India’s Madame Tussauds

Hi blog.

I know I’ve been away from you for a really long time – more than 6 weeks!

It’s been a hectic time. First, the two weddings. Then the travelling and looooong days. I just wanted to sleep whatever little time I got.

And the few times that I really sat to write, my fingers just started writing about two incidents of January that I really do not wish to write about here – the demise of a young person I had met just a week before her accident, and an incident that I witnessed while on a tour in Rajasthan.

It took me a while to bury them somewhere deep in my system.

Anyway, we keep going to Pune and Lonavla very often, and pass by the Celebrity Wax Museum at Varsoli.

A fortnight ago, on a whim, my wife and I decided to step in – and were bowled over by what we saw. Real, life-like wax sculptures of various celebrities - Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Satya Sai Baba, Babasaheb Ambedkar and so many others.

The scultpture of Mata Amritanandamayi Devi is so life-like that for a moment, I felt she would get up and hug me in that famous embrace of hers. And A.R. Rahman with his Oscars...

My wife had a ball getting herself photographed with Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussain and Micheal Jackson!

It is a very small museum – one can go through in less than 15 minutes. At Rs.75 per entry, possibly one might call it a bit expensive. And some of the sculptures are possibly not 100% accurate (e.g. of Shivaji Maharaj; though on the whole they are definitely very good). But when you bear in mind that all this is the work of just one young man – Sunil - and he did not have access to any of these celebrities – with the microscopically precise 3D measurements that people give to Madame Tussauds, I could not help but doff my hat to his skills.

Am going to try and post some pictures on my facebook page, as well as here. And I would urge you to go to the museum once, if only to encourage such artists. It is not very far from Lonavla – if you are going from Mumbai, just cross Lonavla on the Expressway and get down at the other (Pune) end on NH4 (the old highway). Puneris can get down onto the old highway just before Lonavla, at Balaji Restaurant.

The wax museum is just about 300 meters on the right side, before the NH4 toll gate.

(And no, Sunil has not paid me to write this. Nor does he know that I am writing it :-))

 My wife at Saddam Hussain's trialDr. Babasaheb AmbedkarThe sculptor with his daughter

I’ve joined the League

After nearly 15 years of having a mobile phone, finally I have joined the League of people whose mobile phone has been stolen!

It happened in Kolkata last Monday, and I admire the person’s guts. He stole it from right under my nose – the phone was kept by my side, along with my tie and glasses. And within less than a minute, the phone was switched off.

I immediately went to the nearest Vodafone Store and got a replacement SIM card. The executive assured me that it would be activated within 4 hours. We then went to the Nokia Store to block the phone using the IMEI number.

And here’s a lesson, folks. The IMEI number blocking is a sham!

The store owner himself said that it would be worthless blocking the phone, because the thief would walk up to the grey market and erase the IMEI number, making the phone usable all over again!

I said a prayer, got a temporary old handset, and life continued.

At night, I checked the phone. The SIM was not activated yet.

In the morning, I checked it again. Nope, no activation yet. I was with a colleague, so that made matters easy. At about 10, another colleague called up, saying that he tried calling me up, and the thief had picked up the call. He was using my number.

And that led us on a wild goose chase for about 45 minutes. We called the thief, who said that he would return the phone, but kept giving wayward directions, before I finally gave up and decided to go to the police. My worry was not so much about the phone, but about the possible numbers the thief may have called. Nowadays, you never can be sure...

We stopped over again at the Vodafone Store, where the same executive was about as helpful as a clerk in a Government Office. He had sent the e-mail to Mumbai, and that was the best he could do, etc.

So unlike Vodafone Mumbai!

After finishing my client meetings, at around lunch time, I called up Pallavi, our Vodafone Relationship Manager in Mumbai. In less than one hour, the old SIM was inactivated and my new SIM was on. Thanks, Pallavi!

We then went to Shakespeare Sarani Police Station, who said that while the place where the theft took place, though closer to their station, was in another jurisdiction. Upon hearing that I was a visitor to their city, they went out of their way to be helpful, coming along with me to the crime scene, and then escorting me to the Beniapukur Police Station, under whose jurisdiction the theft took place, in their vehicle. The Sub-Inspector at this Police Station was even more helpful, as well as extremely apologetic about a visitor having to face this problem in his city. He helped us in writing the proper report, and got it logged in very quickly.

Thank you, Mr. Vaibhav Shroff of Shakespeare Sarani Police Station and Mr. Nazrul Islam of Beniapukur Police Station!

Anyway, now I am still using the temporary old handset. Still undecided on which handset to buy!

Ahmedabad

What a change this city has seen!

In the 90s, when I stayed here for a while, and then kept visiting regularly, this city was no more than an overgrown village. The airport resembled a railway station, with crowds, congestion, and absolutely no facilities to talk about. Traffic sense was non-existent, possibly because roads were pathetic.

The changes over the past decade are just amazing, to say the least! Wide roads, organized traffic, eating places, malls…the works! And the airport can now be bracketed with possibly some of the best in the world!

However, beneath all this glitz and glitter, I also notice a strong underlying current of disquiet. People are generally wary of trusting each other. One particular community in the city has been clearly pushed into ghettos, as it were!

Makes me wonder. What would I choose?

A city where people trust each other and feel safe, but which lacks infrastructure, basic needs, quality of life. Or one which boasts of great infrastructure, a high quality of life, but where a person would not trust his neighbour, and always be worried for his and his family’s life!

A Morton’s Fork, isn’t it?

“Allah loveth not those given to excess”

Narrated 'Abdullah bin 'Amr bin Al-'As:
Allah's Apostle said, "O 'Abdullah! Have I not been formed that you fast all the day and stand in prayer all night?" I said, "Yes, O Allah's Apostle!" He said, "Do not do that! Observe the fast sometimes and also leave them (the fast) at other times; stand up for the prayer at night and also sleep at night. Your body has a right over you, your eyes have a right over you and your wife has a right over you." (Bukhari 7:62, Hadith 127)

Someone very dear to me was hospitalised last week. He had fainted at his office. His BP had fallen to critically low levels. After a battery of tests (including MP and CBC! I wonder why MP and CBC when it was low BP? Maybe the doctors and insurance companies know better!)...

Anyway, as usual, I digress...

After a battery of tests, they have diagnosed a problem in his inner ear, and it would need to be operated upon. This problem was also diagnosed a few years ago, but was taken lightly by the person.

This person is also actively involved in a few social causes which take up a lot of his time – sometime at the expense of his family, in my reckoning.

And despite our repeated entreaties, pleadings and even admonishing from his mother, he is adamant on following his lifestyle, which we all know his detrimental to his health.

Consider the weeks leading up to his hospitalisation. The social organisation for which he gives of his time had organised a seminar / workshop on Oct 29-31. He was running around for it for a couple of weeks during the day, and was at office at night. Sleep – about 2 hours daily. Some other jobs came up the next week, and he volunteered for them. No sleep again. The weekend before Eid, some people had come from out of town. Who will take care? Who else? And when he had some time off, you could find him online.

Not only that, he also fasted for the 8 days leading up to Eid, and wanted to also fast on Tuesday while in hospital. It was only because of a trick played on him by my wife, the hospital staff and I that he could not do so.

All of this, I daresay, with complete disregard to his wife’s feelings and concern, and his own health.

On Eid, the doctor agreed to our requests to release him for two hours so that he could attend the Eid prayers. We drilled it into his head that he has to go with us to the masjid, sit in one place, pray and accompany us back.

Do you think he did that? Oh, quite the contrary! Knowing that we could not scream at him and stop him in front of everyone at the masjid, he went ahead and did his own thing, till I finally had to lose my cool.

I know you are reading this, my dear brother, and wanted to highlight the above Hadith to you. You are disregarding the above words of Rasool Allah (Sallallahu alaihi wasallam) completely! And I hope you change. Do what you are doing, but stay within limits. Do not go to the extremes that you are going now.

After all, at various points, the Qur’an highlights that Allah does not like those who transgress limits. And you know that much better than I do!

What next?

Just read in today’s daily that the Mumbai Police have booked a woman who blew the lid off her husband’s misdeeds. The reason given – she did not go the police earlier, therefore, she must be abetting him.

Wondering what will they do next? Will they book a citizen who reports a crime in his neighbourhood for not calling them while the crime was being conducted? They could make him an accomplice in the crime because he let the criminals get away before calling them.

And it happened on the same day that they removed Borude from his job!

To use a tennis terminology – Mumbai Police has scored a winner and hit an unforced error!

Speedy

She came home one rainy afternoon in the monsoon of 2007 – dripping wet, extremely famished and very pregnant.

There she was in our backyard, with a piteous face, either too weak or too proud to make a sound and ask for something. My wife, having a soft corner for her species of the feline family, prepared a fresh chapatti, ground it in milk and offered it to her. She gulped it down quickly, looked up as if to say thanks, and ran off.

Three hours later, she was back again!

The routine went on for two days; and the third morning, as I was leaving for office, I realized I could not take the car out of the garage. Because there she was, with four cute little babies, who most probably were born early that morning itself.

My son – who loves fast cars – decided he would call her Speedy. My daughter – who loves to agree with her brother on most things (which irritates him no end!) – concurred. My wife – who anyway loves cats – decided to feed her till the babies grew a bit. My dad – who loves his daughter-in-law – decided to protect the babies from the neighbourhood stray dogs. My mom – who, incidentally does not like cats – decided to take pity just this once.

And that’s how Speedy came into our lives.

It has been three years now, and the house has seen an assortment of cats, due to Speedy’s propensity to have a litter every four months, with an amazing variety of experiences for all of us.

While they are generally very well-behaved, the babies have spoilt my mother’s carefully tended plants from time to time. Speedy has once walked into the kitchen and spilt all the milk. The feline family has torn away my expensive car cover. And the tyres of my car, my brother's mobike and the children's bicycles are their favourite nail sharpeners.

Every day, Speedy has to sit on the kitchen window sill and look through the glass at my wife or my parents, till she sees them preparing her milk and chapatis, or getting the pieces of chicken. At the point they do so, she jumps down from the first to the ground floor in the agile way that only cats can do, walks through regally through the back door, out the front, to have her food.

My father gets mutton from the neighbourhood butcher every alternate morning, and it is a sight to see the cats following him with their tails up in the air till he reaches their designated eating spot, and waiting for him to empty the contents of the bag before slowly starting to eat their fill.

It has also led to regular daily visits by the neighbourhood cats and stray dogs, with mixed feelings.

I have had to answer my children’s questions and have also been a witness to my son’s hilarious explanation to his sister, cousins and other neighbourhood kids on ‘how are her babies born’. After crying bitterly for days when some babies died initially, my daughter has now accepted death as an inevitable part of life (which sometimes frightens me!)

And now, three years later, we can safely say that Speedy and her children can now count me, my wife, parents, brother, our neighbours and the assortment of our children, and those of the neighbourhood – as their pets.

The Verdict is Out!

Sikandar ne Porus se kee thi ladaai
Woh kee this ladaai, toh main kya karoon

While travelling back to office yesterday afternoon after a spate of cancelled meetings, I decided to take the train from CST to Parel. It was around 3:00 in the afternoon, and the train was crowded with prime rush hour traffic as nearly all offices had declared a half day due to the expected verdict. The crowded train was the best place to observe the expressions and reactions of various people and try to analyse their feelings.

The train was packed with travellers of all religious denominations, castes and creeds; and the expressions on the faces of each person reminded me of the above song.

There was nary a person who seemed remotely interested in the verdict from a religious perspective. Everyone seemed completely detached from its socio-political implications.

On the contrary, there was a sense of wariness, a worry on their faces – worry whether their daughter has reached home from college, worry whether their son is sitting at home or is roaming outside, worry about whether they have enough rations stocked up for a couple of days, worry about the goons who masquerade as social workers or political party workers in their area, worry about the disconcerting sms they had received from their neighbour in Thane or wherever.

Seeing those reactions made me realize once again that while certain interested parties might create a ruckus about this issue again, and the media might play on for their TRPs, the ordinary man on the street, irrespective of his religious or social standing, is so frightened! Frightened for his family, his security, his next square meal.

Their expressions could actually be summed up very aptly by the opening lines of another very famous song…

Saari umr hum mar mar ke jee liye
Ek pal toh ab humein jeene do, jeene do