The Chronicles of Dangerous Dabbs

Welcome son!

Published by Prashant Yadav on January 5, 2014

Dear Son,

Welcome to the world.

First thing I want to tell you is that right now, what gives me the greatest pleasure is just watching you – you sleeping, you awake. You smiling, you grimacing. You blinking, you winking and you giving those innumerable expressions no dictionary has the words to describe. They are simply so many. Most of the adult faces I know, including my own can manage only four or five. Where do so many come to you from?

Or are you telling me that as we grow up, the multitude of expressions we once had coalesce into a few we now possess? Do we lose most of those feelings as we go along?

People told me I’d all of a sudden become very responsible (yes, they thought I wasn’t) when you come. They said life will change. They also said you’ll be a huge responsibility. Possibly. Right now, though, you are just 3 kgs.

Frankly, I haven’t felt an emotionally overwhelming moment so far. Yes. When your little hands shivered in my arms after the nurse handed a new born you to me, I felt an urgent helplessness – wanted to stop your shivering but didn’t know what to do. Yes, I can sit for hours just watching you and I love to wrap myself around you and hold you close to my chest. But, not one moment has been an unleashing of a tsunami. May be that’s how it really happens – slowly and definitely.

I want you to grow big and strong and happy. I want you to be brave. I want you to be kind and loving. I know, a long wishlist for such a small you. But dads are selfish. Yours too is no different.

There, you’ve already started helping me understand my dad in turn.

The day you were born, I saw a small puppy, near the super market and it occurred to me that he too would have been born just like you. Possibly he too was as precious to his parents. And I also saw a child begging at the traffic light – a torn sweater in the chilling December cold. He too would have been as precious to his parents. I don’t know what it means. Most probably, random ramblings of a newly minted dad. Whatever.

Million things I want to tell you and we will talk as we go along. A couple, I think are most important.

First, do everything like the only thing that exists in the world is you and the thing you are doing. I have done things both ways and the most rewarding experiences have come when I’ve done them as if nothing else exists – no past, no future, no people, no causes, no consequences. When you do something and your mind is elsewhere, that’s when you don’t enjoy it and that’s when it doesn’t work out.

And then, be brave. No matter who or what you face, no matter when or where you face them. You will realize sooner or later that the most important thing in life is to take a stand, your stand. No matter what others, including me, tell you.

Love,
Dad

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Never Stop travelling Sleeper Class

Published by Prashant Yadav on February 26, 2013

Ghaziabad station. Too filthy. Too many people. We find a place for the two of us to stand out of the way of sundry passengers and vendors and it takes some effort. Platform numbers 1 and 2. Every five minutes a train comes and leaves. Ours is still sometime away.

A filthy man in his mid forties ambles awkwardly behind her . He is above average tall and stoutly build, only his walk is slightly deformed and clothes a tad too dirty. There is something creepy about him. I am code red alert. I have heard about these weirdos in crowded places. They look miserable and harmless but are always looking to brush against a woman or touch her and run away.

You are getting it from me dude if you try anything smart. All muscles tensed, I am ready to launch a solid kick to his head if he does anything funny.

Just then, he bends down, picks up a half eaten piece of bread pakora from near the dustbin and walks off.

Something falls inside me – too dumbfounded to react!!!

Just then the PA system announces the arrival of our train. We pick up our bags and walk towards the other platform. Too many people standing on the platform. We pick a spot where we expect coach number S6 to arrive. Yes, S-6, we booked late so couldn’t get anything else. We had to book a sleeper class ticket.

I see a tough looking guy standing close to me. I am sure this bastard is going to squat on my seat and I will either have to scare him away or share my seat with him. I rest the bags on the floor. The train is not yet in sight but the rush on both sides is already giving me heebie jeebies.

The fuckers are even standing on the other side of the track in between platforms. I am sure these are the daily passengers who travel without tickets and throw those reserved ticket holders off the train who resist being bullied into surrendering their seats.

I secretly pray S-6 doesn’t stop here and just to get rid of my nerves walk further down the platform secretly hoping my coach to stop where there are no toughies. Bad luck, they are everywhere.

I know the train won’t stop here for long so it is important to not be too far away from where S-6 would stop.

Luckily, as the train stops, S-6 is right in front of us.

We get in.

None of the toughies get in the train. They are waiting for the Saharanpur Express coming after this!

We reach our seats. 50 and 56.

A hard looking guy in his mid thirties, stocky build and an old man sitting on 55 and 56.

As soon as we reach the seat, the hard man gets up and sits on another seat close by. Turns out he is a cop, a UP Police constable travelling to Moradabad who in all probability doesn’t have a sleeper class ticket and is travelling in a reserved coach partly to avoid the rush of the general class and partly out of the faint sense of entitlement his khaki uniform bestows on him.

I softly ask the old man, “Chacha, what is your seat number?”

Chacha too gets up, indicates his seat is in another coupe and walks off.

I didn’t have to use any of my brown belt third step karate badassery to save my wife from molestation or to secure my seat.

And then it struck me.

Too much travelling in my car is making a neurotic coward out of me. I have begun fearing public transport and sleeper class and this when I have traveled in meter gauge trains for the half of my life which didn’t even have any reserved coaches. Sleeper class and long route trains came during college and AC coaches and air travel came post MBA.

I remember being pleasantly surprised when I saw our Organization Behavior professor at IIMA travelling in the same sleeper class coach as us some 10 years back on Ahmedabad to Delhi Ashram Express. I wondered then as to why someone who could easily afford more comfortable travel options would travel Sleeper Class.

The professor had smiled and said something about liking to travel Sleeper Class. I had found it weird then.

But now, I am beginning to understand the value of Sleeper Class. The fear of Sleeper Class signifies the fear in me of the “others” and doubt in my ability to tackle a situation if it should arise.

Not the way I want to live my life.

Mind you, the professor’s reasons for travelling Sleeper Class might have been entirely her own but now, I too have begun to find my reasons to at least occasionally travel Sleeper Class.

Come to think of it, Sleeper Class is probably the most interesting way to travel in Indian Railways. Open windows, incessant chatter, a wide variety of people, on and off beggars and an occasional eunuch invoking your likeness to Salman Khan or Ajay Devgan to extract some money. Even the people there talk as against those in AC coaches so basking in self glory that they exchange only icy glances.

Not going all seventies Amitabh, “Sachcha pyar gareebon ka baki hai khel nassebon ka” extolling the virtues of ‘Sleeper Class’ as against the ‘evils’ of AC coaches. Not to suggest that I’d only travel Sleeper Class. Far from it.

I’d still travel air, AC and Volvos but would not stop travelling Sleeper Class or UP Roadways.

That’s where the stories are and that’s where the edge is which I don’t want to lose. The edge that’s too damn precious for a Hindi heartland Bhaiyya born in a farmer family.

Never stop travelling Sleeper Class.

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OMG Bharata! Mom and dad wore sexy clothes

Published by Prashant Yadav on February 19, 2013

Indians don’t talk about sex. Infact, we don’t really really have it. It’s just the flowers touching. Skirts and short dresses are against Indian culture which crumbles the moment it sees a woman’s uncovered leg, shoulder or midriff.

The most potent feminine form at ease with her feminity — **Love or war – we dressed in style!!!**

Sex is dirty, tolerable only as a sacred duty to procreate (or wait, didn’t our glorious ancestors figure a sanskari way to procreate that didn’t require genitals?).

Someone’s brilliant brainwave, very popular, and not just with khap nut cases or card burning vigilantes.

And if you look at the history of our ancestors, you find great great granddad and grandmom were really colourful people. And, am talking of the glorious past, India’s Vishwaguru days. And am sure as hell they’d be laughing their asses off from up above – granddad with a stole on his bare chest and grandmom in her teeny weeny shiny bustier.

There is sexism in our epics. There is power politics, there is discrimination, there is the evil side of men and women and there is punishment and redemption. However, there is very little of this squeamishness about sex and the idea of keeping genitals under lock and key which we today propagate.

To start with, the nation itself is named after king Bharat who was the love child of Shakuntala and Dushyant born out of their rendezvous in one of his hunting trips in the forest.

The greatest epic of Mahabharata is written by Vyas who was born of single mother Satyavati and brought up by single dad Rishi Parasher. Yes sir. Premarital sex is not something they dreamt up in the west.

All the Pandavas were born out of wedlock. Their dad, Pandu too was born out of wedlock. Even Kauravas’ dad Dhritrashtra was born outside marriage and so was the wise Vidur.

We are named after a love child — **Follow your elders, yo.**

Khajuraho depicts sexual acts which would make pornhub look like kindergarten. Vatsyayan wrote Kamasutra some 2500 years back when humans everywhere else were still concerned with making fire by rubbing stones (dang, even that sounds raunchy).

Apsaras never shied away from using their sexuality for purely material ends which often times didn’t even concern them.

Our goddesses were never ashamed of their bodies – check out sculptures of Goddess Kali in her most potent and destructive form.

Vedic texts are full of sexually liberal narratives. Kama is one of the pillars of the ancient Indian way of life. The sages and wise people had sex, had kids and many times, it was way outside the confines of conservative sexuality.

Our forefathers were comfortable with sex. They treated it maturely and my guess is, they weren’t maniacally obsessed about it. Sexual repression was never our way of life.

Oh yes, we always wore sexy clothes, be it men, women or Gods. Be it love or war.

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The sky is falling

Published by Prashant Yadav on February 20, 2016

Blessed are the homes that don’t have TV!

And I personally have been feeling that blessedness in the last one month that we disconnected the DTH connection. All that karate practice not withstanding, everyday ‘sky is falling’ premonitions would have surely given the fast middle-ageing me, at least a minor heart attack.

Source: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/afzal-guru-film-screening-jnu-student-leader-held-for-sedition/

Way back, when Anna sat in Jantar Mantar and Kajriwal was a chaste, dyed in white activist, TV screeched to show us that anyone asking for accountability from elected government was an anarchist. Anna was jailed, cartoonists were arrested and charged with sedition and the country was saved.

When thousands swarmed to Ram Leela, they scared us that the country will be taken over by self righteous, un-elected mobs.

Thankfully, we survived, Anna went back to Ralegan beating boozards and Kejriwal became a hardboiled poiltician.

Then they told us that if Modi became PM, the sky will fall, all of us will die and intelligent, emancipated people will have to leave the country.

Well, Modi did become PM, and we haven’t died, not at least as yet and not a lot of intelligent people left the country though many keep saying they will. TV meanwhile continues with its sky is falling symphony.

Then came the beef story. With all that noise, I started having visions of trident wielding, saffron wearing chaddi-men storming in my house looking for left over meat curry of the last night. Thankfully, I survived. Perhaps they missed my house. Perhaps because it is on the nineteenth floor.

Then came the award wapsi season. The country became so intolerant all of a sudden I thought I too would have to return my degree to save my country. In retrospect, it would have been a smarter idea before IIT and IIM themselves disown me from their alumni lists for not having done anything earth shattering as yet.

But the country lived on and some reverse award wapsi too happened.

And now this freedom of speech vs nationalism issue. Like, evil Brahminical mobs are roaming the streets distributing certificates of nationalism (just as every election season, certificates of secularism are handed out and withheld) beating anyone who doesn’t wear a khaki short.

The sky is dark, the outlook grim. The sky is falling and we all are dying. Like yesterday.

They don’t teach this in management schools but fear sells more than sex.

Don’t use Fair and Lovely? You will die an ignored, unemployed virgin.

Don’t use Complan/Farex/Cerelac/(whatever else)? Your child will shrink down to an unintelligent, weak midget.

Don’t buy a flat in Noida/Crossings Republic? You will have to live and die in rented slums in Pilakhuwa.

Don’t use this magic toothpaste? Your buccal cavity will soon resemble the chopped forests of Mala – all stump, no crown.

Fear is everywhere. They use it to make us buy things and TV is their favorite vehicle.

The point is not denial. Akhlaq’s murder was a crime and should be dealt strongly. Attacks on writers – be it Kalburgi or Tasleema – were wrong and should be punished. Sec 124 is archaic – whether charged on Aseem Trivedi or Kanhaiya. Beating people up on the streets is a crime in IPC.

But the sky is not falling. India has survived far more hate filled oppressors and self glorifying incompetents than we have on display right now. We have also survived foreign rule, emergency, forced sterilizations, Sec 66A and still preserved our voice.

In the end, there are only two questions:

a) Is name-calling Supreme Court verdict (‘judicial murder’) legitimate dissent or contempt of court?

b) Is calling for the destruction and division of country (God willing), acceptable free speech or treachery?

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Fear sale secularism and beyond

Published by Prashant Yadav on April 9, 2014

The benefit of having many friends is that you become a firm believer in the power of conviction. The sheer strength of conviction is admirable, the underlying idea be damned.

So, on one hand, there are friends high on secular-nalin who believe SP, Congress, TMC, JDU, RJD are the guardians of secularism. For them, Imam asking Muslims to vote for Congress and TMC is secular, illegal immigration from Bangladesh doesn’t happen and Indian Mujahideen doesn’t exist. Haven’t had a talk about Riyaz Bhatkal with them, I am sure they’d either say he is vapor or some RSS man in disguise.

Don’t ever get into an argument with them unless you want to be called fascist, communal and a regressive pest out to drive away minorities and make India a Hindu Rashtra.

On the other hand are friends high on nationalism. For them, Nehru’s real father was not Motilal but his Muslim gardener, every dark skinned Muslim pulling a rickshaw is a Bangladeshi and Kejriwal is Ford funded, CIA prompted B team of Congress launched to keep India from achieving its Aryavarta glory.

An argument with them means bringing upon you extreme patronisation deserved, perhaps rightly, by fools who get taken in by Kejriwal’s antics and who fail to decipher the grand design to eliminate Hinduism from mother earth.

There is victimhood in both narratives and an eagerness to get back at the other for past sins – centuries of plunder, conversion and temple destruction on one side and decades of upper caste Hindu conspiracy to keep Muslims subjugated on the other.

Thankfully, the average man on the street is much smarter. That’s the reason he is able to live, work and do business with those of the other religion despite what the wise men with bright halos, especially of having left their careers to do social work, NGO ishtyle, say.

The shrillest component of this debate is the fear mongering targeted at Muslims. Congress, SP, BSP, TMC, JDU, RJD, MIM – every stalwart on the secular side tries to scare Muslims into running into their arms for mere survival. It works very well for them too – a scared person doesn’t ask questions. For example, “Why am I still backward despite secular governments all these years?”

Fear of survival is a low hanging fruit, tastes damn sweet and soon metamorphoses into the Crown of Secularism. Ask Neta ji or Laluji or Didi ji. Or ask Nitish.

Good thing is, if you grab it with a loud enough bang (like Neta ji did when he ordered firing on karsevaks in 1989-90 or Lalu did when he arrested Advani midway his rathyatra, same time), you and your progeny can continue enjoying the sweetness for decades and a lot of your indiscretions will be forgiven. Like watching lungi dance while riot victims shiver in Muzaffarnagar camps or their kids freeze dead.

Come election, call someone a goonda, talk about chopping people to pieces, stoke the ungrateful oppressive majority narrative by proclaiming that only one community fought in the Kargil war and you are good for another five years.

No, the idea is not to hand out a Certificate of Secularism to Modi, me not qualified enough and neither did Soniaji ever approach me for it. The idea is to stress that this survival discourse is not helping anyone – when fear mongering is the currency, it needs to be sold to both the sides and the questions of education, health, jobs, roads, electricity and growth recede in the background.

As for how well the survival fares, check the stats – how many riots in the past 10-20-30-40 years under which party and how many deaths. Congress would win by a mile. Even then it can take the moral high ground, “Modi talking secular is like a dracula protecting a blood bank”. That’s the power of fear mongering.

The seculars have traded in blooded, and yes, in minority blood too. They all are equal here – secularism is no differentiator.

Sachar Committee report tells us that years of fear peddling have not benefited minorities. The time has come to ask them what else will you do apart from keeping Modi out.

What is on your agenda that will help Abdul mistry’s son get on Facebook instead of repairing bikes?

[Image courtesy: http://whatsup1.com/hindi-poem-on-communal-harmony.html]

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Women’s day and safe deposit sexuality

Published by Prashant Yadav on March 8, 2014

A small news item made for the perfect start of the day, incidentally, the Women’s Day!

A dude from Delhi reached his baraat pitch drunk. The girl lost it, refused to marry and her dad, instead of imploring her or putting his pagdi in front of his jamai or drinking poison, locked up the baratis and the groom. The cops came and made the pati parmeshwar return the engagement gifts worth 2.5 Lacs.

So, this would be the girl whose marriage broke at the last moment and this would be the guy who was chased out of his wedding party by the bride!

That’s awesome progress, no doubt. The “doli goes, arthi comes out” brand of dedication to one’s husband is not so distant past (possibly, not yet past in several areas even now). Hell, even today, we Indians are such misogynists, the simple technological tool of prenatal sex determination becomes a deadly weapon in our hands. I mean, I can convince the government to let me keep a gun but not to know if my baby is going to be a boy or girl – something trivial in most of the countries of the world. Government of course, is helpless. Generalization yes, but we Indians can’t handle it if we are going to father (or even mother) a girl.

24X7 media and social media has forced everyone to take a more politically correct turn. So, instead of saying, “I have the right to rape a woman when I want”, people say, “Well, why didn’t she dress conservatively?”. And then, the other bullshit, “Rise and shine, but don’t ape men. You are beautiful in your own way. Don’t become a consumption commodity”, which essentially means, “Take your freedom and baby rattle it as much as you want but you’ll forever stay men’s sexual belognings”.

Look closely and you’ll find that every form of discrimination against women can be traced back to the idea of women’s sexuality being owned by men in the family. Dad’s famous shoulders droop the moment daughter becomes adolescent not because he is worried about unwanted pregnancy or STDs but the shame of not having been man enough to protect her future groom’s “secure deposit”. We need sons because they will protect instead of needing protection. Women must get married because what is a secure deposit without a certified owner!

What women need is to reclaim their sexuality from their husbands, fathers, brothers and whoever takes it upon himself to protect the “khuli tijori”. The right to one’s body is the most fundamental right and that should be taken back by women absolutely unambiguously. This means the right to dress as one wants. This also means the right to be sexually promiscuous without being judged (irony, I know, ‘promiscuous’ and “don’t judge” in the same sentence!).

The thesis is that nothing short of a sexual revolution enabling women to own their sexuality will bring about equal status.

(Image courtesy: Global fund for women)

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Thinking in labels

Published by Prashant Yadav on January 29, 2014

Labels are valuable. They save lives and, at least partly, have ensured human race survived to this day.

The early man saw a lion and thought, “Dangerous” and ran. Of course, sometimes the lion would be a non-violent kind or a vigilante who only ate evil animals or abhorred human flesh or lazy or not even hungry – but survival was more important to our primitive uncle than understanding the niceties of the leonine mood.

There was a time when I thought exclusively in labels. Years ago, but the time did exist.

Anyone who had a car in the eighties came from a family of moneyed blood suckers who built their wealth on the toil and tears of the hardworking poor. Rich puppy! Undeserving parasite wallowing in the luxury of the ill gotten wealth of his father. Too much seventies Amitabh, I guess.

Anyone from Delhi was a super fast man of the world, full of street smarts to even sell a dead rat to pest control.

Anyone who didn’t go to an IIT, and this I admit with a lot of embarrassment, was a below par sub humanoid. Anyone who didn’t study science in 10+2 didn’t exist.

Pithy approximations based on my limited view of the world to help build a model and make sense of it.

And then, as my world expanded, I met kids with a car in the eighties as nice, warm, ambitious, hardworking and fun as anyone; Delhi kids as naive as anyone from Sitapur and Sitapur kids who could sell off your ears without you realizing you’ve lost them; Humanities graduates who would outscore me every single time in, woe betide, Computers – which I thought had to be my bunny owing to my premier engineering degree and high voltage work experience building IC design software.

That’s when it occurred to me – labels limit. If you only see in black and white, you miss the colors. If you only see in red, blue, green, you miss the shades. The real world is far too complex, real people have way too many nuances.

Both are "Bow-wows" for the 2 year old Aujas — **Both are “Bow-wows” for the 2 year old Aujas**

For the two year old Aujas, both the dog and the cow are “Bow-wows” and it helps him decide to run when he sees either. As he grows up, he will realize that everything walking on four legs is not “Bow wow”.

However, we can’t entirely discard labels too. For one, they are too deeply ingrained in us, a survival trait sustained by organic evolution, and then, in the times of information overload, they may help us stay sane.

Thinking in labels is so powerful that the entire marketing industry revolves around pasting the desired label on an idea, product, brand or a person. The easiest way to win over millions of people is to build the right label and make it stick.

Congress has been trying to fix “Maut ke saudagar” on Modi for ten years now while BJP jostles to paste “Development Superman”. Similarly, labels of “Pappu” and “Reluctant prince with a heart that bleeds gold” compete to find a firm place somewhere on Rahul Gandhi’s visage.

“Elite”, “Intelligentsia”, “Masses”, “Classes”, “Communal”, “Secular” and the flavor of the season, “Anarchist”. Labels are omnipresent.

Smart ass advice 1: Labels make us a victim of, “Has a tail, is a ‘Bow wow'” logic. Avoid them.

Smart ass advice 2: We will forever be susceptible to labels – create the right one & slap it on with the stickiest glue when selling something.

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No bullshit guide: To be or not to be an entrepreneur?

Published by Prashant Yadav on November 20, 2013

Problem solver. Need satisfier. Pain reliever.

The ultimate explorer, he not only seeks new worlds but brings dazzling riches along.

They come in different flavors too – altruistic types make their gardeners rich through stocks while flashy ones pose with bikini clad women launching a new business in a new continent every month.

The ultimate in human triumph – can analyze like Raghuram Rajan, charm like SRK, street fight like Jai-Veeru, persist like Mother India and possesses an oversized head full of all that wisdom gathered every day of that action packed life.

He is an entrepreneur.

Want some of that sexy glory for yourself too? Check out if you are cut out for it:

Disclaimer: Please do not hold me responsible if you read something here, use it to take a decision, get screwed and come to know that you got screwed only after 10 good years of getting screwed. And yes, cigarette smoking causes kark rog!

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Our fetish for missing the devil and shooting the trees!

Published by Prashant Yadav on May 2, 2013

Ban short skirts. Ban hand holding in public. Ban V-day. Ban item numbers. Ban chowmien. Ban mobiles. Heck, ban women.

Is porn responsible for rapes? — **She is behind all these rapes and the poor men get blamed !!!**

The latest in this brilliant anti-rape measures series is to make watching porn a non-bailable offence.

Now, the cops won’t offer Rs 2000 to rape victims. They’ll just say, “Look kid, can’t file rape FIR. Gotta catch that pimpled teenager shagging to Sunny Leone in his engineering college hostel”.

Such is our fetish for missing the rampaging devil and shooting the trees, shrubs, birds, insects anything in the jungle except the dude staring you in the face with blood dripping off his mouth.

We don’t see that the one thing common in all rape incidents is the rapists’ confidence that they will get away. We don’t see that the hostile callousness of the police and a near-dysfunctional criminal justice system makes them so bold.

We wouldn’t talk of educating people and police that women have a right to their bodies, to public places and the girl who doesn’t have a dupatta on is not desperately looking for sex. It’s not as impossible as it may seem – when we can educate people for pulse polio vaccination, we can do so for treating women as more than meat as well.

Heck, when you can think of making porn-watching non-bailable, why can’t you think of making not filing rape FIRs as non-bailable?

Is porn responsible for rape — **Arrghh..My eyes are burning. Please ban this image!**

And it’s not just rape.

For widespread corruption, we will blame everything from bribe givers to lack of morals to low salary to the latest lunar eclipse.

The blame the bribe giver argument is attractive too – isn’t the guy who bribes to get his license made or bill passed equally responsible? Only, where do these bribe givers go when it comes to IIT/IIM admissions, army recruitment or whatever little that actually works in our system. Why do these immoral ease-shoppers suddenly become honest foot soldiers of morality while dealing with foreign government departments?

Clearly, bribe giving is not the prime mover in the corruption machinery. It is driven by the lacunae in the system which enable people in power to harass you for not paying up. Deprive corruption the life blood of such lacunae and it dies down.

But then we only seem too eager to believe that it is the trees, the birds, the climbers, the creepers, the insects, the grass even the air in the jungle that’s eating up the villagers and how, the devil is a poor victim of circumstances. It works to the sweet advantage of the perpetrators – be it rapists or be it the corrupt babu/neta.

Sometimes, the simplest answer to a question is the real one. We seem to miss this simple truth simply too often.

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Can you become rich in India without stealing?

Published by Prashant Yadav on April 16, 2013

Mommy says no!

Can you become rich in India sans a skeleton in the cupboard? — **Can I have all this without a few skeletons peeping out of my cupboard?**

Infact, this was one of the arguments she gave to dissuade me from becoming an entrepreneur, way back, when I was within dissuasion. Like any dutiful son hell bent on changing the world, I of course, didn’t listen to her.

But even after all these years, the argument is not yet settled. It keeps coming back. Whenever she gets something that can be used to support her case, she dispatches it in my direction.

The latest example she threw at me was Subrat Roy Sahara being quizzed on Rs 24,000 Crores.

Now, both you and I know the drill. The process of law is on and you can’t jump to conclusions. I told her so.

However, when it takes 15 years to frame charges against Salman Khan and 31 years for an IAS daughter to get a guilty verdict from the Sessions Court against her father’s killers (the High Court and the Supreme Court are still left, link here), the legal process argument loses most of its fizz.

Truth may be anything but a first generation big shot getting accused of serious investor fraud by a statutory body like SEBI only strengthens the idea: This guy became rich, this guy stole too.

I of course, stand my ground, “It IS possible, that’s what I am betting on”, trying hard not to sound like a teenage rebel whose communist hero on the Tshirt has just been caught in bed with capitalist imperialists.

Who drives the Pajeros in Noida, Ghaziabad? The Land Rovers, the Range Rovers, the BMWs, the Endeavors, the Fortuners?

Any of the IIT, IIM type corporate honchos? Any of the IT entrepreneurs? Or white kurta clad politicians, builders, wheeler dealers and their cronies?

Hmmm, something like, if you want to check the nature of the soil, see what plants flourish there? Know the character of the pond by the weeds that bloom in it.

Yes, exactly. What kind of plants flourish in the soil that is India today?

Prosperity is reaching nooks and corners of the country but almost every village seems to have one family which rises way faster than every other. NREGA and village level development schemes have only speeded up the rise of the pradhan families.

Every city, including the really godforsaken ones would have a few families with huge mansions floored with expensive marble tiles housing the snazziest SUVs. The rest of the city would either make do with government jobs or small time trading or petty private jobs. Even if there is no industry or major economic activity in the city, a couple of families seem to have access to a perpetual fountain of financial gangotri! More often than not, you’d find top functionaries of all political parties distributed amongst these families.

It doesn’t technically prove that you can’t become rich in India without stealing. It does indicate most of those who did well in one generation did stuff that middle class morality fed on eighties Amitabh would not allow.

That we have more Ponty Chadhas than Narayanmurthys doesn’t help either.

And damn that Kejriwal dude. Ambanis had never smelt of pure jasmine, he put the stink to the DLF story as well with his Vadra disclosures.

Where are the clean heroes? Where are the straight guy stories?

I am sure they are there. I feel most of the stories in the tech-internet enabled “new age” businesses are clean stories. But they are much less in number than “5 years in politics” or “7 years of wheeling-dealing” stories and they are not visible in Sitapur, Saharsa and Siliguri. That’s where bulk of India’s “high energy youth which China doesn’t have” demographic dividend comes from.

Mommy’s argument was simple enough. Since she hasn’t seen anyone become super rich without stealing so it’s impossible to do so. With uber-capitalistic American dream off the menu, there was only one option for me – be a good boy, write the exam, become an officer and live with the stick of the government in my hands.

I don’t blame her. Mommies have their own agendas. They don’t want their sons to fight too hard, struggle much or change the world.

But what does an ambitious, energetic twenty year old in a mofussil town see today?

Narayanmurthy and Bhikchandani are stars in the sky; Murthy, a friendly uncle in the stories and Bhikchandani, a stud IIMA entrepreneur. Other worldly characters even for those who have heard about them in small towns and villages. That bastard in the white Scorpio who picked petty street-fights only 2 years ago is as real as the cloud of dust his tinted glass car leaves in your face. His prosperity is spilling all over what with gold chains, new cars, scores of hangers-on, road construction contracts and an engineering college to boot.

The guys who steal, flourish. And they are everywhere. In every city, town and village. Purely statistically, becoming one of these is many times easier than becoming a Bhikchandani. And one doesn’t even need to understand the esoteric dynamics of web enabled information handshake business.

Is there a viable path-to-prosperity sans thievery for the bulk of the youth? Or is the rather simplistic notion that to become rich in India, you either don a white kurta or jump in the pockets of those already in white kurtas – the real wala truth?

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Free laptops, social change and a bottle of rum (err, pauwa)

Published by Prashant Yadav on March 13, 2013

The kids in UP now have free laptops fully loaded with photos of Neta ji, CM sahib and something about fulfilled promises.

That’s the beauty of socialism. Sponsoring something with your own money to get your branding and faces on it is so Coke and Pepsi.

Fuckin’ market oriented capitalism. Bazarwaad!

Who needs roads, electricity, schools and teachers? — **Who needs roads, power, schools and teachers?**

In Samajwad, spending public money to further your brand is kosher. Social change!

Talk about social change? The digital divide is now bridged.

The glowing white light of knowledge has reached the villages with no electricity, proper roads and primary schools.

The sons and daughters of poor farmers will now crack IIT JEE, PMT and CAT. Fuck you city bred, English speaking urban elites.

Will the quality of teachers in primary schools improve? Will they come to school daily instead of calling the attendance register home? Will they teach instead of asking kids to go get some gutkha?

Damn the cynic in me. The laptops are going to put the bloody world on their fingertips. Who needs primary school Science, Math and English teachers?

What about jobs? What will the kids do when they grow up? There can be no industry because roads and electricity sucks. There can be no industrialists because who would want their kids kidnapped. Police and teacher recruitment in UP have always been a money fest. What will these laptop wielding kids do?

Job? Is being a party voter not a job?

I mean, some of them would become full time party workers all with beacons and hooters and tinted glasses and colorful stickers and flags on white Scorpios. Isn’t that upward social mobility?

**Paying to get branding is so Coke and Pepsi**

Hmmm. How about using these 3000 Crores to build roads, better hospitals, better schools? How about providing primary health, education and improving law and order?

Come to think of it, not doing that is actually smarter. Two reasons:

a) Building roads, hospitals, schools and providing electricity, doctors, teachers are infinitely more complex than distributing laptops. More hands means more mouths means more public money disappearing on the way. It’s a brilliant move to curb corruption. Anna should be happy.

b) At least some of them will be grateful enough to remember the freebie when they go to vote.

By now, I am almost convinced of the tremendous social upliftment just waiting to be unleashed by the free laptop scheme. Only a small doubt remains.

Loan waiver schemes of the eighties/nineties led to a slew of loan waiver schemes. They provided instant relief to farmers but did nothing to remove the reasons behind rural indebtedness. Within a couple of years, the same guy came under the same debt once again.

Why not spend the money to create assets which create education, health and job opportunities so that they can buy their own laptops?

Ooops! My bad! Dumb dork me!

The above reasons a) and b) will hold for this too.

Empowering them to buy their own laptops is complex, will lead to corruption and won’t generate gratitude.

Point taken.

Hold on! This gratitude thingie?

Isn’t it the same as bribing voters? Significantly evolved, alright, but isn’t it the same as offering pauwa to the voters and counting on their quid-pro-quo.

Tum mujhe vote do, main tumhe pauwa, err, laptop dunga!

Heck, the pauwa is at least given from the election candidate’s own pocket (compensation from public funds follows and that too only if the guy wins)

Well, if your glasses are so bloody dark, even gangajal will look like pauwa to you. Why? Going by this logic, wouldn’t doing anything amount to bribing the voters?

Tum mujhe vote do, main tumhe roads dunga, bijli dunga, school dunga, hospital dunga, job dunga….

Fair enough. I rest my case. All hail social change.

Hey wait a sec! How will a guy in a village which doesn’t see power for days charge the laptop?

Dude, communism died decades ago. State largesse is a fossil. You can’t expect government to provide everything for you. Why, can’t you even arrange for electricity yourself? Fuckin’ beggars. Give them a finger and they’ll ask for the entire arm.

Grow some balls. Get some self respect. Do something on your own you khairati hospital!

Agreed. Convinced. Surrendered.

Free laptop scheme is the iPod of social welfare schemes.

If only UP were not so poor or the central government not anti-UP, it could have been even better – free IIPM degrees for all kids in UP.

Just then, Kero Mama walks in smiling ear to ear with an evil glint in his eyes – It’s the look of a twelve year old who has just been tapped on the head by the hot neighborhood aunty. Or the look on your face the day you score higher than the topper of your class in moral science.

“Some smartass kids are already selling these laptops for 10,000”.

Trust the market forces to determine the true value of anything, I want to remember my MBA Fin prof but regain my senses quickly. Thank god for that.

Market sucks. Bazarwaad sucks.

All hail social change. Free style. Fully let loose.

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