The guilt Trip

Promote or I die

It may be that we get to see such things increasingly just because they are now under the press radar. This isn’t the first time someone’s using the Gandhian technique of emotional blackmail that is totally irrelevant and inappropriate in today’s context. But the emerging pattern clearly reflects the common man’s complete loss of faith in the government and democracy as we know it today. People seem to think that in the twitter-ly world, one as to shout out loud in order to be heard amidst all the chirping. This reminds me of the old saying that the crying baby gets its milk. People seem to think or rather realise that rules and laws are only made to inscribe a glory picture into the history book. Today’s world is as wild as it ever was, only, without other species. The only rule is that of survival. As someone said, Choice is just an illusion created by the powerful for the powerless.

Past...

Staring into the far off
There sat , the magic, quiet and soft,
A determined Black, and white.
Under the horizon that marked the beginning of secrets,
Secrets carved out as luring whisper,
Whisper that silenced the waves
And teased the history into oblivion,
Sat the magic, quiet and soft,
Wanting to be whispered to silence

Let the time fly.I'm in no hurry.

New year resolutions are no more fun. Neither do i have time to make them nor do i have the time to celebrate breaking them. But in one of those blissful moments of lull when I stopped to let the world around whiz past, I thought about the long abandoned bunny donned blog of mine. There indeed was a time when Life and I had same priorities. But tonight as I began, hardly had I gone a satisfactory sentence afar when my eyes fell upon the clock and I realised that I was already late for bed .. or resuming whizzing past. I had to choose between divine state of existence and risk being deprived of the little sleep I dream of night after night of deprived sleep. Such is life. But why? That innocent sounding single syllable can open the door to disillusioned truths of life and ancestors, of industrial revolution and capitalism, of postponed lives and unfulfilled desires of generations weighing down on this moment which one doesn't have time to face and hence should postpone for the next generation to come. So I made my choice.

India

Indian Politics is a live, layered canvass painting, like the ones in Professor Dumbledore’s office. The layers could be multiple, but there are at least two – Behind the people welfare , tribal issues, farmers grievance and the long list of struggles in the foreground lurks the corporate face at the background. While the foreground receives all the attention, comments and criticisms (none of which is of any practical use), hidden behind, barely visible only for those look for it, lies the vast expanse of India Inc, well preserved, safely shielded by the other face that revolves around agriculture and poverty

Stranded

Accidentally, by a stroke of sheer chance, I happened to find myself free of supreme supervision of the boss god for a good 5 minutes and my fingers tap danced on the keyboard even as my heart was stunned by sudden lack of throttling corporate pressure. It pacifies me to take a look at my blog occasionally as it reminds me that there was life and I may one day come across one again. This time since I had more than a few seconds in my hand, I let my eyes linger on the screen and there I saw:

Last Posted: August 2009

My mind got to reminiscing all that went wrong or awfully right that had me stranded , with many others, in a lifelike existence that can see nothing beyond the helmet.

That day I submitted my resignation.

Of course resignation had much more to do with other things than my blog. But the point is, I got my answers

Rain & Train

After a long long long confinement to the home-bus-work life, yeah I know, life!, imposed on me by my mother, I finally broke the shackles (mainly because she’s left for vacation) and went to all crowded places to get a feel of the big wide space (read: one foot * number of people living) called Mumbai. In other words, I took the Virar local from Bandra and hung to my dear life till Mira Road.Now that feels like life. dear life. While on that, I also proved to myself, my inherent interest in public welfare, by engaging in a verbal assault over a woman who was troubling many others around and over herself and others. When the station finally arrived, I held on to my three bags and to myself tightly and waited to be spat out. Have you seen the movie confessions of a shopaholic yet? The scene where Suze (Krysten Ritter) opens Rebecca’s (Isla Fisher’s) wardrobe? That’s the perfect movie analog of Mumbai locals on the Churchgate Virar line at peak time (from 6.30 AM to 2.00 PM and 2.30 PM to 2.00 AM. PS: Trains don’t run from 2.00 AM to 4.30 AM).

When I was finally thrown out, I immediately ran to a corner before the ejected crowd could carry me in the flow. No sooner had I patted myself at my back for bringing with me all my belongings safely, including the band that was once holding my hair neatly tied, now hanging in the courtesy of one strand than it dawned on me that one big black new umbrella (terrified) that belonged to my mom (more terrified) was no longer with me. My hands instinctly went to the back pocket of my jeans, (instincts are logic defying), as I looked all around me on the ground. Then instantly a series of images – the next morning 7.09 AM when I would run for the 7.10 AM company cab in the rain; the 6.30 PM rain when in the exertion caused by the day long mental agony at work I would choose to prioritize going home and falling on the bed above buying an umbrella and how I would move in this cycle and probably wait for September to come so that I can choose my priorities without paying the price of getting drenched. Then I did the net loss calculation ( cost of my umbrella – cost of travelling in a hired cab instead of a crowded local train ) and realized that by not traveling in the not-so-crowded first class I’d saved enough for a new umbrella. So essentially I’ve lost nothing at all. If so then what about the lost umbrella? This is a high difficulty level logical reasoning question by standards of some IT mass recruiting companies’ campus placement cells. So if you succeeded in answering, rest assured of a back- up job. I think I’d clear CAT, don’t you?

When Jawaharlal Nehru made his freedom speech 61 years ago, he took an oath to eradicate poverty, disease and inequality. And it made sense. But after 61 long years of globalization and scientific revolution, it doesn’t make much sense for the prime minister of India to pledge the same.

What are 9 GDP growth and IT boom if we can’t make the ends meet for a middle class Indian? And the metaphor holds true in more than one sense. There are 80 domestic airports and about 11 carriers in the country. So technically and ideally Delhi should be 2 hours away from Mumbai. But in reality, for the middle income group it’s still 2 days away.

Despite the wallet burning prices of air tickets, the air traffic went up by 25% between 2003 and 2005 and an overall 19.1% between 2003 and 2008. This could only mean either the average spending capacity of a common Indian has really gone up like we all like to believe, or it’s yet another stunning evidence of that gap between the riches and the rest which we’d choose to stay ignorant of.

Considering that about 97.2 % of the population falls in the middle and low income slabs, it’s blasphemous ignorance to draw conclusions like the former (unless we argue that the income tax records should not be taken so seriously at the face value but that’ll open the door to a series of complex politico-economical revelations that the country can’t handle).

Is the middle income group not able to afford flying or is flying not affordable for the middle income group?

Up until a decade back, flying was considered a privilege reserved for suit clad Tatas and Birlas. But then with the emergence of low cost carriers,(and low cost suits
) air travel moved from unthinkable to far yet reachable for all. Just when the country was beginning to bask in the hopes of India flying, the fate of LCCs ended in mergers and acquisitions. The government seemed to be keener on promoting the aviation sector as a potential source for revenue generation than as upgradation of the transportation service for the common man.

At the same time the concoction of high air-traffic brought in by the LCCs ,the copious financial liquidity due to seemingly accelerating economic growth, the fierce competition and fresh business school educated minds led to sprouting of a number of new airports and modernization of existing airports in line with the international standards. Besides the big Indian players expanded recklessly in a greed to grab as much market share as quickly as possible. But they made the mistake of over estimating the growth pace of the still nascent aviation industry in a country like India whose population is predominantly monetarily conservative (read: constrained) middle class.

The absence of LCCs resulted in considerable reduction in domestic air traffic. Further unfortunately the global economic crisis followed, melting big and small companies down on its way. Not surprisingly the corporate world freaked out and adhered to the only handy back up solution known namely cost cutting thereby drastically cutting down on air travel expenses. India, traveling by air for pleasure is not yet popular among the general public. The corporate population and the international travelers constituted a major chunk of the flight passengers. As a result the air traffic dropped further down to a new low. The number of flights in the Mumbai-Delhi route, the busiest in the country, was reduced by half.

Pessimism set in when the largest private airline giant Jet airways (over) reacted by impulsively pink slipping employees overnight. Then the government stepped in and deferred the oil company debts. This followed by the fall in fuel prices gave a new hope. Although the fuel prices were slashed by 55%, the airlines were quite rigid in letting the impact reflect on the air fare. The fuel surcharge alone constitutes more than 45% of the taxes levied on the basic airfare. But the airline giants in their desperation to gobble up every bit, hardly relaxed the stiff prices. On the contrary the budget carriers stepped up and brought down the fares once again posing an undesired competition to the greedy giants. (No I'm not an ardent supporter of LCCs I'm just anti-Giants)

But then within a few days, the offers were withdrawn and prices hiked (abruptly) further more. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that once a seed is sown it takes some time to sprout results and longer to bear any fruits. But surprisingly and suspiciously all the airlines quickly withdrew their offers and returned to the original price simultaneously. When the credit crunch crushed the economy hard, we fell short of money to meet the estimated cost for modernizing the numerous airports and ended up collecting additional user development charge for meeting the shortfall.(rightful begging) Then they complain of the load factor not increasing despite slashing prices.

Mistake number 2 is elimination of the LCCs which is the result of the aviation sector’s misunderstanding of the needs of the Indian Market.

Any industry should have a strong domestic base for long term sustainability. Ours is still a developing economy that values worth and utility of any product over luxury. LCCs basically aim at providing a little more than the indispensable at affordable costs, which is a good business model for attracting the domestic market. Business class lounges and world class services are accessories that only the elite could relate to but increase the operating costs. When the economy slowed down, the international market on which the Indian aviation sector was built let them down and naturally meeting these high operating costs became a burden and they are resorting to desperate measures which are not helping. In short, the operational model of the Indian airline carriers lacked sustainability and that’s what failed them today.

So ultimately the carriers are flying at the same revenue for a reduced cost and for once, not at the expense of working class tax payers but at the expense of the haves and the less haves in indispensable emergency. The working class has returned to railways with no hard feelings and the prime minister is still pledging to remove disparity, poverty and disease.

women's "third base-ic" right to equality

him: KNOW WHAT??

her: what?

him: IT REALLY DOES TAKE TWO TO... you know... TANGO

her: i know.

him: IT IS THE BLOODY LAW OF NATURE

her: it is???

him: yeah, think about it.i can't... you know... tango you without being... you know... tangoed first and viceversa. also it takes EXACTLY as much you as me

her: ..er...ok i will... think about it

him: and that is why all the un-natural laws of raping don't and can't hold naturally and logically. see?

her: you'll make a good human rights lawyer.