Whose fault is it anyway?

Whose fault is it anyway?

Today's newspaper reported yet another unfortunate accident that took place in Delhi. A person was driving a scooter on the wrong side of the road,on a flyover, when a speeding car coming from opposite side hit him. He and his child were fell down and sustained injuries, while his wife was thrown 15 meters down the flyover, and died immediately. The driver of the car is absconding, and a case has been registerd against him.

Now, I will not even remotely disagree with the fact that in general, people in Delhi drive rash. Nor will I not empathise with the poor man who suffered an irreplacable loss.
But I still wonder, whose fault was it (a case of rash and negligent driving has been registered against the car driver). In the city, where people consider it their fundamental right to drive on whatever side they please, whatever lane they fancy, traffic rules like helmets, seat-belts and signals be damned, perhaps one always needs to watch out, even if s/he is following the rules, for people who are not (coming from the opposite side, or jumping the signal).

A colleague of mine learnt this lesson, and more, the hard way, a few years ago. Late evening, he was returning back from work, driving well under speed limit. A person on a motorcycle jumped a light and crashed into him [the colleague was crossing rightly on his signal]. Worse, that person was not even wearing a helmet. My colleague took him to a hospital, and paid for the treatment. After a few days, the motorcycle guy demanded money to keep quiet, and threatened to file a FIR against him otherwise. Now, my colleague, in all righteousness, refused to pay up ransom money. So, the other guy filed a FIR, and my colleague was entangled in a court case for some years. Every two weeks or so, he had to go to the court for the hearing, only to get the next date. On every visit, everyone involved in the process wanted a bribe, including the peon who demanded 50 or 100 bucks only to let him mark his attendance.


Whose leader is it anyway?

I am strictly apolitical, politics is something I find more than uninteresting. But still, the mindset of the people in general, which is still more aligned to monarchy than democracy, amazes and frustrates me at the same time.
For years, Rahul Gandhi has been seen (or projected) as the savior, of THE PARTY and the country. A person who has spent a substantial part of his youth outside the country, and another substantial part safely ensconced in a private world - how can he understand and solve the problems of the common people. Someone who wakes up one fine day, decides that he is ready to assume the supreme responsibilty, and enters politics with a definitely chartered plan [a five-year plan ? ;-) ]. Someone who is so naive to believe, or at least state in public, that the country is only safe in the hands of his family.
The worst part is that there are people who fall for it.


Whose hair is it anyway?

I seriously think that the consumer today is spoilt for choices. Speaking for myself, the choices sometimes overwhelm me so much, I come back without choosing anything at all.
For example, I need a shampoo, for normal hair, and if possible, something that would prevent regular breaking/fall of hair. So I go to a supermarket, and find shelves upon shelves of shampoo. There are old players, new brands, and the ones that have diversified into shampoos, from other items. Each brand has several "specialized treatment" shampoos - for dry/normal/oily hair, for colored/highlighted/straightened/permed mane, with this oil, that conditioner, fruit extract for your crowning glory ... multiply, and how many choices have I got? A hundred? No? Okay, Fifty at least. Will coconut cream do wonders for my hair, or is it the chamomile oil my hair needed? Would my hair love those micro-granules (whatever they are!), or would an affair with apple extract be more fruitful? I start feeling dizzy, and return to the safety of my home, empty-handed.
Ditto for moisturizers, perfumes, clothes, mobiles, cars ....


... and ditto for the topic to blog about. Whose blog is it anyway ? ;-)

Dinkar

This is the 100th Idle Thought I have had in this space. My blog completes a century! :-)

And what better way to celebrate, than with a long-loved poem, by my favorite poet - Ramdhari Singh 'Dinkar'. A very bried introduction of the poet, for the uninitiated - Dinkar was known as 'Aag ka Kavi' [The poet of fire], for his poems raised the voice of the oppressed - in the pre-independence era, he fought for freedom; post independence, he stood by the poor and unprivileged. His repertoire also includes a number of poems celebrating beauty and love.

Amongst the treasures I found at the book fair, there is a collection of Dinkar's poems published by Bhartiya Jnanpith; the poems selected by the poet himself. It is a lovely, hard-bound edition, titled 'Sanchiyata' [The Collection]. My only lament is that it does not contain two of my favorite poems - 'Aag ki bhikh' and 'Kalam Aaj Unki Jai Bol' [these phrases can be translated as 'Begging for fire' and 'O Pen! Hail those (heroes)']. But what I did find, was a poem I had been searching for a long time [even pleaded bloggers for it :-)] - a poem that I had read in school in textbook - a four para poem, 'Kyun Yeh Aag Bujhaoge' [Why will you douse this fire'. And what I also found was that, those four paragraphs were part of a longer poem 'Bharat ka Reshmi Nagar' [The silken city of India], i.e. Delhi - the centre for power and wealth.

And the lines I had been lookng around for years? Here goes ...

Reshmi kalam se bhagya-lekh likhne waalo.n
Tum bhi kabhi abhaavgrast ho roye ho?
Biimaar kisi bachhe ki davaa juTaane ko
Tum bhi kya ghar bhar peT baandh kar soye ho?

Asahaya kisaano.n ki kismat ko kheto.n mei.n
Anayaas jal mei.n bah jaate dekha hai?
Kya khayenge? yeh soch nirasha se paagal
Bechaaro.n ko cheekh rah jaate dekha hai?

Dekha hai graamo.n ki anek rambhaao.n ko
Jinki aabhaao.n par dhool abhi tal chaayee hai
Reshmi deh par jin ablaao.n ki ab tak
Resham kya? saari sahi nahin chadh paayee hai

Par tum nagaro.n ke laal, amiri ke putle
Kyun vyatha bhaagya hiino.n ke man mein laoge
Jalta ho saaraa desh kintu hokar adhiir
Tum daud daud kar kyun yeh aag bujhaaoge?


And an attempted translation ...

You, who write the destiny of others with a silken pen
Have you ever cried, suffering from acute deprivation?
To be able to buy medicine for a sick child,
Have you ever gone hungry, alongwith the whole family?

Have you seen the fate of helpless farmers
Being washed away by merciless flood waters?
Have you seen them cry out loud, all hope lost,
Thinking, what will they sustain on, the rest of the year?

Have you seen those village beauties
Whose radiance is still covered in dust?
These poor, helpless lasses cannot afford
Let alone silk, even simple dresses.

But you are living luxurious lives in cities,
Why would of think of the sorrows of the ill-fated?
The whole of the nation is ablaze,
But why will you get restless and rush to douse the fire?

Ismat Chugtai - ChiDi ki Dukki

I had been aware of the name of Ismat Chugtai as a well known writer of hindi/urdu fiction, but had not had an occastion to read any of her works. When I found this collection of her short stories, I thought that it might be a good place to start, in the absence of a direct recommendation from someone who is aware of my taste :-)

The collection is titled 'ChiDi Ki Dukki' [The Two of Clubs], which is the first of the five stories in the collection. All the stories are based on marital relationships in middle class Muslim families. There are certain aspects which are typical of Muslim family settings, due to which I found the stories different from the little of hindi/urdu prose I have read so far. The first story had a bit of humour, and all of them projected the ironies of human life. I liked the stories, but did not find them very interesting. I will probably not read it again, but it was a good one-time experience, and I might explore other works of the author.

The collection had a foreward by another famous author, Manto. He starts with a question he had been asked by a few of his fans [why did he not marry Ismat], and devotes quite a space to his imagination of the events this eventuality might have led to. [BTW, both of them were already married when they first met, so this was just a wild question.] I found that rather absurd way to start an introduction, though later when he narrated his interaction with Ismat, thus describing her personality, it became an interesting narrative.

Till sometime back, I used to completely ignore the forewards and prologues of the books I was reading, in order to get to the story. But, of late, I have found an interest in reading these introductions. It gives me the opportunity to get a perspective from another person who is better informed [than I am :-)], and look at the broader context, the life and times of the author/poet whose work I am about to read, and probably enable me to appreciate it better.

Orkut vs Facebook

About a year back, I joined the social networking site, Orkut. It helped me get back in touch with long lost friends from school and college. For people who are not familiar with Orkut, it is similar to mySpace, and from what I know, the most popular networking site in India. [For people who are not familiar with either, well, what are you doing online ? ;-)]

Recently, two of my friends urged my to join another social networking site Facebook, citing that it has much more features than Orkut. Now, I get invited to join a new networking site every few days (as I guess would most of you), but it is difficult to maintain membership on multiple sites, so usually I decline or ignore the mails. However, since this time the recommendation has come from reliable sources, and as a personal note rather than an automated mail, I am pondering over it.

For me, a networking site would only be useful, if I am likely to find people I would like to remain in, or re-establish contact with. Frankly speaking, I had not heard of Facebook before, so I am trying to determine its popularity by how many of my friends use it. So, I have requested my Orkut friends to respond back, telling me
- if they also use facebook, alongwith orkut
- if they have friends who use facebook
- a comparison of the two, if possible

Meanwhile, I'll be glad to hear anything anyone has to say on this.

Delhi Book Fair

The 13th Delhi Book Fair concluded last week. I was out of town in the initial days, and busy with work in the later days of the week, so I managed to visit the Book Fair last Saturday, the second last day of the fair. It was quite crowded, against my expectations, and this time I didn't find it as good as it was in the last few years. The primary focus was on Children's books, and choice of books for adults was less compared to previous times. Penguin didn't have a stall, and Rupa and Rajkamal Prakashan had smaller stalls this time. This was also the first time I saw stall owners selling used books at "heavy discounts" - if one wanted them, one could instead easily get them from different road-side stalls or Daryaganj market at lower prices.

Even so, I browsed through the stalls for more than four hours, specially since the book fair is the only source for hindi literature. One can find english fiction and non-fiction in many book stores in the NCR, but good hindi literature is hard to come by - a deplorable state. Apart from the variety, an attractive feature of book fairs are some very good deals one can get. However, the discounts on fresh copies were also not as high as earlier times - I got a discount of 10% on my purchases.

In spite of these facts, I returned with following prizes:

Hindi/Urdu Poetry:
Bashir Badr (2)
Daag Dehlvi
Dushyant Kumar
Ramdhari Singh dinkar

Hindt stories:
Ismat Chugtai - Chidi Ki Dukki

English Fiction:
Rider Haggard - She
Jane Austen - Sense And Sensibility
Mark Haddon - The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Erle Stanley Gardner - Perry Mason (2)

PS: Reader reviews to follow later ... :-)

On abusive comments

Quite a few bloggers, whose blogs I visit, have written about abusive comments they receive, mostly anonymous. I received my first taste of it today - and unbelievably, on something as innocuous as an interpretation of a sher!!
I am more surprised than offended. It was not a heated argument, or even a debate. Why should someone get rude on a thing like poetry? After all, poetry is a subject matter of interpretation.

PS: And no, this reader was not anonymous.

A Town Like Alice

This is another book by Nevil Shute I had got along with On The Beach. Since I had read it once some years back, and found it fairly good, though not wonderful, it was a long time before I was inclined to read it, though my brand new copy was lying prettily in my shelf, untouched, for almost six months.

The story is set against the background of World War II. The premise is the atrocities of Japanese on the prisoners of war, when they invaded the eastern parts of Asia. The first half of the story revolves around a group of English women and children, who are forced to march on foot, from one city to another, since there is no camp for women. Although the Japanese do not want to cause them harm, no commander wants to take the responsibility of this group. They have to struggle against lack of bare necessities - food, medicines, clothes, while they are forced into an aimless walk, which takes a toll on the group which reduces to half its initial number. The leader of the group is young Jean Paget, who takes over the responsibility of her friend's child after her death. During the march, they meet an Australian prisoner, Joe Harman, who is driving trucks for Japanese. Joe steals food from Japanese for this group, and is crucified for his "crime". Joe assumes that Jean is a married woman, while Jean gives him up for dead. After months of marching, Jean's group finds refuge in a Malay village, where they spend the rest of the war.

Years later, Jean receives an inheritance, and desires to give back the Malay village something for the generosity they had shown her group. So, she travels to the village, and builds a well and wash-house, as the village women had to fetch water, two or three times a day, from a well some miles away. Here, she learns that Joe Harman survived the Japanese torture. So, she decides to go to Australia to find him, although she does not know much about his place, except the name of the cattle station he used to work on as the ringer. When she reaches there, she learns that Joe has gone to England (talk about ironies!). She finds that although the station is huge, the town is very small and dreary, with nothing to do, and so people tend to move out as soon as they grow up - a "dead" place, just as Joe had described it, in their brief encounter in the war. While she waits for Joe to return, she visits Alice Springs, which is also a cattle station, but is a thriving, lively town. So, she comes up with a plan to develop Joe's rundown town into "A Town Like Alice".

Meanwhile, Joe learns that Jean was not married as he had assumed, and travels to England to find her. When he returns (unable to meet her, or even learn of her whereabouts!), he finds her waiting for him in his homeland! Knowing that it would be difficult to settle a family to adjust in his rundown town, Joe talks of leaving his job, and moving to another livelier place. Jean disagrees, mot wanting him to leave the work he loves, and tells him about her plan ...

The story is narrated by an old lawyer, Mr Strachan, who has the responsibility to find the heir to the legacy (Jean), and disburse it to her. He forms a strong bond with her, and helps her judiciously. Overall, a nice, heart-warming story, although predictable. I liked the first part of the story, the war years - they feel very authentic, and gripping. The second part, when Jean goes back to Malay, and then to Australia, are fine, though embedded with too many coincidences. The last part, where Jean (with help from Joe and other) proceeds to build up a whole town single-handedly, stretches the imagination a bit too far.

The Dark Crusader

As I mentioned in the previous post, my most favorite fiction genre is Suspense Thriller. And IMHO, no-one can beat Alistair McLean, when it comes to thrillers. I can state this with a fair degree of confidence, having read 28 of his titles. Many of his books have been made into famous films, eg, The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, Where Eagles Dare, Fear is The Key, and many more. Of all these movies, I have only watched The Guns Of Navarone, and I strongly recommend it to anyone and everyone :-)

Generally speaking, what I like about McLean's stories is fast pace, witty style, underlying technical details, and characters who are not superior in physical strength, but in mental strength and dndurance. And then there is drama, twists, and treason. In this way, 'The Dark Crusader' is typical McLean, and thoroughly enjoyable. The 'hero', John Bentall, is a solid-fuel specialist, who is recruited by the Brtish secret agency. He has just returned from a long, dangerous mission, when he is sent on another, with a beautiful female agent, who poses as his wife. Eight top scientists and their wives have gone missing, after they accpted lucrative jobs in Australia. After a while, advertisement for a ninth position appears, and Bentall is volunteered by the agency for the position, under the obvious conclusion that one of the the scientists has befallen a tragedy. He goes on to encounter an eccentric archaeologist and his chinese henchmen, find out what is 'The Dark Crusader', and finally come to a realization that he has been double-crossed! And that is all I'll say for now, to avoid spoiling the suspense in case someone intends to read it. :-)

Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less

Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less - Jeffery Archer

Archer is one of my favorite fiction authors. My most favorite genre is suspense thrillers, and although his stories are not really thrillers, I like then for their fast pace and lucidity. I had read "Not a Penny More ..." the first time, way back in college, borrowing a friend's copy. For a long while, I have been wanting to get my own copy, and re-read it. However, most of the times, I have new stuff to read :-) But the last time when I went browsing in a bookstore, and could not find anything interesting, so I finally decided to buy it for my collection.

The premise of the story is simple (even artificial, according to my brother), but it is fun nevertheless - a big-time crook sets up an elaborate stock market scam, and four people who have no understanding of stock market, but a fairly good amount of money, get conned of almost all of their assets. One of them is a mathematical mind, he gets all of them to join forces, and plan to steal back there money - "not a penny more, not a penny less". And the way they set about it, is enough to keep one amused for a few hours.

An unlikely experience

I have been out of circulation from the blogosphere for so long that now it seems to be sheer inertia that is holding me back. Well, that is not exactly true, that (dis)credit goes to hectic work schedule that has sapped up most of my energy for last couple of months.
I have hardly been able to post anything on my three blogs for almost 2-3 months. However, till 3-4 weeks back, I still managed to check on my reader from time to time, and each time it showed 100+ unread items. But now, I am so overwhelmed by the reading I have to catch up on!
In the middle of all the chaos, I managed to get a much needed break, for a trip we had been planning for quite a while - a trek in 'The Valley of Flowers'. The trip was rendered partially unsuccessful by heavy rains and landslides - we could not even get to Joshimath, but we finally made it to Kedarnath. I will hopefully post pictures of the trip on 'Travel Memoirs' soon; in the meanwhile I'll share an unlikely experience here ....
We had planned to travel overnight from Delhi to Haridwar by train, and take a taxi from there for the rest of the journey. The train we had reservations in, goes till Dehradun, reaching Haridwar very early morning. Though heavy rains were reported in the region, the train departed from Delhi in time. But when we reached Roorkee around midnight, the situation in the higher areas had deteriorated, and the train stopped there for a considerable time. After an interminable wait, the train started from Roorkee, but stopped again after some time - in the middle of nowhere. After dawn, when there was some light, we could see it was a very small village station, with no platforms even. One of the attendants informed us that the train will stop there for an undetermined time - there was water on tracks on the way from Haridwar to Dehradun; so the trains scheduled to go to Dehradun had piled up at Haridwar station, leaving no space for more trains to be parked there. The attendant advised us to board another train that was going to Rishikesh (and would therefore be given a pass at Haridwar) which was about to cross. And so, we jumped down on to the tracks (no platforms, remember!) with bag and baggage, stood by the side of the other track (along with several other passengers), and waited for the other train. When it arrived, we waved it to stop, and climbed up!
Though I have had varied experiences in trains earlier, this was something I never expected to have to do!! I have done this number of times in buses - the roadways bus breaks down on the way, the conductor stops another bus going the same way and helps you board that bus. But never ever have I done it on a train!!