Asparagus densiflorus

Returning home one day, I saw a wagon-load of Asparagus densiflorus dumped in the pavement outside our building. A casualty of the annual landscaping, I could not bring myself to let them die.

They expressed their distaste for the painted KFC tubs that I had converted into pots by drying up, but I refused to give up on them. If what they craved was neglect, they got it- I watered them, but did little else.

They hated the monsoons, but thrived during winter. If the pigeons tried to convert them into nests, they fought back.

Last week they even flowered!!!

What Change ?

Did I vote last Thursday?
Short answer - No.
Real answer – I did not, because I could not. I had filled up the forms to get myself registered as a voter in Bombay, but my name never found its way into the voter’s list and I just did not have the bandwidth to run around the offices to get it inserted.
Will I vote next time round?
Definitely. My country deserves much more than sheer apathy.

I still think my vote is precious. Going by the number of fingers sporting the India Ink tattoos, almost all my colleagues think that way too. Why then did only slightly over 40% of the population of my city exercise their franchise?

Sure, many of the migratory workers would have gone on their annual pilgrimage to their respective ‘gaons’; a large chunk of the middle class would be taking advantage of the long summer holidays to avail their LTAs- none of them would be willing or able to air-dash to Bombay for a day to cast their vote.

But what about educated, newly enlightened upper middle class people who took to the streets with their hand crafted candles post 26/11? Could they not have left for their weekend break in Lonavala or Goa after exercising their franchise? When so many ‘people like them’ took the plunge this time round, could they not have supported their candidature by casting their vote?

“Be the change you want to see”, said the Father of the Nation. After our fantastic showing last Thursday, do we even have the right to call for change?

Mamma, I am mad!!!!

“Mamma, I’m mad”, announced my three-year old.

Coming from him, I knew it could not be a simple statement of fact, or intent– there had to be a catch somewhere. But before I could probe further, he proceeded to explain what he had in mind.

“I’m mad. Now, can I have some salt?”

Flashback! All those dozens of times when he came to me demanding that I give him a spoonful of salt, and I responded, “Are you mad or what? Does anyone eat salt?”

After that bit of irrefutable logic, how could I resist giving him what he wanted?

The Color Purple

Though I have never been really been tempted to read the book, I have almost always been aware of Alice Walker’s ‘The Color Purple’, mainly because Woopie Goldberg’s first starring role was in the movie based on the book. Browsing at my favourite bookstore the other day, I chanced upon a recent reprint of the book, and bought it mainly because the cover was so attractive.

On the face of it, I should not have liked the book. Rape, incest, poverty, gender and racial discrimination – the book promised to be rather morbid. And though I keep trying to make myself read ‘good’ books on human suffering, I will not pretend I enjoy them.

But ‘The Color Purple’ was a happy exception to the rule. Celie suffers, but accepts her suffering to such an extent, she doesn’t go into the gory details. Her first letter to God talks about how he put his thing in her, and when she cried told her to, “better shut up and get used to it.” By the end she writes the second letter to God, the child is born, taken away, and her mother dead. No long morbid descriptions of her plight. Just an almost clinical letter to God, all the more effective because she seems almost detached while describing her predicament.

The entire book proceeds in the same manner. Jumps of a few months, or even a few years, accomplished effectively from one letter to the next. Celie’s silent acquisition to whatever is meted out to her morphing into a realisation that she is a person in her own right.

Gender roles gradually bend, everyone becomes a better person than (s)he started out as, almost everyone is victorious on their terms, reality is not compromised – The Color Purple is very much my kind of book. I am glad I picked it up. Judging a book by its covers is not always a bad thing.

Plagiarism - does anyone even accept copying as stealing?

I am probably the only Indian woman of my generation who’s teen years were totally bypassed by Mills and Boons (MB to all but the uninitiated). But even while my geeky nose was buried in Issac Asimov, I could not but be aware of the MB Universe that everyone else was a part of.
It was therefore with a smile of recognition that I read Niranjana Iyer’s blog post on India’s romance with MB. But the smile was replaced with a frown when I read a subsequent post of hers on how India’s ‘No. One Magazine’ plagiarised her work.

Damayanti Dutta, the Deputy Editor of India Today, in her blog on India Today dot In seemed to have exactly the same experiences and reactions to Mills and Boons as did Niranjana. Which is not surprising considering Niranjana spoke about the reactions of an entire generation of teens, not just her own.

What is surprising is the fact that Damayanti Dutta’s ideas flowed in exactly the same order as did Niranjana’s.

For instance, when Niranjana wrote - “Back in eighties/early nineties India, every girl I knew read (or had read) Mills and Boon romances. They were especially sought-after during boring college lectures–the books were small enough and bendy enough to slip comfortably into Samuelson’s Macroeconomics text, or P.L.Soni’s magnum opus on Inorganic Chemistry.” – she was talking about a universal experience.

But was it so universal that Damayanti Dutta could not be exactly parallel Niranjana’s paragraph construction when she wrote – “All the girls I knew back in the ’80s and ’90s—in school, in the neighbourhood—read (or flipped through relevant pages of) those Mills and Boon romances. We would narrate stories to each other, lend and share books, and fall asleep clutching an M&B. Not just that, those handy volumes were our best friend at all those sleep-inducing, yawn-invoking classes, slipping neatly inside a Resnick & Halliday physics tome or an A.L. Basham’s Wonder That Was India and enveloping us in a warm glow.”?

Niranjana thought that of the 3 billion copies shipped worldwide, at least one billion found their way to India. Damayanti Dutta has come up with very similar figures – she thinks that of the 300 crore books shipped out, one third made their way to India. Neither of them come up with any rationale to back up the number – what is the probability that two people come up with exactly the same number without following any particular paths of logical deduction?


There is no doubt that Damayanti Dutta was not just inspired by Niranjana’s piece, she cleverly reworded the entire piece and tried to pass it off as her own.

The question is what next? The least Niranjana can expect is a public apology, an acknowledgement of her piece, and a monetary compensation in lieu with whatever the India Today Group/ Damayanti Dutta has made out of plagiarising Niranjana’s work. But being an Indian, Damayanti Dutta is probably used to 'mugging' answers from guide books and passing it off as her own - she probably doesn't even realise that copying someone else's ideas is also stealing, even if she presents them in 'her own words'.

Kanhaiya

"Charon taraf gopiyan, beech mein Kanhaiya.
Pretty maidens dancing all around Kanhaiya."

Long before he revealed himself to the world as a God, Kanhaiya was the flirtatious cowhand who had all the girls in Vrindavan dancing to his tune. Young or old, married or single– no female was immune to his impish charms. He hid their clothes while they were in the communal baths- but could anyone stay angry with him after he flashed that charming smile?

Spring turned to Summer. Kanhaiya the cowhand was forced to become the King of Dwarka. But his tunes continue to echo in Vrindavan.

The Examination System

We were discussing education and the examination system in office yesterday.

“I really don’t care if my daughter gets 95% or 70%,” said the mother of a new teen, “as long as she gets the concepts right.”

“Why even 70%?”, challenged a colleague, “Isn’t it enough that she pass her exams, provided she gets the concepts right?”

In principle, he had a point. Grasping concepts and retaining knowledge should be the purpose of education, not clearing examinations. But, what does it say about an education system, if a student who understands the concepts gets less than 70% in the examinations?