All things plastic

Its interesting to note that we Indians have an OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) when it comes to using plastic in our lives.
We simply cannot live without it. There are many instances where it is indispensable and we have to thank plastics for that.
It is however very interesting to observe how we have extended the use of plastic in our lives.

Often we see cars being driven about, new cars especially, that still have their car seats wrapped in plastic covers they came with! I have a good friend whose car seats are still wrapped in the precious polymer even after a year of road usage!

A relative still has their sofa cushions wrapped in plastic! lest they become dirty!It actually does not seem to matter if the seats are uncomfortable to sit on! they should not become dirty!

Mobile phones are used without peeling off the sticky plastic it came with for protecting the screen! its alright if NOKIA is written boldly on it obstructing the screen view. I'm happy as long as it protects the screen from scratches! It is another matter that the keypads are already dirty from coming into contact with the my oily hands. The screen is still pristine you see!

My computer keyboard is wrapped in plastic and so is the desktop and my monitor! My shelves are lined with plastic sheets cut from food world covers and unused garbage bags!

My milkman likes to use plastic covers as caps to escape rain when he rides around in his 50k Honda motorcycle.

Even my money has become plastic thanks to cards! Now, the government is seriously considering discarding paper for plastic to print currencies! Better security , they say!

Local street-side food vendor uses plastic sheet over paper plates to guarantee purity of the plates!

The Bihari at the food restaurant round corner that serves Chaat food , wears plastic gloves(yes, not rubber) to make his preparations! Every five minutes he removes it to sneeze the phlegm off his nose and dons the gloves back on! Clean hands you see!

I also started using plastic plates and cups for the birthday parties, it can be recycled until my year old becomes thirteen you see and not to mention my yet to be one son! I'm looking at an returns several times over! who needs Styrofoam anymore Simble logic you see!

In my city, everyone and their mother-in-laws have an enviable collection of plastic covers stashed away in yet another big plastic cover! she uses it at every possible occasion. There is always a plastic cover for any activity. Be it stocking vegetables in the refrigerator or keeping the plant saplings until they become adults and claim their own piece of land in the garden!


When I was a child, I vividly remember Balamurugan, who used to wrap his note books in Milk covers and other such covers instead of brown paper! Lasts longer he'd say to my curious stares!
Today, brown paper is manufactured with a shiny plasticky coating on it! water-proof I heard!

The local vegetable market is always swathed in multiple hues ! Not because of the lovely green and red vegetables in the market, it is because the sun bathing the place in light through the huge multi-coloured plastic sheets that covered the area between the shops should it rain and chase away the buyers!

Even the asbetstos sheets are now plastic! So are the glasses I wear, smiles of the models on TV!
Boy! I cannot imagine what we'd do in India if we did not have plastic!

Unreal shows

I'm sitting in an amphitheater watching gladiators gore themselves to death there was a section being mauled by lions to the thunderous applause from the onlooking crowd.
I could feel adrenaline surging through my veins watching these brave warriors fight it out. It is a curse rather for these warriors who are doomed to die , one way or the other , sooner or later, all the time entertaining the crowd.
How I wish I could throw my mother-in-law, husband into the ring. Let them survive even for five minutes, they will understand my life. Ha.. the sweet thought of revenge! mmm..
---x---x---

The mother-in-law was pouring some powder into the milk and planning to give it to her daughter-in-law, the daughter-in-law was actually planning to seize the property and kill the husband. The mother-in-law had overheard her plotting this with her brother and now the mother-in-law had somehow overcome her five year old weakness(really, thats how long the serial ran) and decided to settle the matter once and for all, now this powder is special, it will not kill her, but it will make her a vegetable. She pours the powder and turns around stirring it. Her daughter-in-law is standing behind her at the doorway watching her prepare the milk.. CUT - ad break

----x---x---
The elderly woman has been watching this dutifully from her retirement home, she no longer could wait for the ad break, she started debating the plot with the octagenerian neighbour. She wished she had the courage of the lady in the serial. If she had even the courage to speak up against her vitreous daughter-in-law, she would not have been here. Now all she wanted was to see the lady in the serial win. She felt almost like winning her own battle.
She had even written a letter to the director of the serial thanking him for presenting such a true to life program.
---x--x------
The couple were breaking it off said the scantily entertainment host, Yajna could hardly contain her elation. They never suited each other, Ash and Viveik. Eh.. what was he thinking. Thank god she threw him out of his life, wish I did the same with Ashok. I was too blind to see his nefarious ways. He had been sneaking behind me and seeing Rupa, I wish I could strangle that conniving tramp! She had been depressed for the past few weeks. Now she was feeling murderous, watching MTV roadies made her feel a lot better. She like being the conspirator for a change, shilpa was plotting on stealing lakshmi's boy friend. How she wished she could steal Ashok back from Rupa. One moment I hate him, but I want him too!

----X-----

Now I finally seem to have an imaginary understanding of why Serials and Reality shows work in India!

The fine line between patience and weakness

I have been managing the apartment maintenance and funds for the past one year in the building where I live. Its not a big building. There are eight apartments and most are occupied by working couples except a few.
All the residents are duty bound and pay their maintenance by the first week promptly. There is this one couple who have their own problems and often find it difficult to pay their maintenance. Earlier it used to get delayed till almost the end of the month before they paid up.
Slowly and slowly they started slipping and now they have accrued up to three months of dues. Even at that point I used to dutifully request them to pay up the maintenance at least in parts to help them catch up their big backlog.
By this time all the other apartment owners had to be intimated that we are short of funds by three apartment months due to this resident and all owners were pressuring me to get stricter with this resident.
However, I could not see reason how it would help if we ended up antagonizing this resident and continue to be pleasant with this resident till date. My patience bore a little result last month and they paid up a part of accrued maintenance dues for two months together.
However they are again slipping by two months and I dont see any end in sight. While I'm going to continue my strategy of patience, I wonder whether my patience is perceived as a sign of weakness and will being stricter help? hmmm...?

This was in Oct 2009.
Now: Feb 2010. The said resident has paid up all their dues by themselves even as their dues crept up to a relatively high five thousand! This happened as I was slowly resigning to the amount creeping higher! What a miracle! I'm humbled and I feel bad that I even had a shade of doubt of their willingness to catch up. Once again, the world has reaffirmed that appealing to the good person in everyone definitely begets only goodwill. I'm glad that I was patient.

Its all about the name Chennai

Most of today's Chennaiites / Madrasvasis have been believing that the city's name was 'Restored' to Chennai reversing what the British did. But, here is what I found out in a radio debate I accidentally tuned into on the way to work today.
Chennai, formerly Madras, was originally a fishing hamlet that went by the name 'Madarasapatnam' a hundred or so years back.
It gained prominence when the East India Company, the erstwhile proxy front of the British Government used to colonize the south asian countries, bought a piece of land that is now called Fort St. George, from a local ruler.
History has it that the local ruler agreed to sell the land to the British and imposed one condition for the sale. He requested that British to name the city there were going to develop after his father and former Rajah, Channapa Naicker(Naickan).
The British, however did not honour their agreement and went on to refer it as Madras as short form of referring to Madarasapattinam.
The name stuck for hundreds of years until one day when the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu Mr.Karunanidhi (also known as Dr.Kalaignar ) issued a G.O renaming the city as 'Chennai' claiming that he was restoring the original Tamil name to the glorious city and we all believed him!
What I found unbelievable was that this Channappa Naicker/Naickan, never visited this city and had nothing to do with its existence and survival, leave alone developing it to be a cosmopolitan commercial hub.
Why should we name our city against a non-entity? I find this unacceptable as a proud citizen of this country and city.Why should I call my home by a name of a person who meant nothing to this city?

Much to my disgust, the radio featured a youth Congress leader who was making inane arguments about how we are changing everything . He was referring to IT growth and changes in Financial sector, and he was accusing the general populace for not willing to accept a change in the name of the city. I cannot fathom what is the connection between IT sector and the name 'Chennai'.
A research scholar was trying in vain to counter his arguments by explaining that she had nothing against change that is meaningful , but the youth congress leader would not listen to her and was just sticking to yelling unrelated arguments about how even in court they have started referring to the judge as 'Your honour' killing the British practice of addressing the judges as 'My lord!'.

I do not know if it is worthwhile even spending time and effort in discovering the truth and making a movement. Do I need to change it back to Madras?
I live in a world where a child's parents' names keep changing, the workplace names keep changing, the lanes and roads are being constantly renamed, products are being rebranded, even planets are suddenly being declared as just a piece of rock.
Frankly speaking, I dont care any more by what name my city is being called, it just will be 'home' to me.

Indian Woman

I fail to understand the Indian woman, she is a paradox. She is a pandora's box of conflicting emotions.
She can be the most loving and benevolent creature on earth. She can be the most patient and tolerant being in this universe. She can be the most determined and frightfully competent force to deal with. She can be fierce when it comes to protecting those who depend on her.
Yet, she is the weakest in amongst her own breed. She cannot peacefully coexist and share her space with her own breed. I Wonder why?

Advertisements are sexist.

Of late, i have taken to observing the storylines and plots and the analyzing the minds of creative agencies that come up with ad-spots for the junta.
I cannot but help notice that advertisements meant for women are so beautifully done. So much so that I wish why men should not use them. Be it the 'Dove therapy' or 'Pril dish wash concentrate' or even the personal hygiene products.
All of them focus on the strong points of the products and how each product provides more bang for the buck and why they are chemical free and next best thing to what nature has already created for you.
In a strong contrast, it makes me cringe at the sight of advertisements targeted at men. Almost none of them focus on feature or functionality. I'm being constantly told that women will literally undress and fall over me if i use one perfume or the reason to buy the new Suzuki motor cycle is for its snazzy flashy stickers!!!!! and i can do wheelies all the way to market if I buy Mahindra Rodeo scooter and again, women will fall for my hair gel if i use the latest wet and sexy product. Somehow you become macho and dive down the cliff in a jeep and get out unscathed after a cup of mountain dew or even worse, how cars will cringe at the sight of my new Hunk motor cycle because it looks like well. ahem.... a ..... a bull!

Whats wrong with these guys? They What happened to the days of "Fill it! Shut it! and forget it?" Why don't men get advertisements that are focused on the product features rather than on women and the primal instincts of men.

Children and Memory

I had a rather unnerving moment today with my daughter when she recounted an incident that happened a year back when she was all of two years old with alarming vividness that shocked me.
Here is what happened

Grandpa: தீபாவளி Saturdayஅன்னிக்கி வரபோரதே, அப்பா பட்டாசு எல்லாம் வாங்கி தருவாளே, நம்ம ஜாலியா வெடிக்கலாமே(Deepavali is just round the corner, appa is going to get you lots of sparklers and we are going to have fun!)

Daughter: ஆமா , அருந்ததி அக்காகூட வருவாளே, ஜெயந்தி அத்தை வீட்டுக்கு வருவாளே அவ! பட்டாசு வெச்சிட்டு காத முடிப்பா இல்ல ? ரோஹித் கூட அழுவானே !
(yeah! Arundhati will also come to Jayanthi Athai's place and she will close her ears to all the loud crackers! Even Rohit will cry for bursting his quota of crackers!)
We were all stunned to hear her say this, for among the host of hindu festivals, she correctly related the festival of lights by name t the one we had a year before and vividly recounted the incident where she met small girl (Arundhati) when we visited my sister on that day. She has never met Arundhati after that day!

Timesheets are such a waste of time

Timesheets are the bane of the Indian IT Industry
They have evolved to a point when the have ceased to serve any meaningful purpose other than present some meaningless numbers to senior management.

We have been told countless times that it is a sin not to keep one's timesheets up to date.There is barrage of emails from PMO to keep our timesheets up to date. The nagging is so persistent that our managers literally plead with us to put in our timesheets.

I however find the ritualistic update of the number 8 in some five meaningless boxes every week to be such a criminal waste of time and effort of multiple people at least in a development project.

For one, the manager has to prepare a detailed plan as to what each and ever person in his team of five or fifty is doing every hour that makes up the forty hour week.
Imagine doing this for a fifty member team every week, activity takes up so much time of the manager that the manager starts being deviant ,vague and starts making up tasks that take the entire duration of the project to complete. Here is a sample
i. Development of code
ii. Testing
iii. Code review
iv. Build management

these are not task types, but tasks themselves marked to begin at any point but will only end along with the end of the project which is probably two years away.

Added to this plight is the problem of reconciling MPPs with that of the online system that maintains the timesheets.For, the senior management always wants to see both online reports , MPPs and additional dozen Exel sheets along with a PPT on the status of the project.

The entire team thus begins entering timesheet of 8 hours against the five or six days of the week against the meaningless tasks created for them.

It has become so stupidly ritualistic and I'm surprised that most senior management personnel do not realize that the system is being subverted and is not serving any purpose and keep insisting on them being kept up to date.

To the credit of the timesheet systems, they have tremendous amount of features in them and could throw up a great deal of light on who is doing what, but if it were only simpler to use.