In other news..

So, I haven’t been tagged on Facebook. This means I don’t legally have to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about me and then at the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. But if you knew me, you’d tag me too. And, whaththeheck, I’m dying to do this.

1. I love sleep. If I have two hours before an early morning flight, I will use it to… sleep. I always get up two minutes before my alarm goes off. And then I go back to sleep for those two minutes.

2. I wish I’d listened to more music growing up. I blame my singledom on my incapacity to hold a five minute conversation on music.

3. I always know how imbalanced I am in real life by the complexity of my dream-plots. The more complex my dreams are, the more messed up my life is. This is true.

4. I am publicly thrilled that I’m Gemini.

5. Wit above looks above smarts. I wither at the mention of ‘brands’. And childhoods spent outside the country. And “high class” upbringing.

6. I can amuse myself for hours in my room imagining impossible imaginings. What she’d say and what I would say in reply that would make her laugh. (I laugh out loud at my witticisms.). The speech I’d deliver if I was Prime Minister. The speech I’d make in the hours before my hanging for assassinating the tyrannical Prime Minister. How I’d single handedly beat up entire armies of capitalist marauders if I only knew ju-jitsu.

7. I want the world to change.

8. I sometimes wonder what it would be like if I were just the way I am… only, a girl. What would it be like to have breasts. Female genitalia. Would I still watch porn? The best part of these rare fantasies for me: the women’s showers! Sometimes I can be sucha bloody perv.

9. I only have a very dim notion of where I am headed in life. I don’t know what made this way. I don’t think knowing would make a difference. This scares me. Sometimes. It always infuriates my parents. I would trade this phase in my life in exchange for a time travelling device. Or a rocket.

10. Birthdays puzzle me. I always feel like I’m being congratulated for something I didn’t do.

11. I’ve always gotten what I needed, seldom what I wanted. Women, grades, admissions, recognition, whatever. And that has been the biggest gift of my life. I don’t know why, or who to thank for it.

12. The kind of girl I want to be with doesn’t exist in this world.

13. For the past 4 years, my weight has ranged between 63-65 kilos. At 5′11 I look lanky at 63 and overweight at 65.

14. I have been leched at by women. This is a feat I would NEVER have imagined myself capable of 10 years ago.

15. In my dreams, I often regress to my last year in school. 12th grade.

16. Animals drive me to distraction. In the past year, a cat has been responsible for the loss of my most productive hours.

17. Schemers and manipulators are the only kinds of people who excite violently aggressive impulses in me. Make me physically prepared to ball my fingers into a fist and send it crashing into their skulls.

18. I want an elder son and younger daughter. I will be buddies with my son, but will spoil my daughter.

19. There used to be a time when the internet was my whole support system. I’ve graduated to the telephone.

20. I constantly feel like reaching out and touching women’s hair. No part of a woman’s body (except neck maybe. And waist) arouses me more.

21. I have had two “one-night stands” and have regretted them both.

22. I am ready for marriage with the girl I know doesn’t exist.

23. I can manage without glasses, but have “less than perfect” vision. I sometimes wear glasses when I read, but automatically take them off when I’m talking to someone. Even on the phone.

24. I once played an Anarchy Online for an entire week. When someone asked me what I’d been upto that week, I told them that I’d spent it running across a vast fantasy terrain battling aggressive monsters and scavenging their dead bodies for loot.

25. Hyderabad is the city I carry around inside my head. Wherever I go. So Budapest was Hyderabad with the Danube running through it. Istanbul was Hyderabad with the AyaSofiya and the Bosporus. Sapporo was Hyderabad with.. Japanese. Like Orhan Pamuk wrote of his Hyderabad, I love mine because it has made me who I am.

26. I am more terrified of remaining unmarried lifelong than of being divorced.

27. I had to stop talking to my “first love” so that I could become who I am. I always feel happier when I imagine what my life would have been like if I hadn’t stopped talking to her.

28. The best gifts I have ever given, or received have been handmade.

29. I thank the lord each day for having given me an older brother. I sometimes wish I’d been less mean to him growing up. Or I’d held myself back, when I called him a stupid bloody moron.

30. One day, in the not-so-distant-future, the contentment of 700 million people will be directly traceable to one of the mundane things that I am doing now, or will do during the course of my life. And I don’t much care if they didn’t even know that I did it, or name their children after me, or write about me and talk about me while passing the salt at the dinner table.

I live in a beautiful (bee-yoo-ti-fool) two room apartment with an enormous verandah and plants in front. This is in an adorable quiet, ‘decent’ locality in Bangalore. Some days, I feel like standing on my huge verandah and hollering out loudly.. to disturb the peace.. just for fun. Just to see.

I had a startling revelation this morning. These days, I habitually encounter trees in this city as if they were lingering representatives of a species under threat of extinction. I cannot help myself. I see a tree and almost reflexively also imagine its absence. What would this space look like, this street become if this tree were to be felled, if only the stump were to remain of this massive tree, its luxuriating branches and dense foliage surgically excised, like a cancerous outgrowth.

I had a somewhat combative conversation with my father this morning. He called to declare his plan of lunching this weekend with the parents of a girl who may become my brother’s bride. He wanted me to make a flying visit to Hyderabad for the occasion. I advised caution, “hurrying slowly”, and only after my brother had endorsed the plan. My consultative tone appears to have grated my father. “Look, I’m not stupid ok?”, he said, hotly. While momentarily taken aback, I’ve learnt to adjust, over the years, to my father’s temperamentality, to ignore the harshness of his words with the patience of one who overlooks the tantrums and fits of a patient, or an infant. My father is a “good intentioned” man, somewhat despotically convinced that his good intentions pervade everything he does. To question his conduct is to question his inmost fiber.

The conversation with my father this morning brought back memories of a meeting of the Yellappa Reddy Committee that I attended in November last year. The committee was constituted by the High Court to review the large scale tree-felling plans of the BBMP. It is charged with the task of eliciting public opinion on tree felling and to pass orders necessary to preserve greenery. Contrary to the High Court’s mandate, the chairman Yellappa Reddy sees himself as an “expert” appointee, capable of pronouncing on behalf of and as the public. At one point in the the meeting I attended (in response to a call for wider public participation) he abruptly exclaimed “You think we are fools sitting here? Every child in Karnataka knows Yellappa Reddy. Don’t you have any faith in me?”

There’s a similarity of structure, I think, between Yellappa Reddy’s and my father’s outburst. After 28 years of being a parent, my father, probably justifiedly sees “thinking and acting in the best interests of children” as his exclusive preserve. Any collateral attempts by other “interested parties” (viz me) are acts of mutiny, no less.
With Yellappa Reddy and his BBMP flunkies, there’s a pervasive attitude of condescending “expertness” that one encounters with them. As government appointees, they see themselves as invested with the sovereign power of determining the fate of the numberless trees (timber) under their dominion. Any attempts by concerned citizens like me are viewed derisively – as if we were naive officious interveners who were taxing their “expert” time.

I’ve realised something. The constitution of the BBMP as the overlord of the city and its trees, has configured me as an alien interloper within its limits. My passage through the city is permitted, but any possessive feeling of “belonging to” the city is vigorously resisted. Specifically, under this arrangement, I may never grow fond of, adore, worship, or relate directly to/with a tree in this city. Because of the Karnataka Municipal Council’s Act, I can only ever relate to a tree as a stranger or disinterested “third-party”. There’s an invisible “arm’s length” between the trees in this city and me, and I have no business. To attempt to bridge this length is to question the apparatus of the state, to attempt insurrection.

Here’s what I might have said if I had business:

Krishna Udupudi, Deputy Chief Conservator of forests, Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) told The Hindu. These trees are set to be felled for widening the two roads for the smooth flow of traffic.

Mr. Udupudi said.“We had divided the 66 trees into eight lots, which means that the bidder will have to buy the entire lot. The lot with three mahogany trees netted the maximum of Rs. 70, 000,” said Mr. Udupudi.

Further, he explained that the value of the tree depends on the species, girth and height of the tree. “A mahogany or timber tree will fetch us more than say a gulmohar. Some of the trees fetch very less because the cost of felling the tree itself is steep,” he said. Apart from the mahogany trees, all others fetched prices on par with the government value, he added.

In a study that costs US$ 10,000 to read, Access Market International, a consultancy which describes itself as “The Leader in Global SMB Actionable Market Intelligence” and “Go-To-Market Strategy” (huh?) says that “Indian small and medium businesses (SMBs) are on track to spend $1.26 billion on Internet-related products and services this year.”

Snippets from the study from our friendly neighbourhood Hindu Business Line who, I dearly hope, did not waste their good money buying such junk.

The study states that the while the Internet has become “a way of life” for medium businesses, barely 25 per cent of small businesses currently have an Internet connection. However, small businesses are embracing the Internet by “leaps and bounds”.

The study states that the penetration of Internet-enabled small businesses is anticipated to rise by more than four percentage points in the current year.

More than 50 per cent of the SMBs said they were in favour of an improvement in Internet speed. Thirty-seven per cent of the respondents said they would like to opt for a total revamp of their Internet access infrastructure such as replacing or upgrading their Internet access routers. Affordability and availability have increased broadband usage with BSNL/MTNL enjoying an SMB penetration of 44 per cent and 33 per cent, respectively. They are followed by VSNL, Tata Teleservices and Reliance.

The study states that SMBs are also heavily dependent on information sources such as vendor Web sites and search engines for gaining awareness about IT products and services.

So.. people in small and medium business are using google. Who knew. They are in fact, in favour of (and not against) improving internet speed. Hallelujah! This is so stupidly banal, that it MUST be dressed up in a title as fruity as “Go-to-market” strategy.

I think the secret to saying anything in this world and being taken seriously, is to insert mention US$ 1 billion in relation to anything you are talking about. US$ 1 billion is a sufficiently fatly rounded monetary figure that makes it hard to ignore.

A young boy employed by the HMWSSB clears a stormwater manhole near Indira Park.

From The Indian Express

The Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in Guwahati has confirmed that pesticide caused the death of a tiger cub in a tea estate near Kaziranga National Park in January this year.

According to R P Gohain, director of the FSL, lab tests found pesticide residues in the carcass the tiger cub had eaten before its death in the Rongagora division of Hatikhuli, a tea estate owned by Tata Tea Ltd. “We have found quite a high concentration of pesticide in the cattle carcass on which the tiger cub had fed,” Gohain said.

A second tiger cub that also consumed part of the carcass survived and is currently lodged in the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation at Kaziranga.