She hit me hard, and now I am a rascal

The city of Bangalore has got a lot of attractions for youngsters. The traffic, fashion, dogs, malls, and above all, a plethora of opportunities to start a professional career. From the day one I landed a job in this IT hub, I had been nursing a small dream – I think I am still not capable of dreaming big.

My first office was in the third floor of a building on old airport road. As a fresher, I immediately found out that getting a job is not everything, but getting on with one is. I had got an easy chair, but on the contrary, the job was quite challenging and didn’t give me much time to recline on the chair. However, during stressful evenings, I used squeeze in a minute or two to move my window-curtain aside and look down to the road that goes along my building.

The whole Bangalore would be on the road at that time. Cars, buses, bikes, bicycles, and so on. The scene of a thousand headlights rending the darkness of night has always been a turn on for me. Sometimes, the long haul of vehicles looked like an extraordinarily large train with each boggy having two headlights. I would enjoy that stress buster scene with my evening quota of a cup of frothing tea.

To contribute one more headlight to the road was my small dream – yes, I wanted to buy a bike and join this traffic procession.

I tabled the proposal at home to own a bike. I was not very hopeful because mom and dad were already at loggerheads with me over my lack of enthusiasm to try for a job in Kerala and settle down there. Occasional news reports about explosions, fires, accidents and other untoward sporadic occurrences in Bangalore always had them stepping up pressure on me to relocate. But I am yet to bulge.

Naturally, the proposal got rejected. Mom and dad put up three reasons for the rejection. First: There will be a hell lot of speeding vehicle on Bangalore roads and if I met with an accident, nobody would be there to take care of me. Second: Handling a heavy bike will cause further loss of my weight. It is a matter of concern because I am already underweight at 55 kg despite boasting of a height of 5.8 feet. Third: They don’t consider me to be any good at riding.

Despite this early setback, I worked out a strategy and told mom that vehicles in Bangalore would move very slowly, just as vehicles move in Eid-ul-Milad procession that she sees each year. But still she didn’t want me to get out of the ‘window-seat-comfort’ of BMTC buses.

My next challenge was to tackle the weight loss fears. I convinced her that I would get 5 minutes rest at each signal after every 10 minutes of riding. But she wanted to know the number of such signals between my room and office. I said 6. And she was happy to calculate that I will get one hour ‘on-road rest’ every day, up and down. I need not convince dad. Mom will do that.

By the time the proposal was accepted, I had joined a new company. Earlier, in the ‘window-seat-comfort’, I used to jealously watch bikers on the road. For me they were the most free people in the world as they can stop at any juice corner at any time, have refreshment drinks and move on. If I ever get out of the bus for a drink, my ticket price would go straight to Marathahally – my stop.

During the initial days of my biking, I used to extremely enjoy the city ride. There would be lots of brand new cars, bikes, beautiful girls with their flowery scooties whirring along side. The road looked like a heaven, even under the burning sun.

However, after my short honey-moon with the bike, I began to find handling that heavy machine (it is relative) with my thin structure to be a horrendous task. Adding insult to injury was some revving guys who at times kiss my bike’s ass from behind. When I turn back, with a heavy helmet on my head, to focus the hitter, he would salute me with a big ‘sorry.’ I would not initiate a quarrel as that would cause a traffic snarl and probably attract a fine. Within two weeks, I became used to such ‘hits from behind’.

April 16th of 2010 was the day I would like to forget the most in my life. I was going to attend a company training at a hotel on Brigade Road. As I couldn’t find the hotel, I stopped at a shop to ask the shop guy about the hotel. Luckily, at the very moment, he was guiding an auto, which was taking two journalists to the same training program to this hotel.

So the easy option for me was to closely follow that auto so that I can reach the hotel without any confusion. I followed them very closely because I didn’t want to lose the way in that heavy morning traffic again. But when the auto guy suddenly applied the brakes at a hump, I had to react in a jiffy to avoid a hit. My disc brake was so sudden that a beautiful girl on a bright red scooty lost her drum-control and hit me violently from behind, the hardest hit I have ever had in Bangalore, hurling me and my bike on to the auto.

When I looked back, recovering from the fall, I saw her too shocked even to say sorry. The traffic moved on for about 5 more metres, before it came to a halt at the next signal, and the auto driver came out charging to me. He started calling even my ancestral fathers. At this point I wanted to prove my innocence.

Pointing to the back, I started to say, “Bhayya, this girl......”. But she was not there as she was yet to recover from the shock of her own hit and was stuck at the accident spot, still unaware that traffic had started moving. The auto guy was fuming up like a Yamaha RX 100 engine, glaring at me. I even forgot to breathe as I thought he was going to hit me. “Bhayya, one girl just....”.

Without allowing me to finish my sentence, he said, “Rascals like you won’t ever see other vehicles when there is a girl riding along side. Who the hell did give you the license to ride?” Smelling a news, two journalists in the auto craned their heads out from both sides. In a few seconds a hundred heads started peeping out from their vehicles around us.

I just wished I had died on the spot sitting on my bike.

So naive was the world about Copenhagen

After giving lots of hope and squandering millions of dollars, the climate change summit in Copenhagen drew to a close without even taking off. Leaders from 192 countries brainstormed for over ten days just to reach a forced consensus to declare an amorphous solution, as a majority of them were forced to accept an Obama brokered agreement on the final day.

The final (?) agreement aims to reduce carbon emissions to limit the increase in global temperatures to 2 degree C, but lacks any specification pinning down commitments necessary to reach that aim, let alone a legally binding agreement. Copenhagen, though, left a possibility of further discussions along the lines of reaching a binding agreement in the future.

Actually the world must have been naive to have thought that their leaders boarded planes to Denmark to hammer out a solution focusing on equal and proportionate distribution of the emission target among countries.

Why should a developed country think that it should suffer more to save the world from global warming? In the same way, why should a developing country should think that it should share the responsibility for the damage caused to the environment mostly by developed countries? This is not about being cynical, but being helpless when it comes to loosening of bootlaces in the midst of a neck to neck global competition.

Competition is something that global regulatory bodies see as necessary to bring about democracy in the market place. This is to make sure that consumers get maximum benefit out of each and every penny they spend. Telecom providers are vying to give out free calls and SMSs to subscribers, breeding a ‘free’ culture in the society.

Four years back, when I went to buy a mobile SIM card which cost 500 rupees, I had to go through certain cumbersome procedures. But last week, a marketing professional from a service providing firm spent a local call to see if I wanted a free SIM. So the current state of affairs has many customers wanting products at a nominal cost. This situation warrants mass production of goods and services to achieve profitability, bringing in a situation where factories all over the world would endlessly spit smoke to the sky.

So do we really need to wait for leaders to act? We, as consumers, can reduce emissions by resorting to a slew of measures like putting computers, electric bulbs, vehicle engines and other machines off while not in use. If the whole world were to do that, only that can take care of the increase in temperatures to a significant extent.

Journalism: What the hell has it got to be?

During the recently concluded assembly by-elections in Maharashtra, candidates literally bought pages in newspapers (not all of them) for hundreds of crores of rupees!

The culture of ‘coverage packages’ is not new to some part of the country. We had seen lots of instances of democracy being taken hostage by using muscle and money power in many north Indian states. For us in the South, booth capturing is something seen on screen or paper, but for people in the North it is real time experience.

Many social and democratic activists, writers, and the other section of newspapers that resisted being sold, are now up in arms against the section of media that joined hands with a bunch of social criminals to maliciously manipulate the public opinion, for a vulgarly huge amount of money.

If you are to completely blame some newspapers alone for breeding this kind of an outrageous culture, just wait till I remind you of something. I hope you remember the hardships Tarun Tejpal‘s Tehelka, an Indian weekly magazine, which began in 2000 as a news website, had to go through when it exposed a major corruption in defense procurement via a sting operation called Operation Westend. It was forced to close down temporarily due to hostile government action.
Tehelka was financially too weak to fund a long legal battle, and it exhausted what is available with it by doing so. Its staff had to face terrible police and government harassments. And later it had to depend on the money contributed by some readers to restart functioning.

In any part of the world, it is not uncommon to see working journalists being jailed and harassed by police at the behest of some political leaders for having written some articles against them. It was not long ago that Lasantha Wickramatunga, editor of Sunday Leader, Sri Lanka, wrote his own obituary before meeting with his anticipated death. He was killed by official military forces for writing articles about the torture of innocent Tamilians by Lankan army in the name of LTTE eradication.

Still, I believe it is the role of the media to keep the system clean and safe. But how far is it possible when some people from all sections ranging from ministers to police use their official powers to manipulate the same system in their favor? Have the media got any official power or privilege to confront the official influence these sections possess? Even the constitution of India does not bestow any special privilege upon the media. It is enjoying the same freedom of speech and expression which is enjoyed by all citizens in the country. Literally, the media is just a citizen without any extra privilege.

And now I will put forward two scenarios:
1.You tell the truth, and you will be terribly harassed before being taken into jail or killed.
2.You just tell what you are asked to tell by some ‘power seekers’, you will get filthy rich and your family ensured a safe and secure life.

I know you are still unable to buy these scenarios for face value. So let us just pray that the God give this unarmed media force a strong willpower to stand the tide of seductive black money.

Obama’s Nobel and open defecation in Kavthepiran

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize won by the new US President Barack Obama has got an intellectual but indirect connection with the open defecation in Kavthepiran, a village in western Maharashtra in India.

Kavthepiran won the Nirmal Gram village award in 2006 for having eradicated the widespread public habit of discharging their body waste in open, public places.

Look at this matter with a ‘developed’ eye, and you will perhaps say this: “Bloody Indians! An award is given for having made sure that people shit in their toilets.”

What a pity, right? But the award committee set the stage in Indian background and determined this kind of an initiative had got a distinct value as it dealt with getting rid of a malicious habit that was entrenched in the society as part of a common living style.

Coming back to US president’s story, there’s a difference in characters and the background, but the theme is almost the same. Here, Kavthepiran is substituted by Obama, Nirmal Gram award by Nobel Peace prize and open defecation by open bloodbath or international intrusion, or anything of that sort.

Obama’s predecessors were literally living like the world police. They lent a ‘helping hand to Israel for encroaching parts of Palestine, played a major role in throwing Iraq’s internal security into chaos, showed the world the re-incarnation of the Nacist Hitlor by setting up the notorious detention center at Guantanamo, bombed to pieces many innocent Afgan women and children, kept amassing nuclear weapons and at the same time threatened the other countries even from doing nuclear tests, encouraged wars from one side and sold weapon to the other party, and always floated on the surface with a look that they run the world.

Gradually, it became a deep-rooted assumption that an American president who does not get involved in some wars and cause inconvenience to the world economic minority is a misfit. So this was a common living style for many US presidents, and they grew numb to any call for compassion, besides losing their ability to discriminate between what is good and bad for the world community. They tested all the world matters by setting it against their business prospect, and whichever promised profit, were considered good.

The world countries have now grown accustomed to seeing these cruelties and have stopped having objection on their conscience to granting impunity to the world police. In short, it has been alright for US presidents to get involved in all filthy matters, and benefit whichever way possible.

That is why when Obama indicated a paradigm shift in his policies through some nice speeches (of course, not via actions) at some international forums including the one at Cairo, the Norwegian Nobel Committee thought it was something ‘extra ordinary’.

It is a pathetic degradation of the Nobel Prize that it sends out a message that anyone can win this recognition by doing some lip-service in a short span of 9 months - because Obama assumed office in January this year.

However, in these nine months, Obama, who was well known for his strong and charismatic speeches, dared to make some verbal overtures to the Muslim world. There are a few deplomatic advancements in Iraq and envirounment front. But they are still not worth a recognition like Nobel as concrete steps are still awaited.

And now I think I should respect the Nirmal Gram village award more than I should the Nobel Peace Prize.

The reason: Kavthepiran won the award for having completely stopped the open defecation in the village, while Obama won the Nobel for having made some announcements that just indicated there would be a cleaning up of the US foreign policies of all the so-called filth.

Mr Mittal, please don't do it again next year

It is the second time that merger talks between India's telecom major Bharti Airtel and South Africa's communication provider MTN are meeting with a debacle. In May 2008, when the deal talks first began, MTN insisted on buying a majority share and having Bharti as its subsidiary company. But Sunil Mittal would have rather closed down all his businesses.
And after one year, the history is repeating. Four months back, two parties again came and sat around a table, perhaps praying that the other guy forget the last year's insult. After a lot of day dreaming and castle-building in the industry and media circle, the talks are again packed off – this time too a demand by MTN for it to be duel-listed in India turned a damp squib as India government was not ready to 'change its laws overnight.”
It is obvious that Bharti had found it much worthwhile to pursue a futile exercise in two consecutive years. For, had the deal been a success, the merged entity would have become the world's third largest telecom service provider behind China Mobile and Vodafone, with a subscriber base of 200 million and a revenue of about $20 billion.
According to the agreement, though failed, the deal was valued at around $23 billion. Bharti was to buy 36 per cent of MTN’s existing equity from the company shareholders. For this, Bharti was supposed to pay in a combination of cash and share – it was to shell out $10.34 per MTN share totaling $7.03 billion, besides issuing half a share in the form of Global Depository Receipts (GDR) for every MTN share it gets (about 34 crore shares worth roughly $6 billion). The GDR would have been listed on the securities exchange operated by JSE Limited, South Africa.
On the other side, MTN was to buy 25 per cent of Bharti Airtel’s post-deal equity through fresh issue of Bharti shares. MTN would pay $2.89 billion in cash and issue fresh MTN shares to Bharti equivalent to 25 per cent of MTN's existing equity (worth $7 billion). At the end , as the deal was envisaged, Bharti would hold about 48.8 per cent of MTN’s expanded equity, while MTN would keep 36.4 per cent of Bharti's enhanced equity. And of course, Bharti was supposed to pay MTN a net cash amount of $4.14 billion to make sure that it buys more shares than it sells in the deal.
This created an apprehension among Bharti stakeholders that if the company had to raise a $4 billion, it would be forced to go a loan-route, but a relief was that MTN was not a loss making firm and it might have a healthy balance sheet.
And the structure of the deal had also left some questions on the identity protection unanswered. By releasing a media statement, Bharti had sought to dispel the confusion that may have arisen on the governance front in case the deal was signed. It said that had the deal been through, Bharti would have held substantial participatory and governance rights in MTN enabling it to fully consolidate the accounts of MTN, while MTN's economic interest in Bharti would be equity accounted and would have appropriate representation on the Bharti Board.
But there were still ambiguities. How would the merged entity be named? It would be more or less like naming a baby born to a couple representing two religions as nobody owns a controlling stake in the deal.
The company's clarification in this regard apparently did not go down well with the investors as that was seen in surging stock price of Bharti immediately after deal talks were called off.
Let's hope Mittal would not be repeating the history in 2010 too.