Diwali

It is that time of the year, again !

People all over India celebrated Diwali, the Festival of Lights, over the past couple of days. While people appeared to be cheerful, and billions of text messages were exchanged, I sensed something different this time around. i had expected to see much more exuberance of the rational type ofcourse, since the stock market has done very well, and the real estate prices in Mumbai showed no signs of abating. People have to spend money, you see, and one of the best ways is to splurge it on the family !

To check out the feelings of others, I spoke to couple of friends in Bangalore and Chennai. They confirmed what I thought was different this time - it indeed was a “low key” Diwali. Not much noise, nor crowds. It was surprising !

In fact, when I went down with family to burst crackers during the late evening, it was quiet. We were only with just another family in the smoky celebrations which use sparklers, flower pots, jamin chakra, and atom bombs. We also resorted to rocket attacks, but there were few corresponding response from neighbouring apartment blocks. That used to be the case - tit for tat type almost - previously. Further, there was no action on the streets - there used to be gangs of youngsters who use the powerful multi-blast crackers, which go on for a few minutes non-stop, during which you can’t even talk. That was clearly missing, though I saw some serious action during the late hours of Friday.

We went to visit my relatives in South Mumbai, and that was a long ride from where we live. It took just about an hour - the traffic was thin, and on the day of the Diwali, there was hardly any crowds of people who usually mill around mithai shops and burst crackers on the road. The heavy regulation on crackers must be playing a role in peoples’ minds, I thought, but that was wrong. The cracker sound did catch up in the wee hours of Friday, sometimes non-stop, but I still could not get over the feeling that the celebrations were not in tune with the economic mood of the city.

Nevertheless, it was a Diwali enlightened by people who sent lots of messages all around. It was nice to see customised messages and pictorial ones. Much time was devoted to sending out SMSs to the people on one’s phonebook, and then replying to folks who had managed to send out the messages earlier thanking and reciprocating their wishes !

Ofcourse, the one thing that never goes out of style is the variety of sweets that one can enjoy during Diwali. We got an excellent collection from Hyper City, and supplemented the same with some additional mithais from elsewhere. It was just fabulous and delicious, to say the least.

Apart from this, one also gets new dresses !

Enjoy the rest of Diwali and the Long Weekend folks !

Cheers

Vijay Srinivasan
10th November 2007
Mumbai

Religious Mishap

It was a happening week in India last week - rarely it is otherwise.

The Government of India contested the existence of Ram, a mythological God in Indian ancient mythology, in the Supreme Court of India ! This was in relation to the narrow canal between the South-Eastern corner of India and Sri Lanka in the sea dividing the two countries, which was proposed to be deepened to allow passage of bigger ships. The Archaelogical Survey of India was challenged to choose between geography/geology and mythology. Being a scientific body it chose the former.

In Ramayana, the ancient mythological story loved by millions of kids and adults, Ram is the central figure. Hanuman, the monkey God, builds a bridge across the sea from the India side to the Sri Lanka side, to send an army of monkeys to help save Sita, Ram’s wife, from her forced captivity on the island by Ravana, the ten-headed king of Ceylon.

I was just wondering about the foolishness of the government officials in contesting the existence of Ram (a la God Himself) in a Court of Law. Though a secular nation, India has a population with 87% Hindus. It is clearly an affront to them, or atleast to many of them, if their faith itself is being challenged in a court by the government of the day ! It turned out to be a no-gainer for the government of course, which hurriedly withdrew its affidavit from the court. It realised the folly of pushing the envelope too much, though it might have contained factually correct information.

Secularism is ofcourse an important and critical tenet of India’s own existence and survival over the past 6 decades after independence from the British. The many governments which came and went over these decades pandered to the religious minorities’ wishes, so as to preserve their majority in the parliament by the split votes management technique. Nothing wrong with that ofcourse, but the religious majority developed certain firewalls to defend their interests.

Without going into politics too much, I just wanted to make one observation - whenever religion mixes with politics, the results have been disastrous for any nation. One sees it in the middle east all the time. Politics when emboldened by religious fanatics, fans the fires of destruction in civil society. However, it would not be prudent for any ruling government to facilitate such fanatics by making foolhardy attempts like taking a Hindu God to Court ! Again, such things happen only in democracies, but that does not take away the foolishness of the whole episode which has captured the imagination of political parties around the country.

Time wasted, which could have been used gainfully in economic development.

Here’s wishing you all “Happy Ganesh Chathurthi” an important Hindu festival celebrating Ganesh, the elephant God who removes hurdles from one’s life.

Cheers

Vijay Srinivasan
15 Sep 2007
Mumbai

30/31 December 2006

On 30th Dec late evening, there was a party in my condominium premises which we attended as a family…..it was great with very nice dance and song performances by various kids, including mine.

Some pics from that event……

DSC00491, originally uploaded by vjsri99.

DSC00468, originally uploaded by vjsri99.

DSC00467, originally uploaded by vjsri99.

However, on 31 December, we decided to spend time together as a family - not go outside given that it would inevitably be crowded everywhere, further policemen would be sniffing almost all drivers - we thought it would be better to stay indoors. Nevertheless we went out for dinner to Rajdhani - fabulous Gujarati Food of the highest quality. After that we saw a few movies at home.

One such movie was the Pearl Harbour, which works very well if you have a hi-fi home theatre system. The whole house will be getting bombed for a long time - as long as the Japanese took to complete the two bombing sessions on the unsuspecting ships anchored at the harbour in Hawaii. We were seeing it probably for the third time - all of us love the movie’s theme and the great direction of the movie - the sound effects of the movie come out great on a DTS 5.1 system.

Some of the pics from the movie courtesy the Pearl Harbour Movie…….

DSC00527, originally uploaded by vjsri99.

DSC00500, originally uploaded by vjsri99.

DSC00524, originally uploaded by vjsri99.

Best Regards

Vijay Srinivasan
01 Jan 2007
Mumbai

Apologies and Diwali

There has been no posting for the past couple of weeks. I have been reminded of my journalistic duties by several regular readers. Sorry about the lapse.

It has been the first Diwali after a long time with sound and music. We enjoyed the Diwali Crackers the most - it was now possible to launch rockets from home ! Singapore does not allow bursting of crackers - Diwali is normally a sedate affair with temple visits and long dinners with family and friends. We dropped the temple idea here at Mumbai - does not seem to be the practice anyway - and focused on adding waistlines and launching bombs and rockets.

It was good - only that the security people in the condominium came up several times to ensure that we are behaving properly ! “Please clean up” !!

We went up to the 18th Floor Terrace, and the city was bursting with joyous colours. Environmental fanatics may not agree with the pollution generated by crackers. The socially conscious refute the whole notion of cracker usage, since child labour is used in Sivakasi, a town in southern Tamil Nadu State, to manufacture crackers. My eldest daughter does not seem to be approving of the environmental damage caused.

Well, we all enjoyed the day - it is after all “destruction of demons”, “destruction of evil with lights and fire”, et al. Good finally overtakes evil.

Well, friends, have a wonderful and relaxing Sunday - will catch up soon with some of my new exploits in and around Mumbai soon ! The camera is in full use now, and I am going to upload pictures finally soon.

Best Regards

Vijay Srinivasan
29 October 2006
Mumbai

Tamil New Year 14 April 2006

We have a small association in Singapore which is prestigeously called as “G-12″, with members drawn from various walks of life, the only common thread being that all of them are Tamilians settled in Singapore. There are many such associations amongst the Indian communities in Singapore. I call it “communities” since there is not one single brand of Indians or India reflected in the society as such. There are language, religion, caste, community based groupings everywhere you go, but it is striking to notice that the Indian community is the one known for its divisions, reflecting the manner in which the country was ruled and operated in the past. When I came to Singapore in the early nineties, I was expecting to be part of some Indian community association, with the sole expectation of social networking benefits. My wife was interested in the arts, for the sake of the children, and the first one we enrolled in was the South Indian Fine Arts Society. Later there were instances when I could have become part of a casteist grouping, but I desisted from doing so, given the self-learnt leanings one develops when growing up with a multiple set of challenges which drives one to develop an independent streak of thinking. To say it in a nutshell, it was a non-conformist behaviour, developed into a pattern of expectations on the self, which I would let go on its own decision-making when it confronts societal pressures, because logic cannot be the only basis in such situations.

However, the G-12 association in which I became a member in 1995, has kept to its objective of developing strong networking amongst its members and families, a strong sense of belonging to a like-minded group of people who have no other agenda apart from developing friendships and providing needed advice, a spirit of sports and games playing involving even dull people, and last, but not the least, provide a continuous opportunity through the year to taste solid Indian food, albeit with plenty of South Indian impact.

I have enjoyed my association with this grouping, and now it has grown to a shape when sons and daughters are in their mid to late teens, or entering university, and discussions have taken a decided shape away from normal business, political, and society kind of talk. Many of these folks are now very knowledgeable about university admissions procedures all around the world !

We met on 14th April evening at Braddell View for an evening of games, chit-chat, and dinner. The ladies started with a “Rangoli” design on the floor, which is what you see in the picture above. We celebrated the Tamil New Year day, which is the traditional “harvest” day for the farmers in Tamil Nadu. It was great fun, and despite my grasp of the English knowledge which I thought was nothing less than of an impeccable standard, my team of two members scored the last in the Scrabble Competition, due to the unfortunate set of vowels we constantly landed with.

It was simply a relaxing evening, which recharged my batteries for another few weeks !

Well done G-12 !

Best Regards

Vijay Srinivasan
16th April 2006
Singapore