It’s very rare to find your prayers answered immediately! So I was pleasantly surprised recently when I found that a cobbler had materialized right in front of the bank as I came out after getting a Pay Order. Two straps of my new sandal had broken 3-4 days earlier and I had been unable to locate any cobbler. While waiting in the bank I had looked sadly at the straps dangling uselessly and wondered how I was going to manage the 10 minutes’ walk across to the courier. No self-respecting Mumbai cabbie would have been willing to take a fare for that short distance.

So, overjoyed at the sight of the cobbler, I handed him my sandal. As I stood with the heel of my shoeless leg resting on the cloth spread out in front of his shop, I felt weird – especially as a long line of cars formed right in front of me when the signal turned red. :-) Not wanting to turn in the direction facing the street, I turned my attention to his work and suddenly realized that it was quite some time since I had last watched a cobbler mend the shoes. The peculiar way that he knots the threads and the sharp instrument used to cut the thread’s ends seemed so very familiar from the school-going years. Mom had always scolded me saying that there must be something wrong in the way I walk – because in those days I had amassed quite a few Frequent Cobbler Miles at the friendly-neighborhood cobbler’s :-)

And then suddenly I wondered how much he will charge for the work. I didn’t seem to have any idea nor did I remember the figure from my childhood days to make a quick inflation-adjusted guess! Still, I hazarded about Rs 20 and waited for him to finish the job.

A final neat cut with that sharp tool and it was done. As he handed me back the mended sandal I asked him how much I owed – turned out it was Rs 7! I handed him the money and slipped the sandal back on. But as I walked on I looked over my shoulder again – just to make sure that the cobbler hadn’t evaporated back into thin air. He was still there. I don’t seem to be having enough Frequent Prayer Miles with God Almighty yet! :-)

The latest print ad by Paharpur Cooling Towers Ltd. has me flummoxed. It goes like this:

Ever felt cold at an airport?

You can probably blame it on us!

So what are they saying? That their ACs are going to make you feel as if you have landed in Alaska? Who in their right mind would buy from them?

Though I am not from advertizing world, let me take a shot at rewording this. How about this one?

Ever felt refreshingly cool at an airport?

Look out for the Paharpur Cooling Tower!

राजू, कपडा और मकान!

Warren Buffett says in one of his memorable quotes: Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.

It looks like Satyam's Ramalingam Raju took the quote literally because when the tide went out for him, he was found swimming with 321 shoes, 310 belts, 1000 suits :-)

Neumonia and Other Sketch Stories

Yeah, yeah, I know I haven’t spelt it right but this, indeed, is the title of the little e-book of sketch stories penned by Dhimant Parekh (www.sketchstories.com).

I came to know about it when he sent an email on my B-school’s alumni site and I have recently finished reading it. I found “Raw Mangoes” and “The New Star” hauntingly beautiful. We all seem to go through a complex web of emotions even during the course of our mundane lives – a web so gossamer that we cannot, sometimes, describe it in words even if we try. Dhimant seems to have achieved exactly that in many of his stories – “The Yearning” amply demonstrates that.

I also liked "Churchgate Fast", "One Fine Day" and "A Flying Tryst" but must confess that “The Final Enclosure” was a bit over my head. :-)

So if you get a chance, do visit the e-book site and read the book. It’s free - and it's good!

I have been increasingly wondering if the politicians who are supposed to take care of us can even spell the word “Shame” – let alone know its meaning. That’s because any person with even an ounce of shame would vow vengeance against the naxalites who slaughtered the security forces so brutally in the Gyrapatti forest (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Gadchiroli_mourns_policemen/articleshow/4067024.cms). Yet, there is silence from the state government – except for the customary expression of grief that it is simply incapable of feeling.

As usual, the security forces were woefully short – not on valor but on ammunition. The helicopter which was supposed to be at their disposal wasn’t around because no one had thought about extending its lease. By the time the Chhatisgarh government gave its helicopter, those who could have been saved were already dead. And the irony is that the CM made it to the funeral of these brave men in a chopper!

Many times during my evening walks, I have seen cars with the red light zoom past me – escorted by armed cops at the back and front. These days that red light reminds me of the blood of so many that these shameless leeches were put in office to protect in the first place but have consistently failed to.

I hope to God that the next naxalite attack kills some major politician because unless one of their own is killed these scoundrels won’t wake up and smell coffee!

Someone please tell me that the NSA is joking when it says that “Pakistan seems to be serious on Mumbai probe”. When are we going to get it through the thick head of ours that the only thing that Pakistan has always been dead serious about is the destruction of India? Whatever happened to the severing of the ties that Chidambaram had talked about in not so distant past? Have none of these idiots ever heard the old proverb that even if you feed milk to the snake it is going to always spit out venom?

My blood boiled when I saw IPL Chairman Modi talking about Pakistan foreign ministry's banning the Pakistani cricketers from taking part in IPL. I would have felt much better if the ban had come from IPL. But patriotism has always been a lifelong tenant of the backburner in this country! :-(

It isn’t a site I would have normally visited. I wouldn’t even have known about its existence if it were not for the sponsored program that popped up in the middle of the old Hindi songs that I was listening to on FM Gold (100.7) the other day. I was annoyed at first because government programs are not known for their quality. About to switch the channel, however, I decided to listen for some time – just out of curiosity – to this program from the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

This time it was on preparing nutritious home-made food for a child. Predictably, the voiceover in Marathi had a forced gaiety about it and the words and phrases chosen wouldn’t have been employed by any Maharashtrian in daily use. I strongly suspected that someone who is not a Maharashtrian but knows the language a bit had prepared the content or it could have been translated from a Hindi version.

That said, I must also note that it was very informative e.g. a clear and simple recipe for Spinach Khichdi was given. And what was most surprising was that at the end of the program a website was mentioned - http://wcd.nic.in/.

Needless to say, on my next trip to the Internet I typed the address in the browser fully expecting to see the website down. Surprise again! There is a site - up and running. I checked out a few links – the pages seem to be all there though I am yet to read the contents. And there is a Guestbook section. Aha! Now I will come across a non-functional section, I thought. Wrong again! There were entries here too. Of course, some of them are yet to be approved by the Webmaster but there were quite a few praises and a suggestion here and there. One of them – that of adding a search option to the page – had even been implemented by the webmaster. I found a note to that effect at the end of that guest book suggestion.

Flipping through the guest book I came across the following comment by one of the visitors (the use of uppercase is the user’s original):

CHILD MEANS BOTH MALE AND FEMALE. HERE I SAWONLY PROGRAMMES FOR FEMALE CHILD ACCORDING TO GOVT OF INDIA POOR AND SUFFERING MALE CHILDREN ARE NOT HUMAN?

I don’t think he is entirely wrong!

Email wars seem to break out every now and then on my B school’s alumni network – like seasonal cold and cough outbreak! Anytime I login to the account early in the morning and see 20+ mails, I open the mailbox with apprehension and quite a bit of resignation.

The latest bout seems to have been sparked off by a forwarded email from one of the members. This email contained a petition by some person to keep the mobiles on Tata Indicom, Reliance and Airtel switched off for a day in protest of the recent support voiced by the owners of these businesses to the Gujarat CM Narendra Modi.

Now, I must confess that I am not a fan of Mr. Modi either – and this despite recently coming across an article in Mint about how the Gujarat government’s efforts in providing water and power to the villages is prompting more and more villagers opting to stay there rather than migrate to the cities. Though I admire Modi for his work and wish other CMs would take a leaf out of his book, I would shudder to see him as the PM of this country.

But coming back to my alumni network, I believe a sane – some would call it spineless – action would have been to forward the mail to some friends and also to decide whether to keep the phone switched off or not. In short, a highly individual decision! Instead, people started firing off emails in support of and against the mail. After a while, as usual, there were mails asking everyone to stop such emails. And finally, there were a scattered emails calling on the hapless admin to do something so this won’t happen again!

Now there is a lull – except for the occasional mails on apartments for rent, cars for sale, job posts, resumes of friends and requests for information. Another 2 weeks of this and I would begin to wonder where the next storm will come from. But till then I am determined to enjoy this peace! :-)