I still love Cartoons

While on a day out with Aayush and Isha, we started a trivia quiz on cartoons / shows. Though Aayush was the clear winner of that particular tournament, I started to think about cartoons and their impact on our childhood. No matter what your nationality may be, or the culture you belong to, comic strips and the cartoon characters in them are one of the most universal forms of humor. These little bits of visual humor are mirrors of our daily lives. They give us life's lessons, urging us to think about the foibles of humanity, to laugh at ourselves, and sometimes even to shed a tear or two. Not only do cartoons and the characters in them transcend nationality and cultural barriers, but they also cut across all age barriers, from the two year old toddler watching animated cartoons on the TV screen with rapt attention to the large numbers of adult viewers following the saga of The Simpsons in primetime shows.

Here are some of my favorite cartoon shows which I confess that I still see today:

Bugs Bunny: This slick, conniving, insulting, sarcastic, clever carrot-munching rabbit has to be one of the all-time favorite cartoon characters in the world. Who does not know that distinctive Bugs Bunny line: "What's up, Doc?"

Tweety & Sylvester: These are another inimitable pair of cartoon characters. This is another comical case of the villainous cat chasing the cute little canary, with Tweety always ending up safe at 'Home Tweet Home', escaping the wicked 'puddy tat's' claws. My favorite part - that adorable Tweety line: "I tawt I taw a puddy tat… I did! I did!"

Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble: This is another great cartoon duo. Remember this cartoon's signature song - "Flintstones... Meet the Flintstones, They're a modern stoneage family. From the town of Bedrock, They're a page right out of history..." and Fred's catchphrase - "Yabba-Dabba-Doo?" The cartoon is an account of the daily lives of the stoneage couple Fred and Wilma Flintstone, and Barney and Betty Rubble, their best friends. All of them live in Bedrock, a prehistoric city, but have to deal with the problems of the modern-day life of the working class. Instead of a cat or a dog, they have a saber tooth tiger and a baby dinosaur as family pets. In 1962, Pebbles appears in the series as the daughter of the Flintstones, and in 1963 Bamm Bamm makes his appearance as the adopted son of the Rubbles.

Daffy Duck: True to his name, this black little duck was daffy indeed, with his hair-trigger temper, enormous ego and blind covetousness. Although Daffy was popular indeed, with the introduction of Bugs Bunny a year later, he always played second fiddle. But that secondary status was in itself a great source of laughs.

Swat Kats - T-Bone and Razor in their mean aircraft, out to fight the villains of Katdom. I remember there were villains like Darkcat, Professor Viper. My fac line was the commissioner's line - "The enforcers will handle this".

Captain Planet - Who doesnt remember the cartoons opening song - "Captain Planet, he's a hero, gonna take pollution down to zero". I remember this show because it introduced me to the idea of recycling. The 'raddiwala' was the captain planet for me! So with our powers combined?

There really are so many lovable cartoon characters: Mickey with his girl friend, Minnie, and a bunch of friends like Goofy, a highly popular cartoon character by himself, and Horace Horse Collar, and Pluto, the dog. The space-age Jetsons and their electronic gadgets like Rosie, the robot housemaid. Donald Duck and his girlfriend, Daisy Duck, along with his three nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie. Plus Scrooge and the Beagle Boys. Then there are Popeye, Felix The Cat, Tom & Jerry, Woody Woodpecker, Yogi Bear & Boo Boo… the list can go on and on

Ps - Questions from last night (Dont use Google)-
1. What was Popeye's adopted Baby's name?
2. What is the Powerpuff girls' father name?
3. Which was the 1st cartoon to have a Indian character?
4. What was name of the air specialist in the centurions?
5. What is the name of Richie Rich's butler name?
6. The only show in which Baby's where the stars?

10 things To remember the 2010 FIFA World Cup

After a month of football action, the 2010 World Cup is over. Sure, Spain won the cup, but there is more to the world cup than just winning it. What are your 10 things that even after 10 years, you will remember about this cup? I am listing mine –
1. OCTOPUS PAUL – The invertebrate had a 100% record in forecasting matches in this world cup. Had he been a human, there would have been cries of divinity. I googled for an average life expectancy of an octopus, and it seems he will be with us forecasting for a little more time yet. Paul predicted German wins over Australia, England and Argentina, and it all came true. It predicted a defeat to Serbia that came true too. I hope his talents lie in the cricketing domain too.
2. Germany 4 Argentina - GAMES of this magnitude can often be dull, sterile affairs, where two giants cancel each other out completely. The game between these two giants never had a chance of being that way. Six days after turfing England out of the World Cup with a magical display, Germany cast their spell on Argentina with a brilliant quarter-final performance. Argentina were buried thanks to a third-minute goal from Thomas Muller and two second-half efforts from Miroslav Klose either side of one from Arne Friedrich. Even Diego Maradona would had appreciated it had he not been in the opposite dug-out. Given all the trash-talking that was done by both sides, given Maradona's spat with Thomas Muller and given that these teams had a history between them, it was surely a spectacle.
3. French Revolution - IN 2010, we witness the modern day French Revolution. This time the French football team provided the ammunition against, well, the French football team. In-fighting. Wasn't that the bane of Dutch progression in tournaments for many years? Now that they aren't busy fighting with themselves, look where they ended up. France, on the other-hand, have been the most tedious and excruciating side to watch in this tournament. Much has been written about Nicolas Anelka's spat with Raymond Domenech. The stream of invectives that the Chelsea striker launched at his coach, resulted in his withdrawal from squad by the French Football Federation after he refused to apologise to Domenech. With Anelka's withdrawal, most French players refused to play under Domenech against South Africa. No less has been written about captain Patrice Evra leading the players' walk-out from training on June 20 in support of Anelka. With Evra dropped in retaliation, the rest of the squad showed little desire to excel and were it not for goalkeeper Hugo Lloris and several unlucky bounces, the margin of victory for South Africa would certainly have been enough to progress to the knock-out stages.
4. The Frank Lampard goal - FRANK Lampard's chip, which hit the crossbar before landing behind the goalkeeper over the line, was ruled out in one of several controversial decisions at the World Cup in South Africa. It reminded of the goal awarded to England against west Germany in the 1966 world cup. Fate, it seems, like luck, evens itself out.
5. MELO: FROM HERO TO VILLIAN - FELIPE Melo went from hero to villain in a matter of minutes as favourites Brazil were stunned 2-1 by Holland in the quarter-finals.The midfielder provided the exquisite through-ball for Robinho to score the game's opening goal in the first half as Brazil threatened to run riot. However, the game turned on its head when Melo scored an own goal in the second half, and was later sent off after losing his cool and stamping on the legs of Dutch midfielder Arjen Robben. The goal was later credited to Wesley Sneijder
6. Vuvezela – The annoying noise robbed the broadcast of any crowd jeering, booing or applause. If not for the commentary, it would have seemed like a swarm of angry bees. I found out today that the vuvuzelas are originally manufactured in China! And we thought it was African!!!
7. The hand of Cheater – There will always be one hand of God. And then there will be the hand of the cheater. Suarez robbed Ghana (and Africa) of a chance at history. It was only fitting that Uruguay were eliminated in the semi-final. As my mom says, cheaters never win!
8. Diego Forlan, Gourcuff, C Ronlado, Villa, Van Persie – Apart from their attacking skills, they are pretty attractive (according to all the ladies). Now that is not a thing to remember the world cup, but due to them, ladies took a pretty keen interest in the world cup.
9. Big names failing to fire – All the big names did not fire in this world cup. Too numerous to write here – Henry, Ronaldo, Robinho, Gerrard, Cannavaro etc. Ironically, the favorites won the world cup.
10. SHAKIRA WAKA WAKA – Going by the number of people having it as their caller tunes, it would seem that India is a football crazy country and not cricket crazy. There was the little item of Shakira getting sued for the song, but hey who gives a damn when she sways her body. She’s right, Hips don’t lie!!!
Wait, I forgot the Jabulani. But hey who wants to remember it anyway???

The Talisman

It had been a particularly hectic week in office. Work was piling up and there were deadlines to be met, mails to be sent and documents to be re-read. On top of that, I was getting a terrible headache. Even after downing a tablet of dispirin, there was no respite. At about 5pm when it became unbearable, I decided to call it quits and go home early for a change. My boss, being a very understanding fellow, acquiesced and I left for home.

The walk to station was filled with visions of work and thoughts of intricacies of the corporate culture. Once again, I thought “I was not born to do this!” I was plagued with self-doubt over my career plan, over my current position, my long term goals, my financial condition, in short everything and anything negative. The 10 minute walk elevated my pessimism and reduced my morale. Even the normally chirpy songs on my Ipod were of no effect. I soon switched them to Hemant Kumar & co.

The transformation was complete.

The train thankfully was empty (at least according to Bombay standards). The emptiness in the compartment seemed to reflect my inner emptiness. There were a lot of thoughts floating around in my fuzzy mind. The lack of ambition, some social faux pas, the emotional barrenness, the purposelessness of my existence were some of the threads in the mind. It wouldn’t need a psychologist to diagnose a bout of mild depression.

The non-depressed portion of my brain was sending out SOS by the dozen. Some mood alleviator hormone must have been triggered temporarily which suggested me to go and stand near the door. The rush of wind against your face is always a feel-good factor, I reasoned. Instead of the usual ‘Born to be wild’ (by Mars Bonfire) song which comes to my head when the wind rushes past your head, I could only hear the thoughts floating and hovering. They were pulling me back into the abyss of melancholy and misery. My eyes had a far away glazed look in them and nothing was in focus.

Suddenly a foul smell emanated and shook me from my stupor. What I saw or to be more precise, what I perceived was a whole populace living in between the train tracks. Though I had been passing through this area for the last 6 months, the scene had never registered with me. I could see children lying on the tracks, men ambling on, teenagers puffing on their beedis, women sitting and tying their daughter’s hair. Despite the sully environment, they looked at peace, if not content. What is their secret, I wondered?

Suddenly in a flash, I remembered the Gandhiji’s talisman. Some random synapse must have triggered the memory retrieval. The same talisman which used to be printed on the front page of our NCERT text books. The same talisman which we once read and never understood. The same talisman which was forgotten in the rush for marks, money and power. I remembered the talisman and a feeling of peace came over me. It was an awe-inspiring moment in the most unlikely of places. I felt at one with myself. The dragon of reservations and fears within myself were slain by the shining knight with his weapon of the talisman. I took a deep breath and mumbled a word of gratitude to Gandhiji. Though I may not subscribe to his political views, I had been turned into an instant fan of his spiritual outlook of life. I understood then that no matter what we do or what we become, there will always be some time when the self is in need of a crutch. That time, your spirit and your mind will come to the rescue.

Gandhiji’s talisman
"I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away.

Games Indians Play

The book of the same title has the introduction: “A rare attempt to understand the Indianness of Indians – Why we are the way we are.” What makes this book different from other self-congratulatory books out there is that it is

a) AWritten dispassionately ( a good sign)

b) Uses economic theorems like prisoners dilemma and game theory to provide an insight.

Now most of us are not familiar with game theory and prisoner’s dilemma (Wikipedia has some excellent articles on it where it is explained in detail). However, the author V Raghunathan has very cleverly managed to explain in a non economist manner. While you do get a feeling that the problem in Indians was analysed effectively, the elusive solution could also have been attempted at.

The most potent was Chapter 6: Self- Regualtion, Fairness and Us. The chapter starts off with the famous poem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came...) and then the various malaises affecting Indian society is listed. They vary from

1. Exploding population

2. Abject poverty

3. Pathetic basic education

4. Woeful primary health care

5. Scarcity of clean drinking water

6. Unhealthy pollution levels

7. Near absence of the justice delivery system

8. Runaway corruption

9. Creaky infrastructure

10. Criminalization of polity

Yet all of the people I have met say that “we are proud to be Indians”. This relationship is more like of a parent with an unruly child. The parent knows the child is unruly, however makes no effort to stop him and cannot love the child any less. The dilemma facing the parent is somewhat like us Indians face, though on a billionth level. At the risk of being branded ‘anti-national’, I would say that I am not proud of India. This was not the India promised by our forefathers and certainly does not look like becoming one in a hurry.

Another quote from the book comes to my mind – “Indians are privately intelligent and publicly dumb”. Correct. We will use our intelligence for our own individual gain but never use it for the society. We take pride in our country running ‘democratically’ despite using all our powers to subvert the essence of democracy and republican outlook. We take proud in our ‘morally superior culture’ yet all our leaders, who are supposed to be the face of the public, show our ‘superior’ culture to the maximum.

“India is a functioning anarchy’- Gabraith. I love India, but not this version. I love the idea of India, not this one. I love the way we Indians have a ‘jugaad’ for everything, but not when it is used to subvert the law. I love the idea of democracy, but not when it is “Bye the people (spelling Bye intended), Off the people, Far the people”. I love India, that’s why I feel this pain. What can I or you individually do? What????

Humara Bajaj

2 icons of Liberated India retired last year- the ubiquitous Bajaj Scooter and the peppy Maruti 800.

If you would have grown up during the 1970’s and the 1980’s, you would have seen a slew of advertisements with the tagline ‘Humara Bajaj’. It quickly became a stereotypical image: father on the wheel, mother on the pillion, younger child standing in front with head bobbing out, older sibling squeezed between mother and father, everybody with their arms around each other for balance and protection, epitomized the complete Indian family, “Hum do Hamare do.” (We two and our two)

It was idyllic. Needless to say, the ad tag line `Hamara Bajaj’ (Our Bajaj) translated into brisk sales. There was a wait period to own the scooter, courtesy the Licence Raj. My father often used to tell me that in the late 1960’s, a father used to book a scooter for his new born son and hoped to get the delivery by his son’s 15th Birthday.

People were not in such hurry back then either. In the typical family (again the ‘dum do, humaare do’ image) the father was strict, a follower of the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi or Jawaharlal Nehru, could have typically worked in a government department, or as a university professor or even a merchant; the mother, a housewife or a teacher, dedicated to the family spent hours in the kitchen, cleaning the house and going to Kitty Parties once a month.

The unified aim of the husband-wife duo was to ensure their children a good education to turn them into engineers (via cracking the joint entrance exam) or doctor (via the equally difficult MBBS entrance exam) or make it to the IAS, the top government job (via the even more difficult UPSC exam).

With such a focus on education, a fair amount of the hardworking and lucky ones did make it and many of them went to America, the land of opportunity, to become software czars, top cardiologists, reproducing kids in turn who today call themselves ABCD (American Born Confused Desi), driving big BMWs or Mercedes Benz and collecting bikes for passion that probably cost more than their grandfather’s whole lifetime income many times over.

Some of the kids called their parents over from India selling off the Bajaj scooters as junk, while others forgot about the elders, providing endless sob story themes for Hindi movies.

In the 70s Bajaj scooters symbolized middle class stability, although the engine placed on one side, made the machine unstable. And in the current situation of rashly driven powerful vehicles and 24-hour call center cabs, two-wheelers are very unsafe. But, it also reflects a different mindset, another India and a new era that fancies faster motor cycles and bigger and better cars.

Meanwhile, the Maruti 800 was launched in pre-liberalized India in the ’80s. The Maruti 800 was the pet-project of Sanjay Gandhi, though he did not live to see it materialize. The 80’s was the time when the License Raj prevailed to shackle any enterprise, when access to state authority or the ability to grease the wheels of the bureaucracy with money counted for everything — owning a telephone, a passport, a driver’s license or a gas connection and a house. The Babu (read lower government official) was King and the Sarkar (the Babu’s boss) was the Emperor.

The bulk of youth (everybody could not make it to IIT or IAS or MBBS) aspired to be part of this hierarchy and wield the power to dole out telephone connections or hand out nationalized bank loans and progress in life. Another quote from my father – ‘In those days, there were 2 people you were supposed to know – One was the Babu to get the government business done and the other was the SBI bank manager to get the financial business done.’

In a way the spiffy, cheap interiors, quick pick up, not very expensive Maruti 800s that took on the ambling Ambassadors and Fiat cars that dominated Indian roads was the first challenge to the Raj, though there were car quotas still and one needed to bribe a Babu, mainly by offering foreign made liquor bottles or the good old Gandhi Currency.

The Maruti 800, fast, flexible and individualistic, though a tin pot compared to cars of today, indicated the ’90s and new millennium. Today a typical middle class Indian family travels in a snazzier Maruti Swift or a Hyundai I-20, financed out of a quick processing private bank, visits malls during the weekend, watches high priced multiplex movies, while the kids gorge on pizza and burgers, probably from McDonald’s, home delivery or take away, resulting in new age problems such as obesity and hypertension.

The parents lead jet setting corporate lives, grapple with deadlines, keep global times; some fight lifestyle related heart problems and hypertension, while others spend time at the gym or spa to de-stress and detoxify. Telephone connections are not a problem, bank loans are available online, cars can be brought off the shelf like a pair of jeans. Jeans themselves can be bought on EMI’s.

There is freedom to choose. Love marriages are on the rise, so is the visibility of gays and divorce rates.

Discussions center on Nehru’s affairs with foreign women, rather than his beliefs and vision. Gandhi is remembered in context of Bollywood masala flicks such as Lage Raho Munnabhai.

The ones who have made it bigger via the stock market or real estate windfalls, commute in bigger Honda cars or even a BMW and travel abroad for holidays and spend evenings at expensive clubs, discussing art investments.

Lest we forget, India still has a huge mass of people who still live in poverty in abysmal socioeconomic circumstances, though as the new-age Babu’s would like to make you believe that the times are changing. The middle class may be travelling on the expressway of freedom of choices and fast money but it is the real India in the rural areas, which is crying out for its own icons of liberation. Liberation not from the stifling Babu-dom or the License Raj but from the repressing poverty they have been subjected to for the last 60 years of independence. Let us not forget that.

The era of Bajaj Scooters and Maruti 800s is history. As the British saying goes – “The King Is Dead. Long Live the King.”

The last wish

What do you do when you are leaving your organization? Get your financial details updated, serve the notice period, give KT, write the customary goodbye mail to all colleagues.

But there are some great souls there who regard colleagues as friends and go beyond the goodbye mail and write masterpieces. One of my friends, Surender alias Pinku wrote this gem of a mail when he was leaving Satyam.

Title: The last wish

Two years ago we joined a new college.

To earn a few penny and gain some knowledge.

Far from home in the cold chilly weather

At heaven of STC we all got together.

The morning rush with the roommate

Racing with others for not getting late

The torture started at the strike of Seven

We survived by keeping messenger online

The afternoon session was really overkill

Since Cafeteria food was indeed a sleeping pill

Submitting the assignments n projects was a total waste

As we followed the magic trick of copy-paste.

The junk forwards continued to flow

We waited whole week for the new movie show

Along with friends when everything was quiet

We roamed around the campus till the late night.

The modules and compre didn’t let us sleep

Some cleared away while others had to weep

Results came out, no more hosting

We had to leave, as per the posting.

Battle for Projects then began soon

Mailboxes spammed by every goon

Giving last look to the gratifying paradise

The Satyamites(ELTP) left with the watery eyes.

We all settled down in the different places

Though memories of Hyderabad left in the traces.

New friends and colleagues now we have made

The old intimacy is slowly going fade

2 years gone by since we had a start

Moments of past is stirring my heart

In the noisy world today am losing my mind

The last wish I make, if time could rewind……….