The India For Me In 2018

Thankfully Android is still in fashion and I did not have to get a new phone this year.

Successes are created more in social media.

MeToo stories in every generation.

Whatsapp causes a blur between fake and real.

From birthday/festive greetings on phone to whatsapp messages. The voice of friends and families less heard.

More Indians acknowledge the power of yoga

Cows got the same status as man or maybe more.

Media told me that BJP was only about cows, Hindutva and temples.

Rahul Gandhi/Congress suddenly emerge as the most caring and honest government.

Vijay Mallya tweets that he is desperate to pay his loans but no one wants it. They only want to see his face on Indian shores.

A slight likelihood of a Mallya in Jet next year?

Work productivity dipped to a low with everyone watching youtube videos of the 3 big Indian weddings – Priyanka, Ambani and Deepika.

At least the “Cow” concentration got everyone now veering towards our very own rich Gir Cow milk but still very expensive.

And its organic, organic, organic food all the way.

Still confused why my mutual funds did not earn me more than what I would have earned if put in fixed deposits. 

Stock Market Investments for the common man has to be very, very long term.

People are learning how to segregate wet and dry garbage

Long lived Mumbaikars are all talking of one thing – Building Redevelopment and corpus money.

Even in the worst economic depression, Mumbai property prices will only rise and cause its worst depression in families with more property fights.

I am waiting for the day when a 9 to 5 job becomes a 9 to 5 job

Most friends’ kids going abroad for studies and perhaps they never come back?

The Mumbai Metro construction saw traffic jams and dust and pollution through the year.

Netflix and Hotstar is entertainment now

Heaven got a lot more crowded this year.

A great actor Sridevi passes away in a bath tub and we only hope it was a natural death.

Sunanda Pushkar’s death case did not move much this year and still remains a mystery. 

Finally Arnab Goswami’s voice only became louder from Times to Republic. And still India did not know what the discussions were about.

Why Do Acquisitions Prove Fatal For Airlines?

Another good and leading airline that seems to be crashing is Jet Airways. The reason as always given is the rising cost of Aviation Turbine Fuel and the usual story of high taxes.

But never quite understood the Jet Airways downhill story. Before 2012, it was the leading airline and it was making operational profits. After 2014 started the decline. This was two years after it sold its 24% stake to Etihad in 2012 for Rs 2,000 cr.

So in an environment when other airlines like Air India are on the uphill post its restructuring and Indigo and others are not very bad off, what makes Jet suffer the most. We know that its entry into the Gulf routes did not work as it should. But is that the complete reason?

Why is it that post acquisitions, airlines, seem to come crashing down. Air India went into losses post Indian Airlines takeover, Kingfisher post Air Deccan takeover and now Jet Airways.

What does this experience in the aviation sector tell us or how do management schools look at this trend?

On one hand what kind of due diligence is done to ensure that stake sales and acquisitions are indeed beneficial in the long run?

On the other are we to believe that airlines cannot create any kind of buffer for fluctuating ATF prices?

It is important to address these issues as there is a whole generation of youth who come into this industry, give their heart and soul to make a career here and suddenly everything erupts in the air. Jobs are lost, salaries remain unpaid and so many go unemployed after putting in the best years of their life.

We have seasoned economists talking about how the government should privatise Air India and that is the best for everyone. Will that indeed solve the problem when private airlines are themselves bleeding?

Where lies the solution?

MY DREAM TODAY

I have this dream for my country

1. The air is clean as most travel by the metro or drive electric cars.
2. Road accidents are very rare.
3. The roads are so smooth with not one pothole.
4.  There are no slums anywhere.
5.  Farmers do not commit suicide even when there is a drought as good irrigation systems are in place.
6. Farmers adopt latest technology and minimise the use of pesticides so that the occurrence of cancer is less.
7. Everyone is covered under a health insurance scheme.
8.  There are as many low cost government hospitals as there are private hospitals.
9. Medical students don’t pay heavy donations to institutes, hence doctors don't fleece patients.
10.  Do away with minority reservation as everyone is equal.
11.   Every school insists on sports, art and culture.
12. Graduates from the vulnerable sector don't remain jobless and get white collared jobs.
13.  Toilets are clean everywhere.
14. People throw garbage only inside garbage bins.
15.  There is no use of plastics and waste is properly disposed.
16.    Heritage sites are preserved and not stinking and smelly.
17.    Courts don’t take 40 years to give verdict on cases by which time the honest man dies.
18.      Women have special courts for divorce and rape but they hardly find the need for them.
19.     Children are not sexually abused.
20.       One can get any national identity in a day with minimal paperwork.
21.           A public institution is as good or better than a private institution.
22.           There is less traffic so people come home early and have relaxed evenings with family and friends.
23.           We go back to community living even if we live on the 45^th floor.
24.            Senior citizens have the best facilities wherever they live and are not forced to go to old age homes.

No I am not an idealist but I quote the Chinese billionaire Chen Tianqiao “Its time to focus on improving humans’ emotional well-being after centuries of effort to increase living standards”.

Happy 72^nd Independence Day to all Indians 

Twisty Tale Of Potholes

Ram: These potholes are so dangerous, anyone can fall. What is the government doing these days. No initiative, no new inventions and these government people don’t even take the trouble of getting out of their offices and seeing the ground realities. They only want to sit in their office and earn money. 

Shyam: Hey your son completed his engineering from IIT right?

Ram: Yes, Yes 

Shyam: So where is he working now? 

Ram : He is so lucky. In his campus interview itself, he was offered a job at one of the top investment banking firms.

Shyam: But after engineering, investment banking?

Ram: Yes, yes nowadays who wants to work in those dirty factories and get your clothes soiled. Besides he is getting such a fat pay packet there. His life is made.

Shyam: So then why did he do engineering, he should have done Finance or Economics. Why waste a seat? 

Ram: Come on yaar, stop this nonsense of wasting seat and all. He got such a good grounding at IIT that will take him far in life. 

Shyam: Far where? Abroad?

Ram : Maybe, I don’t know. Ok why did you change the topic? Look at these potholes, so dangerous. We need advanced technology and advanced ways to get our infrastructure in place. 

Shyam: Ram, Ram, who will do it, the engineers or the investment bankers?

Tipping Point By Malcolm Gladwell - Chapter on Suicides

He talks of a South Pacific island Micronesia where a seventeen year old boy got into an argument with his father, father told him to get out of the house and he then committed suicide. For an island where suicide was unknown in 1960s, by the end of 1980s there were more suicides per capita in Micronesia than anywhere else in the world.

The book says - The central observation of those who study suicide is that in some places and under some circumstances, the act of one person taking his or her own life can be contagious. Suicides lead to suicides. Thus as suicide grows more frequent in these communities the idea itself acquires a certain familiarity if not fascination (to young men in the case of Micronesia) and the lethality of the act seems to be trivialized. Especially among some younger boys, the suicide act appears to have acquired an experimental almost recreational element”

It concludes with - AN ACT THAT HAS BECOME AN IMPORTANT FORM OF SELF EXPRESSION” – people who die in highly publicized suicides – whose deaths give others “permission to die” serve as the Tipping Points in suicide epidemics.

60-OUT OF CITY

I am surrounded at this point with uncles and aunties who have retired or retiring.  There is much talk amongst them of buying or settling down in an old age home. No that’s not what it is called now, it is known as senior citizen home. A confusing decision for them to take on whether to lock their home or for many to sell their home in the city and move lock, stock and barrel to a senior citizen home. The marked difference is that they and not their children are taking the decision well before their legs give away. Perhaps to cross the bridge even before they come to it.

In my family of South Indians, the much talked of destination is Coimbatore where senior citizen homes are flourishing like never before. Nice ones most say.

At this point, other than old age, there are many reasons to think of buying or moving into a senior citizen home. A couple touching 60s, hale and hearty, have left their late 20s son to look after himself in Mumbai and shifted to a senior citizen home in Coimbatore. The reason is not yet about being old but not being young enough to enjoy city life.

Out of the many problems, traveling is a big one. It is expensive and cumbersome. Public transport like train and bus travel is tiring. Taxis and auto rickshaws are hard to get. And the private taxis like Uber and Ola, apart from being expensive, is app-based which is difficult for many seniors to operate. That puts many of them home bound with holy places, art and movies a very ‘distant’ dream. Even trying to be productive proves costly. Then the air is polluted and the roads are dangerous for walking with bikes and cars zooming at great speeds.

Adding to those woes is the rising cost of maids, what with salaried youth pampering them with many more thousand rupees.

So why live in the city is the question most ask and rightly so. As the period after immediate retirement is one where you want to truly enjoy your leisure time.

One can look at the idea of living in a senior citizen home positively or negatively. To my surprise, some weeks back I heard a very negative view from a priest performing the rituals of an old age family member who had passed away. While stressing on how important it is for children to take care of their aged parents, he said he advised a couple against moving to a senior citizen home. He told them they will be surrounded by depressing thoughts with everyone sad that their children do not take care of them. The couple decided against moving from the city to a senior home.

Maybe not the right way to look at the concept of Senior Citizen Homes as times have changed.  Children may love and care but their career and work takes them far away. We have cut off the joint family from our system or even brother and sister families living close by, so that has made it even more difficult.

Besides the senior homes are now also looked at as real estate investments. You buy an entire home or villa and you stay whenever you like. The cleaning, security, maids, etc is taken care of. Hence people look at it with triple benefits 1) real estate investment 2) flexi living whereby you can go out of the home and live with your children whenever you want 3) The home is spick and span whenever you come in.

While it may not be as depressing as the priest put it, I wonder though if old age will not catch up faster in a senior citizen home where there is more of the twilight life than the sunshine of children or young people. I believe the old need the young to feel younger and the young need the old to feel warmth and love.  It is so much more better for children to grow up with grandparents around.

But the uncles and aunties and friends I speak to say they are happy and busy. Attending mediation camps, music sessions, long walks, great meals and have many friends and a wider community. That makes it better than living in a cramped flat all alone in a city where anyways the grandchildren are far away.

An ideal situation would be to have schools and creches around these senior citizen homes where they can all cuddle up together and work for each other’s benefit. But life is never that ideal.

The big question though is whether at a later stage when your body and mind begin to fail, will these senior citizen homes actually take care of you? They may have medical facilities but not a full-time staff to take care of old people as in the true definition of old age homes.

It is a Catch-22 situation for the children and Catch-60 situation for those just retired.

The Passing Away

Does it not tell us –

If you cannot decide when and how you want to make your exit from this world, are we in full control of our lives?

I wish to die under a beautiful tree as I sleep in its shade and suddenly life goes out of me. But I guess that is not the way it will be.

Our priest says that when you are born, your date of death has been registered in heaven.

When you see a life going before you and going slowly and somewhere knowing it is going but believing that it will not go, you come to acknowledge much more those unseen forces outside of you and the inner voices inside of you.

No medical treatment is going to save that life when the time has come.

The day after we admitted my mother to the hospital, my sister sees a black forest crow on my mother’s bed.  We are foxed how the crow entered right inside the room when the door and windows were shut. The crow is known as the ominous omen of death. Or as is said it represents Saturn or Shani. A clear signal from the forces above a day after mom’s hospitalisation.

So she had started packing her things for the other world. Not literally, as come to think of it they don’t allow you to take anything from this world to the other. Only the soul goes with all the good or bad in its accounts.

I believe now my mom’s journey began almost 3 months ago. That came with a voice in the middle of the night telling me to go and visit our family temple. Our family including my mother had never visited the temple. I did trust that voice and went to my father’s village in Kerala for the first time, visited my father’s mother’s home. I stood outside that locked home with just a black dog sitting outside looking at me. Was the black dog too trying to tell me something, like the black crow?

What is the connection? Of me going to my grandmother’s home and my mother’s passing away? In post funeral rituals, when chanting the vedic rites, my brother is asked to utter my father’s mother’s name.  My mother will take her place in the other world and merge with her husband, my father.  Maybe it was meant that I had to accomplish that long outstanding visit to my father’s and grandmother’s village home before my mom could depart this world?

We may doubt the veracity of the year-long intensive rituals that the son has to do post his parent’s death. Priests refer to an in-depth spiritual documentation of the soul’s journey after it leaves the body as per Hindu sages hundreds and hundreds of years ago. These are hard to believe in the modern world and will be questioned and questioned for its veracity.

During the last few weeks, there were many external and internal signs that seemed incomprehensive. My mom used to close her fists and then open it and say here take, but there was nothing. She used to fidget with the bedsheet with her hands. My mother took the name of a person long dead. Or blabbering so many things like chandanam (sandalwood), Lord Shiva’s name in sleep. Then she would always look around the room as if she sees somebody. As I read articles, these are signs that so many people on the verge of leaving this earth exhibit.  So how does one explain these? How does one explain the exit of the soul from the body and what happens exactly on it’s way out.

There was another very significant external sign to say that something was to happen and that again through a bird.

The bird Bhardwaj over the last 6-7 months was often heard outside our home.  It is seen rarely. I read that the bird is rare in cities and it is a good omen. Rural people believe it brings luck.

A day before I was leaving for Kerala to visit my father’s village and family temple, I was sitting in my balcony sipping tea when the Bhardwaj came right there and sat on the window sill of our 3^rd floor residence. It is very rare for a Bhardwaj to come so high up as it is said to be a shy bird. It looked at me with its red eyes for a minute. I adored its beauty but attached no significance to it coming to my window.

I reach my cousin’s home in Kerala, where I was to stay for the next four days. His home is about ten  minutes away from my father’s village. Outside his home, 3 Bhardwaj birds were sitting on a tree. I still didn’t attach any significance and felt it was just a coincidence.

Two days after arriving back to Mumbai, I hear more than 300 crows cawing and making such a noise on my terrace. Believe me I have never seen so many crows ever in my life and that too all collected on every inch of my terrace. We stay on the last floor and the terrace is above us. I realise that they are cawing, seeing something, so I rush to the terrace. And what do I see, two Bhardwaj birds, one on top of the other, fighting. I could not understand what that meant. But I realised then and there this was some kind of message. I thought it must be a good omen but then they were fighting so I was confused. When I recount this to my priest now, he says that when you see two birds fighting, it means something bad is to happen or death is near. Come to think of it now, before this, I have never seen two birds fighting like this, not one on top of the other.

In my own theory as weird as it may sound all the ancestors were watching (as it is believed that crows in some way are messengers from our ancestors) and the fight was to call my mother to them. Perhaps she was resisting?

At home over the last few months, my mother went back in time. She spoke much about my father praising him. She had not done so in so many years interim. He passed away 20 years ago.

She was gradually reaching her destination. At the hospital she asked for repentance for certain things. She thanked the beautiful 80^th birthday we had celebrated on Dec 2, 2018. She told me she wanted to give a shawl to an old house help Shiva who had been of immense support to her when she had to manage the home with 3 small kids. We had not seen him for over 30 years. His brother who keeps visiting us, brought him from the village and my mom decorated him with a shawl in the hospital. Decorating a shawl has a deep significance in Hindu tradition. There is special rite in the last rituals for the departed of an offering of clothes.    

She spoke of my father’s estranged brother who we have never seen and of whom she has never spoken of all these years. She referred to a letter, some 50 years ago that my father’s mother had written to my father. While in hospital towards her last days she asked us to bring that letter so as to read it out to us. We had never seen that letter.

As we recount these incidences to our family priest, he says she was already moving out of this world to join my father and his family.

My mother loved talking. She talked a lot during the first ten days of hospitalisation. Even with the bipap machine over her mouth which was to assist her breathing, she would continue to talk through it bringing good cheer all round with the nurses and hospital staff who enjoyed that banter and requested her to refrain from talking too much for her own good. She then probably resigned herself to fate. She gradually slept more and talked less.

Her peaceful look in the hospital now tells me she was already in the other world. I took my mom for the EEG of the brain (it is like ECG of the heart) test one day. We had to take her on a stretcher from the first floor to the 2nd floor. They had washed her hair in the morning as it should not be oily. With her loose hair, she looked so beautiful, so young, so healthy and fresh and so so very peaceful. It didn’t matter to her what they were doing or what test they were taking. She never asked me what is happening to her. That night I actually dreamt my mom could be back home younger and stronger. That peaceful look still makes me wonder what was going on with the soul and the body.

The day before her passing away Feb 13^th was the very auspicious Mahashivratri day. I fasted on that day, only for the second time in my life. My mother comes from Vaikom village in Kerala where Lord Shiva is the main deity and the village is known for its very famous and big Shiva temple, located close to my mother’s home. We had visited it many years back. I showed her videos of the temple on that day and she looked at them intensively.

The next day February 14, I was with her since 6 am. She told me at around 10 am that “Shiva has not yet come”. I was perplexed on what that meant. At around 11 am she demanded I give her some dosas to eat. So typical of her. She loved dosas. I asked the doctors for permission as till that morning they said only liquids could be given. The doctor on duty said yes you can try and give her solids. She ate 1/4^thdosa and drank water. Soon after she relieved herself on the diaper. I was standing by her side and then I saw tears strolling down. I acted as if I had not seen it as I wanted to be brave. I now wished I had wiped it and said it is okay, do not worry about us, we will be fine. But how was I to know she will leave us? Last words that never got spoken.

Her last moment was strange. Me and my siblings, all three of us were there in the hospital. In the 10 minutes that all three of us were out of the CCU, she got a cardiac arrest. When I entered after the 10 minutes and shook her, she did not get up. Her face had a deep frown. I wished now it was a smile as she always had a smiling face and I have never seen a frown on her face my entire life. The frown could be from the last pain or the pain of leaving us?

I read now that the flame inside a dying person shines brightly for some hours. Like people suffering from dementia become normal for some hours before going away. That explains how the day after we brought her home from the 2 weeks in the hospital to see if she recovers in a home environment (but sadly we had to again hospitalize her 10 days later), she told me she would like to sit on the bed. I asked her if she wanted to walk. She said yes! All these days in the hospital they had tried mobilising her with the physiotherapist!  She walked that morning so very easily with me right up to the front door of our home, some 10 meters away. She looked out and almost asked me if she should go for her regular walk. She then walked back to her bed in the inner room. After that she never managed to even stand. These go beyond medical fitness tests. Beyond modern day questions.

She died on the very auspicious Mahashivratri day as Shivratri this year extended till Feb 14 late noon. She passed away at 1.45 pm though doctors declared her gone at 3 pm.

Lord Shiva took my mother Sivakami (means wife of Lord Nataraja) or later Kamini (means beautiful woman) away to his peaceful abode. He was asking her to pack up but she was doing it very slowly as she did not want to leave her three children behind.

She tried to say her byes to us in so many ways. She gave us so many indications that she was packing up. The cosmos gave me so many indications that she was being called above. But we were hoping against hope that she will not leave us.

PUB OR HILL STATION

Mahableshwar is a beautiful hill station, 285 km from Mumbai. Once the summer capital for the Britishers. Homes and hotels built by the British stand strong and beautiful more than 70 years later. I met a lady who owns a hotel, built in the British days, that will complete 100 years in 2024. With great efforts she is managing to keep herself and the huge structure as it is. She reminisces of the days when Indian film star Dev Anand would come every year, sit in the beautiful lawns of the hotel, with the Sahyadri mountain ranges before him, enjoying the cool breeze and more importantly the silence of nature, to write scripts of his movies. Now she says the crowd is so different.

A crowd that has made hill stations their pubs. Hill stations are places to breathe fresh oxygen, to feel the stillness of nature, to hear the beautiful chirping of the birds and to be touched by nature to bring out the best in you. Unfortunately that is not the case now.

I pass by this newly set up hotel which has no aesthetic whatsoever. Young boys and girls are staying there. Some are dancing outside and some smoking, drinking and blowing away the hookah! A mismatch in those hilly forested surroundings. Out of curiosity, I should have asked where they come from, but they were too immersed in their smoke world. The idea of fun has changed. The idea of a holiday destination has changed. There is blaring music all over the hill station dimming the natural sounds of nature.

The money comes from these young people as they are spending like there is no tomorrow. The reason why hotels are mushrooming everywhere with absolutely no thought for the environment. Hotels are being built on agricultural and forest land. Below is a picture of a cemetery built on a tourist spot which has a beautiful waterfall with the Venna lake flowing below.

One local says he is surprised nowadays to see so many of the local animal, the bison, out in the open. He does not even realise that we have disturbed their forest land and water spots, so they are coming out.

I wonder how hotel permissions have been given so brazenly. But why am I wondering. A corrupt municipal officer is giving licences left, right and centre. 

Everyone wants a room with a view. So these guys are literally giving you a room with a view. They are building hotels on mountain tops and near the lakes, so you pay handsomely to get a view. One can see the mountain land curving in and loosening.

The hotel property of the old lady I spoke about earlier is being eyed by many, waiting to demolish it and perhaps make another big pub.

Indian governments are engaging in environment discussions world over but ignorant that closer home the environment is being disturbed and lost, all because of corrupt officials and the madness of money.

Maharashtra politician Uddhav Thackeray had his night sleep disturbed in Mahableshwar recently by blaring music being played at a hotel next to his. When the music did not stop despite his orders, he used his power to shut it down. But sadly he did not look around and see the seriousness of the problem.

He would have then realised it is more than a one night disturbance.