Poxing out the Pox...

After days of feeling under the weather, I was forced to take a day off last Tuesday.

I visited the doctor and he confirmed that it was not the worst - no malaria and no H1N1. He suggested it was a mild viral influenza.

But then, the next morning, I developed quite a few hideous boils and rashes on my face, back and my chest. Something inside told me they were not the normal boils that I usually get with fever. They were bigger, redder and painful. Something inside me said it was chicken pox. Wikipedia confirmed my fears.

The next port of call was the doctor, early in the morning. He confirmed the worst - it was chicken pox. The doctor gave me a terse warning - to stay confined indoors, no contact with outsiders, complete rest and no bathing!

Yuck, no bathing?

Yes, no bathing.

I was advised to stay put at home till the last boil dries up, as during the drying up process, the infection can spread to others. That could take up to 2 weeks.

I was prescribed an antiviral and a tablet to curb itching.

Since that day I have been isolated in a room. No moving around, just lying in bed. If that sounds awfully boring, it isn't because the drugs that I have been prescribed make me sleep the whole day.

And when I sleep, which is like 16 hours of the day, I dream of being in the South Pacific, perhaps an isolated lagoon in Fiji or Tahiti, which is where I really want to be, someday, but when I wonder?

Or I dream of good yummy food, things like chicken, not the pox-kinds, but the feathered, two-legged kinds.

And when I am awake, I look out of the window to see the pigeons gallivanting around in balcony with some kind of serious purpose, the kind that you would find at office hours in the morning Churchgate, when the trains from the suburbs start rolling in. I try to check out my office emails on the Blackberry or the laptop, when my eyelids permit me, or listen to a bit of FM - Keisha was on air yesterday!

The good part was there were no restrictions placed on diet. I can, I can have anything that I want to, but low-mild in oil and spice content.

That has got poor Neeti into nursing action. Every morning I am woken up with a warm cup of milk with an assorted array of fruit neatly, attractively arranged on a plate - I guess attractiveness of food does build up an appetite. Then it's breakfast time, with eggs and bread or upma, poha with tea, our style.

The cook played truant on two evenings. So Neeti took the pain of getting vegetables from the market and cooking up a lovely baingan bhartha, which had an amazingly delicate smoky flavour, that I will always remember, The next day Neeti's menu featured a crisp Murthal-type aloo paratha with a dash of butter and a lot of cold curd, that's the way I love them!

That's Neeti way of nursing me back to health, or rather pampering and spoiling me to the hilt! I wonder how many kilos she's made me gain! But, in sickness it's the loving care besides the medicines that do the magic.

Every morning and evening, I get calls from home to lift up my spirits and with terse directives to listen to the diktats of "Dr. Neeti" of no television and complete rest, at all costs.

But it is really difficult to stay out of action for such a long time. There is quite a bit of work getting piled up in office. I am missing the crazed action, the rush, the conference calls, besides the tea-time discussions and the crazy drive to office. I never missed driving my Kingliner (that's what I call my riviera red Wagon R!!!) so much, before.

The boils are still there, drying up - till then I am instructed to stay put by all means. It will be sometime before I can be back in action, in full form. And I am raring to do that.

Till then I am trying to pox out the chicken pox at the earliest, after all its no tandoori chicken!!!!

The Rediscovery of India

63 years old or 63 years young?
I would prefer to imagine that young is the word.
It is afterall, that youthful, zesty energy, the lust for life that defines my beautiful country, India. And young is the way it will be, for 63 years is merely the blink of an eye, in the shifting sands of time, millenia after millenia.
India, on the face of it, is undoubtedly chaotic. It is much like a bowl of spaghetti with innumerable strands of contradictions intertwined and messy enough to un-entangle.
But it is the tangy, fiery, spicy, bright red sauce that holds the strands of spaghetti together. That's true for India. The vibrant raw energy is what holds us together, despite the embedded and inherent contradictions.
But then there are those doomsday pundits, who cry to be heard, predicting that the worst is yet to come. They talk of Kashmir, of the Naxalites, of the Commonwealth Games fiascoes, of the decrepit state of urban India, of the great socio-economic divide.
True, these are problems, but they are not insurmountable.
We can tackle all this, the way we had tackled the really BIG issues that so bothered us very much, in 1947, in the hungry 1960s, turmoil filled 1970s, lacklustre 1980s and the economic disaster that struck us in 1990-91.
But to ensure that we, as a nation, handle all this, we need to need to rediscover ourselves, our potential, our capabilities, recognise our great demographic dividend that is almost bursting open. We need to revel in the contradictions and we will.
Metaphorically speaking, just as AR Rahman wrote "जय हो जय हो. आजा आजा जींद शामियाने के तले, आजा जरिवाले नीले आसमान के तले. जय हो." in his song, Jai Ho, we are, practically, standing under a star filled sky with innumerable opportunities, hopes and possibilities.


We need to rediscover our ourselves as a nation, that should be the agenda for each of us as wake up into the glorious morning, which happens to be our incredible nation's Independence Day, our Independence Day!
Let's all rediscover ourselves, our nation and rejoice in the liberty of a free India!!!!

Spare Us This Tyranny....

I sometimes wonder how this megapolis survives.

The systems don't work. There is no plan for growth, let alone a vision for the future. The citizens are least cared for, forget convenience or anything of that sort.

Take for instance the recent diktat by the authorities on the domicile of autorickshaw and taxi drivers. All drivers are now required to prove that they are domiciled citizens of the city for over 15 years for autorickshaw or taxi permits to be issued to them.

The result has been disastrous. Overnight, the number of taxis and autorickshaws plying on the roads has dwindled. The ones that do selectively take passengers with impunity while the cops look the other way.

I had been hearing such horror stories for the past few months from my colleagues. One of them pulled a few of these drivers to the police station at Bandra-Kurla Complex, but little happened. She then even wrote to Priya Dutt, the local Member of Parliament.

But can lawmakers ever be expected to anything of substance ever?

I was at the receiving end myself yesterday evening and today morning.

Since my car had gone in for some repairs, I was forced to rely on public transport yesterday. It took me 45 minutes in the rain to get an autorickshaw to get me from Bandra-Kurla Complex to Lokhandwala. The autorickshaw drivers just don't bother to even stop and hear out where the commuter wants to go. If at all they do, they would immediately speed off as though they had seen a ghost.

Today, I had gone to Godrej Nature's Basket to stock up on groceries for the coming week. I again had a tough time getting an autorickshaw back home. One particular driver, in an autorickshaw with MH 02 RA 2800 as its registration number followed the usual antics. I threaten to report the matter to the cops. He said "No problem, please do. It's not my autorickshaw afterall!"

Now that is the point. There appears to be an artificial scarcity of autorickshaws created in the city. The cops allegedly take protection money from the drivers to look the other way, while the drivers go all out to loot the commuters - overcharge (Bombay autorickshaw drivers who used to run by the meter now quote a fare, like Delhi or Chennai), tamper meters and refuse short distance passengers. And all this happens under the patronage of local politicians who own or finance the autorickshaws.

I sometimes wonders when would this tyranny end.......... But the city does survive, limp on despite the tyranny......

Don't Bark Up the Wrong Tree....this time

Why is common sense so uncommon?

The answer to that will always remain elusive.

For me, common sense dictates that in view of the prevailing geopolitical situation in the Af-Pak region, Iran ought to play a larger role in stabilising the region, so does India, so does Russia.

And logically so, for Iran is very different from the fanatical Islamic world. It does remain a democracy with some (or a lot of) semblance of order, notwithstanding, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's political coups and frequent rants against the West.

I had suggested about the West normalising its equations with Iran in my blog titled Iran and Peace In Asia, way back in April 2009.

The time for such a normalisation could not be more appropriate than today.

Russia, Iran and India, being in the proximity of Afghanistan have a geopolitical interest in that country that country that serves as a logical counterbalance to Pakistan's destabilising machinations in Afghanistan.

None of these three countries would like to see fanaticism seeping out of Pakistan at any cost. If it did intensify, going forward, these three countries have a lot to be worried about.

In a scenario where the United States and NATO were to pull out, the three regional forces can lend some semblance of stability to Afghanistan.

But as always, the United States and the West are barking up the wrong tree, by canoodling with the rogues in Pakistan, including the Army Chief, Ashfaq Kayani and the ISI Chief, Shuja Pasha. And this could have potentially disastrous results for the West in the next few years.

It is high time the United States woke up!

Freakish 2611

Today I read a news report on the proposal for India's first emergency call number, on the lines of 911 in the United States.

The system promises to integrate all services - fire, police and medical - all into one. It is said it would operate on the principles of artificial intelligence to search and locate the distress caller!

Ambitious it is. Futuristic, it sounds.

The United States had the 911 emergency service. The country then faced the horrific 9/11 incident.

India had a horrific 26/11 and we now want "2611" as the emergency call number.

That is far too freakish to digest....