Sunday 10 May 2009

Varun Gandhi must be on dope!

http://election.rediff.com/report/2009/may/09/loksabhapoll-varun-gandhi-for-sterilisation-compulsary-military-service.htm

1. Varun Gandhi wants to re-introduce sterilisation program and continue his father's legacy (who, by the way, sterilised people on the sly without their knowledge!). I love how in India, population control has to be so fatal. What about condoms and pills? ("Oh but that is immoral because it will encourage sex!" Indeed and we're the second largest population on this planet through vegetative propogation, right?)
I'd like to see VG to be the first person who is sterilised. Doosron ko bolna bahut hi aasan hota hai...

2. Varun Gandhi wants to make military service compulsory to "unite" India. Usse accha hoga if he stopped making hate speeches against Muslims. I disagree with compulsory military service. I think it should be a choice otherwise people will start resenting it. Plus it will be a huge hole in the Govt's budget! Also, if caste and religious divides exist in society, expect to see them in full flare during military service where certain groups will be bullied and harassed. And again - why doesn't he do some military service first?

3. Varun Gandhi "vowed to protect local people from "anti-social" elements after three local girls were reportedly gang-raped." I feel alienated that I'm not one of the "local people" VG cares about. And I'm sorry but this is not the first time women have been raped in India. If VG reads the newspaper, he might have noticed that this is an everyday reality. How nice to want to root out "anti-social" elements (whatever that means!) before elections.

Wednesday 29 April 2009

Aaa-cchhooo!

I don't like this one bit - Aaa-cchhooo! I hate missing Uni so close to exams (though some might argue that one is more productive that way) so I could sneeze all day into aromatic tissues that I picked up (Aaa-cchhooo!) from a well-timed sale at Paterson. What's the point of having them smell like (Aaa-cchhooo!) peach or apple or vanilla? It's not like I can sme-(Aaa-cchhooo!)-ll anything right now anyway, and it's not very nice to be reminded of temporary disabilities!

In the (Aaa-cchhooo!) midst of the deadly swine flu epidemic, I guess a regular flu is bittersweet at worst but this is the 3-(Aaa-cchhooo!)-rd time in 4 months that (Aaa-cchhooo!) my organism has been humbled by this lyctic bas-(Aaa-cchhooo!)-tard of a Rhinovirus! I used to have an immune system to die for! I almost never (Aaa-cchhooo!) fell sick - maximum a fever a year with a few throat-aches, usually (Aaa-cchhooo!) associated with the over-consumption of Coca-Cola or Baskin-Robbins' cookie dough (Aaa-cchhooo!) ice-cream. (They don't kid when they say that stuff isn't good for health!) But St. Pete's PMSing (Aaa-cchhooo!) weather conditions, false promises of a warm Spring day and living (Aaa-cchhooo!) next to the Gulf of Finland where the average wind-speed is 4m/sec (that's high, right?) have shattered this iron-curtain of an Indian immune system I used to be so proud of.

The only good thing is that I am (Aaa-cchhooo!) again accepting get-well-soon cards, flowers, chocolates, return-(Aaa-cchhooo!)-tickets to warm places etc. and you know where to find me ;)

Aaa-cchhooo!

Friday 17 April 2009

Remembering London

As fanatical as I may be about Russia; as homesick as I may be for India; I will always say that there's no place like London! My only problem with the capital of the Old Empire was it's weather but clearly, that won't be an issue anymore. There is always something worse in life! Today, for instance, St. Pete was at -2 with 'heavy' snow. (Well, it definitely felt heavy for Spring!)

I went to London for the first time way back in 1997. This was the first time my 11 year old feet stepped on foreign soil and I was smitten by the idea of London. My Dad was studying at the LSE back then; and Mom, Arpita (my sis) and I had gone to spend a few months with him.

Arpita and I both enrolled into schools. Those were some of the best days of my life. I loved how school began at 9:30 and not at 8:00 like in India. Every morning, I walked her to school and read her a children's book in her school's library. I still remember, 'A Mother for Choco'(1) about a orphan chick who is looking for his mother and finally gets adopted by Mrs. Bear - that was our favourite book and I read it to her at least a dozen times.

I would then head to my own school - Sheringham Junior, where the day would start off with a casual chat with my class-teacher, Mr Robinson, a remarkable person. I loved how he made an effort to get to know everyone and how encouraging he was, which was such a contrast to how most teachers behaved in India. (Needless to say, those who didn't behave like this became very dear!)

Classes were always fun. In India, we read books, underlined all the points depending on which questions were posed at the end of the chapter and we went home, where we neatly wrote these answers out. London was so much more dynamic - we didn't just read the books but we watched videos and went to museums, we debated these questions and we went home, where we made colourful projects about what we had learnt - and this "what we had learnt" could have been anything we wanted. Moreover, as a geeky Indian, I loved being able to answer questions like 11 times 13 in 2 seconds, while the other students would still be staring at their notebooks. I bet they hated me for this! And they also made fun of me because they could never understand why I would always stand up to answer the questions. But nevertheless, they played with me and they were my friends. Those differences were never taken personally even if they were annoying. My classmates in India were never so kind...

Fast-forward to 27th September 2004: I landed at London Heathrow and this time because I was going to the LSE...

First time away from home is both exciting and scary to say the least. There were things that weren't so much fun - this was the first time I had to do my laundry - but there were things that made me feel like an adult instantly. This was the first time I could do things on my own terms. I could oversleep without Mom and Dad giving me a hard time for the rest of the week. I could go out whenever I wanted with whoever I wanted (Mom and Dad are still a bit strict though with time they too have grown up!) The London Underground completely eliminated by dependence on the need to be picked up and dropped off. Plus unlike New Delhi, London is very safe for women and I didn't ever have to worry about getting r*ped and murdered(2). And most importantly, this was the first time I had a debit card with my name on it. Being in control of my own £inances - even if that money came from a ridiculous 12.5% student loan that had to be paid back - was a big step for me! So in London, having dropped my chains, I was taking cautious steps and big leaps all at once...

The first cut is the deepest. And London is so dear because it is so many first cuts - first time abroad, first university, first love, first job, first apartment...




That’s probably why nostalgia is so unbearably powerful when it’s for London. The craving is so real that I can...

...see the traffic at the High Holborn crossing where I waited for 38 to go back to my hostel on Rosebery Avenue;
...smell the midnight hot-dogs and pizzas at Leicester Square and Tottenham Court Road;
...hear “The next stop is Canary Wharf” on the Jubilee Line;
...taste pineapple coolers at Ping Pong, the peri-peri sauce at Nandos, the strawberry cheesecake ice-cream at Haagen-Dazs;
...and feel the wind in my hair while crossing the Thames to get to the Lehman building on Bank Street

Coming to Russia made me realise how ‘Indian’ London really is. London has a huge Indian community so no one stared at me when I was out in the street. There are a gazillion Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi restaurants for the Brits love “curry” as much as we do. Diwali and Holi are celebrated with the same fervour as in India though not on the same scale. And I used to get invitations to Bollywood parties all the time. Therefore, Russia sometimes is twice as hard because not only do I miss London, I miss India more than I ever have!

Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better to settle for dominion status with our former colonisers so we could have been one big happy family! In any case, we Indians still think of England as our second Motherland and love her to death! Perhaps, a more accurate slogan during our Independence Struggle would have been, "Angrezon, Bharat chhodo...taki hum tumhare peeche aa sakein!" (“British, quit India...so we can follow you home!”)

PS - This post is dedicated to Medha, Dheer, Divya, Dhiren, Varun, Kanishk, Ali, Pallavi, Manyu, Herschel, Farhad, Neha, Ankit, Khushbu, Sasha, Sonia, Peter, Valerie, Sharmin, Chris and Kate. Without you, London wouldn't have been the same!

Notes:
1. A Mother for Choco:
http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Choco-Paperstar-Keiko-Kasza/dp/0698113640#
2. This safety issue made me realise what kind of civil liberties I was missing at home and till date this is one of the biggest reasons against moving back to Delhi.

Saturday 4 April 2009

I'm bringing Lazy back...

Privet vsyem!

I know I have been ridiculously out-of-action. Not because things haven't been happening but because so much has been happening that...well...I have felt too tired to write about it and generally submitted to the voice of the lazy 'devil' Aanch that sits on my left shoulder...

So what now? Well, these are difficult economic times so we've had to regrettably fire her. And now, I, under the sound guidance of my halo-bearing 'angel' Aanch, am back at your service...

Here's what you've missed:

1. Temperatures continue to be in-tune with oil prices i.e. they're heading back up. Spring is slowly approaching. The cute-little flower buds and happy song-birds that they used to show in Bambi and Lion King to depict Spring still seem like a cruel joke but the days are getting longer, DST has ticked away, the Sun is becoming more than just a guest-star in my Bollywood life and the snow and ice are slowly melting to reveal the long-forgotten colours and textures of the mud and gravel underneath (along with the occasional unpleasantries of perfectly-preserved pre-Winter dog excrement...)

2. Dorota (my Polish flatmate) and I went to Murmansk, the largest city in the world north of the Arctic Circle. I have to say, while it felt great to be so far up-north (See satellite image: http://www.maplandia.com/russia/murmanskaya-oblast/kolskiy-rayon/murmansk/), the 20 hours we spent there sandwiched between 27 hours of train journey each way, were more than enough! The city is bigger than I expected but still small enough so we were able to walk a big chunk in around 4 hours. But among the Alyosha statue overlooking the Kola Inlet, the Museum of Regional Studies (Probably the № 1 employer of taxidermists in Murmansk), the red-brick Lighthouse and the rather stinky Aquarium, the highlight of my Murmansk trip was falling waist-deep in snow! Even though, at one point I was terrified - because even when Dorota tried to pull me out, there was no ground beneath my feet on which I could have pushed myself up and out and any attempt to this end only sank me deeper into the snow – without this incident, there would be little else worth remembering from Murmansk!

3. This is an uncomfortable time of the year for a brown girl in Saint-Petersburg. 20th April is Adolf Hitler’s birthday and whilst I really don’t care about Nazi-boy’s birthday, I do have to watch out for racial hatred in Europe’s skin-head capital. My Schengen won’t be ready in time, so my planned escape to Latvia is essentially turning itself into a self-imposed house-arrest to avoid getting beaten-up or stabbed. (Hmmm...every beautiful city has an ugly face!) From what I hear, sometimes even the Police turn a blind-eye to Neo-Nazi activities and it’s only the old, wobbly Babushkas who shout at these xenophobic trouble-makers. I guess, if you survived the Leningrad blockade, very little in life must scare you! Kind of makes you wonder why Supernanny wasn’t originally Russian instead...

That’s all for now. I must say that the ‘devil’ Aanch sabotaged me again. I sat down in front of the computer to write a cover letter for a job application but ended up doing this blog-entry instead. Oh well, just coz we fired her doesn’t mean she isn’t good at what she does...

Back to work now...

Sunday 22 February 2009

Gone in sixty seconds...

If attitude is contagious then a certain lady is guilty of unleashing an epidemic. To do her justice, one may have to liken her spirit to a love-poem that cascaded from the tip of Pushkin's feather-pen or a face stroked by Michelangelo's brush that paled everything else on the canvas...

It was the most ordinary, almost missable chance encounter when Mia and I were crossing the road to get home. It was a red light but the only two cars coming in our direction were far enough so we started to walk to the divider.

Suddenly, someone called out to us, "Girls, wait for me..." And there came this easily-over-80 lady, wearing a grey headscarf outlined by her silver curls, wearing a black knee-length overcoat and a long-skirt that exposed a bit of her fragile legs wrapped in skin-colour stockings and worn-out black men's shoes, dashing forward with her walking stick. "Please help me cross the road!"

Without question, Mia and I held her elbows on either side and did exactly that. When we got to the divider, the light turned green making the second half of the road even easier to cross. But now she didn't want to go!

"Come on. We'll take you to the other side," I said, unable to conceal my confusion at her sudden resistance.

"Don't worry. I have to wait for them," she chuckled toothlessly and turned back teasingly to the other side of the road, where her other friends had just started to cross seeing the green signal.

"Are you sure you don't want to come with us?" I think I was pleading at this point.

"Thank you very much for your help!" She said dismissing my question and then started to cross the road leaving her friends way behind.

Mia and I exchanged a look of complete amazement. Given her age, she had obviously survived the Seige of Leningrad and probably lost most of her dear ones then and in the years that followed when post-war famine plagued the Soviet Union. Her defiant eyes had obviously seen the Stalinist terror and probably knew some who had been sent to the Gulag and maybe she herself had been imprisoned! She had seen the Khrushchevs, the Brezhnevs, the Gorbachevs, the Yelstins and the Putins. She had probably lost everything she 'owned' in 1992 and 1997 under the capitalism shock and the currency crisis...

...And here she was jumping a red-light just so she could tease her friends for not being as fast as her!

"I want to be just like her when I'm that old," Mia said.

"I was just thinking of that!" I nodded as she walked past us!

And in that moment, she was my Russia! This is the unconquerable spirit I am so hopelessly in love with...

Wednesday 28 January 2009

65 years on...

Женя умерла 28 декабря в 12.00 час. утра 1941 г. (Zhenya died at 12:00 AM on 28th December 1941.)

This is how Tanya Savicheva(1), a 12 year-old girl from Petersburg, started her diary. And over the next 5 months, she added these notes:
“Grandma died at 3:00 PM on 25th January 1942
Leka died at 5:00 AM on 17th March 1942
Uncle Vasya died at 2:00 AM on 13th April 1942
Uncle Lesha died at 4:00 PM on 10th May 1942
Mama died at 7:30 AM on 13th May 1942
Savichevs died. Everyone died.”

8th September 1941 - 27th January 1944 – 872 days and 872 nights – this was the duration of the Siege of Leningrad. (Also known as the Leningrad Blockade)
1.5 million – This was the number of civilians and soldiers it killed.
1.4 million – This was the number of people who were evacuated from the besieged city but most died during evacuation due to Nazi bombardment or hunger.

I don’t want to do a Mastercard by comparing these deaths to others but just to give you an idea of the magnitude - This is 2.0% of the total deaths in the Second World War, 6.5% of those in Soviet Union, 20.7% of those in Nazi Germany, 333.5% of those in the UK and 358.4% of those in the United States(2). And this is math worked off the 1.5 million number and does not include any deaths during evacuation!

It is thus hardly a surprise that even though in the run up 27th January (the date when the Blockade ended), Saint Petersburg proudly wears patriotic flags, slogans and banners, it isn’t a day when the city celebrates; it’s a day when she remembers and mourns her dead.

It is impossible to live in Petersburg and not bump into people’s recollections of the Blockade. My Conversation teacher, Masha knew a lady who told her that when there was no food left, people ate paper, cement and concrete from walls, birds, dogs, cats, horses, rats, parts of their own flesh and even resorted to cannibalism. My friend Lida’s grandmother told her that her neighbours tried to steal her younger sister so they could eat her!

It is very easy to wince at these words and these stories but I cannot even imagine the helplessness and plight that could encourage such actions. One can only live it to know what it must be like. My own words, emotions and experiences fail me!

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the man who spent 8 years in the Gulag (Soviet Forced Labour Camps) and was the first voice to tell the world of their existence, said:

“First Cell, First Love
How is one to take the title of this chapter? A cell and love in the same breath? Ah, well, probably it has to do with Leningrad during the blockade – and you were imprisoned in the Big House. In that case it would be very understandable. That’s why you were still alive – because they shoved you in there. It was the best place in Leningrad – not only for the interrogators...In Leningrad in those days no one washed and everyone’s face was covered with a black crust, but in the Big House prisoners were given a hot shower every tenth day. Well, it’s true that only the corridors were heated – for the jailors. The cells were left unheated, but after all, there were water pipes in the cells that worked and a toilet, and where else in Leningrad could you find that?”(3)

Here is a man who endured 8 years of hunger, humiliation, terror and torture in a system that crushed anyone that was sucked into it and yet somehow, it was better than being a free man out in the street in Leningrad during the Blockade!

If a picture says a thousand words, a video can hopefully do even better. Do spare three and a half minutes, if you can, to remember Leningrad and her people: http://video.mail.ru/mail/lopes290968/146/152.html

“Leningrad must die of starvation,” Hitler had roared. But she stands. Not only that, she has flourished as the cultural capital of Russia and an important business centre. She is a seductress but she doesn’t lure you with empty promises! Her beauty radiates from the golden domes of her churches as she elegantly dances along the gentle curves of her rivers and canals. Her palaces and museums adorn her soft skin and her gardens and parks give her a fresh energy with which she teases and surprises you. But most of all, much like her Kazan Cathedral, she welcomes you with arms wide open. And right now, she is home and for that I am grateful. Leningrad – I salute you!

Notes:
1. More on Tanya Savicheva and her diary, which was used as evidence at the Nuremberg Trials: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Savicheva

2. The numbers may ignore the fact that Soviet Union had a larger population compared to Nazi Germany, UK and US but consider the fact that at the end of the war, the numbers of deaths in these countries as percentage of 1939 populations were recorded at 10.38%, 0.94% and 0.32% respectively. For the Soviet Union, this number stood at 13.71%. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

3. From Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago (The Harvill Press 2003. Copyright © – The Russian Social Fund, 1985)

More on the Siege of Leningrad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Leningrad


Sunday 25 January 2009

Freako-matri-nomics!

23 is a dangerous age! Nowadays, when the phone rings and my friends have “good news” or “something exciting” to report, it’s usually that they have just gotten engaged or fixed the wedding date or are pregnant...

Now, this is great. It’s a big moment in their lives and I feel very touched that I am one the first people they think of sharing these things with. Being here in Russia, it’s reassuring to see that our friendship has stood the test of distance...if only because we are glued to Google Talk or Skype half the time!

With a surge in such good news and somethings exciting, there are bound to be mistakes when occasionally someone somewhere sends the wedding or engagement invite to my address in Delhi, where I have not lived for the last 4.5 years! Sounds innocent enough, right? Well it is...till my mom or some other older woman in the family gets to it and thereon for the next month or so, all sentences begin with the fatal, “Aanchal, you’re getting older now...and you’re not married...”

What ensues is a battle for my independence, a struggle to retain the right to determine my future, for Liberty, Freedom and Justice – the fight to, at any cost, escape an arranged marriage!

Let me make my position clear – I do see some merit in arranged marriages. For one, both people are ready to make a commitment so it saves a lot of heart-ache that might come with a relationship in which one party is ready to tie the knot but the other one isn’t quite there yet! The second benefit, which probably doesn’t come with relationships, is ‘even’ expectations. Both parties are fairly clear on what the other wants from the very start so conflict on expectations is practically squeezed out. Let’s just say, it’s like walking into a mall with a shopping list so the chances that you end up with something you didn’t want after investing a lot of time looking for it are pretty slim.

But just because I see some health benefits of alcohol doesn’t mean I’m ready for what could be the worst hangover of my life! After all, arranged marriages unlike long-tested relationships come with the twin-problems that economists call moral hazard and adverse selection!

What am I talking about?

Well for starters, when parents arrange a match, just because they feel it is good for us doesn’t mean it actually is! Am at no level doubting their saintly intentions but I can’t help wonder that since they wouldn’t have to live with the consequences of their mistake, they are perhaps less cautious with our lives! The classic principal-agent problem under moral hazard!

And my biggest fear with those who end themselves up on the arranged marriages market is adverse selection! (Look at the size of this industry in India and it would be unfair to call it anything but a market!)

In economics, adverse selection describes the behaviour of insurance seekers – a person who displays riskier behaviour or is at a greater risk of loss is more likely to take up insurance than a person who is more risk averse and has his act together. So similarly, a person who was unable to make a relationship work or was unable to find a partner through normal means is more likely to end up on the arranged marriages market than someone who was able to make it all work!

Of course, my analysis is rather naive and doesn’t consider the many complications that go behind making relationships work. But the truth is out – moral hazard and adverse selection exist in this market and for that reason, I want to stay as far away as I can from arranged marriages! This isn’t to say that arranged marriages don’t work. I know many people who are very happily (‘arranged’ly) married!

It is said that marriages are made in heaven so God has to make sure we meet ‘the one’. But He probably got tired of giving us low tolerance to alcohol or creating perfect chance coincidence meetings – giving us the same bad taste in movies or taking us to the same dance class where we could bond over how inelastic we are!

And then He came up with arranged marriages so He could just free-ride of our parents’ efforts and the world would still run...