After a yet another long month in Gurgaon, it was now my chance at the spanky new Bengaluru International Airport which was initially thought to be the start of the city’s redemption from the growing list of grouses..

Like any new airport, it really does look impressive with all its fancy glass and shops (though one could argue that it should have been bigger). But then the only thought that came to my mind, it did not look Indian…This looked like any of the other airports across the world.It even looked like the Frankfurt or Munich airport given the fact that the consortium that built this airport was largely German.

Now that should have been a good thing with the German efficiency etc etc…but then yet it seemed almost a ‘clinical structure’ almost like a hospital…unavoidable but just that…..
Well several would argue, I need an efficient airport not a good looking one….

Courtesy:Photoyogi

But then I look at the Kochi International Airport (which incidentally is the country’s first greenfield private airport and doing remarkably well at that)…It’s now a few years old and not too many people know the success of the airport in India. It is now already a Harvard Case Study.

It’s been a fairly pleasant experience for me always here (partly due to the sparse traffic out there). But beyond all the good experience and service in the airport, it is also about the construction that has a truly Keralite character which I think is very refreshing. In fact, I haven’t heard of or seen any other airport that tries to reflect the character of the location where it is situated. Even after 9 years of existence, it still does look elegant. In addition to looking good, I think it gives a Kerala feel to the traveller the moment they step down the aircraft…Now that should be good for tourism too!!

Given the number of greenfield airports that are expected to come up, wouldn’t it be so cool to have more airports do this. India would then have a really unique set of airports…..given the diversity we have to offer…but alas, we just love ‘if it works out there, it must be good for us too’ airports…

Bring on the glass houses!!

And when you think this is the time for optimism for the country, then we have Deve Gowda and his clan…

Disgusting is a word that would be not even close to what’s happening in Bangalore…

There are these 2 junctions on the Ring Road (part of the perks of a new job - some million km of road to drive extra) where there are a few eunuchs or hijras (to use an old term) who come and demand money in their own inimitable style of begging. Of course, the idea is that people will feel so repulsed that they will end up giving money. My stance has always been that I wouldnt give in to this kind of arm-twisting. But when by chance, my window was down, this person comes and starts talking in such vulgar language and I am refusing to pay him/her. Here I am thinking, isnt this such a pathetic thing for a person to do?? Where is the self-esteem of these people?

Then after a few km more on the Ring Road, I started to think who was laughing at whom. These folks must be laughing at how easily these repulsed folks end up paying every day…Maybe they had more self-esteem than me and the other ‘normal’ people. Would they be sitting around a table and laughing at the rest of the world? Quite possible….

“Imagology is stronger than reality, which has anyway ceased to be what it was for my grandmother, who lived in a Moravian village and still knew everything through her own experience: how bread is baked, how a house is built, how a pig is slaughtered and the meat smoked…what the priest and the schoolteacher think about the world……she had, so to speak, personal control over reality………My Paris neighbor spends his time in an office…..drives home, turns on the TV…..the latest public poll where the majority of Frenchmen voted their country the safest…..he is overjoyed and opens a bottle of champagne without ever learning that three thefts and two murders were committed on his street that very day.

It is naïve to believe that our image is only an illusion…….the reverse is true: our self is a mere illusion, ungraspable, indescribable, misty while the only reality, all too easily graspable and describable, is our image in the eyes of the others”

Milan Kundera has a way of saying things. The above extract is from different parts of the book ‘Immortality’.

In the end aren’t we all this and only this? With the number of imagologists around, do we even realize that maybe we are all just acting out our roles. At the end of it all, I think our generation is so completely confused and I am not even sure we even realize what the self is and what the image is. We are living our lives just based on the images that we have been exposed to.

I think the ones in most danger are the pseudo-intellectuals who may have high opinions on things but in the end don’t really care about anything at all enough to do something about it. So the ones who are running the nation are imagologists in the guise of care-takers of religion, castes (be it the Sikhs who are fighting it out or the moral policing RSS or VHP) who are creating the right images in front of the audience that ‘matters’ who are lapping it up and we the ‘educated’ are just incidental to the entire process. This is why this piece by Hindol Sengupta of CNN-IBN struck a chord.

In fact, even if we talk about personal relationships and people, the ‘image vs self’ conflict is omnipresent. Since the protagonists themselves are not sure of their position in many cases, I think the whole process of working out a relationship between two people (especially when we talk of the new age woman and man) has become so much more complicated.

I do not know when or how the end state (if there is something like that) can be reached. As I have written before in this blog, in India, I think our generation (what I call the possible Indian baby boomer gen) is definitely in for a ride – traumatic and cathartic but exciting.

For someone who has to brave the Bangalore traffic on a daily basis, one early morning drive can bring back all the nostalgia for Bangalore….Though the unearthly hour of 6.30 in the morning is not something I would want to venture often, the smell of the fresh breeze without the accompaniment of smoke and pollen reminds me of why despite all the cribs about the city, it still does have its charm…

Really, this post is like a break from normal programming…but sometimes it is good to just be…

Just a pointless post…
Its that time of the year when it seems like people are only getting married…..

The thing about people getting married is that for starters, its one person less for doing all the pointless things in life…but the really big pain is having to think of the right gift for each person… After all, the gift cannot look like it was hastily thought about…it needs to be classy enough…and of course, if not completely original, at least not a dessert set… why dont people just register for a wish list as in the US….saves some grey cells…

Yet another good friend in office gets hitched soon…and it’s slightly amusing to see him go through the motions of deciding who should he invite in office….would a soft copy card do? or does it have to be a soft copy + phone/personal invite for the managers? Of course, it is highly possible that only 2.34% of the invited population turns up for the wedding…yet the expectation is there…

Then the crazy shopping binge….every single day in Commercial St or in Forum or such other locales….and the bills keep getting bigger…. and of course the long-distance phone call if the partner is in another city….all the decisions on whether the sherwani colour will go well with the bride’s dress.. i learnt that ‘mauve’ is also a colour in one of these sessions that I had to tag along for… so i guess its not all bad…

No wonder then that the Big Fat Indian Wedding is a 88,000 Cr. industry!!!

This post sucks…i should really start doing something that I am more capable of… hmm…

Note to large readership group of 2: No smart aleck comments!!

1. All the passengers with kids (0 – 48 months) will always be in the vicinity of your own seat

• a. At least one of the kids will decide that is the day for a shouting contest
  b. Infants will not have a ticket in their name but will stake claim to 70% of the seat and you are supposed to say that is so cute too*
  c. That will be the day you are trying to read a Milan Kundera

2. If you took solace thinking it is not too long a journey, the seat that you will get will be near the smelly toilet
3. The day you are reading an interesting book, all your co-passengers will want to retire for the night at 8.30 itself
4. A lower berth by definition is not for the ‘able’ people since there will invariably be someone else (old lady, woman with child etc) who wants you to move up or sideways and of course you are a jerk if you did not move
5. The pretty girl is always in the next coach and the coaches are not connected
6. If part of your reserved journey is during the day, anyone can come in and request you to kindly ‘adjust maadi’
7. When you need to drink a tea, you will find a complete procession of coffee vendors only in the train
8. The more ridiculous the time of the night the train reaches the destination, farther the platform will be from the exit
9. When travelling in Delhi during the winter on a Sleeper Class, NEVER be found short of a blanket (this had to be a separate one after that experience…)

*- Out of frustration from my last journey when I had 3 couples with 4 kids in my coupe. To say the least, I did not have a peaceful night…

Even Better….Indian Media is just the thing to savour…

Air Deccan refutes CNN-IBN allegations…thank god we dont have to depend on Seinfeld alone for the laughs….

The page (available as of Mar 27th)

I started writing this post when Dussehra was happening and I was travelling to Kerala. I was trying out mobile blogging and found it too much of a pain. Now that I am back in Bangalore and Diwali is almost here, fitting enough to continue the post..

There was a time when I used to like and enjoy festivals. But over the years, as the family started moving to different locations, the excitement over festivals has kinda come down. I guess it was also a growing up thing when it started becoming less ‘cool’ if you showed too much enthu about the whole fireworks thing. Also, Kerala was never big on Diwali.

But one thing is for sure, festivals really liven up the spirit of people. Everyday someone is asking me what’s your plan for Diwali. People are going for long vacations. They are much nicer to each other (excluding Hosur Road). They are more sanguine about the month with the bonus expected for Diwali in the rest of the country and for Onam in Kerala. It’s the same for Christmas anywhere else in the world. It’s almost contagious…..(hey, I even remember the time when my company used to provide a large package of sweets…well those were the days of a small company…)

But I wonder how many of us really understand each of the festivals. If our generation itself has such a bad understanding of the history, what will happen when it comes to the next gen……But i guess it is still nice to see that even the yuppie couples of today with their kids, try hard to inculcate the festival spirit. I think these may be the last strands of ‘culture’ that we may need to cling on to if we need to continue talking about ‘the great indian story’ for years to come.

After all, it is the age when families rarely sit down at the dinner table together (despite what all the Karan Johar movies and the soaps might show) giving precedence to the TV and the mobile. I just hope I can continue the tradition of sitting at the dinner table forward….cant say thanks enough to my dad for that…though I have cribbed so many times about this during my childhood…..

After a long time, I travelled by Air Deccan. There seems to be something happening over there. It almost seems like Capt. Gopinath got up one day and said ‘I am sick and tired of people cursing my company. My employees are all becoming demotivated having been shouted at so many times.’

Let me run a market research to do a perception map for Air Deccan. So now we have the dear Captain making enough announcements about how they are making it on time 88% of the time and we are only late 12% of the time.

So he gives all of his employees this bright yellow T-shirt asking his customers to give Air Deccan a second chance. It’s an interesting exercise to change the negative perception of the public.

In many ways, this is an important exercise for the company. They need to boost up their sagging stock, their customer satisfaction scores and their employee morale.

Let’s see if the captain manages to pull this off too…

ps:Btw, captain, it is perfectly legal to provide some directions to passengers when and where the flight is going to take off from at least 30 min before departure