Self Denial

Is it a virtue ?

V-Day musings

Over the past few months here,  I have been racking my brains to come up with some purposeful topic that I can write on. But of late, everything seems to be fine – Manmohan Singh’s had a fine recovery, India is winning all its matches, the Super Kings have poached Freddie Flintoff, the temperature has been steadily climbing, my friends are getting calls from the IIMs, so much so that I was really unable to think about anything that can be possibly go wrong with this world – ofcourse, we are avoiding the credit crisis here as the Americans now have Obama leading them. Yes we can, you see.

Everything was nice and fine until we had the good samaritan Muthalik entering the arena. Just when you were expecting if life can get any interesting, he and his social outfit beat up a bunch of girls and teach them a moral lesson. While I am all for Catechism and Moral Science, that is not really my concern now. What really caught my attention was his plans for Valentine’s day. And suddenly, things look exciting on a different level.

Read Muthalik’s matter master plan here.

The implications. When I get to think about it, I am experiencing something on the scale of Mind-at-large.  Imagine.  When you kiss a girl, you either marry her or she becomes your sister.  This leaves a perfect setting for what the American’s and desis who think they are Americans call, a Fling.

These are the people you should keep an eye out for - for the better or worse (Image courtesy - http://www.tundlajunction.com/)

This is to say, if you are interested in a girl physically and just wish to have a “flingy” relationship, or if you are thinking for sometime now about breaking up with your girlfriend/boyfriend, you cannot get a better setting. All you have to do is to take the girl to the most happening place in the city on V-day – because that is most likely to be the place where will you find our saviours – and express your love (in a way you deem fit).  And make sure you do it in their line of sight. And our brethren will just jump into action and take care of the rest. As I mentioned earlier, you will be given the option of either marrying the girl or making her your sister. Ofcourse, we choose the second option after a lot of thought, and wish behenji a happy life and a successful career, while accepting  with overwhelming emotion the rakhi we will be getting in return. (People who haven’t seen a rakhi before can take a look here. You will get something like the fifth image on the grid and not anywhere remotely related to the first four. Just to make sure you are not misled when we mentioned you will get a rakhi).

I am planning to start a franchise of Sri Ram Sena here in the US just in time before V-Day. I bet the Americans will love this idea.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone !

Radio Nation…

Last week, one of my friends here called me a weirdo when I proudly informed him I got myself a radio for 20$. That he called me names was due to the fact that he could have got me one for 2$ is a different issue altogether.  But it did set off a chain of thoughts within me – about how the humble radio has suffered such a huge decline in popularity from its heydays , the slide that began with the invention of the television and was further precipitated by the onslaught of the internet. And anyone listening to radio ends up being called a weirdo.

I grew up listening to the radio, right from the time when I and my dad used to sit outside our home with a portable radio of the early 90s and crank the tuner, trying to catch the Ceylon AM signal or the Vividh Bharathi commercial radio signal. And listen away till the broadcast ended or I fell asleep. The joy of listening to that the distorted radio signal during the night was something that has stayed with me for my life. And that justifies the 20$ bill I paid for the radio.

But why, you may ask, would someone even bother to listen to a radio in this age of podcasts and Slacker internet radio(TM), let alone buying one. The answers are many and varied.For one, you are not bombarded with a gazzilion options when you want to listen to some good music; the station chooses the song for you – if you don’t like it, meddle with the tuner. And you are done. The kind of music you get to listen to are varied on a radio when compared with a internet radio portal like Slacker or Pandora or while using the Radio Guide in your Media Player, where you are asked to choose the category of music you want to listen to (New or Old, Rock or Hip Hop, Blues or Electronica…). Your listening experience is narrowed down to one category of music. A good old radio, on the other hand, plays every kind of music – from the Beatles to the Black Eyed Peas (MS Viswanathan to Yuvan Shankar Raja for the “south Indian desis” reading my blog ), without you fretting over the options. And when the radio plays one of your favorite songs, old or new, there is this little spark of joy that surges in you – something which a digital online radio cannot recreate.

To many, listening to a radio is all about popping their earphones in and tuning their mobile phones to catch a station on their commute.  While this sounds promising, to know that radio stations are still finding listeners, the true delight in listening to a radio lies not in hearing it play within your ears while you are sitting in the middle of a traffic jam, but when you are working in the stillness of the night, with the radio playing those timeless classics, and all you can hear is that sinful voice singing in the distance (for those still having doubts, try listening to “It must have been love” by Roxette in the middle of the night on a plain old radio at a low volume. Trust me, there is nothing quite compared to this ! ) . What accentuates this listening experience is not the kind of songs being played, but the quality of the audio coming from the speakers. There has always been a distinctive charm to that archaic sound coming out from those dinghy speakers,  that many a time I am left wondering if the 5.1’s output can even be compared with that miniscule piece of magnet.

And you really have good company in the form of the RJ on the radio,  rather than just listening to song after song which brings in a monotony to the listening experience. This is more experienced when you listen to the radio in the middle of the night, when you are all alone and immersed in your work (Yazh Sudhagar’s show on Suryan FM after 2 AM is a classic). I still remember the times when Suryan FM was introduced in Chennai, and the difference it made to the monotonous work of drawing engineering charts through the night !

So why do I encourage you all to listen to a radio ? The reasons are myriad, and personal. The joy of discovering songs while listening to a radio is unsurpassed. Nothing helps you relax while dong a tedious job, like the radio does. Unlike an advanced speaker system with its booming sound and digital rendition, the output from a radio doesn’t overpower your senses. It’s gentle, it’s subtle, and you do not realise its presence until you really begin to concentrate on the radio. And the companionship it provides is unsurpassed.

Such is the magic that I may not be exagerrating if I compare this humble piece of equipment to the solitary reaper that William Wordsworth describes in his poem. But so caught up in our fast paced lives we are, hardly do we find any time to indulge in such simple pleasures that life has to offer. Such as the radio.

Pleasant. Distant. Soulful.

Redundancy…

It has been almost a week now since the havoc that wrecked Mumbai and its indomitable spirit, which all the politicians have been using as a cover to camouflage their incompetence in dealing with terror and its aftermath. I think its high time Dr. Manmohan stops offering condolences and actually does something to address this issue.

But, really, what is more appalling is to see how all of us, irrespective of social status, religion and color, jump up quickly to blame the politicians. While I’m in no way appreciating the present government in India, I am equally sickened by everyone, including me, squarely blaming the government and its allies for everything that’s wrong with our nation.

I think its high time we realize blaming someone is the easiest thing to do, next only to giving advice. We talk about political failure, intelligence failure, defense failure.  We point our fingers at everyone that had a role to play in this catastrophe.   We let our tempers run high, hold candle light marches, give high voltage interviews. And I don’t even want to mention about the media’s role to fuel this rage that we have against the country’s system.  We blame this, we blame that.  But at the end of the day, is anyone of us willing to do anything about this ? Of all those who came on those TV channels, those newspaper articles and those innumerate photographs, how many do you think actually participated in the whole democratic process that we are proud of ? 20 percent ? 30 ? It’s for all of us to draw our own conclusions.

Take a moment to reflect on this. We talk about corruption.  Do you think you can weed it out ? If you are talking about preventing the cop standing at the corner from taking bribes, you are wrong. We talk about unaccountability.   Do you think you can wipe out the bureaucracy and bring corporate style governance, where everyone is accountable ? If you are talking about stopping those PDS shop guys from cheating the common man, you are wrong.

All that we can do is talk. Talk about why this country sucks, why the politicians suck , why the system sucks. But when it comes to action, will you do something to rectify all this ? Will you enter politics to clean up the system and provide good clean governance ? Will you enter administration to clear up the bureaucracy and  bring in some credibility ? Will you enter the Police forces to save this country and give your life in the process ?

We the people. We are not willing to do any of the above. All we can do is sit in our armchairs and couches, sipping our coffee while watching those eloquent newsroom editors give you cringing reports about the apathy in our nation,  and complain away to glory. And then proceed with our daily business. Do you think anything is going to happen with all those Big Fights or Face the Nation? Is Arnab Goswami’s emotional outrage with some random socialite going to change the nation ? Will all these guys actually be the ones driving the change ? NO. Why ? Because it’s someone else’s job. Well, why don’t you take up that job ? NO. Why ? Because politics is dirty, you say ?

Anyone and everyone can talk. Of all those umpteen socialites who came on those TV channels and griped away,  I would really like at least one of them to get into the field and do something about it (esp this video, where a bunch of random socialites team up to bash the government).   I mean, any idiot can talk. I can talk and so can you. We talk for a few days and forget the whole incident.  We talk for argument’s sake. We talk because we have something to talk about.  We talk because we want to be heard by those around us. We talk because we want to blame someone. We talk because we want to make sure that someone takes a responsibility for all this. We talk because we don’t want to be left out.

Sitting in your air conditioned homes and voting on a news site  selecting who is to blame for this system, or writing a letter to the editor pointing out what is wrong with this nation, or messaging to a media channel offering condolences or condemnation is not going to change anything.  Change will only happen if you go out and do something about it. Will you shed that rich lifestyle that you are having and enter politics or take up administration? Will you be a part of the change that you want to see ?

If we can’t and if we won’t, then I have only one request to all those giving those interviews on the tele or holding candle light marches while carrying placards abusing the government :

Please shut up.