Month: February 2013

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Learn

Bandh? What bandh?

Except for nationalised banks and RTOs, everything was in working order in Mumbai on Day 1 of two-day national strike.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

In recent times, and most recently after the death of Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray last month, any cry for bandh in the city and with which the Shiv Sena is associated, has always been met with almost unanimous participation. However, in what can only be seen as good news for the country’s financial capital, Day 1 of the two-day national bandh went off without anybody realising that it was a bandh at all.

Except for nationalised banks, which remained closed and will remain closed today as well, and employees not of the rank of officer at the city’s RTOs, every other service was available to the public yesterday. Apart from autorickshaws and taxis plying, BEST buses turned out in full force, registering a 100 per cent attendance among bus conductors and 98 per cent attendance among drivers.

Meanwhile, all essential services were available to the city all day – except, of course, from chemist shops, which resolutely downed shutters at 6 pm yesterday as well.

Day 2 of the bandh is expected to go along the same lines as Day 1 in Mumbai. However, the rest of the country has not been so fortunate, with reports of commuter woes and closed shops and establishments doing the rounds since yesterday.

(Picture courtesy phulme.wordpress.com)

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Outside In

The colour of me

Shweyta Mudgal was thrilled to know that Americans coveted her skin colour – and then her ‘fair’-skinned daughter was born.

My grandmother has been dark-skinned all her life. The colour of milk chocolate!

Her daughter – my mother, has always been light-complexioned; alabaster-like, like the colour of daylight on a beautiful morning!

Me – when I was born I am told I was somewhere between ochre and honey. Until I decided to go out and ‘play in the sun’ every day, ending up a shade of burnt sienna for most of my childhood. Once the sun-play stopped and I moved out of India to the States, my colour lightened and became what it is now (as suggested by the make-up world) – wheatish medium-toned.

My daughter was born the colour of peaches and cream. Mixed together, in the exact proportion, to form a flawless light creamish-pink colour that I refer to as ‘baby blush.’ Over the course of the past 19 months of her life, she has managed to keep just enough sun under her skin to move on to more peach and less cream, in the process being labelled the “fairest one of them all” in the family palette.

Evidently, the skin-tone lineage in our family, studied over the cross-section of its surviving generations, clearly alternates between dark and light. For instance, in a picture taken standing between them, I am the brown vada between the light-coloured pavs that are my mother and daughter. No surprise then, in an openly in-your-face kind of society such as ours in India, I looked back confounded when faced with this recurring query throughout my childhood: “How come you are so dark while your mother is so fair?” (That my name also literally means ‘white’ in Sanskrit didn’t help at all. Really! What were you thinking, Mom?)

This oft-asked question had affected me enough, I am told, to have created one of the funniest childhood memories of my life. My juvenile brain had finally decided, one fine day, that the solution lay in mommy’s home-whipped white butter. She still cracks up when she recounts how she found me sitting on the kitchen floor with butter smeared all over my face one evening. All this, so I could be as fair as she was!

While the fascination with human skin colour has been of much interest and intrigue to Indians for eons (more so for women, the so-called ‘lighter sex’), it has taken on insane levels in some other Asian countries. Vietnam, for instance.

Creams, fairness gels, deodorants, soaps, moisturisers and even pills that make skin-lightening promises abound on the shelves of convenience stores and supermarkets alike, all over this country. In sultry, humid and 100 deg F (roughly 37 deg C) temperatures in Saigon, women can be seen covered head to toe (for no religious reason), dressed in jeans or slacks, face masks (that double up into anti-pollution and anti-sun barriers) and long-sleeved hand gloves – all in an attempt to shield their skin from the sun.

If you asked their darker Cambodian neighbours, they wondered: why the fuss? After all, they would ask, aren’t the Vietnamese already fair enough? Makes for a good pun, that phrase there, but the Vietnamese, on the other hand, will tell you, ‘fair enough’’ is not good enough!

The significance of being ‘white’ (bordering on albino-like sometimes, what with all the lightening products and procedures available in today’s market) in the cultural paradigm of Asian countries, is enormous. Not just on the socio-economic level but on a global identity level – where Asian women, in their quest for beauty, are trying to achieve the colour of their Caucasian counterparts. In Asia, ‘whiteness’ of the skin has always been directly proportional to beauty and affluence. A dark or tanned skin belonged to a worker toiling in the fields all day, thus reflecting poverty, physical hard work and a socially inferior status.

This obsessive pursuit of fairness leads to accidents, as well. For instance, in today’s day and age, with countless fairness products made available to them, women of the lower social strata in countries like Cambodia often resort to making uninformed choices. Partly due to their ignorance and partly due to the products’ unaffordability, they end up buying cheap skin lighteners, the application of which results in severe skin damage and even death in some cases, on account of their high mercury and/or lead content.

My analysis of this fairness craze has brought me to establish my own hypothesis – all we want is to be like our neighbours on the left. Take a look at the map of Asia – this pursuit of fairness starts from India, Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Cambodia and the Philippines, who wouldn’t mind going a few shades lighter, say, like the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese, Chinese, Taiwanese and South Koreans would prefer going still whiter like the neighbours on their left, the Japanese. And the Japanese, not content with their high rank on the Asian shade card, are vying for the Caucasian-like radiance of the Americans (the white Americans, to be specific).

The Americans, infamous for doing things diametrically opposite to the rest of the world, obviously wouldn’t mind bartering their ‘ivoriness’ for some ‘colour’, the pursuit of which leads them to natural or unnatural tanning practices. Tanning of the skin is their equivalent of ‘whiteness’ in Asians, in terms of desirability.

While most Westerners tan naturally by simply lying under the sun, usually by the pool, on the beach or on a lawn, the more popular method that Americans prefer is that of cosmetically tanning themselves indoors, on a bed or in a booth in a tanning salon. Either way, the tan is achieved by exposing one’s skin to UV radiation; the overexposure of which can adversely affect one’s health causing skin cancer (melanoma), cataracts, premature aging and wrinkling of the skin, etc.

Having sun-kissed skin is so highly coveted in the West, that to my surprise, I found myself at the receiving end of compliments, in school here, for being the colour that I am. It was ironic! To be appreciated for something that one had been chided for in their growing years, naturally felt wonderful!

To me, America became the land that loved and welcomed coloured skin, non-judgmentally. Granted, this nation was not always this colour-uncoded, going by its history, and that parts of it are still not as non-discriminatory. Yet, I found that overall, cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and several others celebrated their colour diversity. I had classmates, school staff and co-workers telling me they wished they had some of my colour. That for the first time, someone wanted to be – the colour of me!

The natural Asian tan was a coveted one in America. Here, hues of black, brown, tan, olive, yellow and white seemed to co-exist in harmony, often blurring lines and blending in with each other to create new shades. Black and white marriages yielded light brown babies, as did brown and white marriages. Yellow and white marriages resulted in white babies with Asian features, or vice versa. This was the Land of Colour, yet free of Colourism! Here, the Colour Code did not apply to me anymore. Finally, I had been set free!

Until the day my peaches-and-cream daughter was born. And I took her out for her first walk by the Hudson river. A much elder mother-daughter duo, probably of Asian origin, stopped to admire the little one. “She’s beautiful. And soooo fair!” they said as I smiled, opening my mouth to say, “Thanks!” and gracefully accept the compliment. Until they looked me up and down and added, “Is she your daughter?”

What can I say? I am always going to be her nanny!

A Mumbaikar by birth and a New Yorker by choice, recently-turned global nomad Shweyta Mudgal is currently based out of Singapore. An airport designer by day, she moonlights as a writer. ‘Outside In’ is a weekly series of expat diaries, reflecting her perspective of life and travel, from the outside-in. She blogs at www.shweyta.blogspot.com and loves being referred to as her daughter’s nanny by unsuspecting strangers. 

(Picture courtesy bellasugar.com)

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Big story

No nightly load shedding in Maharashtra till end of March

State Government decides not to enforce load shedding in the night hours anywhere in Maharashtra till Board exams are complete.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

In its weekly Cabinet meeting convened for its ministers at the Mantralaya today, the State Government took the decision to spare students across the State the ultimate torture during study hours: load shedding in the night hours for a little over a month’s time.

This decision will indeed prove to be a boon for the millions of students appearing for their Board exams across the State of Maharashtra. Class 12 exams commence tomorrow, February 21 and end in the last week of March 2013, while SSC exams start on March 2, 2013 and end on March 25.

As per the Government’s decision, there will be no load shedding in the night hours till March 31, 2013, keeping the Board exams in mind. Regular load shedding schedules will be followed across Maharashtra after this date.

Additionally, all the ministers of the State Cabinet donated a month’s wages towards the drought relief efforts in the State.

(Picture courtesy ilmkiduniya.com)

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Event

TechCamp comes to Mumbai

US Consulate Mumbai spearheads two-day camp for information technology dissemination in the field of NGO work in South Asia today.

The US Consulate General Mumbai, with Global India Fund and Samhita Social Ventures, launched the US State Department’s TechCamp in Mumbai today.

The two-day South Asia technology conference brings together nearly 140 international technology experts and young, highly-motivated participants from NGOs throughout India and Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. The Camp will provide NGO participants with training in low-cost or no-cost new and online technologies to help them address some of the most pressing social challenges in South Asia.

“The US Mission in India is delighted to bring international specialists in new technologies from all over the world to NGO leaders in South Asia, in order to initiate new projects throughout the region which will benefit youth in South Asia,” said US Consul General Peter Haas. “It is a platform for learning, dialogue, growth, and networking.” Also speaking ahead of the event, Akhtar Badshah, Senior Director of Global Community Affairs at Microsoft Corporation, said, “Information technology plays a critical role in today’s society. TechCamp is an excellent way to encourage nonprofits to innovate through technology and thereby deliver more effective services and programmes.”

This high-tech, interactive social entrepreneurship event is an effort to galvanise the technology community to assist NGOs across the globe by providing capabilities, resources and assistance to enable them to harness the latest Information and Communication Technology advances to build their digital capacity.

TechCamps help build digital literacy for NGOs by introducing local and international technology experts for collaborative education and training.  The sessions focus on exploring the challenges and needs of NGOs and then provide the necessary training to address those challenges through technology solutions. TechCamp Mumbai’s specific focus is on the theme of youth empowerment, and will address the needs of NGOs working in areas of education, entrepreneurship, women’s issues and rights, youth-led media, civic engagement and democracy building.

Some of the experts at TechCamp include Sean Knox (US), an experienced engineer, grassroots organiser and entrepreneur; Samantha Barry (UK), a reporter with the BBC and an expert in multimedia and youth broadcasting; Hanny Kusumawati (Indonesia) is the Head of Raconteur, Creative Director in Maverick Public Relations and Founder of Coin A Chance; Rikin Gandhi (New Delhi), Founder and CEO at Digital Green, “reverse-migrated” to India to help start a biodiesel venture on the wastelands of Maharashtra; Gautam John (Bangalore) who works at Pratham and describes himself as a recovering lawyer, erstwhile entrepreneur, earnest educator, pretend polymath and future dilettante; Raheel Khursheed (New Delhi) is the India Director of Communications at Change.org, the world’s largest petition platform; Anshul Tewari (New Delhi) Founder and Editor-in-Chief of YouthKiAwaaz.com, an online platform for youth and Arjun Venkatraman (Bhopal) of CG-NET SWARA, an engineer and entrepreneur who believes in designing for efficiency and economy.

(Picture courtesy ngo.samhita.org) 

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Read

‘Stop looking for love’

Rupa Gulab speaks about her latest book, why she prefers writing short stories and about telling it like it is.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

That Rupa Gulab is a very good writer is stating the obvious. The writer of three books – Girl Alone, Chip Of The Old Blockhead and The Great Depression Of The 40s: A Novel, and a columnist with a flair for the comic touch, Rupa is a revelation with her newest book, I Kissed A Frog.

In an interview with The Metrognome, the author talks about writing on love and friendship, how her most poignant tale in this story is an ode to her best friend, and why one must stop looking for love and let it come when it has to.

Why a book of irreverent short stories on love?

Why not? I enjoy telling it like it is! I must say that with I Kissed A Frog I discovered that writing short stories is so much more fun than writing a novel. You have so many different characters and situations to play with – it’s great entertainment for a writer. But I’d just like to point out that this book is not merely about love – friendship plays a huge role here. And friendship (to me) is just as important as love. I pointed that out in ‘Hell’s Angel’ (one of the stories in the book), where the heroine is gutted when her best friend moves to New York.

You mention in the book that some of the stories were published earlier in magazines and websites, and that you made changes to them before they went into I Kissed A Frog. What is it like, re-visiting something that is written and published?

What can I say? I get bored rather quickly. My first novel, Girl Alone, was based on a column called Dating Diary that ran in Cosmopolitan for two years. When I decided to adapt it to a novel, I made many changes. Like, for example, in the column whenever Arti (the heroine) goes through a spot of trauma, she glugs antacids. In the novel, I changed it to cough syrup because that gives it a more dangerous dimension. I have to refresh things to keep myself interested. Then there’s so much more freedom when you’re writing a book. You can use swear words liberally without worrying about nasty letters being sent to an editor. And there’s no word count limitation – you can write as much as you want.

That’s why I made a few changes to six of the stories in I Kissed A Frog that were published earlier in mags and websites.

Are any of the stories in I Kissed A Frog autobiographical?

Not at all. Girl Alone was the only novel in which I let a part of myself show.

Of all the stories in the book, ‘Au Revoir’ stands out for its very different tone. In fact, I was startled by how searing this particular story was, not what I was expecting after such funny ones as ‘Diet Wars’. What inspired this particular story?

When I was writing stories for the Friendship Diaries section of I Kissed A Frog, I decided to put in one about my best friend, Ranjona Banerji, too. See, Ranjona and I have always joked about the fact that she will outlive me because of my lousy lifestyle choices. Which means she’d be the person to contribute to my obituary, and I’d be off the hook for her obit, right?

So I decided to write her obit in advance – Au Revoir is just that. It’s a tribute to our long friendship that goes back to school days. Not surprisingly, the emotions flowed naturally, and dark humour set the tone. I sent her a cryptic text message while I was writing it, saying that I had just murdered her.  As far as I’m concerned, my job is done. And she owes me an obit, and I want it now! Hell, I’m longing to read nice things about myself before I die.

Have any of your family and friends featured as characters in any of the stories?

While there are shades of some members of my family (including my husband) in my earlier novels, I Kissed A Frog is free of family-based characters. And I bet they’re all heaving a sigh of relief! This book really is about different kinds of love and a celebration of friendship. And, as I mentioned before, the story ‘Au Revoir’ is based on and for my best friend.

Of all the stories, which one is your favourite? Why?

I have three favourites: ‘The Ex-Files’, ‘Au Revoir’ and ‘Rapper N. Zel’. I enjoyed writing ‘The Ex-Files’ because of the gradual changes in the heroine’s prickly relationship with her mother after she got dumped – exploring relationships is my thing! I loved writing ‘Rapper N. Zel’ because it’s all about how women have to struggle to break the glass ceiling and how bitter they become because of it – and in my mind, this story is dedicated to all my friends who’ve faced that problem. And as for ‘Au Revoir’, I’ve already told you why it’s special for me.

Of all the stories, which one is most likely to have played out in your own life?

Oh, ‘Hell’s Angel’ – definitely! I worked in the media (as a copywriter in advertising) for many years. The heroine’s lifestyle could have been mine.

What is the nicest compliment you’ve received for ‘I Kissed A Frog? 

A review by a male blogger who started out by saying how much he disliked chick lit, and ended up saying that I Kissed A Frog changed his mind about the genre. I seriously love this guy! (Read his review here)

What is your honest opinion on love and the various ways we go about looking for it? 

I’d say stop looking for it! Don’t waste your time. It will come when it has to. And if it doesn’t come, who cares? Look, you have friends you can rely on for companionship, FB and Twitter are great interaction spaces, and then you have work, books, music and movies to lose yourself in. Life’s crowded enough already. When I was in college, I’d put up a lovely paragraph from DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover on my bedroom wall. It says everything I believe about love. Here goes:

“It’s no good trying to get rid of your own aloneness. You’ve got to stick to it all your life. Only at times, at times, the gap will be filled in. At times! But you have to wait for the times.”

Not surprisingly, I put this quote in Girl Alone as well!

On the subject of your sister Kushalrani (aka Bunny), who you say is a ‘horror, and your worst critic’, how has having a writer sibling helped you when you write?

Well, most writers always show their first draft to family and/or close friends. I have a small core group: my sisters Roma Circar and Kushalrani Gulab (aka Bunny), my husband Salil Sadanandan and my friend Ranjona Banerji. The reason why I chose them is because we share the same sense of humour and irony. Incidentally, all of them are writers. While my husband is not a full time writer (he was cruelly shoved on the IIT, IIM path by his parents) he occasionally writes on eclectic subjects (humour, design and travel) for various publications.

When I share my first draft with them, my brief is very stern: “Do not waste my precious time by telling me what you like about it. Tell me what you hate about it. Be savage, rip it to shreds!” I must say that this is the only time they ever listen to me. I grade them on the ‘savagery’ index:

Roma is the gentlest of the lot. When she doesn’t like something, she informs me firmly but apologetically, starting her sentences with nervous “umms.”

Ranjona is tougher. No “umms” for her. It’s always a grim “hmm” which is followed by a bald statement. Our biggest arguments are over the placement of commas. We both have strong views on the subject.

Bunny and Salil are the most frightening – and frankly, I don’t know which one is worse. Let me start with Bunny. When she goes through my draft she ruthlessly deletes sentences/paragraphs that she believes interfere with the flow of the story, ignoring my howls of anguish. Hell, some of my funniest jokes have been killed by her and she’s always unrepentant. “The story comes first,” is her heartless mantra.

Clichés are bigger sins than murder according to her, and my God, if she happens to spot something like “as white as snow”, she hisses menacingly and explodes like an angry pressure cooker. I have, however, sneakily slipped in an “over the moon” in one of the stories in I Kissed A Frog. An act of defiance, just to prove to her that I have a backbone!

If Bunny does the pressure-cooker-exploding act to frightening perfection, Salil is like one of those raging Pamplona bulls you really don’t want to cross paths with. He gets furious, absolutely livid, if he comes across bits he doesn’t like. I am ordered (yes, ordered!) to rewrite bits of stories, change a character’s profession, change a tone of voice, et cetera. And though I’m complaining bitterly, I have to confess that his feedback on the draft of I Kissed A Frog was marvellous. Bunny’s softer when it comes to rewrites. She merely offers suggestions that I am free to ignore.

At the end of it all, I’m a quivering mess and I go with my gut. Sometimes I give in, sometimes I don’t. But I’m always thankful for the advice from all four of them because they are the critics I respect most.

What is the kind of writing you are most drawn to? Who are your favourite authors?

I grew up in a house that had more books than furniture because my parents were voracious readers. Humour was their preference and we had practically every single book written by PG Wodehouse, Richmal Compton, Anthony Buckeridge, Lewis Carroll, etc. As I grew older, I added a few more humour writers to my personal book shelves: Woody Allen, James Thurber, George Mikes, Richard Armour and Gerald Durrell, to name a few. At the same time, I have to confess that I sighed deeply over Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom Of The Opera, William Saroyan’s beautifully brilliant The Human Comedy, Richard Llewellyn’s How Green Was My Valley (my dad’s favourite book), most of DH Lawrence, some of Thomas Hardy and other  books that do not fall into the humour category. And as for the girlie moments, I still fall back on my mum’s favourites: Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer and Jean Webster who wrote my absolutely favourite growing up book Daddy Long-legs. Oh, and I have finally learnt to appreciate Charles Dickens! My parents loved him so, and they were shocked that I hated his books when I was in school and college.

What are you working on next?

I can’t say yet. I’ve got two novels for drastically different target audiences in mind, but I really have no idea if and when I’ll get down to it. I’m not a disciplined writer anymore.  Take I Kissed A Frog. I suddenly decided to write it in April last year and finished it in three months flat. I’m pretty much worn out after that frenetic burst of activity.

Lastly, if you had to change the endings for any of these stories, which ones would you choose and how would you change them?

I wouldn’t change them at all.

 _________________________

About the book:

I Kissed A Frog is a collection of not-so-perfect love stories, dealing as they are with ex-boyfriends, current boyfriends hooking up with best friends, aiming for a man who doesn’t love one when another who does is right in front of one, friends and colleagues engaged in diet wars, and in a really funny vein, love and relationships through popular fairy tales set in contemporary times.

I particularly liked ‘Love in F Major’, where a girl starts seeing a married man and hopes he will make the ultimate choice, ‘Welcome to the Sisterhood’, which discusses sex change, ‘Wannabe mum’, in which a woman’s biological clock decides the course of her stable relationship, ‘Au revoir’, in which a dying girl says goodbye to her best friend, and all of the ‘Not-so-grim fairy tales for big, bad girls’.

Rupa keeps the tone conversational and sometimes flippant, bringing in different dimensions to love, romance, inter-office rivalry, personal insecurities, and of course, friendship. This is a book to be read by all women – those who have a gang of girls to hang out with, those who slink off home after work to watch TV and eat ice cream straight from the container, those who wonder why their mothers and best friends oppose everything they say and do, and especially those who feel that the world ended with their one great romance.

In fact, the book stands the very real danger of being picked up only by women – and all the stories are written from a woman’s perspective. Maybe Rupa’s next book of short stories could be about what men want.

Send us a love story to editor@themetrognome.in, and you could win a copy of Rupa Gulab’s I Kissed A Frog. 

Categories
Big story

New metro systems for Mumbai, courtesy Britian

London firm specialising in metro infrastructure signs MoU with MMRDA for 150 km metro network in Mumbai and surrounding areas.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

It is the run-up to the General Elections in 2014, and Chief Minister of Maharashtra Prithviraj Chavan is seemingly playing several cards right. This is the year to get big business investment into Maharashtra, and Chavan has just pulled in a big player for Mumbai and the State.

Capitalising on Britain PM David Cameron’s visit to Mumbai yesterday, Chavan pushed for investment in Maharashtra, and what’s more, got the Britain-based Transport For London firm to ink and MoU with the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), for a 150 kilometre metro rail network for Mumbai and surrounding areas.

As per a study conducted by a transport body, Mumbai needs a 300 km metro rail network to serve its burgeoning population. Of this, it is possible for the State to construct a 146 km-long metro line comprising nine lines; again, three lines admeasuring 33 km will be underground. The MMRDA does not possess the know-how to construct an underground line, but Transport For London does. In all, the MoU will help MMRDA execute its plans for the setting up of a 150 km metro rail network for Mumbai, plus a 300 km network in the MMR region.

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