ARGH!

Two news items in today's Hindu have provoked much argh, though one more than the other.

I caught sight of an article putting Sachin Tendulkar and Shah Rukh Khan in the same boat as being intrinsic to Indian culture. Now, I'm not arguing with the importance of film to pop culture in India (and surely they refer to pop cultura, not that I'm dissing pop culture either), but even to such a cricket non-enthusiast as me the idea of putting them on the same platform is a titch ridiculous. I can't stand SRK, but putting that aside, the man has some talent and a REALLY good sales pitch. He knows how to read the audience and give them exactly what they want. And let's not forget the PR. Sachin, on the other hand, is mindbogglingly talented and has honed that talent to such blistering skill that it leaves me fair gasping - and I don't even LIKE cricket! Subject them, I say, to the radio test. If we had no TV and only radio, would SRK be as much as a celebrity as he is? Would Sachin?

***

The second item was a heartbreaking piece on the planned and apparently now confirmed reintroduction of cheetahs into central India. The horror.

Now, any sort of environmental conservation effort should be viewed optimistically, because we are a country with limited resources and far more pressing demands, like poverty and education and so on. However, it pays to turn the occasional jaundiced eye on our efforts. There was the wonderful idea of reforesting Karnataka with eucalyptus, which isn't native, doesn't really provide much protection from erosion, and drains the groundwater so much that remaining native vegetation dies. That was stopped, mercifully.

The latest brilliant idea is this cheetah one. I'll leave the dissection of Mr. Jairam Ramesh's masterful articulation of WHY this needs to be done for later. Has it not occurred to anyone anywhere that reintroducing a powerful predator that was on the decline for several years before it finally gave up the ghost into regions that have now evolved without it might upset things a bit?

Secondly, why the North African cheetah? If you're going to spend Rs. 300 crore on a project, how about investing in some breeding pairs and trying to do something in captivity before introducing a similar yes distinct subspecies into the wild? Or maybe even do it parallel? Existing wildlife sanctuaries in India struggle terribly with poaching, and less dramatically, the spilling over of humans and livestock into sanctuary areas and of protected species into buffer areas. Why not use that Rs. 300 crore to rehabilitate people and establish a more enduring system of reserves? From what I can tell, Kanha is one of the few that succeeds and even they see some serious trouble with poachers.
(Feel free to yell at me if I'm talking through my hat.)

And now, of course, we come to the gem that emerges from the sainted lips of His Pompousness Mr. Ramesh:

“It is important to bring cheetah back to our country. This is perhaps the only mammal whose name has been derived from Sanskrit language. It comes from the word chitraku which means spots. The way tiger restores forest ecosystem, snow leopard restores mountain ecosystem, Gangetic dolphin restores waters in the rivers, the cheetah will restore grasslands of the country.”

I'm not going into the epileptic fit that grammar induced in me, and am going to lay the blame, probably rightly, at The Hindu's door. But really? We must bring the chetah back because it's name comes from Sanskrit? REALLY? THAT'S what we should base our conservation efforts on?

L is for the Way you Look at Me

Ah supersize me. I have realised I need a pretty girl to attract men who will then be exposed to stunning by my stunning personality.

Written a long long time ago, back in 2006 I think, I never finished this post. But I still think it's true. BBot, before you freak out, I'm not on the lookout =)

But. I've noticed that, whether male or female, if one is not conventionally attractive, it helps to have a hot friend who attracts tons of attention and then you can get the leftovers. Only, it doesn't work for girls. By which I mean that if I end up in a conversation with a non-hot boy whose hot friend got my attention, then I'm quite likely to forget the hot friend if we connect. Never seen it happen that way to a guy.

I LOVE the transparent idea

in bloggers new templates, but I don't appreciate being forced to use their images. For now I had to choose between two. This is option one, and highly appropriate too. What say?

Edit: Yay, fixed it! Apparently all you need to do is go into your dashboard, scroll to the bottom and select blogger in draft under tools. You can keep the draft dashboard by checking the box on top once it reloads. Then, in the Template Designer, you can upload a photo. The size requirements are complicated, so go to Imgur and upload and resize as ye wish. Download the resized photo and then delete it from imgur.

Could it be that air travel in the US got a titch better?

Pardon any racism I seem to emanate, it's not intentional.

Boarding my flight to Duffai, I noticed that somehow security chec doesn't suck so much anymore. Maybe it's cos we've gotten SO good at the stack belongings, pop out computer, remove belt and shoes, display liquids and shuffle in an insanely slow line. Maybe cos the TSA is nicer. No, wait, hear me out.

The TSA has changed so much! From being formidable and downright hostile white people we have come to the point where Sergio, the nice latino man who checked our passports today, and knows how to say hi, how are you in many languages, who chatted blithely with me, the Indian family in front of me, and smiled at every single person who passed him. He even told me to take care and have a good flight – and sounded like he meant it! It's funny to see the very large proportion of TSA employees who are now black, hispanic, or somehow people of colour – and by extension generally nicer, younger and far friendlier than in the past.

Cruising at 30,000 feet

and this is all I do.  An attempt to restart this blog. Bride, you want to send me tons of tags?

It's official. MinCat is a Bollywood whorejunkie. I'm sitting in a plane en route to Dubai and I'm wondering why the FUCK I didn't get around to watching Wake Up Sid while it was in theatres. Granted, I didn't know Konkona was in it, but even her stellar acting aside (oh man, I was just blown away in that scene when she's dripping form the water he's thrown all over her and he hugs her), it's such a fabulous movie. 

Perhaps it my adoration has something to do with it being shortened for a plane; or perhaps something to do with being an aspiring photographer, and being reminded heavily of college in Delhi (boasting alert, where I did work on a play with Konkona who was my senior and a total sweetie); or maybe I was just insanely amused by how immensely obnoxious Rahul Khanna's character is, having met several people who patronise other people for their tastes – whatever the cause I feel like I'm watching a movie tailor-made for me. I laughed. I swore. I giggled. I sniffled. I even cried a bit – though that might have more to do with leaving the beloved niece than the movie itself. Granted, there's no way she could afford that flat or to furnish it without a job; and hahah let's not even approach the seamless ease with which she jobs was found and passed on to him; but I think many people I know could identify with that life. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I have never had a movie-watching experience that simple incorporated me into itself so comprehensively. I worry that nothing else will satisfy on this flight now.

Edit: no, nothing did.

Yes abandonment has happened

Or, as we'd say in my family, the blog has been ABONDENED.* But The Bride has shaken me out my stupor to put up this list.

First off, in terms of the larger aspects of stereotyping and questioning it, and speaking for a gender etc goes, The Bride and Broom have said it all for me, and I' too lazy to rearticulate what has already been done so well, so go read my disclaimers on their blogs before you ruffle any feathers.

My manly traits:

1. Loud slapping laugh and filthy disgusting mind. Always making dirty jokes and sniggering at double entendres.
2. I burp, I fart: I have bodily processes and I'm proud of it.
3. Always carry my own stuff - luggage, shopping, whatever.
4. Open doors for girls; put my arm along the back of the seat; drop them at their doors when it's late; generally look out for them.
5. I can drink. A lot. I have yet to meet the man who can out drink me. 
6. *If* I carry a child and give birth to it, I want it to have my surname - much along the lines of The Bride. But, since I plan to adopt it shouldn't be an issue.
7. I swear like a truck driver. A Haryanvi truck driver. Though often enough it's in Spanish.
8. I'm very loud and er physically expressive. I will smack and punch and shove etc.
9. I hate shopping. This might have something to do with how difficult it is to find clothes that work for me, but even in Target and Old Navy, I like to come in with a purpose, and get out in 30 minutes or less.

My womanly traits:

1. I LOVELOVELOVE to cook. Yeah I know, whoda thought it what with the food blog and all.
2. I LOVELOVELOVE to keep house. Set it up, decorate, tidy, clean, grocery shop, etc.
3. I LOVE kids. And mostly, they love me. As my father puts it, MinCat holds a strange fascination for those who are below the height of a dining table.
4. I love romcoms. Seriously, if it's not Bollywood, animated, a romcom or in Spanish, I won't watch it.
5. I'm very touchy-feely. This is extension of 8 of course, only in this direction it's girly. Hey don't ask me, I don't make the rules!
6. Porn bores me. Really. It's not gross, or anything more than yawn inducing.
7. I have always wanted to marry and have kids and run a house. I don't think I am incomplete without it, any more or less than someone who wants to be an astronaut but isn't is incomplete. I have considered running a guest house or bed and breakfast.
8. I'm terribly social. I get along with everyone and have lovely pointless Stepford conversations.
9. I'm always mothering people and worrying about them and trying to fix their lives.
10. I love dressing up. It's just hard to find the right clothes sometimes. hee.

*This is reference to all the dilapidated railway buildings one sees, with the word abandoned stencilled on them. except it was often abondoned. or abondened. 

Mah Momma is teh BESTEST

Today is the day my mother retires from 22 years of service at one central government institute. I don't know how many years she was at the one before that, and consequently how many years she's been with the central government in total. Anyway, as the only family representative in town I've been going to her various farewell parties. Sitting there, and listening to all the uncles and aunties talk about her, how long they've known her, the things she's done, etc, I almost burst with pride.

To begin, how many of us can even assimilate the idea of working with the SAME people for twenty-two years? The mind boggles. We congratulate ourselves for surviving 22 months. Or at least, I do. The sense of community and camaraderie that comes from working with the same people for that long is something else. For me, removed by one degree from these people, my memory of the past 22 years is peppered with stories about them - melting solder on one uncle's desk, drawing trees on someone else's blackboard, begging for computer paper to scribble on from a third, and so on. I remember antakshari sessions, and practising Hindi, being quiet because Amma's boss was in his room, going to flag hoisting at least once a year, demanding egg biryani from the canteen, going to Numaish with Amma's friends, and heaven know what else. For Amma, who's gone on field trips running into multiple months with these people, and has spent a significant part of every day of her life all these years with them, it must be something else entirely.

What I take away most though, is just how special a person Amma is. On the basis of science, and marking sites and setting instruments all over rural India, she has reached out to people of every imaginable type and forged these strong bonds of friendship that have reached out and embraced us as well. Her first boss was saying last night, that he remembers the first time she went to the field, they were nervous, because she was the first woman to do this kind of work (a fact she's always forgotten to mention), and the first night she didn't turn up at camp they were panicking so much. She turned up at 9, indignant at the questioning of where she was, and dismissed all the worrying and fears. She then went on to take care of all of them in the field he said. One story he told is, for me, representative of who my mother is. In the wilds of Gujarat, in her flannel shirt and jeans, burnt black by the sun, at a time when letters and occasionally telegrams were the only way to communicate, and they took their sweet time getting there, she's sitting in a jeep, with all the drivers, helping them write letters home.

That's my mother: comfortable with anyone, always reaching out to people who are generally at the fringes, careless of appearance and stereotypes. She has the largest, most generous heart of anyone I know, and its door is always open. She's blunt, brutally tactless, very far from emotional or gooey, but the immense strength of her affection will show itself in the letters she'll help you write, or the wife she'll take to hospital. I have never known anyone quite like her, who gets along effortlessly with anyone, from anywhere, in any language, of any age, and at any time. She has that rare and valuable ability to put people at ease instantly, and inspire loyalty and admiration that know no bounds. Half my own friends have adopted her - and come to visit for HER birthday. She is ready to take anything on, and her interests and abilities are so varied that I get a little tired out just thinking of them! She refuses to entertain the idea that women are weaker or less than men, and in a decidedly non-feminist, non ideological way. I cannot remember a time that we have waited for my dad, or not done something because there was no male presence. It was only later when in college I encountered feminism that I realised that Amma is that rare thing, a non-feminist feminist! She believes that anyone can do anything, if they want to hard enough. And she planted that belief in ourselves in both me and my sister - something for which I am so grateful.

Today, I sit here and think about this brave, intelligent, hilarious, generous woman, without whose presence my life would be so very boring and dull; to whom I have to talk at least once a day, if not three times when I don't live at home; without visiting whom I'm grumpy all week; for whom I'll wake up at 6am and blearily exercise; and I am very grateful to have been blessed with her as my mother. I think that if I can ever be half the person she is, my life will have been well spent.

I love you Amma, way to go!