Blowin' It Out of Proportion

Shah Rukh Khan's detention for 'two hours' has caused heartburn and uproar all over India.
Not justified.

1. The detention was One hour and Six Minutes, not Two hours. Exaggeration.

2. We have no right to be so full of angst- The incident took place in the US. They have their rules, we have no right to interfere. I can't even say we must respect their procedures because, well, they aren't ours to respect. The rules have nothing to do with us, we need to not waste newsprint on them. Yes, if SRK had been illegally detained, without reason, tortured, India had every right to scream bloody murder. None of that happened.

3. Adequate reasons were given- His baggage hadn't arrived. Ever since the Air India Kanishka bombing, the civil aviation world has been justifiably extremely particular about passengers and luggage being together. If your luggage gets on board, they will get suspicious. If you get on board and your luggage is on another plane, they will get suspicious. They have every right to be suspicious.

4. General US slamming is unfair. Reversion to Former President Kalam's frisking senseless. Even in that case, Continental wasn't wrong, the rules apparently say that once you're on the aerobride, the law that holds is that of the country to which the airline you're boarding belongs. Therefore US rules were in force and they don't discriminate based on your former office.

To put this cacophony into perspective, a few weeks before Asian Icon, Global Superstar and the man-with-millions-of-fans-in-the-US-so-he'll-go-back was detained at Newark, another man was questioned by the police in the US, albeit on the road, the staff on duty didn't recognise him.
The name of this man was Bob Dylan.

Concrete Talk

As a much awaited monsoon shower finally blessed Delhi last week, a section of road in south Delhi caved in onto a sewer line. The road had been fixed after a similar incident a little while ago.

After a pillar at a Delhi Metro construction site collapsed near Lady Shri Ram College in South Delhi, killing five workers, a committee appointed by the DMRC found 16 more such cracks in pillars all over the city.

Stupidity of this sort is evident all across Delhi.

Brand new footpaths will be sanctioned in areas where the existing ones remain solid. Three months later, the somewhat elegant, grey stone footpaths with little tufts of grass at places will be replaced by kitschy "inter-locking" pink and white tiles "fixed" into place. The new path will be raised some three feet above the ground making it an expedition to climb one of them. At each end, there will be a six inch long, seventy five degree steep "ramp," although I can't see how any wheelchair will make its way up or down that thing. Three days after they are opened, the contractor who promised to clean the rubble would disappear (the old grey stone will lie in heaps in the middle of the new "path"), three weeks after it opens, the three feet embankment would have sunk in places where the mud underneath was soft, three months after it opens, the rain would have created puddles between the tiles.

Job well done.

When it Flu Out of Control..

If you haven't seen a WHO briefing yet, put on CNN and wait for it. Really, its something worth seeing. The Assistant Director will come on and very calmly say things like, "Swine flu is only in its early stages, it will continue to grow." And "This virus has spread more in six weeks than earlier pandemics have in six months." Finally, "THe H1N1 virus will probably affect two billion people."


There's an unsettling degree of contradiction everywhere. One report comes talking about how H1N1 will probably affect every third person in the world, which also indirectly means it will affect every family in the world. Then there are reports of about how healthy, paranoid people are almost bringing the NHS to its knees. Then some Tory MP says the NHS helpline is too little too late. Then, the statistics come (I've only seen confirmed NHS ones, I don't know about the rest), 100,000 cases in England, 26 deaths. Do the math. That is a 0.026% fatality rate. The authorities need to decide. Is this a problem? Tell us. Is this going to be a disaster? Tell us. Is this going to be mild enough to not require any co-ordinated action? Tell us.


If it is not going to go the Spanish Flu way, fine. A few, unanimous, comforting statements will be in order. If it is spiralling out of control, somebody has got to own up. I'm pretty sure if the pandemic had not originated in Mexico and the US, but say, in India, the US would have banned all arrivals from India.

Exit Screening

The issue of exit screening, or rather its absence, bewilders me. The current method, of screening passengers on arrival makes little sense. What is the point of screening people after a two, four, six, eight, fourteen, whatever hour journey in a closed vehicle with hundreds of others on board, sometimes thousands of miles away from the affected country? If they do indeed have swine flu, they could've infected several other people and these pandemics, I hear, grow geometrically. When they land, they can infect dozens of others at immigration counters, baggage claim etc. before they are finally screened. Why can't screening take place prior to departure. Even from the perspective of a patient that would be better. I'm sure an infected American would rather be quarantined in Washington Dulles prior to departure rather than be whisked away from IGI Delhi on arrival to the isolation ward in Ram Monohar Lohia hospital- alien country, alien people, family far away.

London Calling

It is July, I'm in Delhi, school is on. Our school is not air conditioned. The clouds have been ridiculously stingy this year, it has rained only twice. There is no respite in sight. The Uttar Pradesh government today declared twenty districts as officially drought hit. Non-basmati rice and wheat exports have been banned, even as the Union Minister for Agriculture, Sharad Pawar declared that India has enough grain for 13 months. In short, not a good time to be sitting here; fan revolving creakily, air conditioner not working (water leaking out of the vents), maths work lying incomplete on my table etc. As I punch the keys on this laptop, I cannot help having my mind racing back a little over a month. London. Rain. Breeze. Sweaters. No need for an air conditioner. No provision for a fan in the ceiling.

I miss getting up on that mattress in that drawing room in Harrow with an agenda that including walking, eating, walking, yes, more eating, with a few museums and football stadia (courtesy my brother) thrown in. I miss that mile long walk down Sudbury Court Drive to the tube station. I miss the bemused expression on the face of the Indian man at the station counter. A peculiar smile would appear on his face as my father would appear at the window yet again asking for day passes for four. Zone one to four, even though we were going from zone four to one. (Remember this if you go there, they get inexplicably offended if you say zone four to one, it is always, always, zone one to four) We would ask for three adult passes and one for a child (courtesy my brother). He would ask, "Who?" and my brother would stick his face into the counter window. Armed with four day passes, zone one to four, we would take the Piccadilly Line to Green Park and from there take one of the assorted lines to our destination for the morning. Hyde Park, Greenwich, the Globe Theatre, Arsenal; thought that was on Piccadilly itself, Buckingham Palace; those men cannot march, were all on our menu. In the evenings, some strange twist of fate, some say divine intervention, would see us getting off at Oxford Street or one of the other stations on that Street. We'd walk to either Marks and Spencer or some other such store, yes, once to Selfridges (ridiculous- track pants for 109 pounds!). Then we'd eat, anything ranging from Cinnabon to Chinese food from a cardboard box. The Piccadilly Line would again play host to us, taking us back to Sudbury Hill station.

We'd get off the train and walk back, this time uphill, thinking about which football stadium and museum to visit the next day. The weather was always good, it always seemed as if it was going to rain. I really don't know what Britons complain about. My jacket now lies neglected, it deserves to be worn.

Yes Prime Minister

The Indian political system is plagued with many illnesses: excessive lethargy, corruption, red tapism but no disease is more widespread than myopia, myopus politicus. Statements and policies from most government agencies are so short sighted that it almost begins to seem as if our ministers and bureaucrats expect Doomsday to come tomorrow. This has been going on for so long that sadly, some media houses have also been infected (myopus politicus is highly contagious, unlike opthalmological myopia).

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani met at the sidelines of the Non Aligned Movement meet at Sharm-al-Sheikh in Egypt. The meeting produced a joint statement that has courted more negative publicity than it deserved. When Dr. Singh returned home, he was accused of selling out to Pakistan by delinking the composite dialogue with Pakistan and the latter's commitment to cracking down on terrorists on its soil. The mention of Balochistan in the joint statement also caused no dearth of criticism against him. Balochistan, a province in Pakistan, has been home to a movement asking for independence for a very long time now and Pakistan has frequently levelled charges against India, and especially the RAW, for instigating these movements. India has summarily discredited these accusations. Nowhere in the joint statement did PM Singh accept India's role in Balochistan but the Pakistanis said that its very mention implied that India had accepted its role. The Congress now began to witness discontent against the Prime Minister's decision to let these clauses be. On the 19th of June, Leader of Opposition LK Advani said that the PM had 'squandered diplomatic advantage.' As far as the Baloch issue is concerned, this might be true, but this post is not concerned with that. It is the reaction to the Composite Dialogue debate that has caused me adequate heartburn to write this. The PM deserves not censure but praise for thinking with the future in mind, for putting sentiment on the backburner and putting pragmatism before everything else.

I strongly believe that the PM and his aides took a brave, farsighted and necessary call by allowing the delinking of the CD process and Pakistan's crackdown on terrorists. Let us understand one thing very clearly, Pakistan as a state is in trouble, its institutions are crumbling, the PM and the President don't see eye to eye on much, the Army is often on its own trip, it is having to bombard its own territory in the North West. Can a country like this be expected to effectively crack down on a well organised terrorist syndicate on its own? Can the Pakistani government, sitting in on a very fragile democracy heed to the US, India, displease its own population and risk collapsing? Unequivocally, no. The populations in both India and Pakistan like nothing more than a statement against the other. Any hint of compromise, reconciliation and the media and 'civil society' come screaming with accusations of a 'sell out.' Pakistan right now is weak, as a country, as a democracy. Gilani, Zardari and that genius of a man Rehman Malik will continue to let out all sorts of nonsense against India. The Indian leaders will want to respond and in their defence, Pakistan is not a nice neighbour to have but the fact remains that in the long run, these reactionary policies will not end terrorism, Baitullah Mehsud will not be defeated. India must take the higher ground. One of the two has to. Pakistan cannot afford to, the Pakistani people must remain happy with their leaders. India can afford to, its democracy is, thankfully, well entrenched and stable. Admittedly, it will not make the UPA seem heroic, it will probably give LK Advani more chances to criticise the ruling coalition but someone has to make a brave start. The composite dialogue process will improve economic and cultural ties between the two nations. Increased commerce between the two nations will help Pakistan's economy recover. Cultural ties will help increase confidence in both the Indians and the Pakistani people in each other's countries. Pakistai institutions like the Judiciary will get time to grow and gain the respect of the people. With a strong foundation, the Pakistani state will be in a better position to crack down on extremists.

Manmohan Singh has demonstrated in the past that he is willing to rise above political childishness, that he is willing to stick to his guns if he believes in something. I only wish that the same spirit prevails.