Both licenses were obtained through a driving school.  I would have had to go through the driving school to learn car driving anyway, but for the two wheeler license, the driving school was just an expensive way to circumvent the long delays at the RTO, not to mention the bribes that needed to be given.  The Driving School’s main job really was to take care of the bribe-giving  and smooth the process.  I still had to get my Learner License, and pass the driving test, everything I would have done otherwise.  This was in Chennai, though, and one always hears anecdotes about RTOs in other states/ cities where you don’t have to take any test, or have to just show up on test day, to get a license.  The RTO, after all, is a part of the State Government, so the rules, or at least the level of enforcement of the rules, can very well vary from state to state.   I had one colleague who couldn’t get a car license in Delhi (his right hand was afflicted by polio), so he went to Bihar, where he apparently did not need to take a test.  He drove well enough, and with power steering and automatic transmission, I  don’t see why his driving one-handed was a problem for the RTO, but I suppose India is still not disabled-friendly in many ways.

But coming back to RTO corruption, if this blog post on India Ink is any indication, nothing has changed – you still need a Driving School to smooth your way in the RTO.  The blog post talks circumspectly about the RTO “maze” and “drudgery” – there is no maze except the hierarchy of bribe-giving that’s involved.

It’s surprising, though, that nothing has changed.  It is common knowledge that the RTO is one of the most corrupt parts of Government.  It is also one of  those Government departments which deal with the public on a daily basis.

Given all the anti-corruption movements and the mood of the people, I’m assuming that both Central and State governments are doing something about reducing corruption.  If they are, shouldn’t the RTO be one of the first places they start with?

Has anyone found that RTOs have actually become less corrupt, or are things still the same ?

Pic : Flickr/ S_W_Ellis

1. The name should start with an “A”.  The more As, the better. Why bother turning the pages of that baby name book all the way to “S” or even “G”.  There must be thousands of names to wade through.  Who has the time or energy to decide?  Just stop with “A”.   Pick any name, as long as it starts with “A”.  In fact, don’t even bother going to “Ab”.  You can stop at “Aa”.  The more “A”s the better.

So Aakash or Aarti or Aashna are better than a mere Ajay or Aditya.  If you can pack in even more As into the name, even better.   Like Aarav -  just one long A garnished with a few consonants.

2. Let the Gods (and Goddesses) come to your rescue. You may have never been inside a temple for years, but now is the time to show your Hindu faith by naming your baby after the 1000 names of Vishnu/Lakshmi/ Durga/ Shiva or any other deity.

3. Ancient texts are baby name books too. What better use for all those ancient texts than as baby name books? Here is a great way to choose a secular name that shows off your knowledge of India’s culture.  Select names that are either Vedic in  origin (Advait, Vedant), or those that  belong to lesser known characters from mythological texts (Ahalya, Uttara) – lesser-known is key, for everyone knows who Kausalya and Dhruva were.  Then there are characters from ancient classic literature (Manimekalai, Kannagi).  Whatever you do, just make sure to steer clear of the villains.  Even if you did think Duryodhan was a great guy who was just misunderstood, please do not name your son Duryodhan.

4.  Choose a winning combination of the parents. What better way to name the baby but by combining the parents’ names? If the father’s name is Mahesh and the mother’s name is Jaya, then the baby should be called Maya, or Jayesh.  Of course, if the father’s name is Harish and the mother is Diksha, one hopes they wouldn’t name their baby Hardik.  But you see, they will.

5. Follow the latest trend. If everyone is naming their baby Aryan, then so should you.   What are last names for except to differentiate?  And when his class ends up with 5 Aryan Sharmas, well, you can still rename him to the current fashion then.  This way, his name will always be the “latest”.

6. Is it Americanized enough? Do you think he/she will work in a call center, or an MNC?  Then you better choose an Americanizable name.  “Samanth” will become “Sam” later, while Siddhanth and Siddharth have been “Sid” for years now.  Meghna could become “Meg” and so on.  But don’t worry, your kid will find a way to Americanize any name you give him/ her – after all, even a Chakravarthy can become Chuck and a Kannan can become Conan.

7.  Numerology is key. In thirty years’ time, your kid is going to consult a numerologist and add a bunch of  As, Es and Hs to his/ her name.  But that would be thirty years of being numerologically disadvantaged, so it’s best if you consult a numerologist right away.  Your kid might have to go through life with a name like Narmmadaa or Shobhaa, but it’s a small price for a bright future, right?

8. Go Global. We are Global Indians now. Our names should be equally global. There are the time-honored names like Maya,  Anita or Tara that work everywhere. But these are so common now that you should be considering names like Ansa (Finnish) or  Freya (Nordic).  In fact, names like Freya and Diana also satisfy rule #2 and show how much we love Gods and Goddesses, irrespective of which culture they belong to.

9. Use Mother Nature. This is not a new trend, naming babies after cute animals (deer, swan, peacocks), mountains, snow, the sun and the moon has been the norm for ages.   To be different, therefore, you should choose a global variation.  So instead of naming your daughter Chandra or Poonam after the moon, you should name her Celina or Cynthia.   Instead of naming her Ganga or Kaveri, you should call her Jhanvi, or choose a lesser-known river like Kshipra, or  go global and name her Volga or Lena.

10. Go Ethnic. Why do most names have to be Sanskrit based?  Why not base them on other Indian languages? You can call your daughter Alli (Tamil for Waterlily), for instance, which would also satisfy rules #6, #8 and #9. This last one is something of a very niche trend, unfortunately.  Sadly, we Indians would nearly always prefer to use a French or a German name rather than a Tamil word for a baby name, and this is true for many Tamil speakers too. (Replace Tamil with any other Indian language and it would still be true).

None of these examples are fictional, a quick search on the net (Google/Linkedin/Facebook et al)  is all you need to convince yourself that there are real Indians with these names.

Which brings us to the question you are, no doubt, asking yourself – what did I name our baby?  We had a few simple criteria – the name should be short, just 2-3 syllables, be easy and intuitive to pronounce and spell.  After years of enduring people mispronounce my name every third time and butcher R’s every single time, we wanted something that was easy on even untrained tongues.

But we did end up following one of these rules.  I am just not saying which.

Why does there seem to be more coverage of Sachin’s grief following Sathya Sai Baba’s death, rather than the events at Puttaparthi itself?

Over just two days, the Hindu has printed multiple articles on how much Sachin has been grieving :

Tendulkar down on birthday following Sai Baba’s demise (April 24)

Sachin avoids referring to Sri Sathya Sai Baba’s demise (April 24)

Sachin sets aside grief, takes to the field (April 24)

Tendulkar’s birthday celebrated on a lowkey (April 25)

Tendulkar pays last respects to Sathya Sai Baba (April 25)

Pic courtesy: The Hindu

It’s not just the Hindu, every other newspaper seems to find this the most important news.

I’m sure there are thousands (millions?) of other Sai Baba devotees, but have any of them won a cricket World Cup for India recently?  There may also be quite a number of relevant news articles/ analyses that could have been written – about the succession at Puttaparthi, the full details of the Baba empire, about godmen in general (I’d love to have seen a history of famous godmen and their celebrity devotees) but would any of them (except the last idea) have been as interesting as an article about Sachin Tendulkar?

The only thing that is surprising is that I haven’t so far read any wisecracks about one God grieving over another.

Little did I know that singling out NRIs for stealing from their bags is an international practice.   According to this news article, Michael Arato, a TSA official in Newark airport  was found guilty of stealing cash and other valuables from travelers.  Apparently, Arato and his subordinate would steal the cash from bags during X-ray screening, and sometimes subject their intended victims’ carry on bags for additional screening so they could pocket the cash.

Here is where it gets interesting:

According to the original complaint, authorities became suspicious after receiving several complaints from passengers on Air India’s daily nonstop flight to India that money and valuables from their carry-on bags had gone missing after TSA employees at Arato’s checkpoint had searched them by hand.

The victims were mostly women of Indian decent (sic) who did not speak English, the complaint said.

What is even more interesting (and hilarious) is how Arato tries to justify his actions:

Arato was caught on tape explaining his action by saying that the travelers were leaving the country with “our money,” ABC reported.

Now, if only our Indian baggage handlers could come up with a similar justification.

To me, it  typifies everything that is wrong with how one can depict arranged marriages.

Okay, I can understand the part on the proposal to marry “Amy” meeting with stiff resentment while “Amritha Khanna” is much more acceptable.  Fine, we Indians like our children to marry people of Indian origin.  You can take objection to this too, but I’ll give it a pass, it’s understandable – for shared values, culture and all those reasons.

Though, Amritha’s own “Indianness” is a little open to question, given she feels the need to rename herself Amy when she has a perfectly pronounceable name.  (Also, what’s with the “h” in Amritha? That’s a South Indian way of spelling it, hardly one a Khanna would use).

But what’s much more interesting is how Ms. Khanna introduces herself.  She says nothing about herself, or what she does, but her first words are “My father is a doctor in New York”.   This piece of information apparently results in instant acceptance by the boy’s family.   Since doctors in NYC don’t exactly live in penury, apparently all we need to know to make her a perfectly acceptable bride is that she is of Indian origin and has a rich father.

Is this really how they want to depict arranged marriages? I come away with the message that we may now be modern enough to use a website to find brides, but in the end all we want is that the bride should be pretty and rich, and her interests and personality are, as always, a non-issue.

I’m guessing it’s hard to find a crasser ad from a matrimonial website.  I’m not saying such thinking never happens;  I’m sure there are people who think and match-make along these lines.  But what I find myself wishing is that Bharat matrimony wouldn’t make this kind of thinking sound acceptable or admirable.

The first is the one by Kanta Rani and Rajesh Luthra of CSIR’s human resources group. They have analysed the number of research grants in biology, given by CSIR during the period 2004-2008, and asked how many of these went to women.

Their paper shows that, surprisingly enough, men and women are equally successful (39 per cent success among men and 41 per cent among women) in winning grants from the CSIR (and likely from other agencies as well).

Okay, I don’t know why it should be surprising that men and women were equally successful in getting grants.  But moving past that, clearly whatever is hampering women scientists, it is neither ability nor funding.

(The paper did find that women in universities were more successful than those in R&D centres at getting funding, but doesn’t say if there is a similar trend among men, so I cannot conclude anything from that).

The second paper, “Beyond family and societal attitude to retain women in science,” by Drs. Anitha Kurup and R. Maithreyi of the  National Institute of Advanced Studies, surveyed 568 women scientists.  I am amazed (and somewhat appalled) not at their research but at the conclusions they chose to draw.

Consider this:

Most of these 568 were married (86 per cent of WIR, 88 per cent of WNR and 92 per cent of WNW). Yet a small number of women in research (14 per cent) preferred to remain single to keep their career on track (compare this with the 2.5 per cent of men in research, who were single). This suggests that a majority of women scientists are able to balance both their career and family responsibility.

So, er, one in seven women think they can only advance in their careers if they remain single, and that suggests that most women are able to balance career and family responsibility?  Really?  I would think rather that it shows the opposite – that women find that marriage (and children) affect their career so much that large numbers of them would rather stay single.   Clearly, it is not an issue of the women’s own commitment, obviously some of them are so committed that they prefer to remain single rather than damage their careers.  Given the social stigma that single women still face in India,  this is quite a sacrifice.  Clearly, there is something institutional going on here that the women are not able to tackle.

Pic courtesy: The Hindu

Here is more:

Another fact emerged. Although nuclear family and lack of childcare facilities may have affected WNW from continuing in science, they reported difficulties in finding jobs, institutions or advisors. This difficulty was more with the WNW group than with WIR or WNR.

So, it’s not just lack of childcare facilities, but there is outright discrimination against women that makes finding jobs or even advisors “difficult”.  The study doesn’t probe into why this is the case, and whether men with similar qualifications face the same difficulties.

So now what have we found – it’s not women’s ability or commitment, but opportunities available to them that make the difference.  You would think the study would talk about changing attitudes, right?

Wrong.  All that the study suggests, at the end of this, is that work timings should be made more flexible.

I am all in favor of flexible work timings, I am sure many men and women will find them helpful.  But aren’t we asking for too little here? Shouldn’t women scientists in India be more aggressive in demanding equal treatment ?  If a woman scientist cannot even find an advisor willing to take her on, or a job where she can prove herself, we have a very serious problem that merely changing office timings will not solve.

Neither is it just the lack of childcare facilities that are holding back women.  As far as I can see,  even the tip of the iceberg that these studies reveal shows that we need a whole new attitudinal change towards women scientists in India.  Why is nobody talking about this?

It’s when I read studies like these that I really wish we had class action lawsuits in India.

The Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) has finally admitted to what the more cynical among us have always believed – that there is nothing miraculous about the “Makara Jyothi” that devotees crowd in the millions in Sabarimala to watch each year, usually on January 14th.  The Makara Jyothi is a somewhat predictable and punctual light, which adheres to TV telecast timings and is seen every year in the hills around Sabarimala, in pretty much the same area each year (so of course the TV cameras know in advance exactly where to point).  Yet, no one has seemed to know much about the light all these years.  If you asked any Sabarimala devotee, he would consider it a sacrilege to even question its authenticity – of course it’s a mysterious heavenly light, its annual appearance one of the reasons why Sabarimala has become so famous.

The TDB President said “”It is known to everybody that Makara Jyothi is a fire lit up by men at Ponnabalamedu“.   I don’t like to contradict you, sir, but I wonder  how it would be known to everybody when the TDB has never mentioned this fact before ?  Also, perhaps you have not met the millions of devotees who do believe that this light is  miraculous and celestial ?

In fact, the first signs of anyone in Kerala admitting the light was man-made was this letter from the Pandalam Palace management to the Hindu two weeks ago:   (The Pandalam kings have been the age-old patrons of the temple).

Greater opposition to this lies in the act of misleading the devotees by pouring extra divinity of a heavenly lamp into the flickering light while the government, the Travancore Devaswom Board and other vested interests keep mum, without openly declaring and publicising that the lamp is man-made. This is exploiting the belief of the devotees, that the devas perform deeparadhana at Ponnambalamedu to coincide with the deeparadhana of Lord Ayyappa, adorning the Holy Ornaments.

There is more from the Pandalam Palace:

Upon the belief of a deeparadhana and/or upon the sight of a light, if the devotees chant the names of Ayyappa, I do not find anything wrong. The controversy is in the matter of misleading people. Now that the tribals have been thrown out of their dwellings and the exhibition of the light has been taken over by vested authorities who ensure its quality, number of appearances and TV transmission, the sanctity of the show is lost.

Sabarimala temple (Pic courtesy: Flickr/Vinodhpc)

A little background – there are two lights that appear in Sabarimala on Jan. 14th – both of which are part of the “Makara Jyothi”.  One is a star that appears near the horizon at twilight.  The senior thantri says this is Sirius. Now, while we have  all had a soft spot for bright stars that appear in the sky right from the days of the Magi, there is, unfortunately, nothing either miraculous or magical about Sirius.  You don’t even need to undertake the arduous journey to Sabarimala to see Sirius, you can see it much more comfortably from your backyard, without having to elbow anyone or crane your neck.  Obviously, then, those millions don’t go to Sabarimala to see Sirius.

That leaves the other attraction – the light that appears on the edge of a hill slope (making people wonder if is it in the sky, or on the hill)  every year.  This light  also appears around the same time – twilight, but is much more fleeting, appearing only for a few minutes before disappearing.  The millions who chose to visit Sabarimala specifically on Makara Vilakku day, and not on any other day that the temple is open, do so because they believe they would be blessed to see this spectacle.  It’s because they believe that the appearance of the light is an annual miracle.

(Some people mistakenly call the second light as Makara Vilakku, but as the Pandalam Palace has clarified, Makara Vilakku is the name of the festival itself, not the lights).

The TDB had a chance to set the record straight decades ago. As a child, I remember reading an article in the now-defunct The Illustrated Weekly of India about two college students who were wandering around in the hills surrounding Sabarimala, including some areas that are off-limits to tourists.  They came across some lighting system deep in the forest, and quickly figured out that this was the famous “Makara Jyothi”.   The students were chased and threatened, but managed to escape.  That article created a huge controversy, but most people did not believe those college students, and even saw the article as an insult to their faith and so on.

The Travancore Devaswom Board should have spoken out then, if it really wanted devotees to know the truth.  But the Travancore Devaswom Board did not come out in support of those vilified college students, either then or anytime after that.  The TDB issued no statements clarifying that of course, what the students saw were the lights used to project the “Makara Jyothi”, or say that the Jyothi was artificial.  If  they had said anything, of course, today there would be no controversy about whether the Makara Jyothi is man-made or heavenly.  So why did they remain silent?  When newspapers and magazines were full of angry letters from people rubbishing the claim that the Jyothi was man-made, shouldn’t the TDB authorities have come out with the truth? What stopped them?

Was it, by any chance. the thought of the millions in lost revenue for the Sabarimala temple – not only from the devotee-tourists’ lodging and food and transportation, but also the TV telecast rights on multiple networks!

People have always loved to believe in miracles. Even otherwise rational people who are skeptical about most other things will believe in miracles when it comes to religion.  But we aren’t even talking about fly-by-night fake swamis here – we are talking about a famous temple that has existed for hundreds of years and attracts devotees in the millions.  We are talking about a temple that is famous for its strict adherence to religious belief, and to rules that no other temple has (the 41 day penance, the prohibition of young and middle-aged women from visiting etc.).  Surely, the authorities in such a temple would  not stoop to lying, or remaining silent in the face of lies,  merely because they would profit commercially from things left unsaid?

I have a lot of respect for Sabarimala devotees, and the rigors they undergo to visit the temple.  Devotees who visit Sabarimala do so because of their faith in Lord Ayyappa, and they don’t need additional marketing gimmicks to visit the temple.  Creating  hype around an artificial “makara jyothi”  and leading people to believe that it is some kind of modern-day miracle is nothing but a cheap publicity stunt, not something one expects of an authority like the TDB.

All right, this is understandable to the extent that international recognition is good.  But when we see the frenzy which accompanies the decision of which entry to submit in the “Best Foreign Film” category, we realize that it’s much more than mere international recognition.  Somehow the Oscar awards have become the arbiter for all the world’s films.  Somehow you need an Oscar to tell you that A R Rahman is very good.

I’ve blogged in the past about how ridiculous our craving for Oscar recognition is.   We have a film industry which is larger than the US film industry (in terms of volume, if not in total film budget).  We are the best arbiter when it comes to films made in India.  Why should we bother about the Oscars?  Why not give more importance to the Filmfare awards and other film awards in India?

Which brings me to my second issue – why are we so cavalier about these other film awards?  I’m just going by the casual attire that actors and actresses wear to these award ceremonies.   For the Oscars, no one would think of wearing anything except a suit.

But one after the other, Indian film stars seem to turn up in see through shirts and distressed denim at desi film awards.

Not to pick on anyone, but here’s one example (there were several others who appeared in similar attire):

Pic: Sify Movies/ Salman Khan at Star Screen Awards

I don’t need a dress code from UBS to tell me that distressed denim is not formal wear, and certainly not anything you would wear on the red carpet.

But from what I can see, ruffled, unkempt hair, see through shirts, shirts hanging out partly, distressed denim, tight T-shirts (including those with teen-humor messages) and other such attire seem to be standard red carpet attire for actors.  You would think they bunked class at some nearby college campus to appear at the awards.

I am certain that these same people, if they were to appear at an Oscar awards ceremony, would (going by the attire of Aamir Khan and Anil Kapoor) be very smartly dressed in formal business suits with not a hair out of place.

Why this differential treatment?

I have my strong suspicions that FCC officials don’t randomly call people soliciting Do Not Call registry sign-ups, but he had a desi accent, so I decided to humor him, and asked him what he wanted.

He asked for R, then went on to tell me that he is registering phones for the “Do Not Call” registry so that I don’t receive unwanted calls from telemarketers.  Did I want to register mine?

I told him that my phone was already registered, thank you, and if I did need to add any more numbers I would go to the website to do it.

“But ma’am if you do it through the website ma’am, it will cost some dollars, ma’am” he said.

Now I was certain this was some kind of  scam.  But hey, he was a desi, and  did I mention that he was calling me “Ma’am” at the end of every second word?

So I just told him I was pretty sure he had no idea what he was talking about, and ended the call.

A quick search revealed that, sure enough, there was such a scam. The FTC’s website warns that this is yet another identity theft scam, where he would have asked for my Social Security Number , date of birth and so on.  No doubt he would have opened a few credit cards in my name and bought himself some flat-screen TVs.  Unfortunately, my generosity towards fellow desis does not extend to buying them flat-screen TVs.

But later, I wondered if I had let “Joseph” get away so lightly.  Why was I so polite to him even though I knew he was a scammer?  Was it because of his multiple ma’am syndrome, or because he was desi?

I also started thinking about how “Joseph” made no attempt to disguise his Indianness.  It was not just the accent, but the way he framed his sentences and the words he used (which I may not have reproduced exactly above).  He was either from a call center with a severe shortage of  “accent reduction” training personnel, or he was targeting desis.

I have been the target of desi to desi scams before.  Typically, these involve desis trying to sell phone cards, and these people are quite persistent.  They don’t hide their accent, if anything they seem to exaggerate it.  Being on the “Do Not Call” registry doesn’t help with these guys, as they proudly tell you they are based in India and so the registry has no effect on them.

But phone card harassment is one thing, identity theft is quite another.

I’m sure there are some unsuspecting desis who might give out their social security number on the phone.   But there are lots more unsuspecting folks in the general population who will also do the same.  However, they *may* wonder at someone with a strong Indian accent claiming to be from the FCC.

So what do you think, was this scam targeted at desis?

Do you feel more indignant when you receive such scam calls from desis ?