his notary signature !

Once again, no one really cares to check the numbers in my gas consumer book against those in the affidavit, before notarizing . A crisp fee of a hundred rupees is smilingly charged, and happily accepted.

I find my way out through a rocky terrain, clutching the sheets, and checking the original documents which no one wanted to look at.

A sudden rocky obstruction, a slight twist of an ankle followed by an involuntary loosening of my chappal straps. My next project has just presented itself. Search for a cobbler . I try and walk regardless, then drag my foot a bit, in an effort to cover some ground. No good. I bend down to remove the offending chappal and try fixing it with a safety pin. No success. Taking a deep breath, cursing the judiciary that has these creative locations for doing this terribly non creative work, I look up and notice a very ornamental sign, above a ramshackle shed. "Notary Canteen . Cutting chai : Rs 3"

That seems to be the first sensible thing I have seen all day.

What NOT to see .......डोळे मिटून बसा......

A noticeably non-trivial correlation between television as a medium, and distraction and effect of it on school children has tended to cause bad blood between parents and cable operators. In many households, cable TV subscriptions are simply cancelled during January to March, so that school children can pay more attention to conjugation of verbs, factorization, theorems, latin names of plants and shakespeare , rather than get distracted by motorcycle chases, murders, secret rendezvous, revengeful k-serail mother-in-laws, and advertisements for cellphones.

That leaves them with Doordarshan. If at all it is watched. It used to be that one watched the news every evening . And given whats being shown these days, I really hope no child watches it.

Welcome to the Parliament of India.

Parliament today, can be held up as an example of how a class should NOT function.

No one listening to the teacher, drowning his voice out; when one member is reciting something, others talk loudly and incessantly, drowning out the performance. When the teacher says something unpalatable, you rush to the front of the class and scream at the teacher.

Grown men sitting at desks, laughing at another's misfortune or discomfiture; suddenly elevating themselves full length, to snarl and shake fingers menacingly at someone , all the while trying to make a point; another one droning on and on and on making points across literature, sociology,politics,sanskrit, infrastructure, and even songs from hindi films whose lyrics fit the occasion like a motichoor laddoo fits in the palm of my hand

Meanwhile. the teacher type sitting at a podium, with what looks like a guard by his side, pleads with everyone to sit down. Repeatedly. he is soundly ignored and some peope rush down to the well of the hall, raising their hands and slogans, to make some points which could have been heard even from their seats. Some others start wandering around in between the aisles, some approach the officers , to try and interfere in their work. Meanwhile some three other guys, hitherto unknown for anything else, suddenly open a bag and start throwing around bundles and wads of money, as behind them, an entire group of people rise is support, raucously shoutng and making , what they think , is , their point.

We actually mugged up all kinds of things about Parliament, its functions, and its occupants in our schooldays; we were passed or failed based on our knowledege about it. Civics was an eminently boring subject. And now it appears, that a lot of what we learned, was simply not the case.

Had this happened in my school, the troublemakers would have been caned and made to kneel outside the class, for crimes, much,much less than this. Their parents would have been called. Some kids would have been marked as troublemakers, monitored, and an honest effort made to help them change. Shouting at the teacher was a no-no. You simply didnt rush to his/her desk and stand staring at her/him with a false bravado, mouthing disrespectful words. If your teacher didnt punish you , your parents would. School was sacrosanct.

And today , we read , day in and day out, about people being "bought" for crores of rupees. These are people we voted for , in what is considered the greatest example of a functioning democracy in the world. Issues be damned. Its all about payment. You pay , and they will vote against the Women's Reservation bill, and the women of India can go to hell. (If some of them actually have not already gone much further, if such a thing is possible). You pay and they will vote against a bill that ensures free education for some children upto graduation, and everything else be damned; their children are educated, arent they ? Want them to shout against a particular religion, pay them.

The young of India are learning , and how. Children kidnapping their friends trying to demand fake ransoms to make easy money ; stealing their family jewellery to finance the secret jailed paramour's bail; a youth creating a false correspondence with NASA and almost convincing a state government(Maharsahtra) to fund so called "further studies abroad" ; and of course, stealing credit cards, and splurging on malls , bars and similar stuff before the slow, long , corrupt, long hand of the law, catches up.

We need to fire these MP's and call an election.

Not because so many are itching to go nuclear and so many others cannot bear the thought, and rules demand that there be a count etc.

But because the recent scenes in Parliament, the crowning glory being the going-ons during the trust vote on July 22nd, make every simple minded, middle class , tax-paying, hard working, God-fearing,law-abiding, worried-about-children's-future-and-studies Indian, hold his head down on shame. Our representatives are a bad example .

And just out of typical middle-class curiosity, I have always wondered what happens to those currency notes that sort of flutter around and come to a stop in little known niches and gaps amongst the hallowed benches, when an exercise in undertaken to throw around bundles of currency notes in Parliament. Does someone (who sold his vote to the highest bidder, maybe, five minutes before the trust vote), suddenly get righteous, pick up a 1000 rupee note and take it to the speaker and say "here, see what I found, take it back etc" ? Does someone actually go around sweepping the stuff ? Do they keep track of how much was flung around ?

Is there checking of peoples' bags while entering Parliament? People who sell themselves for money may simply graduate to more. We have hardened criminals serving life terms coming in to vote in these situations.

Will there be a future where MP's will be subject to the same rules as a normal citizen ? Will a security officer of the august body, not allow his eyes to turn after seeing huge stash of currency notes being taken in to the main hall , and stop it forthwith? Is there something like 'contempt of Parliament' (akin to Contempt of Court ), where misbehaving rogue members can be straightened out and taught a lesson , without appointing a committee?

In the meanwhile, while TV channels continue to show the latest in the Saga of the Crores in Parliament, my neighbor, Mrs Sharma, has just packed off her TV in its original box, and had someone put it high up in the loft. Her son has just started 10th grade, and she fears elections late in the year.


Good luck, young man....

Golden Jubilee of an Innovatively Educated Illiterate Lady एका अनपढ़ हुशार बाईची कहाणी....

Intellectual brilliance, excellence in teaching, rigour and innovation in world class research.

When an entity celebrates this after 50 years of its existence, applause rises in a crescendo, the air is rife with congratulations, awards are declared, publicized, and celebrations echo across alumni-space, if the entity happens to be an institution. A familiar picture is that of parents, once students at the same place, exchanging notes about how their own children sailed through the same learning institute ,after them, and now straddle institutes of even higher education, not to mention higher pay, across continents.

Click to a story about someone, who grew up on the periphery of such an institution.

Her father was an employee, who all his life, proudly walked behind the mason, putting together crumbling parts of edifices, as part of his job. His male children attended school. The only female child, was married off in a mofussil area of Maharashtra, and had 4 children, and a very unhappy life, replete with violence . The old man, saw opportunities open up for the offspring of colleagues, thanks to easily available primary and secondary education on campus.

He had one of the most open minds that I know of. Against prevailing norms, with implicit belief in the strength of his daughters mind, he brought her home, with her four children, beseeched no one for help, and gave his daughter the finest gift she would ever know. A strong mind, an implicit belief that honest trying gets you everywhere, and a realization that ALL her children , including her daughter, must go to school, and learn from life s well as books.

They learnt very well from life.

Her daughter, completed her 7th grade, then found it difficult. Did a sewing class, and now freelances, sewing stuff , while doing a daytime factory job.

Her younger son, was of a age where he saw PC's around him, and his innate curiosity, and never-say-die efforts to grab every opportunity that allowed him to fiddle around with keyboards, wiggled his way into a group that did data entry for industries in the area. Intel may never know what it Inside this child's restless brain. Today he works on a PC , doing data entry from home, thanks to falling hardware prices, and a family of 9, that shares the single room tenement with him, and pretends not to hear the clackety clack of the keyboard in the dead of the night , as he plods on, dreams of success coloring his horizon.

Her two older sons, passed their school leaving exams. One of them assists in a Xerox copy centre, the other is a Man Friday/Messenger for a research company based on campus.

The most educated member in the family is the elder daughter-in-law. In a way, she has the most enlightened , and in a way, the most non-formally educated lady for a mother-in-law.

This daughter-in-law, has done her higher secondary schooling. Soon after marriage, she had an opportunity to do a library assistant's course. Her mother-in-law couldn't wait for her to start the course. She asked me about it, deputed an elder from the extended family to accompany the girl for completing formalities, and proudly reported to me a few days ago, about the successful completion of that by her daughter-in-law.

Mind you, life went on , all this while, and two small children were now on the scene.

But no reasonable requests for enhancing learning were denied, and theories of chaps getting a complex because their wife was more educated than them were relegated to where they belonged; in the text books, and to a world where everyone had so much, they paid more attention to heir egos than their vision.

This mason's illiterate, uneducated daughter, who helps me with the housework, recently came telling me about the Maharashtra State Certificate in Information Technology course that her daughter-in-law wanted to do, now that the older child was starting nursery school. I don't know about the young girl, but her mother-in-law was more excited than anyone I have seen whose child got a rank, say, in the JEE.......

"I told her to go by all means..." she told me; " I am at home in the evenings, and I will look after her kids. My other sons too will help and take turns".

They say God helps those who help themselves. Some of these Gods also decided to help me. I came to know of a a Trust that financed such course fees for women in need.

The young girl's application for aid was accepted, and to day she goes 3 evenings a week, with her mother-in-law's active support, to immerse herself in softwares, clicks, and other contraptions, that make magic on a screen , as well, as in her life, looking into the future.

Perhaps, nothing brought this home more than a conversation I had with her mother-in-law, my household help, as we walked together, a couple of days ago, she to her next household job and me, to the post office.

" She is having exams soon. Her roll number indicates that her examination center is a bit far away; but its OK. Her husband will go leave her and my younger son will go escort her back; she is new to that area, you know. "

She paused.

" They have a week off. And my "soonbai****" told me, that they are going to learn something called 'tailey'. Everyone talks about it in her class. Do you know what it is ? Is it difficult ? ..........."

Well, she certainly immortalized the accounting software "Tally", as far as I was concerned.

Here was this formally uneducated, unskilled lady, with a heart greater than any I have seen around me. Won't recognize a thing on the keyboard, or the screen; cannot read or write (except her name); but has been the finest example a child can ever have within a family. And she suspects , that "Tailey" as she calls it is something useful to learn.......

She has a knack for knowing what is good to learn and encourages it. If she doesn't know, she finds out who does. She has given her children a great attitude. Nothing intimidates her. Software, hardware, humanware. She believes there is always a solution . And she believes in keeping her eyes and ears wide open.

Its our turn to standby, mouths wide open, in amazed wonder.

In the golden jubilee celebration year of the institute where I reside on campus, my totally illiterate , but amazingly educated and aware household help, will be 50 this year. She spent her childhood and a large part of her married adulthood and motherhood here, while her father was alive.

What a wonderful example of what an educational environment can do in an ordinary struggling life.

What a great golden jubilee in her life.

( And to hell with all those degrees.........).


***** marathi for daughter-in-law

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 )

Evolution and Insult of Rules नियमांचा फज्जा

In the year AD 66 a guy called Gaius Petronius said, "What power has law where only money rules?"

He couldn't have said it better today.

Rules. Those noble things that made life simple and sometimes , tolerable.

Earlier these worked. Now, I'm sorry to say, it appears, that they don't.

In our primary school, Class II, we learned the Rules of Crossing the road . It went : "Look right, look left, when you cross the street; use your eyes, then your ears, and then you use your feet."

( Denizens of advanced countries addicted to driving on the right may design a suitably altered version for themselves).

(Mrs Desouza (my class teacher of 50 years ago who taught us this ditty) , if you are reading this, remember me as one of those, who stood with palms out and open, as you moved around with ruler(raised sideways) , punishing those who messed up subtraction-with-carry sums).

At that time, this rule worked like a charm. We believed everything our teacher told us. We follow somethings even today, unconsciously. So did the traffic on the road.

An effort at doing that recently, outside on the road, nearly lead me to an accident and traffic jam .

I looked right; only to have a policeman blow a whistle, and wildly gesticulate asking me to move back from the path of a bulldozer trying to make a right turn , from the opposite side of the road,almost on me. An agitated leap back, almost caused my collision with the fashionable exterior part of the bonnet of an unusually upmarket car with highly evolved occupants , who proceeded to give proletarian-me , disdainful looks.

I looked left; and got a whiff, then a blast , of diesel , as all the traffic had stalled at the turning, and I barely escaped being part of the pile up. Seeing stopped traffic on the road makes me very happy these days. I CAN CROSS SAFELY !

I used my eyes (after rubbing the diesel particles out), used my ears ( no dangerous accelerating engine noises, no police whistles, no one-shouting "Oye, dikhta nahi kya ") and was about to use my feet, when a motorcycle whizzed past, with the pillion rider, shouting at me saying"Watch, watch", and the driver did one of his angular 40 degree bends to the side in typical filmy style. He barely avoided crushing my extended right ankle. One of my friends was not so lucky. In a similar situation, the occupant of a rickshaw shouted in a similar manner, but in addition pushed her back (supposedly for her own benefit) , from inside the rickshaw, with the result that she fell to the ground, as the vehicle disappeared into the traffic.

Sorry Mrs Desouza. Rules today are designed , so we can all break them.

Smoking in public vehicles is banned . (notice how I hesitate to even mention public "places"). A request to a middle aged chap in my bus, (who alternated between "enjoying" his mobile phone and cigarette, and caused nauseated uneasy reactions in some of us), to put his cigarette "out" , brought forth questions about who owned the bus, and did my father figure in that ?

Ladies seats in the same buses, are another cause of Rule trauma. The Bus authorities, in their wisdom , and out of great concern for Mumbai's embattled, public-transport-using women, reserved certain seats in the bus for women. This rule has been disobeyed so many times, leading to arguments , finger pointing at the painted rules, and adamant males, that one day, has simply been etched into my memory. I got into a bus, and kind of squeezed ahead to the aforementioned seats, to find two guys standing next to them, leaving those seats vacant, for stumbling folks like me. I emerged out of my utterly speechless state, to give them my thanks. Really felt like nominating them for some awards.

(But I didnt know the RULES for nominating them).

Nowadays, I suspect there is another reason for making rules. Every rule and regulation has an equal and opposite reaction. I don't think even Newton realized how widely prevalent his 3rd law would be. Every new rule spawns a set of experts who specialize in bypassing them . Mumbai has an industrious lot that designs systems to bypass rules , for a price.

Buying of tickets, reserving bus,train and other seats , admission to colleges, getting identity cards, applications to various posts in government institutions, buying grains at subsidized rates, obtaining ration cards, getting unentitled medical care; the list is endless.

They don't spare people even in death. Crematoriums charge a fixed amount as per municipal rules. Details of the cremation are forwarded to the municipal ward office, for further processing, leading to the issuance of a death certificate.

A certain electric crematorium has evolved a "tip" culture where people pay them substantially more than the designated charges. Those that stick to the municipal rules, thinking, that decency and respect will prevail in the last journey of a tired life, will be left making innumerable trips to the ward offices for the certificate, as the relevant information doesn't move from the crematorium, without the "green" tip.

(In this case, a visit by the daughter of the deceased , and some loud questioning by her , in a place where women are not naturally seen, seemed to do the needful, and the information was forwarded to the ward office , more out of a sense of getting rid of her and the ensuing embarassment in front of the "paying" people, than any remorse on their side).

They want to convert Mumbai into Shanghai. Maybe even Singapore or New York. But in the euphoria of brick-and mortar progress, and unnatural huge attention to money matters, we are certainly destroying peoples good sense and minds.

It's a sign of the times. There is degeneration. The impressive Asiatic Library Town Hall building in Mumbai, today is direly in need of maintenance, if the original structure and wealth of books and knowledge, are to be saved .In all the statue obsession and individual avarice, funds seem experience obstructions. Aldous Huxley, who would certainly know what he was talking about, once described the Asiatic Library town hall building as the only gentleman amidst cads and bounders.....

Will a real gentleman ever stand up amidst the rule breaking cads and bounders of Mumbai ?

A question of statues....पुतळेच पुतळे

"Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it”

The great Michelangelo, probably said this between finely chiselling away at someone's nose or giving a great gradient to someone's waist, on his way to creating another masterpiece in Rome. Michelangelo Buonarroti was , to put it mildly, a very creative person. Very fond of sculpting, he also had some other things to say (as above) , which , it appears, are being avidly followed by the government of this state.

The trouble was, you needed to find free ,available, and unencumbered blocks of stone, possibly with a clear title, in this city of Mumbai. And that was the tough part. But, as someone said, where there is a will, and a possible early election, there is always a way .

And in Leonardo da Vinci,(1452-1519), Italian draftsman, Painter, Sculptor, Architect and Engineer whose genius epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal, they found some great support when he said:

"I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.” (Italics mine. Leonardo possible couldn't have known about the current intricacies of "applying" for stuff and "getting stuff done").

If you cannot find a block(s) of stone(s), not to worry. For a government which has managed to convert water into land at an amazing and profit making speed, why stop at blocks of stone?

Aim high . Create an island.

And so the powers that be got into a speedboat, skimmed through the crashing waves, life jackets and all, assisted by what may be called "affirmative" men and women , and did a recce of the wild waters of the Arabian Sea a mile into the sea. They came back, and decided that they would create an "island" .( Eat your heart out, Aristotle Onassis. Gifting your wife an existing island may be a laudable proposition, but I bet you never created one).

Why all this ?

The urgent need to create a Shri Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Island, as a grand home for a huge statue of Shri Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, that will look down victoriously in international globalized splendour at the Statue of Liberty, which will now be 4 feet shorter. This feat , that is, the "gazing down" at Old Liberty, appears to be a bit difficult due to various guys like Galileo declaring that the earth is round, despite modern Friedman types declaring flatly, that it is, what else, flat.

The Shri Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Island, will host a Shri Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Museum, the Shri Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj sound and light show, the Shri Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Gift shop and Food Court. Special buses will be run from The Shri Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Train Terminus(CST) and the Shri Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport. When visitors of ranks higher than you and me visit, there will be an n-star hotel on the premises, so they can have "Paav sur le Vada", "Misal a la Kolha" "Soul Kadhi Supreme, "Thal-i-Peeth au Konkan" and unnamed carnivorous items (unknown to shakahari me) , about which details will be known later. Various motorized water vehicles, will skim across the Arabian Sea (now to be shortly renamed as the Shri Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Samudra, as soon as the PM is free of the Nuclear stuff, for the inauguration), carrying passengers to the island.

Did someone ask about a freeway being earlier planned through the waters , to ease the traffic congestion in South Mumbai ? Simple. The Government is all set to drop nearly four kilometres of sealink between Malabar Hills and Nariman Point which is part of the ambitious Rs4,500-crore Western Freeway sealink project. The reason apparently is to give an unobstructed view of the Chhatrapati Shivaji statue which is to be installed in the sea, off Marine Drive.

The cost of all this ? A mere 25 million dollars. One billion rupees. The number of zeros is enough to send arithmetically-disabled-me into a dead faint.

And another cost too. A long term one. Without Zeros.

The Indian Express of 24th June 2008, on page 4, reports that a bunch of politicians have been visiting the chief minister, and asking that a statue of Dr B. R. Ambedkar be set up ,off the sea of the sea coast of Mumbai. What the Chief Ministers reply was , is not reported.

Why not also, a statue of the Rani of Jhansi, Laxmibai, who was a part of the original war for independence, thus also celebrating the outstanding contribution of women to the nation's independence, as well as giving it the honor it deserves, as a precursor, to a series of women in power in India over the years since 1947. (And we will just forget about those insecure types who keep opposing the 33% women's reservation bil in Parliament)

People in Kolkata will not rest unless the Marxists, currently reeling under Sangrur and Gorkhaland, agree to install a statue of Shri Subhash Chnadra Bose in the Bay of Bengal, and flights from Anadaman Islands to Chennai will fly low over the approach to Chennai to point out the huge statues of MGR, Annadurai, Jayalalitha, Karunanidhi and others , standing somewhere in the ocean, looking back at the land they called theirs. Of course Gujarat would not rest unless their Iron man , Vallabhaiji Patel was given his rightful place , looking benignly across his land of birth from his perch in the Arabian Sea, maybe just off Dwarka.

Helpless ignorance allows me to avoid mentioning who Kerala, Karnataka, Rajasthann, Haryana, Punjab UP, MP, and Bihar might nominate for an honorable place in the Sea. And lets not even think of states that would start clamouring for Statues in the mountains of the north.

The possibilities are endless. The consequences , frightening.

It is very clear, that someone needs to pay great attention to this new fashion of erecting statues, on what would essentially be, land stolen from the sea.

Cut to Mumbai monsoons in the year 2030. There will be no flooding in Juhu, simply because there will be no Juhu. The sea will have taken over. Folks will look back nostalgically at the walks they took on various promenades at Bandra, Worli, and Marine Drive, and mourn their loss, and look angrily in the direction of the statues on islands, then hidden by the south Mumbai smog, thanks to vehicle exhausts. The Thane Creek will suddenly look huge, what with most of its banks, minus the mangroves, flooded with sea water , consequent to an all round rise in sea levels. People will stand on the Pedder Road flyover, and look down into the water swirling below, and wonder about where Breach Candy used to be, and how they stood in line for their US visa 22 years ago. The US Consullate, having switched to the Bandra Kurla Complex, at a huge cost, will wonder why flooding is inexplicably linked to their location, now that BKC is also water engulfed. The Commissioner of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai will be relaxed at the sudden decrease in maintenance of manholes and storm drains, since everything is now officially , "the sea", and will hold a press conference on a ship to announce his success. The Taj will now be a 10-star floating hotel, and school children will wonder what the idea of the Gateway was, if King George had to wade in through deep water anyway, since the gateway was way out in the sea.


Maybe we need to create a single island for all statues. Mark out areas. The government will have its work cut out, trying to balance all the political demands. New statues will come up as new coalitions come into Power. Parliament will have an entire session to decide reservation issues in statues. All those great men and women immortalized in stone will look on aghast as the representatives of the people resort to fighting,sloganeering, and flinging of microphones and chairs. Regional infighting on the island consequent to political compulsions, will make people stay away. Mumbai Police, will come steaming in in their Maruti launches, IPC section 144 at the ready. It will be an island of statues, of people, who if they could, would simply shake their heads, as if to say "I told you so"......an island of figures, standing tall, looking out at their land, and wondering what it had come to..

And far away from Mumbai, in a load-shedded small town in Interior Maharashtra, thanks to all the power concentrated in Mumbai, electrical and otherwise, a child will be pouring over his homework, in the light of a lantern; something he needs to finish fast, since he needs to get up very early as his school requires that he walk there 8 kms each way, thanks to the school in his village that exists only on paper, and the broken bridge that no one wants to repair. And nobody really cares.



The homework assignment ? An essay on Maharashtra's greatest glory : The Neta Island - off Mumbai.

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Matric fail मँट्रीक फेल

There is a very disgusting ad doing the rounds on television these days. Contrary to what most suspect, it has nothing to do with displaying maximum parts of the female human anatomy with minimum clothes.

It advertises some energy saving CFL bulbs being marketed by what I thought, was one of India's leading IT companies(Wipro), who was, or maybe is, also involved with soap. As in washing, not operas.

So what is disgusting ?

A very presumptuous, money minded man, talks down derisively to a slightly older, supposedly uneducated, confused man, to tell him that the energy saving capabilities of the CFL bulb were really equivalent to putting money in your savings account. He ridicules the man , treating him like a dumb kid being subject to rote learning, and abuses and addresses him loudly ,as "matric fail", clearly designed to elicit a "laugh" from everyone around including the shopkeeper .

Given the lopsided standards in society today, he succeeds. I wonder what the company is trying to tell us besides the wonders of the CFL bulb.

What else is to be expected, in a society, where education has become such a business, that we now have, a category called "education moghuls" or "shikshan maharshi", patronized by those in politics who acquire cheap government land with spurious lofty intentions, and then build their "empires" fuelled and funded by outrageous fees charged from students , and never mind that several families may have just denied their current generation their own house , lost their ancestral land , denied a similar chance to their female offspring, or gone into debt, all under the pressure that "this admission was a must".....

What else is to be expected in a country where ability to threaten is often accepted as a management technique to be employed in communicating with examiners , currency notes are often stapled to examination answer books; come march-april, newspapers are replete with stories of how some invigilator was bashed up because he tried to forbid some guys from passing examination answers from outside a window to students inside, and june simply sees newspapers full of details of students who end their lives because they couldn't face failure and parents at the same time..........

What do you say about a place where an all-round brilliant student was once docked marks in national board exams, because he dared to solve the a mathematical problem in an innovative way, (way beyond the comprehension of those Kings of By-heart who go into a tizzy just seeing an English spelling, wrongly, but logically phonetically written), the concerned parents who brought in experts to prove their child's point were successful, and the parents politely refused when they were asked to make an "application" to have the child declared a topper in an exam he had topped anyway...........

What else is to be expected when authorities act as if education is only about college, and in the meanwhile, schools in remote parts of the state close down because the money sanctioned for repair of the roof of the single room primary school building, never reaches there, and materialises as a motorcycle for some one's son, who probably couldn't spell "truth" if he was asked......

What is to be expected by sets of parents so brainwashed by the rote form of learning, the neighbour's child's success, and intricacies and movement of the decimal system in the 90th percentile of marks, that they ridicule their child who is a gifted artist and or sportsman, reacting to low marks by acquiring into a plethora of mental ailments which they then pass on to their children , only to benefit a breed of counsellors and psychiatrists that has since become very prominent....

Does being "matric" imbibe you with common sense , or a halo of brilliance ?

For some people ,the answer is a resounding NO.

In my childhood, there were many women, who had studied only up to the class 7, prevalent in those days; sometimes due to brothers reaping most of the family resource benefits, and sometimes due to financial,societal or geographical constraints.

Some of these folks were mothers, some were grandmothers, not very "educated " in the formal sense. But their sense of the greening of the environment, their natural abilities in energy saving in most of their household activities, their understanding of economics in the home, and handling of family members with differing mental and physical abilities could teach today's educators a thing or two. This knowledge was never hoarded, kept secret, or sold. it was available to those who looked like they could use it.

They didn't have degrees in liberal arts or sciences, but were able to relate what they learnt to day-to-day matters of living, problems and all.

And lets not restrict it to the female of the species.

A lot of the men then, made their careers by being clerks, after some kind of basic education. Matriculation was mostly a function of the other requirements and needs within the immediate family, based on everyone's health and monetary situations. Being a matric didn't mean you calculated things faster, or read faster. It meant you qualified for a job in places like the government , where matriculation was a weeding process for others rather than selection process for you.


Today my "uneducated household help" , who operates her bank account with an inked thumb impression, can calculate things faster than some people I know . Her son, who probably classifies as an aforementioned "matric fail", runs a fresh vegetable stall, and is yet to be cheated by anyone, including some educated types. He married a "matric pass" girl, who, after having 2 kids , wanted to do a state government computer skills course, and it was her , so called, first-grade-fail mother-in-law , who enthusiastically stood behind her, offering to manage the kids, thereby sending a message to her sons.


Unfortunately, the prevalent thought today is that education ends with a degree; you pay for it, you get it; if you don't have a degree, you are not only unfortunate, you are stupid. Doesn't matter if you don't end up learning. You need a stamp, a label. And forget your aptitudes, your native intelligence, and special capabilities. Green doesn't mean trees, it means money, like the currency notes the "educated" man flashes in the ad, and the disgustingly subservient look on the face of the other.

And so the man in the Wipro CFL bulb ad, epidermically thickened after being derisively addressed by the so called successful, moneyed, arithmetically-enabled disgusting non-gentleman, will go home, install the bulb, and try to use the "savings" to build up a fund to send his son to some outrageously expensive coaching classes, so no one , can, EVER, call his son a MATRIC FAIL.

Deep down , somewhere , it hurts.

P. S. Does someone in Wipro actually see what ads they are putting up?

Lessons from the chutney stone: Mastic-ization of Mumbai Roads...रस्त्याला टाकी लावा......

Takes me back to the days when chutneys were still ground on stones. My mother must have been the last of those loyalists who looked down their noses at folks trying to make lassi in mixers, pretending that dahi became buttermilk solely due to blender brilliance, and of course those who thought that metal blades making a mess of coriander and chilles was something to be thrilled about.

There is something about fresh moist coriander, chopped finger burning chillies, fragrant fresh coconut, refreshing sprigs of mint , some lashings of kairi, all this oozing aroma as it lies on a dark flat stone, being crushed and dragged under another smaller cylindrical stone, getting enriched with jeera,salt, and other things.

So much so, that, about 30 years ago, I once lugged a biggish chutney stone from Pune to Mumbai , in a tough shoulder bag , in a crowded second class ladies compartment in the first train of the day, and won the everlasting admiration and encouragement of those hardworking women (who commute to work in Mumbai daily), who were so impressed that they even helped me carry it towards the compartment exit, as I battled entering passengers, trying my best not to injure them , and also myself, as I jumped out in a gravity defying manner , all this in the standard 30 second stop at the station.

It instilled in me a healthy respect for weight bearing exercises , as well as my clavicles. and subscapularises, and my subclavicles.

One of the things one needs to do as maintenance from time to time , on these stones, is to ensure a roughened surface. As you grind more and more chutneys, and various lipsmacking fluids kind of overpower the surface, gradually smoothening it with spicy wear and tear, a time comes, when you need to do what is called , "taki lavne" in vernacular, but simply means that you call someone to hammer the surface with a special nail in a special manner, so as to create the correct rough surface once again.

Unfortunately, the folks at the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai(MCGM), almost all of who grew up , undoubtedly in traditional chutney households, have been so wonderstruck with mastic and asphalt, that they have forgotten this simple friction principle.

So we have 136 accidents on the Eastern Express Highway in the first 5 days, of a monsoon, that has started this year, in a fury reminiscent of the 2005 deluge. Roads were treated with mastic and asphalt, to avoid fast creations of potholes, which is the norm for our roads. This time the roads became too smooth, and vehicles skidded, many people were injured, and vehicles damaged. A van returning with a marriage party skidded , killing an entire family , with the exception of the father.

I wonder if the MCGM knows that Ireland resurfaced its mastic-ed roads into a non-mastic-ed state , and restricted the mastic-asphalt stuff to roads where the speed limit was 30 mph. Police did trials on these roads before foisting it on the public, and were aghast at , what is called skid resistance. Tests initiated by the National Roads Authorities (NRA) in the Irish Republic raised questions about the materials' ability to provide enough friction for tyres at higher speeds.

Turns out that the Highways Agency of the UK , doesnt agree. Even though BBC reports mentioned police in Debyshire doing a test and agreeing with the Irish. Germany also has reservations about the use of this, and they actually were the pioneers of this mastic asphalt stuff.

Then there is this high cost of what is known as filler and binder material while laying the asphalt-mastic stuff. Science says that Stone Mastic Asphalt( SMA ) mix must be cooled to 40°C to prevent flushing of the binder to the surface, and it is this binder stuff on the surface which needs to be worn off so prevent skidding.

It may be even necessary initially to do to the road, what we did to the chutney stone. In road parlance it is called applying a small clean grit.

In many ways, thats what it takes. Grit . Determination.

To do excellent scientific supervision. To ensure that the epidemic of easy money, consequent to contractors using cheaper fillers etc, is handled strictly. To ensure, that when an adverse experience is indicated in Indian conditions, technology be adapted to our situation. Maybe the roads should have been masti-asphalted at the end of the last monsoon. So the binder on the surface would have nicely worn off by this monsoon, given our huge traffic density and vehicle variety.

Our corporators gift themselves laptops. They go on junkets to Europe , ostensibly to study governance. Presumably with eyes and ears closed. Pockets open. I wish they would surf and see this .

What is interesting is that the country(UK) whose governance model we apparently follow, had apparently banned the use of this mastic-asphalt, only to overturn that some time later.

BBC did a campaign. No change. Rings a bell ?

A police seargent in Debyshire testing the surface said "It was a sunny day in August. I jumped on the brakes and the car just kept going and going.Instead of the scream of tyre on road and a cloud of smoke there was just a gentle hiss as I passed over the road, and I skidded far further than I ever expected to."

Back to Mumbai

Those 136 accident cases in 5 days.

The marriage party where a skidding vehicle killed all but one family member.

Maybe, like the sergeant said, there was a gentle hiss.

But is the MCGM listening to the screams of those that are no more?

The power of a Canis Familiaris *** मुम्बई का कुत्ता

Have wings. Will fly.

Lest you think that I hop from plane to plane and travel a lot, let me explain that the scope of my travel normally extends to three wheeler and bus travel between Mumbai's eastern and western suburbs, and occasional suburban train travel, when the skies are not excessively overcast , and threatening to discharge fifteen kilometres of high dark and loaded cloud cover in 8 hours , as happened in July 2005.

As a person with feet more or less firmly planted , not only on the ground, but these days also in deep and watery potholes, I often feel a tinge of envy as I see planes coming in for a landing beyond the hill in the distance; no slush, no wetness, no wet mud splashes on your window (if not on you, in a 3-wheeler), no pushing and shoving in buses, no defining your space with unfolded umbrellas, no glaring and , hopefully, no shouting.

No more. Because of a dog.

A stray dog, the mongrel type that wanders aimlessly in crowded areas, trying to snatch something to eat from something we humans trash, the type that children like to stone and run away, and the type that often runs in a pack with other like minded homeless dogs, suddenly realized that there was this huge clean inviting expanse that he could run on to in the rain, now that a portion of the airport perimeter wall, had collapsed, thanks to the aforementioned rain.

So what's new ? This.

One dog, was able to divert 5 flights, delay 30 , and have hundreds of folks running around trying to catch him, as he frolicked on the runway. He appeared on the scene, a few minutes before another runway was to be closed, and so all these high tech, radar technology enabled folks were desperate to catch him. Of course , there were other things like cargo planes which had made emergency landings and blocked some area, but the dogs timing was, if you forgive the usage, superb.

Just think. Diamond merchants, bankers, stock exchange honchos, looking forward to landing, whizzing off to their air conditioned offices in their air conditioned cars, to make an air conditioned profit, suddenly realized that they were not landing, but diverted to say, Ahmedabad. And you could not use your cell phone.

Maybe , some of our captains of industry, no longer flying junta level planes (but their own private ones), winging into Mumbai for a meeting and a page 3 party, suddenly realized that they were going round in circles, and not likely to land soon. Think of the revenue lost per minute, collaborations left unsigned, and lets not worry about the jet fuel wasted.

The idea that the world's 3rd richest man, trying to land in Mumbai in his own jet, waiting to helicopter over to his south Mumbai abode, is unable to any of it, all due to a dog , is simply outrageously funny. Not that it has happened but the scenario simply sizzles. How very unReliable.

Politicians, some brimming with optimism after a successful visit to Delhi, others, seething with anger and discomfort after a perceived treacherous episode in Delhi, and some others, simply wasting their country's resources, flying into Mumbai with large families and even larger Z-plus securities, for a social event camouflaged as a working visit , must have wrung their hands in despair, as the air hostess announced in shudh hindi about the diversion to an airport 600 miles away. (And that state was ruled by the opposition....).

The rest kept circling round and round , giving everyone a birds eye view of the flooding , the slums, the traffic, and the uprooted trees.

Some flights were international. Some carried people from the worlds most advanced IT companies. NRI chaps returning home, participating in the newly happening "brain gain". Some were terribly embarrassed. Some were desperate, they had interviews to appear for. Some like my friend, were actually kind of relieved - this would be an unexpected off, in their heavily crowded, day-to-day routine, they were returning to. Some just took a deep breath.

But I often wonder. Knowing the nature of the population and density just outside the perimeter wall, should they be pursuing some added technology besides the brick and mortar wall ? Some kind of ultrasonic/electronic sound technology that only animals would hear and keep away ? Is building an airport only about making five star amenities in lounges, and newer technology for the air traffic controllers? For a city with a huge population, would it be a feasible solution to train and employ local lads to guard the perimeter walls to avoid such things ? Is technology all about machines, smarter, faster, bigger , or is it about trying to improve the lot of the people who live around you?

Maybe the dog has an answer. Maybe it is trying to tell us something. Maybe we need to pay attention to the little things.

Like someone said, " The intelligence of a Poodle and the loyalty of a Lassie. The bark of a Shepherd and the heart of a Saint Bernard. The spots of a Dalmatian, the size of a Schnauzer, and the speed of a Greyhound. A genuine, Mumbai ka kutta has it all."

***Canis Familiaris : mongrel dog

Tencket, anyone ? अगोबाई, टेनीस का क्रीकेट हे ?

Cloudburst after cloudburst in defiance of the Met office predictions, heralding the angry onset of this year's monsoon, flooded railway tracks, deep water filled roads, municipal authorities fibbing and giving creative excuses on most TV channels, has made me gravitate towards the sports channels, which I had hitherto relegated to the trash folder ever since the ostentatious overdose of IPL happened.

It's Sunday evening, and I see Rafael Nadal serving at 198 mph at Roger Federer. Maybe it is kmph. But if you look at it from the ball's perspective, it may be similar to what it feels when being flung out of the curved palms of Ishant Sharma or Mr Akhtar.

Which has got me thinking. (Regardless of the fact that a lot of people think such an event is difficult to imagine).

Anyone interested in Tencket ?

A bunch of 11 people , playing on a pitch, versus two guys holding bats. One guy running in and hurling a ball, taking care to not bend his elbow more than so many degrees. Bat swipes the ball, some of the 11 run after it, while the batters keep running between the two ends of the pitch.

Imagine a game where most things remain same, but the ball is flung with the help of a tennis racket. The bowler runs in, tosses the ball high up, takes a few more steps and smashes a serve on the pitch. 200 kmph . Maybe even mph, given that you need to bang the ball much closer than on a tennis court. The secret is to know how high up and at what angle to toss the ball, so you can whack it before being no-balled.

You can even call the racket , a "backet", out of consideration for cricketing types. The batting guys will have to be really alert while performing their stuff. Of course umpires will have to considerably reposition themselves so as to not retire hurt due to a tennis racket smacking them .

It will mean the bowler must take return catches, if any, with one hand. Its been done before, the one handed catches, that is.

Of course this will mean redefining the tennis racket gutting material. Normal gut will not handle the red cherry.

Just like in current matches, you have guys from the batting team running in with spare bats and gloves , sometimes to pass messages from the gurus inside, you will now have the bowling side's benched payers running in with different tennis rackets for the bowler to check. With the stunning impact on the ball, once from the tennis racket and once from the cricket bat, players will have to figure out ways to make use of the innovative wear and tear on the ball, as well as better ways of polishing the ball, than rubbing it in weird parts of their trousers.

There will be a new type of spin. Doosras and Teesras will be a thing of the past. This will some kind super fast spin. Folks will now specialize in Satwas.

Think of the new stuff you could add in the rules . Bowlers taking one handed catches from their own bowling (with a racket), can now subtract 3 runs from the batting side.

Guys fielding near the boundary in deep and silly positions, can do so with a racket in hand when required. Very useful while stopping boundaries (even as they slide in the slush), and bouncing the ball above the racket , over to themselves to take a catch. Such a "catch" would then be called a "snatch".

T-20 authorities will curse the day they made the rule about resolving a tie by bowling at the stumps . Serving and smashing the stumps will be so much easier.

Third umpires , who tend to have doubts over the television replays will now be assisted by tennis umpires. Bowlers who make a fuss, come running in, and suddenly decelerate and cancel the run-up , will be glared at by the umpire, who will, in his best Wimbledon imitation say "Time!" while giving the bowler a dirty look, and asking him to serve the next ball immediately.

Think of Billy Bowden doing some newer steps while declaring someone out. Dennis Lillee will now be assisted by a tennis player . Sania Mirza will be advising the Deccan Chargers, and people will crowd the next IPL fixture to watch her sitting in the dugout . Shahrukh Khan will hire Leander Paes for the Kolkatta Knightriders. Mahesh Bhupathi will give the nod to Rahul Dravid. Dhoni, aiaiyo, will be happy to appoint Bopanna. And Shane Warne will probably take tennis lessons himself .

With so much excitement, the Page 3 , cricket ignorant IPL owners who deemed it necessary to outsource expressions of excitement to the Washington Redskins and similar outfits (pun intended), will find that cheerleaders (version 1.1) has been upgraded, and that version 1.2 now consists of page 1 common folks, who throng the stadiums to watch their favourite players, make witty posters, do Mexican waves, bravely face up when hit by a six (war injuries are honorable), demand sixes, shout themselves hoarse over a diving catch 2 cms short of the boundary and quieten down dangerously when Sachin , just out, walks back to the pavilion, looking up at the sky.

The BCCI, in its new upwardly mobile attitude (thanks to the several hundred crores from the IPL), will sniff at Mahesh Bhupati and Bopanna, and hold talks with Rafael Nadal, Andy Roddick, and Lleyton Hewitt. Chak De situations will demand the presence of the Williams sisters, and there will be big competetion with Maria Sharapova announcing her entry into coaching.

Or should I say Federer ?

The last time i looked he wasn't doing to well at the French Open finals.