The not-so-secret diary

News on 17th December 2009, UK: Cheques to be phased out by 2018. Personal experience on 8th November 2009, India: Cheques from cheque book of well known private sector bank  ‘payable at par’ only in the city where cheque book was issued. In the UK, use of cheques is declining by 10% every year. In Sweden and the Netherlands, cheques are now virtually extinct. In India, we have a long way to go before we can seriously consider being in the league of paper-less transaction countries. Although giving us company are the US and France where  successive administrators have seriously resisted the phasing-out of cheques even as cheque usage continues to decline. Coming back to India and the plethora of cash transactions that occur every day my first reaction was to sigh again. Then I decided to give it deeper thought. Even 5 years ago no one would have thought that a country with worrying UN and World Bank-type ‘Basic Facilities Depravation Statistics’ wo...

Have you ever seen a young child at a hairdresser's? You know when they are just about 1 or 2 years old. They still can't understand why they are being forced into a scary looking chair and why their parents or grandparents are holding their head tight as the evil man with the scissors descends upon them. That’s the point when they start wailing non-stop...... Now I don't remember my toddler-trips to a hairdresser or a beauty salon. I suspect that my mother, a natural at dress-designing and other arty things, probably snipped off my locks at home for a while! When I was slightly older I distinctly remember going to the little Ladies Beauty Parlour , a cubby-hole of a place in the Neelkanth shopping centre near my house. It was a mini-adventure. First you would have to sit in that grown-up chair, then have the white cloak wrapped around you, then the lady would spray water from a little white plastic bottle and finally with the click click click of the small scissors yo...

And that too 'India's Number One Fairness Cream'. Mind you the advert outside the suburban rail station had such a big picture of you and those very words in Font Size 150 that I could not even spot what brand it was representing ! Now understandably, in a country obsessed with the colour of skin, the one cosmetic that probably out-sells all is the ubiquitous fairness cream. Till very recently these creams were mainly targeted at young women. Guaranteed to make you super-fair in 3 weeks and help you grab a husband instantly. It has never ceased to amaze me how deep-rooted the desire for 'fair women' who would generate 'fair offspring' is. I think recently someone realised that ... err.... maybe you need both the woman and the man to be light-skinned to be (somewhat) guaranteed that they will generate light-skinned offspring ! Heading back a couple of centuries, it appears we were a civilisation of brown to dark-brown folk. And then came the invasions ...

Window seats have always held a great fascination for me whether in a car, a bus, a train or a plane. As a child I would watch the city whiz past me in the car. As a teenager the grilled window of the train was not just for viewing the passing scenery but also for buying the ‘kuladh-waali chai’, tasty pakoras and fruits from stations on the way. On the bus to college, the window seat was a key prize. If you kept your bag smartly just by your side on your right, then you could be safe from those ‘falling’ men- Ugh. On the plane, it’s the shapes of the clouds from the little airplane window that first caught my imagination. When older I was mesmerised by the birds’ eye view of cities during landing and take-off. But that was my phase of near-innocent bliss. Windows now bring to me a mix of joy and anxiety. No longer do I want to be looking out of the car window straight into the eyes of the young 8-year old trying valiantly to sell fashion magazines or books, or dusting clo...

Security Code You know those the squiggly security codes, that pop up when you try to register in all sorts of places on the web, designed to verify that you are ‘human’ and not a ‘machine’? Aren't they incredibly hard to decipher? Some of them are so tough that you begin to doubt yourself and think….."Umm am I really human? And do I need to go back to Primary School as the shape of these letters and numbers is looking very strange indeed, even if I read it sideways?" Some of them have the ‘audio’ option. It makes you wonder, if the alphabets are blue and wave-like, will the audio sound like someone gurgling under water? Email Vs Indian Bureaucracy Its funny how most of the time you need an email to get a new email. Reminds me of the Indian bureaucracy in many ways. You need a photo-id to get a photo-id, you need a bank account to get a bank account, you need a credit card to another credit card. Of course if you are smart, then you would have figured out tha...

This is not the average winter temperature in Ol’ Blighty that I refer to. It is the much studied ‘six degrees of separation’ theory. And the kick I got at chopping 3 degrees off it this morning. It all started with the daily chit-chat with my ‘kaamwaali bai’ or cleaning lady. Her friend is the ‘koodewaali bai’ or house-garbage collector. And this 2 nd bai picks up rubbish daily at Shahrukh’s house. Oh yeah I totally call him by first name now that I’m technically a neighbour on Mount Mary Road in Bandra ;-) That's Shahrukh Khan- King of Bollywood for those who still haven’t heard of him. So essentially that’s 3 degrees of separation with Mr Khan. Jai Ho to the world of bai s! Now getting to 2 degrees will be dead easy, all I have to do is befriend the koodewaali bai directly. But one degree… hmmm….. no I’m not planning to disguise myself as her and pick up his rubbish. Really there have to be some limits to celebrity-voyeurism. I've never been a groupie of any sor...

Jaywalking is an essential skill to cope with most Indian cities and Mumbai is no exception. Indians are genetically geared to excel in this. No one ever teaches anyone. From childhood, youngsters observe the adults, newcomers to cities observe the veterans and together all of them learn and evolve the best strategies to navigate the onslaught of heterogeneous traffic and the odd slow-moving bovine creatures. (Incidentally the more we in 'modern' India try to vehemently deny the presence of the aforesaid peace-loving bovine creatures on urban roads, the more they pop up at the most annoying places, in full view of camera-happy foreigners). Back to jaywalking. It is not just an art. On further thought, I believe it involves quite a bit of a complex science, an understanding of human behavioural responses, the experience of animal behavioural responses and a small belief in kismat.  So here are some starter’s tips. As you hit the metalled surface, first spend half a second t...

Indians are religious. Or maybe a bit superstitious and somewhat spiritual. Or maybe we just believe in kismat. Why take a chance and let the shortcomings of the current or past lives ruin our day today ? Surely there can be no harm in asking a small favour of the gods as we go about our daily life. That is the conclusion I have reached after seeing the surprisingly large display of religious deities around my current workplace in Delhi. They are mostly small, printed pictures or calendars. Some are of Laxmi and Ganesha representing prosperity and wealth (pictures and cards from last Diwali?). There are also images of Shree Krishna and Saraswati. Saraswati is the goddess for education and learning so that makes sense. Shree Krishna..... hmmm - case for providing butter, ghee and cheese at work perhaps, a staple diet of baby Krishna. Can't see it being a signal to encourage flirting with the ladies although enough romances seem to brew in the typical Indian w...

Clickety-click, clickety-clack. Do I want to be the cat with the bell? Do I want to announce my arrival at each floor? Will I eventually get used to heads popping up as I head for the printer? A strange and unexpected dilemma faces me in my new workplace - my company's India office in Delhi.  Should I wear high heels to work or not? Actually they are not even that high. They aren't stilettos or tall block heels mainly because I can't even walk properly on a carpet in stilettos. They are just a pair of mid-heel, smart shoes. The kind that I always wanted to wear but couldn't in my erstwhile life in the land-of-good-public-transport-to which-one-must-constantly-sprint, i.e. London. (I'm still rooting for good public transport btw!) But coming back to heels, its surprising how much noise they make on a non-carpeted office floor. Even more surprising is the medley of men on the floor who turn around from their screens to see who's approaching. This happens eve...

A couple of months into my India Sojourn I thought the best way to respond to the frequent "What's new?" queries from across the globe was via this blog.  The other day I went to watch Kamine y with some friends on Independence Day. Anyone seen it yet?  C'est un film noir est tres dramatique. Not as scary as Ghajini thankfully. The second half was better than first half. Priyanka Chopra also shows some spirit. Shahid did well on the 'dark character(s)'. There are some loopholes and some bollywood-style cliches. Watch out for the song 'Dhan-te nan'! I saw the film at PVR Priya in Vasant Vihar - a place which is vastly changed since my younger days. No longer the ultra-cool hangout from my school and college days, it is now in a state of sad disrepair. Most of the boutique shops and the 'happening' crowd that visited them have moved about two miles south to DLF Emporio which is the new shopping 'maal' enroute to Vasant Kunj. It co...