Watering the mouth

Today being the extended Mahalaya, the curtain rises for the long-awaited yearly arrival of Uma with her entourage from the heaven. As if to welcome her the heavenly pouring is also on hold since last evening.

Spending quality time during the days of festivities is something everyone looks forward to. Indeed for many the plans date back several months.

Petpujo, I believe, is perhaps one popular recurrence on all pujo days. And why not? Thronging to eateries you pass by throughout the year is an alluring prospect never to be denied.

Talking of worshipping one’s own stomach reminds me a Khushwant Singh piece of Sep 20 in the TT that partly talks on the fares at Beijing Olympics. Here it goes:

To tempt Western tourists during the Olympics, the Chinese shopkeepers displayed following banners:

At a tailor’s shop: “Ladies and gents tailor. Ladies have fits upstairs.”

Baker’s Shop: “Best loafer in town.” Optician and dentist’s shop: “Eyes and teeth inserted, latest Methodist!”

Furrier’s shop: “Coats made to order from your own skin or ours.”

Restaurant: “Famous for chicken dishes: eat chicken before it is born (egg) or after it is murdered”.

While these may or may not rightly describe the quality of Chinese offerings at the greatest sporting event thus far, the pictures below of some (sent to me by a friend) certainly bring water to my mouth each time I look at them. What about you?









P.S.
I’ll be away from Kolkata for nearly a month. So the next post may be quite some time from now. Here’s wishing all readers a very happy time ahead.

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As you sow, so you reap

The debate has begun in earnest…whether Nano factory would have been good for the state. In teashops and street-corners animated discussions could be seen that catch the mood of ordinary people on the street.

In one such where I chanced upon, the prominent view was that nothing much would happen if Nano moved out from Singur. Yes, jobs would be lost, but not many to their estimate. And no, the impact of the car plant would definitely not spread beyond Singur.

I looked closely at them. They didn’t appear to be supportive of Tata Motors’ exit. In fact some of them I would vouch were surely followers of the main ruling party.

It became clear to me that the motley group there – you can imagine them to be nearly representing the common people of the state – did not have a good idea of what a car factory of the scale of Nano could do to the economy of the nearby places including Kolkata and the state as a whole.

Early this week I was watching a late-night discussion on Nano’s exit on Star Ananda. An economist there said that the latest compensation package by the government would ensure that a farmer would earn at least 2-1/2 times (from bank interests) that of the maximum he could ever earn from the crops he would produce on his land.

The advantage to the farmer is so obvious that to not understand it is perhaps humanly impossible. Yet the impossible is happening right here at a place that is just next-door to a big city, not in a remote village.

Of course the opposition leader is spearheading the ‘Nano No No’ agitation in the hope of reaping political dividends. But I refuse to believe that she can prevent farmers to take compensation if they really want to.

And herein lies the million-dollar dilemma as to why the farmers – remember they are much better informed and are close to Kolkata – still ‘cannot realize’ the obvious monetary benefits.

Social scientists will probably explain the reasons behind this, but I feel the 3-decades long left rule has progressively ruined all scope of hopes and aspirations of common people of the present times.

The political highhandedness of all these years has amassed a huge mountain of moral and social bankruptcy. We are paying the price of the accumulated debts.

It will be a long while before the slate is clean to start afresh. And that is a very, very big ‘if’.

Let us hope this happens, sooner than inordinately later.

Also see my article, Uprooting smallness.

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Google’s Chrome

It has been awhile since we last heard about browser war. IE seemed content with a steady share coming as it did with Windows OS.

Google on the other hand promoted Firefox, which for many has been a delight, what with open source configuration that saw hundreds of nifty extensions that made browsing a pleasure.

Good things however seldom last long. In this case Firefox now has a new competition from its erstwhile backer, Google.

Chrome, Google’s own product, has debuted last week to much less fanfare than what it was when Gmail came into being.

Chrome takes on not only IE and Firefox, but also to lesser extent Apple’s Safari and Opera, the last 2 having several pockets of popularity.

I’ve made this small video below for my 2WebVideo site that highlights parts of Google's Chrome.



I’ve been using it since it debuted, and though there are some irritants like no separate search box – you need to type search terms in the address bar itself – and the search opening only in Google, I still like Chrome with many other innovative features.

Any new product launch means the company devotes its commensurate resources to maintain and innovate it. I therefore do not subscribe to the oft-repeated idea that Chrome is not necessarily an offspring Google wants to pursue vigorously.

Google doesn’t fail to surprise the people who have direct or indirect stakes in it. Its financial results after going public have consistently been wonders except perhaps the somewhat dull last quarter (Q2/08) figures.

To my mind there is no reason why Chrome won’t become yet another blockbuster from the search giant’s stable. Until then let the roving eyes pick up signals, subtle or pronounced, that tell tale(s) about the browser’s future.

The image at the top is inspired from this excellent creation.

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Kolkata’s another first

If you keep aside the apparently suicidal trend to skirt industry to the state, Kolkata has many things ‘first’ to boast of.

I’m not saying the many developments during the Raj era that started in the city. In relatively modern times Kolkata has had the first underground metro in India.

To that somewhat worn-out feather will shortly add a fresh one…that of first under-river metro tunnel across river Hooghly joining Kolkata and Howrah.

Those are under the ground, not visible unless you enter the earth’s womb. What about the city’s skyline?

You’ll say, why, isn’t there the South City? Oh yeah, South City is big, bigger than many in Kolkata. But hopefully it will pale away compared to those in pipeline in the coming years.

It’ll not be a euphoric outburst to say that the city’s skyline will see some radical change in not-so-distant future. Let’s count some eggs that are likely to hatch.

The EM Bypass will host none less than 7 large hotels, among them are some renowned ones from across seven seas.

Moving to the north of the city, the Ideal Heights on APC Road will have 4, 19-24 storey highrises designed by Hafeez Contractor. And if you consider a swanky airport in the august list of buildings that define Kolkata’s skyline, expect the auspicious beginning of its making during puja.

However, the 250 meter office tower planned beside Tata Center will be the one to keep the city agape for a long time. Tell you what, this 54-storey edifice, though short of 60-storey Imperial Towers in Mumbai, will be the tallest in the country when complete.

The total height of 250m is equivalent to 83-storey structure, and who knows it may be a long while before this height is scaled by some other structure anywhere else in the country.

However, for all that matters, the year's architectural marvel surely belongs to the rotating skyscraper planned in Dubai.

Here is the picture above of artist’s impression of the Kolkata tower taken from the TT. In the inset is what it may look like in the evening.

Below is a schematic that compares the planned tower in the city with the world biggies like the Burj Dubai, the Petronas twins, and the Sears Tower.

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Uprooting smallness

September 2008 will go down in the history of the nation as the month when India finally received waiver from the 45-nation strong Nuclear Suppliers Group for dealing and trading in nuclear fuel.

India’s admission to the ‘august’ group seems to have great portents that will gradually unfold as against the solution of more pronounced needs of nuclear fuel supply and the reactors to generate electricity.

Incidentally as the waiver came through after marathon sessions in Vienna, another important meeting to herald or not a monumental occasion has been ‘on’ at the Raj Bhavan in the city. It’s about Bengal unshackling the bondage of ‘smallness’.

Let me deal with the latter. It is important because if the Nano plant does happen, it does not automatically mean that Bengal’s industrial rejuvenation is just round the corner.

On the contrary there are many more hurdles that have to be crossed yet – the hurdles of smallness, of finding glory in smallness. I’ll narrate 3 incidents that have happened only recently to explain my point.

1
First the Sep 4 issue of Anandabazar Patrika with the results of an opinion poll that showed that 72% of Singur people want the plant at any cost.

If that sounds good, wait a minute. Consider the answers to 4 other queries in the same poll. They are alarming and indicative of the people’s mindset toward industry.

Here they are:

Q1: If Tata goes Birla will come. So what’s there to be afraid of?
43% agree to this.

Q2: Bengal has no future without industry.
57% don’t agree to this.

Q3: Agricultural land must be kept aside for the food needs of 7 generations to come.
53% agree.

Q4: We’ve survived all these years without industry. So why is there so din?
45% agree.

Needless to say the path to industrial glory in Bengal is highly tortuous. Remember Singur is quite close to Kolkata. So if a sizeable populace of Singur has doubts about industry, you can expect the picture in the rest of the state.

2
The state’s transport minister who doubles up as minister of sports and youth affairs – and in the process I feel is unable to do justice to any of the departments – recently in a lecture in a chamber of commerce supported the innumerable 3-wheeler autos.

He said one needs to compassionately consider that the auto drivers too have to feed themselves and their families.

Nothing wrong there, but unfortunately the autos are a law unto themselves. They use highly polluting adulterated fuel and they give a damn to traffic regulations.

Both are dangerous for any normal living, especially the pollution. But that means nothing to the powerful minister, immersed strictly as he is in reaping political dividends.

3
The third incident is ‘shocking’ and shows a malaise that has now become symptomatic of once-hailed high-thinking principled Bengalis.

ABP, Sep 3 reports an assistant school inspector in West Midnapore’s Ghatal was arrested for insisting on and accepting bribe for issuing a clearance certificate a school needed after it utilized government grants for improving the school facilities.

What’s new in this you may ask?

A routine affair indeed but for the fact that the school in question was Bhagabati Vidyalaya in the Birsingha village that was established by Pandit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar and named after his mother. No prize for guessing why the news made to the paper.

If you ask me I’d say the inspector insisted on bribe because he knew he could never afford the goodies of modern life he so aspired for, and believed that asking for bribe – this is more ominous – was rather the norm than exception. Why hesitate then?

I think the common thread to the 3 incidents is people’s yearning for ‘smallness’. We have radically transformed from being simple-living-high-thinking to wanting-high-living-yet-committed-to-petty-thinking.

I’ve nothing against high living, but the Bengal of today is still strongly hesitant of coming out of the shell of mediocrity while being unable to refuse the lure of modern living.

Bengal's position is worse than say a distant virgin territory in a village elsewhere. There the people are simple and do not pose as 'great' thinkers to judge whether or not industries are needed.

To our ill-luck we 'know' too much, way too much that forces us to remain confined within the deep depth of narrowness.

The wind of change, so desperately required in Bengal, will need many more Nano plants to blow strongly. And that unfortunately is still a long, long way off.

P.S.
As I write this we’ve the news that the Singur problem is on the verge of solution after the Governor met the CM and the Trinamool Congress chief.

The Singur solution is the latest entrant in the list of memorable events in the week gone by. To the NSG waiver I’ll add Google completing 10 years as being the other two important events.

Will these repeat! [Image source]

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Singur’s blessings

Yesterday was a ‘small’ high point in the ongoing agitation at Singur. Personalities from the world of art and culture like Aparna Sen, Saoli Mitra, and others paid a visit to the site and spoke to various people.

Late in the night there was a talk on the TV channel, Star Ananda, where Aparna and Saoli appeared.

According to them the disputed 400 acres are still barren – though surrounded with boundary wall – and so perhaps the Tatas could consider vacating that piece and locating the ancillary units across the Durgapur Expressway on the other side.

Should that happen, Aparna and Saoli argued, the 2 holdings on either side of the expressway could be joined with an underpass or an overhead flyover.

If indeed this could emerge as a solution to the impasse, I would stick out my neck and suggest that an underpass may be built because I believe it needs less amount of space. But then it must be sufficiently below the expressway to make room for large vehicles to pass under.

Whatever happens, two things stand out as easily noticeable.

One, a solution may be far off since the two sides harbor deep animosity toward one another – something that has happened as a result of several decades of strong-arm tactics by the left front.

Two, there is an unprecedented media coverage – note the debates on NDTV – ever since Ratan Tata’s statement that Tata Motors might consider pulling out of Singur if agitation persisted.

It is perhaps the case that the Tatas being renowned industrialists have sort of nudged the media to ‘take up’ their case. Whether true or not, the ringside view is it’s not all that bad for Bengal.

Being the industrial wasteland that it is for long, long time media coverage at the national and international level has been very few if any.

The ‘neglect’ is justified since Bengal’s story has been a constant denial of everything positive. So you can’t blame if sane people felt nothing would ‘happen’ here, that there was just no story worth spending time on.

Now, even as I feel a bit elated in seeing the media covering the event for an extended period, there is still my fear of clock turning ‘full circle’. But then there may be – just maybe – a silver lining in the distant horizon.

Which is that Bengal’s common people, fed with the limitations of smallness, may start thinking that being big is after all not bad…it’s rather unavoidable.

To that extent, if events prove so, the current Singur agitation will have done a large favor for this beleaguered state.

A beautiful underpass [image source]
Let Singur's solution be as beautiful..!

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