Field of dreams in Bangalore

I lived in Bangalore for a year after college, working in a lead-polluted battery factory. I was one of ten engineering trainees hired out of college, to replace the fast-aging crop of mid-level managers. Except for me, everyone else was a true-to-blood Bangalorean; born and raised. We were young, and had a lot of time on our hands. There were many 2-hour lunches; good food, lots of smoking and with stories to tell. One of the stories I heard from these guys stuck with me all these years. It is about the founder of a string of educational institutions and hospitals founded and built by one man, M.S.Ramaiah. Most of the guys were from the M.S.Ramaiah College of engineering, and claimed to know the story of the man.

One day, decades ago, when Mr. Ramaiah was an up and coming businessman, with gobs of money and clout in the city, he heard devastating news. His favorite astrologer told him that his days were numbered. Something bad is in store for him, a death so imminent that he could die getting out of his chair after breakfast. It was strange, because he was in good health, and had as many enemies as one in his position would have, no more no less. The astrologer however gave him an out; there almost always is in astrology. He had to build something new all the time, to keep Lord Yama (Indian version of the grim reaper) at bay. My friends claimed that his astrologer’s words possessed Mr.Ramaiah. Thus began the tale of the construction of more and more extravagant buildings in the city. One building grew in size to become an interconnected city of buildings. To the college of engineering, was added a medical college, a college for business administration, and then dorms for the students, cafeterias, parks and administration buildings. Keeping true to his intention of keeping death at bay, the man kept building and building. When he ran out of land to build, he bought up large tracts of agricultural land, and built some more. After colleges came the hospitals. There begs a question at this point, was there a demand for all this? Or is it one of those Field of Dreams sort of thing; If you build it, they will come. It was the latter, turns out, and in what way!

This was the beginning of the eighties, when Bangalore was still the garden city, surrounded by suburbs of villages and fertile agricultural fields. Information technology was beginning to take root in the city. Young men and women were beginning to realize that engineering and medical colleges were the way out of the middle class doldrums they were stuck in their whole lives, with their parents’ meager government jobs. The explosion in applicants, dove-tailed nicely with the extra space Mr.Ramaiah had created to appease his astrologer. The aging population with health issues, coupled with the ever-increasing heath issues among the desk jockey computer engineers, also fed the hospitals that he created. I can only imagine the explosion in net worth of him and his company, with the surge in demand for his products. Simply brilliant.

Thinking back about all this, it seemed like a very shrewd business investment, rather than the whims of a man who may or may not have been keeping death at bay. Did it work you may ask. Turns out it did. He lived to see the ripe old age of 70. I think he stuck around, just to figure out if the buildings got used. Wouldn’t a man who spent millions in building something be half curious to see if he recovered his investments? Incidentally, the institution is still building hospitals and colleges, and this time time around, they already have the demand. This was a classic case of a brick and mortar business. Building and education, rolled into one. I am sure the astrologer got a handsome reward. May I suggest naming the college of business after him?

Memories of the Moonlight Sonata

It has been a while since I heard this piece by Beethoven. I know it sounds hoity-toity to listen to classical music. Or that our daughter prefers it over “All Things Considered” or gangster rap, particularly when rap is played on “All things considered”. If tamil music or hindi music were piping in at those hours, and if that were something I’d want to listen every day in my off-time, I would gladly do it.

But say what you may, the music by these guys does have something in it. I know as much about sonata in C minor, as I do about the music made by the whales or gangster rap. But the music I tend to like has to do a few things: (1) Should take me places and jog a few memories (2) Be good to listen to, without having a to hum the more objectionable lyrics.

I just ran into one today. It took me a bit longer than usual today to drop our daughter off at school today. The president was on the radio discussing the need to raise the debt ceiling, and how progress has been too slow for the market’s comfort. She sat silent for the ten minutes he was on, looking out the window. I asked her if she knew who that was on the radio. “President Obama”, she piped up. I felt bad she wasn’t getting her share of music, and switched stations to land at a hip hop music station. She yelled “No! Something else appa!” The little one does not like loud music. I thought to myself “Just wait until you know what the lyrics mean!” So I played the CD, which played a nice Beethoven piece, which she wanted to listen to again. I dropped her off soon thereafter, and was pulling out of the lot, when a familiar song started playing.

It is called “Moonlight”, a piano sonata; whatever a sonata is. It took me back 15 years to Chicago. The lab where I worked was an old creaky building. There were 5 of us graduate students, and 3 post-doctoral researchers. The advisor was an interesting fellow. He lived in his office most of the time, when he owned a place in a ritzy part of downtown. One weekend, he had a couple of his students move in his piano to his office from his apartment. He seemed restless most of the time, partly due to the funding situation. So to calm his mind, he played the piano and played it so well. You learn that you know so little of someone, when it catches you by surprise at hearing them play the piano.

This story of one weekend that summer, and it involves one of the Korean PhD students, a quiet and unassuming waif of a man. He always struck me as the stereotypical, self-conscious Asian student, who was used to taking a lot of flak for mistakes; be they his own or others. He lived in the dorm with his wife and 3 children, and hardly ever spent time with them. His PhD work was floundering, and it looked like it would take another 2 years to reach the finish line. The situation had been tense between him and our advisor. Its not a good prospect, when you have a family to support, and invested 4 years of your life into work, and then realize that you could lose it all. The only thing I saw of him those days fear; fear of our advisor, fear of the uncertainty, fear of losing everything he had worked for, and a lot of self-loathing.

All that changed that weekend. I sat in the sofa in the reading room, reading a journal that morning, when in walks this guy. I knew right away that something was on his mind. He looked into our advisor’s office to make sure he wasn’t around and sat down at the piano. He played the Moonlight sonata. The piece has a very gently, melancholy feel to it. Coming from him though, it carried a purely rebellious intonation to it. I made him play it three more times, and even got him to teach me the first line. Of course, I forgot how to within a few seconds after. After he played it, he quietly got up and went back to his corner of the lab. That was the last I heard him play. It was as though, he wanted to prove to himself that there was more to the life than work and work. He did end up graduating, although a good 3 years later, and works somewhere in Seoul. I never thought of him as the classical pianist type, even though he had the long fingers for it.

All along this song was in the CD, and I kept skipping it, since there was a great piece coming right after it. That’s what I meant by the power of a good piece. It can take you back years, as though it happened yesterday. I played the piece 3 times between the school and the office.

Good times. Good times.

Oh the shame!!

When and how do we begin to experience shame? Toddlers don’t experience it I am sure. When you rely on someone else to wipe your bottom, and feed and clothe you, shame and pride are usually not traits that will best serve the purpose. Over time, around the time when mobility comes, I suspect, that is when shame checks in. At being caught with the hand in the cookie jar (no metaphors here. I am writing about the actual thing), at bed-wetting and being discovered, thats where it germinates. When you watch someone grow older, maturity markers like shame stand out like sore thumbs; like a thin Indian man eating a small salad at a bar called Dinosaur Barbecue.

We were at the ballet recital at our daughter’s school this past weekend. She had been practicing/playing her moves all over the house, and when guests came. She would raise her dainty little hands over her head, and raise her right leg, while balancing on her left toe. She is a graceful little creature indeed. Our floor is all wood, so she would slip and slide, since she had on her stockings. But she would always recover like it was all part of the routine. We found it funny, and she enjoyed the attention. She was super-excited on the day of her performance. I went with her to drop her off at her school, an hour before the performance. As she entered the classroom, she slipped and fell. The floor was well-polished wood also. No harm done though. She was sitting down to put her pretty little shoes on anyway, so she sat and did that, undaunted. I went away to a coffee shop to read a book, while the group prepared. Show began at noon sharp. It was a loving crowd of family and friends, armed with all kinds of sophisticated audio-visual equipment. Our little one came strutting out with her hair up in a bunch and her ballet costume, dressed like a butterfly. She was deliriously happy that she was able to put on a show for us. She executed all the moves flawlessly, until one point, when she had to pirouette. That is when she slipped and fell. There was an audible gasp from the crowd.

I looked over at her mother, who stood on the side row. Not a trace of pain registered in her face. She smiled, and kept nodding her head with the music, a nice classic from one of the maestros, while maintaining eye contact with the little one. Nothing showed in her face, that commiserated with the little girl's obvious moment of pain. I watched our daughter closely, through the viewfinder of my camera. She stood up, and looked at her mother. Her mother’s obvious nonchalance with the little tumble, only seemed to comfort her. Her face, long with the realization of a 3-year old that all world has ended, contemplated her next move. A lady standing behind me in the wings, remarked, “Oh that poor little thing. Look at her. She is going to cry!” But turns out the poor little thing has a resilient little mind too. Her face hardened and she continued on, and kept in tandem with the rest of the group. I watched with increasing pride, as she persisted and finished her routine. That little resolve broke as her part ended, and she walked off the stage toward her teacher, silently bawling her eyes out. I figured this is it. To expect her to come back for the 2^nd act would amount to cruelty. But come back she did, her face ashen, and her steps a bit more purposeful. She finished her routine perfectly, and stood for her rightfully loud applause.

There were two things I realized that day about her. Shame in a 3-year old, guess that’s where the mile marker is for her. That she recovered and continued with the show, much to everyone’s admiration, was all her. She must have dug into the same resolve she uses to be adamant about her eating. She forgot everything by the end of the evening, a couple of hours, while she explored the recesses of her nose. That is still the playful 3-year old I know.

Music in our car

We listen to classical music these days in the car, my daughter and I. For a precocious 3-1/2 year old, she gets very quiet when the music comes on. Usually, its about what mommy said, or patti (grandma) said, and what she did in school the previous day. Some days, its “Look there’s a green buggy! Punch!! Now show me a pink buggy”. Other days, we play “I spy a dog in a red car”. These days, we sit and listen intently as the symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven waft through the wheezing speakers.

I am sure she will forget these moments in a hurry as she grows up in a hurry. Soon, the songs will be of the likes of Brittany Spears, with their “Belly Buttons” and other danceable music. But I relish these moments the most. Just today, the little one had put her quite a struggle with her breakfast, and left in a bad mood. I tried talking to her, but to no response. For 10 minutes, she sat in silence brooding in her seat. The last 2 minutes of the trip, as the car idled at the light, a more light-hearted flute concerto Mozart piece began. I kid you not, the mood lightened up instantaneously; like a window opened in a dark room letting in the sun. Somewhere in the little brain, something clicked with the music, lifting her spirits up. She piped up, her mood elevated, “Do you like my shoes Appa?”

I thought about the half hour I had spent in a mall in Gurgaon, picking a CD to bring home, a few months ago. It was a 5-CD collection. I have no clue about the music, but had liked the sound of it. I had envisioned a scene, where we would be in the car enjoying the music, a little father-daughter audience to the masters’ music. Today, it happened. Worth every rupee I spent.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

You never think of it, but crossing a road is perilous business. Particularly if you did it in India; not on specially-marked zebra-crossings like people do here in the western society, but the way the chicken did; unannounced, heart palpitating, hair on fire, all caution thrown to the wind. Fervent prayers are sent out to any and all gods, specifically requesting that the drivers see you and coincidentally have their hearts brimming with the milk of humanity to stop their vehicles for you. If they do, the drivers are glad they did not kill you, and so are you. You wave at them, just as a homeless person would thank you for a hot cup of coffee you might give them on a cold day.

Alternately, if they swerve to miss you, it is usually with a flurry of irritated honks, leaving behind a trail of their choicest swear words, and if the roads are good, a pair of skid marks which bear testimony to the physics involved in stopping a speeding 2-ton vehicle. Skid marks, that you were responsible for, which would on a later day, remind you of your brush with death. For those fleeting moments when you try to make it across, the only emotion you the pedestrian feel is a sense of helplessness at your inability to control your destiny. I can see how one can turn religious just by surviving the Russian roulette act of road-crossing in India, everyday. I can see now the significance of why there are idols of celestial gods like Ganesha and Durga and Hanuman at every street. It is possibly to triangulate their good will during the troublesome road-crossing times.

I spent some time in the city of Gurgaon a few months ago. The city, not too long ago, used to be a very fertile agricultural tract of land, incessantly producing quality produce which catered to the ever-growing population of Delhi. Remnants of its pastoral past still exist in barely noticeable patches in the city, which has since become boomtown. There is dust everywhere, in the footpaths, inside the room, in your socks. When the rain mattes down the dust, you see the shrubs and the trees that have fought off the bulldozers and pickaxes with amazing tenacity. They shine verdant green against the black, impersonal granite of the buildings. There are a few parks here and there designed to provide a little greenery to the city. I am sure the planners for the townships (not the city) decided hastily, after a visit to New York’s Central Park, that it might be a good idea to create some green spaces, but not as big as the NYC parks. That would have been insane to waste all that land on forests. In the restricted green spaces they provided, however, the trees have taken hold with a vengeance. Any seed lucky to find dirt literally booms into life so vigorously that you wonder if they figured out the fragility of life even when young. You would not need to have a stretch of imagination to know intuitively that this was once a thriving metropolis of trees and wheat fields. If left to them and in another parallel universe perhaps, the trees would have rivaled the tall buildings that mar the landscape now.

This land, so fertile, that if you spill beans and forget to pick it up, it could grow up into that proverbial beanstalk. We have always thought that the magic was in the bean, that which we read about in Jack and the Beanstalk. I like to think that it is a common misconception. I like to think that it was the super-fertile land that fed the bean so well it grew and grew. Gurgaon could have been that land. Now, in an absurd turn of events, fed by the telecommunication boom in the country, it now grows gargantuan buildings of steel, glass and concrete; buildings which grow and grow toward the heavens.

Everywhere, the message is clear; this is a city of the young and restless. The symbols of the new-found wealth of the young hang in front of the innumerable malls lining the arterial roadway, beckoning the people to come and spend some more. The malls line the roads, and a subculture of people, taxi stands, houses and apartment buildings have erupted around them. The skyline of the city rivals Hong Kong and Chicago, but the bylanes and roads closer to the buildings look like they have just been bombed.

I ventured out one November evening to see the city on foot. That it was a nice November day, and the city had a smoky golden feel to it, only added to my sense of well-being. My spartan room in the guesthouse was a bit constrained, for the day seemed pregnant with possibilities of adventure; things to see, a city to explore and a chance to meet new people. Those large neon signs beckoned me, like the mythological siren lured a greek ship toward the hidden rocks.

That is when I encountered M.G.Road; I had to cross it to get to the malls. Interesting story about this road. Almost every city and town in India has an M.G.Road; “M.G.” for Mahatma Gandhi. In Gurgaon, M.G stands for Mehrauli-Gurgaon road. In a gesture thumbing their noses at the established system, the planners decided to be more practical and named it after the two towns the road connects. No sentimentality toward the leader who steered the country to freedom. I could almost hear the statement in that meeting; “Its just a road.”

For a city that is purported to be the fastest growing in all of asia, there are markedly no designated zebra-crossings where pedestrians might walk across unfazed. No zones of mercy where one could walk on without the fear of becoming the next hot road-kill. There are no street lights anywhere on the road either. There were ten of us souls who wished to cross the road. The traffic showed no signs of stopping, not even showing signs of slowing down as a sign of solidarity. Something that might indicate, “I see you, and acknowledge that you wish to cross the road. I am sorry I can’t help you. I have to get to the movies fast. Any other time, and I would have stopped for you. No hard feelings. Nice shirt btw.”

Not in any hurry to go anywhere, I watched the people waiting to cross the road. The process was the same.

Step one, pedestrian looks both ways all the time. While the traffic may have travel in one direction, there are always those wild card drivers, who go the wrong way for a few feet, to save a half kilometer of unnecessary-yet-safe travel in the other direction before making a legal u-turn.

Step 2, when there is a palpable lull in the traffic, which occurs every 15-20 minutes or so, pedestrian takes a steady-not-tentative step onto the road. This is done quickly, or the window of opportunity (all of 20 seconds) slams shut like a New York City subway car door.

The key is to control panic, and more importantly, not show any sign of weakness. If your body language says, “Well… I did want to cross the road. But I can wait if you want to go first.”, the drivers sense it like a cheetah senses a weakening gazelle in the Serengeti. Gestures like rapid head movements and holding the palm out in front motioning the oncoming traffic to stop, are all big signs of weakness. Especially the last one, since it looks a lot like Keanu Reeves’ Neo stopping the bullets in the climax scene of the sci-fi masterpiece "Matrix". While it may have stopped the bullets, and made it look very impressive on the silver-screen, it falls flat when attempted in real-life, and looks outright stupid. I was sure the drivers of oncoming vehicles almost collapsed laughing.

As soon as a pedestrian sets foot on that road, the high-stakes game of life and death begins. It is difficult to take that first step what with a vehicle barreling down toward you at 60 km/hr. Man and machine molded into this fire-breathing dragon of a steel carriage; it has no sympathy and harbors no love for the person standing in front of it. Meanwhile, the poor soul on foot, takes another step, and the car speeds up to get around the person, before he takes the next step. In all this, there is little or no eye-contact between the 2 or more parties trying to share the road. There is a cosmic connection between the two; almost as if one is the designated hit-and-run-driver for the other.

In the beginning of all this, there is that refuge of the side of the road where the pedestrian began the journey of 10 steps. But as he side-steps and stops and takes a breath, he moves toward the middle of the road, which on one hand, puts him that much closer to the other side. But on the other hand, takes him away from the comfort of the side he left. The same comfort zone issue that prevents us from taking unnecessary risks in life, now befalls the warrior on foot. When the person takes that leap of faith to cross the road, there comes a point somewhere in the middle, when reason goes on vacation, and adrenalin takes over. That is typically when the "Matrix" gesture typically comes out, as a last ditch effort. If all else fails, try telekinesis. If it works at home, in forcing the wife to get up and go get the TV remote, it might work here too.

That is typically when the speed of the oncoming car picks up and you hear screeching tires. Eyes, closed, you wait for the sickening sound of screech and thud, and wait for the hit; will it be the knees, or the hip or the head, you wonder. These SUVs have become tall, and now injuries to the head are probably more common. You hope that the end will be swift. All you hear is, "Hey! Have you lost all fear of life?", "Mother^#&*!@#(", "Sister&%^$6", the abuses come out in hindi, even a few you never heard in college, for times have changed. Once the fear subsides, and the pedestrian realizes that their organs are intact, bristling white anger comes shooting up.

I watched in horror as the Mercedes screeched to a halt, within an inch of the man’s life. The pedestrian was a 60-something old man, carrying a bag of groceries; the carrots and spinach in the yellow tote bag dangled outside the bag, ready to fall onto the dirt with the slightest of movement. His bald head sweated in the evening heat, his white shirt caked with the dust of the road. The last few sprigs of white hair around his ears seemed to stand up with indignity. The driver of the Mercedes was a 20-something hot-shot, his lush black hair combed back with a gel of some sort. He wore the same shirt as one of the models looking down upon them from the facade of the mall he had just left. In that evening sun, his fashionable shades shone, two little spots of sun adorned the eyes. As the last rays of the sun streamed down, you could see the dust rising above the pair. The cultural epithets came pouring forth from both men. New words in english, hindi and indianized english; "I could have killed you, you lazy lout.", "You think you own the road, you $%^&@#". The obscenities seemed so uncharacteristic coming out from the mouth of an otherwise dignified older man. In another time, sitting under a tree with a glass of chai in his palms, he would have seemed a harmless follower of "MG". Now, in this situation, anger pounding in the vein that throbbed in his forehead, the old man was the indian version of "The Hulk". Neither seemed ready to give in to their faults. The car engine idled, and cars lined up behind the Mercedes, angry horns surrounded driver and the old man. A crowd gathered, not to break up the duo, but just to see if there would be a little fisticuff. Or we Indian call it, a little "dishum-dishum". Eventually, the din of the honks and shouts of irate drivers won over, and the fight fizzled just like that. I too crossed the road soon thereafter, also leaving behind a flurry of screeching tires and angry shouts.

The old man, resenting what young people had done to the quiet little hamlet that he had grown up in, his retirement plans shot to smithereens now, later told me. "Cars and Malls. That is all there is left of this place. Did you know this is a very historical place? Somewhere where those malls are, Guru Dronacharya had his ashram. . If not for the Guru, there would not have been the Mahabharatha! He was the symbol of righteousness in the book.That is where he trained the Kauravas and Pandavas. All we have now is a metro station called Guru Dronacharya. Just like that, they wiped out the significance of one of the most important men in our religious texts Not his ashram or anything, just Guru. You know why? They can’t find the damn place that is why! This used to be a peaceful place Delhi wallahs used to come to, for some weekend respite from all their dirty politics and the heat. Now it’s just this”, he said waving his hand at the incessant traffic and the malls. “Expensive cars and expensive malls. Now we get our vegetables from other states, and pay premium price for it. What are retirees like me supposed to do? Telecom has been the death of middle class here, I tell you” he lamented. It is little wonder that the generation that was, has struggled to deal with the explosive growth.

Gurgaon aspires to be the city of the millennium for India. Ripe with the possibility of making it big, opportunities at every coffee shop, capital growth in every sector. There is money to be made even in the laundry business here. It has the feel of the town that dreams about becoming a world-class city, with really no plans on how to go about it. Migrants fill the city; the rich are the NRIs (Non-resident Indians) who plan to settle down somewhere else when they makes their money, the middle-class who have their families in other smaller towns in the care of spouses and parents/in-laws, the bottom in the service sector who struggle to make it here. The bottom two are the ones who are in danger of road-kills every day.

Perils abound here in simple things as crossing the road. I never thought about it before, but here at least I could tell why the chicken might have crossed the road. In Gurgaon at least, the chicken had to buy some groceries, get to work, or just go to the Mall since he was bored.