Ranganathan street - the whys and agony

The Ranganathan street is a famous place for shopping in chennai, it is like the mini chickpet or avenue road of bangalore. The analogy I draw here only establishes the feel for the place nowhere near close to describing its appearance. 

I was warned beforehand about this place, but my curiosity got me for the better. The day I was on this street was right after Pongal, one of the biggest festivals in southern India, celebrated with great ardor and pompous show. The drive to Ranganathan street was very pleasant, going from sterling road nungambakkam through to usman road. 

The sight that awaits you at the end of this journey is nothing short of breathtaking, suffocating and overwhelming all at the same time. Alighting my the auto right at the end of the flyover, I was greeted to a show of lights, a dazzling display of greens, yellows and oranges. The streets on Usman road were clogged to a small extent, I was beguiled at the appearance. As I walked led by my aunt, I bumped into a few people, lost my aunts hand for a second but quickly regained it. There were numerous street peddlers selling fancy trinkets, nothing the sort i had not seen in Bangalore. 

In a few moments of pondering and maneuvering I reached ranganathan street, the street was clogged with people. The only comparison I could draw was commercial street and that does not even cut the mark, there were no chances of vehicular movement on the street, the people were choker blocked. Tall building flanked me on both sides, saravana stores, jeyachandran textiles, the flashing lights, small ice cream stalls, Gobi Manchurian vendors, this one street could cut the records.

I was accompanying my mother and aunts on a shopping spree. I have heard you should never go shopping with women, the corollary to that never go shopping with 3 women. I was stuck at hours end while shopping for sarees, gold and various other trinkets. The one odd thing was that there were no chairs at any of the shops, absolutely none, except for the gold shop. This meant I was either standing clueless or wandering aimless in the aisles, sometimes caring to venture out to the streets for a breath of fresh air.

I was always under the impression my family had a fetish for gold, fool me not, but the amount of gold I saw people buy in the close to half hour in the gold shop, made me understand gold rush. I would never say gold was a precious metal at the speed which it was sold.

Tired and famished I finally retreated a quick getaway to another smaller shop right at the very mention. The last shop we visited was on the usman road and a relatively quiet one, after this it was a happy ride back home to dinner. A truly awe inspiring experience, huge buildings to cater to people's shopping sprees. The women in Bangalore have no clue what they are missing out on!!

The grim reaper calling

I have witnessed the work of the grim reaper thrice in the last year. Death is a state of mind more than the state of body. The mental anguish that one goes through on losing someone near and dear is only comprehensible on a deeper level. It batters you down and puts you in a state of shock and denial. It takes a small chronicling to justify your fears and emotions. The way we handle the reapers handiwork is entirely individualistic

Everyone suffers and mourns the loss of a good soul to the reaper but as we mourn this loss, singing praises on the good soul that was taken away, there is a definite sympathy that goes out to the family's loss. The assurances come from family we hardly know, from friends we have hardly met. The words should be comforting, although they are mostly not and some people even have the expectations to make you feel ecstatic. There are people who walk up to you and tell you "to take some courage". I had one ringing thought, "is it selling in the market, how much does it go for nowadays?" 

The gruesome experience of the hospitals as we wait only for the inevitable is probably the most traumatic experience. There is a long wait in the lobbies and sleeping wards. The air is so gloomy and thick all mirth disappears instantly. The plain walls and the clean sheets makes you think, the deeper thoughts only dwelling on the inevitable pain and suffering. As there are other people who make it out of a hospital alive, it gives us a little hope. We find friends in the hospitals, sometimes in the lobbies and sometimes in the sleeping wards, people who are going through the same trauma as we are. There is a definite exchange of diseases and  doctors treatments, then comes the banter on some radical new therapy you read on the internet. It just goes to say further, the reapers handiwork is something no one wishes to discuss. The optimistic views are our solace. The dreaded words of the doctor, "please say your last goodbyes" or "I think its time you informed others in the family". The phrases so clichéd and a doctors best defence against his emotions are a nightmare for the people who hear it.

Death gives me an understanding of life and the realization of the triviality of it;. the inevitable end to every life and the passage thereon. Accepting death as a final guest of life is hard, the emotions swell up and you are never ready for the losses. We will miss them and their company, perhaps the only solace we can take is that they are in a better place and their soul rests in peace.

Real Progress

There is a fractal calculation for satisfaction and progress. In the geometric terms satisfaction would be sustained within the fractals and bound by a desire of fulfillment, progress would be beyond the fractals in a grey area of dissatisfaction and a move towards remediating it.

Real progress only stems from the trade between a desire to achieve and a desire for happiness. The phenomenon is quite a surprise, as we tend to achieve more we are seeking to further our achievements. The satisfaction we derive is only by furthering our achievements. Our goals tend to be never ending and our drive for satisfying this urge takes us beyond capacities we never imagined. If we were only to be satisfied with one goal and stopped after achieving it, the world might be a happier place but would definitely be the duller for it.

From the times of Da Vinci and Franklin to Einstein and Bardeen. These were individuals who were not satisfied with their surroundings and wanted to change them. They were not happy at the way things worked and sought to improve on them. These individuals had knowledge which they gained from various sources and used them to garner real progress for the human kind. They were people who transgressed science, art and philosophy to achieve things which most of the people during their only laughed at.

In the name of real progress we see a lot of inadvertent skulduggery. The many shenanigans people try to pull off and the way people tout to mark progress makes me vile and sometimes take a hit where it hurts the most. As I advent on my journey of discoveries and propositions I only hope to have the broad view and the great skills of observation and analysis these giants in history possessed.

Friendships

Among the friends we choose we always make a distinction to find the ones with similar interests. We have a strong tendency to bond to other individuals. Why do we do this, and how do we pick out the best of our friends? Is there some magic formula, a common thread that binds us? Are all our friends genetically linked. Is there a science to making friends?

Well of course I am in no position to answer that, but I do observe a very strong pattern and can classify them into two broad categories support and occupational. There are a few of our friends who support us, who are the source of our strength, whom we confide our darkest secrets and desires to. There are the "other guys", the occupational friends, whom we have a working relationship with. As time has passed by and as many things have transgressed over the years the apparent fact is that the importance we give to each of these types of friends differs. I have seen among my own group of friends when sometimes they make out time to come and chat with the "gang" and at other times just plain ignore the invites and search for greener pastures.

My choice among friends has not been based on availability or support, a strong sense of community or fraternity. I am confounded at my own choices in friends. The various strong willed creatures who make up my social circle and entertain me at times and annoy at some others are my prized acquaintances. Some I have met over tea or lunch, others in college, others at social gatherings.This unique set and subset of my social endeavors are incomprehensible as a selection to me. 

As I share a deep bond with my friends and form a kinship with them I see my own new community and family emerge. The source of my strengths and probably my greatest weaknesses. I do not share any genes with  these strangers, yet some are my brothers and sisters, my aunts and uncles. This tendency perplexes my curiosity and only fascinates me further to delve and understand the thinking behind such behavior.

The alter ego

As I write this blog I clearly see my alter ego come alive. The murkiness and gloom that surrounds me seems to wither away as words take shape. The happiness and mirth are a little less joyous and have an undertone of sarcasm. As I write I see myself as another person, a person telling a tale. As I write, I read, in the eye of an espoused reader.

The magical fascination of the alter ego crosses the divine path of the sub-conscious to gather strength in the reality of an unreal world. As I describe,  my alter ego invites a fascination to the many subtleties that  make up the imaginary. As I read my posts I see the writer emerge to discuss philosophies and the train of thought. There are corrections made and small pauses as I think to write. The train of thought deviates only to emerge again stronger than ever.

As we all struggle to make decisions in life so does my writing, it takes many forms. The simple to the subtle, the sarcastic to humorous, many a times merging the many tastes. My alter ego evolves to find its footing and explore the exquisite beauty of writing in a known language. There are simplistic and straight-forward expressions with no hinted metaphors or sarcasm, and there are times I am talking in a cryptic language feigning an appearance I don't wish to reveal to the untrained eye.

There is a certain pleasure I derive from writing, a warm feeling if you wish. The travails of my life and thought may not be interesting or even worth chronicling to any other person. The alter ego emerges only to deviate myself from this train of thought and give way to the whimsical and contemplative writer in me.      

The alter ego is taking shape.

Food over Theater

This post is from an email I received from Ram, all credit goes to the original writer.

Our chief entertainment correspondent just sent me a message saying 3 idiots has grossed Rs.175 crores ! A movie with an investment of Rs 50 crores makes this amount in just two weeks? Fantastic, I am very happy for Amir, Rajkumar Hirani and Vidhu Vinod Chopra, who I think have worked very hard over several years and continue to take their work very seriously. Now the new controversy generated by Chetan Bhagat will help them to even further attract audience attention to their latest 'product'. But suddenly one question ( which a lot of people may find totally unrelated but I still want to raise it) that hits me is, why does urban India that spends Rs 175 crores on one film in two weeks at an average of Rs 300 per ticket, complaining so much about inflation and specially high prices of food grains? If we are so happy paying Rs 300 for a single movie-ticket, why complain so much about paying Rs 40 for a kilo of sugar?

I must make it clear that I am a firm believer in free market and open economy and I don't want to blame the entertainment industry for some of the questions that I am going to raise or the sad situation that I am going to portray in this piece. Yet I just hope to point out to the readers some of the idiosyncrasies of today's consumer-centric and market-driven economy in urban India that nobody seems to be talking about.

Fifteen years ago when I used to ride a motorbike and watch over ten movies a month, a litre of petrol for my bike used to cost Rs 17 and the movie ticket was Rs 20. Today I drive a car and watch maybe two movies a  month in multiplexes: the fuel cost has gone up about three times to about Rs 50 a litre and the movie ticket is Rs 250-Rs 300, that's over twelve times! And nobody seems to be complaining!

The middle and higher middle class of India which is now over Rs 25 crore seems to be spending on entertainment like never before which is great, I have no problem, my only issue is the same middle class wants to put pressure on the government thru media and opposition political parties to control the prices of food products, why? Do we have our priorities right? A friend of mine who works in rural areas on farmers issues asks "why do Mumbai consumers complain so much when the price of milk goes up from Rs26 to Rs28 rupees a liter, if they don't mind paying Rs 12 for a bottle of water", I have no answer. If packaged water gets sold in Mumbai for Rs 12, shouldn't milk be at least three times that price?

Another friend of mine told me an interesting story. A corporate czar based in Mumbai a couple of years ago it seems gave a presentation to his 'senior management team' about future investments. He kept showing a 'priority chart' on his presentation screen, where various sectors were shown from top priority to bottom priority. At the top of the chart was entertainment and media (not real estate!) and at the bottom was agriculture! If that was (and maybe still is) the corporate mindset in urban India, one can imagine what the future of food production will be. Are we going to replace food with movies in the future?

Today agriculture continues to be the most ignored and underestimated sector in this country. We seem to be taking food security for granted.But that may change very fast. We may see a lot of more farmers quitting farming and moving to jobs in cities.We may see a lot of agricultural land being converted to SEZs or industrial / residential land and that will lead to a major drop in food production. The government at central level has now started reacting to this trend and doing a few things to ensure that the farmer gets a better price and agriculture can become a sustainable profession but that may be too little coming too late. The science of agro-economy in India is too complex and I am neither an expert nor do I have the space and time to right now to go into all the analysis and answers to many problems the agro sector faces but one of the big problems experts tell me is the reluctance of the consumers to accept and pay a realistic price for agro produce.

Whenever there is price rise, it becomes a political issue and government steps in to ensure prices don't go up beyond a point (and the farmer remains poor). Obviously the solutions are not easy and the chain of traders and middlemen make things even more complicated. But some mindset change is surely needed to ensure we either set our priorities right to solve the problem to atleast some extent or pay a heavy price in the future. The last thing we want to see is farmers quitting agriculture to become junior artistes in Bollywood!

The Beach

There is a quite turpitude as I move my foot towards the beach. It is not because I am harping on some mischief or some other vague notion of self-indulgence. The waves touch my feet and run back leaving wet sand piled up in the webbings. A surreal feeling, and enhanced sense of pleasure is only bettered by the rushing sound of the sea. I would give away many moments to relive one of these.

The beaches across India are treasured, a place of divine natural beauty and the calm sea. The sand is soft and very fine with a quality comparable to a 1957 chateau. The remarkable serenity in the beach puts my mind at ease and gives me a definite answer. The waves are crashing on the shore day on day, throughout the year, incessantly. The sea tells me come back again and I shall still be here hitting the shore gently and pulling away.

The beauty of floating in the beach submerged in water letting the waves carry you, not bothering to do anything but read and eat. I take some time out to play for a while and get back to the sea. As the sea envelops me I am myself again. The searing sun does not hurt me anymore, the salt and sand make for a heady mix.

A blissful lunch and I spread myself under the shade of a coconut tree listening to nothing but the wind. A few hours go by and I am still under the coconut tree, the azure sky taunting me, I close my eyes again. As the evening comes a small campfire and a violin makes the cold wind warm and romantic. The serenading songs are enough to tickle my wanderlust, out with the torches in hopes of catching the nightfall in the rocks above. In a few moments darkness envelops the sea and turns her hostile. The lighthouse far out throws a beam for the boats and ships. I move in for a game of carrom and some scrumptious dinner. The reggae music in the background can only life the spirits and transcend heaven and earth.

This account of "paradise" only brings back memories and nostalgia.