Sai Baba and his tricks

Back when I was a kid, an annual “excursion” was to the Sai Baba’s ashram in Whitefield, near Bangalore (ok, back then it was “near Bangalore”. Now people claim it’s part of Bangalore). This would usually be in summer, when the Baba would descend on his “summer home” in whitefield. There would be lots of people there, with a large proportion of them being Caucasian. To other “devotees” of the baba (as they like to call themselves), the presence of fair-skinned people among the followers was proof enough that the Baba was not “fake”.

We had to queue up, get frisked, and sit down cross-legged for a while, before the Baba decided to bless us by appearing in front of us. He would wave, produce caramilk chocolates (I think from his sleeve, while my aunt claimed it was from thin air) and throw them to the crowd, which would go into a frenzy trying to catch this “Prasad”. My eldest aunt was especially adept at catching these chocolates and giving them to us kids. I remember my father never came in. He spent the time peoplewatching outside the ashram. He said he enjoyed that better.

One of my greatest fantasies when I was a kid was to expose the Baba. Somehow plan with a bunch of friends, and catch him in the act trying to pull caramilk toffees out of his sleeve. And then shoot the video and escape, well at a faster rate. I remember putting myself to sleep on several days thinking about a plan like this. Unfortunately I never really got to implement that. Thinking back, I don’t think I’d ever planned in any of these daydreams about how I’d get past all the security and the hangers-on to reach the Baba and expose him.

It seems I was not alone in these dreams. Several others thought of this too, and did more than what I wanted to do. Check out this video (HT: Amit Varma). It relies on publicly broadcast footage to show that the Baba is likely to be a fraud.

Of course his “devotees” would deny this. After all, they stand to lose any power and credibility they have in the “organization” if they were to come out. A few devotees who have dared to come out against the Baba (mostly on charges of paedophilia) have found themselves ostracized and hounded by the pro-Baba community. Once “in”, it’s never made sense for any of the “devotees” to turn against the Baba. Until now.

Following the Baba’s demise last week, commentators are predicting a succession war among people who are close to him. And therein lies the great hope. That one or more of the parties involved in his succession battle is going to spill the beans. So far it made eminent sense for all these worthies to defend the Baba at any cost, for they drew their (not inconsiderable) power by being in the good books of the Baba, and more power to the Baba meant more power to them. Now that the Baba is no more, the losers in the succession battle are likely to have anyway lost all their power. And now they have little to lose, and the adulation of the world-at-large to gain, if they were to expose the Baba. And if they were to admit that the Baba’s “miracles” were nothing but a bunch of simple magic tricks, they would also succeed in cutting to size the people who would win the Baba succession battle.

As Tony Greig would say, it’s all happening out there.

Correcting for astigmatism

I suffer from astigmatism. I see better at certain angles than at others, so if I’m not wearing spectacles that correct for it, the aspect ratios of everything I see is quite messed up.

It also results in massive parallax errors. When I was entering the wedding hall where I was going to get married the next morning, I was asked to cut a ribbon. And given that I was wearing contact lenses (which don’t correct for astigmatism) I ended up putting the scissors in a place where the tape didn’t exist, leading to much laughter among the attendees, and worries among the bride’s relatives that she was marrying a blind man.

It also leads to embarrassments on the cricket pitch, when you find that you can’t judge the ball properly in three dimensions, and you end up mistiming the shot, or dropping sitters. In this respect, I have great respect for men like Sourav Ganguly, Anil Kumble, Asanka Gurusinha and Sreesanth, all of whom play/played their cricket wearing contact lenses, which don’t correct for astigmatism.

I also think the measurement of astigmatism is quite unscientific. The doctor puts on a lens in various angles and makes you read the usual “DHLEN CTPALO.. ” chart. And asks you which angle makes you see it most clearly. When most angles look pretty much the same, you just end up making a random choice, which may not correct your actual astigmatism at all .

I wonder why they haven’t come up with a technique like making you compare lengths of lines in different directions, and inferring the angle of astigmatism based on what you say about these comparisons.

And if one such scientific method do exists, and it’s just my opthalmologist who’s not using it, I better change opthalmologists soon!

Inventory

You know inventory represents a huge cost when online retailers such as Flipkart which don’t have to invest in keeping inventory at storefronts in expensive malls and high streets offer massive discounts, of the tune of 30 to 40% at times.

You know that inventory represents a huge cost, and shop space is precious, when you go shopping in summer trying to find a nice sweater and find that no half-decent store is even selling sweaters!

Oh, and I think you can judge the standard of a clothing retailer by the quality of their trial rooms.

Indian attitudes to vacations

Us Indians aren’t a very vacation-y lot. We don’t like to go on long vacations, unless we are visiting friends or relatives, or going on pilgrimage.

When the wife told her colleagues that we’re going to Italy and Greece starting with the middle of this week, they all responded with “oh, second honeymoon so soon?”. Ok i don’t get this concept of a second honeymoon. Yeah, we thought we needed a break, and we wanted to experience a few places so we’re going. I don’t know why I need to classify it.

If I look back at my childhood, and vacations taken with parents, it broadly fits these patterns – we went somewhere either because we had relatives there, or because there was a temple there that my parents wanted to visit. If I remember right, each year, my parents carried forward most of their quota of vacations.

I think the reason for this vacation-aversion among us Indians is similar to the aversion we traditionally had to eating out. There were lots of intricate (and insane) caste taboos, which prevented people from eating where they wanted to.

You get a flavour of this when relatives start asking you what food you are carrying, given that you are going to “non-veg countries”. You get a flavour of this when most people go to Europe on package tours with “indian vegetarian jain meals included”. You get a flavour of this when they had to take massive barrrels of Gangajal on board the ships that took Indians to work as indentured labour in the West Indies.

There was a taboo on eating food whose source was not known, or known to have had the hand of a person belonging to a different caste. This massively limited mobility, and put limits on the potential places where a person could travel.

So you went to cities where they were relatives, for you could eat at their house. You went on pilgrimages in huge groups of your own caste, and you could cook. Even if you couldn’t the visit to the temple would wash away the sins incurred in eating random food.

So yes, we are going to Italy and Greece, for a week each. And no, we are not going as part of some Patelpackage. We are traveling on our own, without a plan, apart from hotel bookings. And no, we are not carrying any food along with us. And we aren’t going on pilgrimage.

And the kannada word “pravaasa” which translates to “travels” always cracks me up, since the first time I heard it was as part of the phrase “bekkina pravaasa” (the cat’s travels), a hilarious story in my Kannada text book in primary school.

Art as a celebration of life

On a long leisurely walk towards Gandhi Bazaar yesterday evening, we ventured into this pretty-looking ancient house which said “Bimba, the Art Ashram”. We turned out to be the only visitors in the place. There were some four “shopkeepers”, led by this guy with a funny beard called Deepak. Deepak was to lecture us for the next half hour about how art is a “celebration of life” and that is what his shop sought to “celebrate”. At the end of it we were so minidfucked that we went out without really looking closely at any of the pieces on display.

While we were walking out, we realized why the store had so few visitors – we’re sure it doesn’t get any “repeat customers”. People would have had their brains bored out so badly on their first visit to the store by Deepak’s lectures that I doubt if anyone would dare to return. And I doubt if the store does much sales also, given that Deepak’s lectures don’t even give visitors an opportunity to check out the stuff properly.

Another Lemma – in a store that claims noble intentions of some sort, you are likely to get less value for your money than you would at a store being run for pure commercial purposes. I leave the proof as an exercise to the reader.

Tithi hotels

A new and fairly lucrative business has developed in Bangalore over the last 10-15 years or so. An uncle of mine likes to call them “tithi hotels”. They are basically institutions that undertake contracts to help you perform the annual death ceremonies of dead ancestors (according to Hindu tradition, you are supposed to remember the dead on their death anniversary every year by performing a set of ceremonies. In kannada it’s called “tithi”) .

So conducting a tithi is fairly painful business, but until these tithi hotels came up, it was all supposed to be done at home. One had to get cooks, for there are restrictions on what can and cannot be cooked for such ceremonies. And then, one has to find a priest, and two “brahmins” who are supposed to be fed. And it’s a fairly messy affair and dirties up the house, and to put it mildly, not very pleasant.

These tithi hotels offer all these services under one roof. They arrange for the priests and the “brahmins” and the food, which is prepared according to exacting standards. And they provide a venue for you to conduct the tithi, and they even arrange for crows and cows to whom you feed the “pinDa”.

While doing my father’s tithi earlier today, I noticed some stuff I hadn’t really noticed today. So the two “brahmins” I spoke about – one is supposed to represent god and the other represents your dead ancestors, if I get it right. The former is “worshipped” wearing the sacred thread the right way, with rice, and doing things clockwise whenever there is circular motion involved. To “worship” the latter you wear the sacred thread the wrong way (right shoulder to left waist), use black sesame seeds, and performing all circular motions anti-clockwise.

My cousin, who is married into a family of priests, reliably informs me that several of her relatives make a living out of being “brahmins” at such ceremonies, where they take on the role of “god” and someone’s ancestors interchangeably, and collect a nominal fee (I think the tithi hotel I go to pays the brahmins 250 bucks a sitting) and a lunch heavy enough to last them the day. In fact, at my mother’s tithi last year one of the brahmins was an auto-driver, and he had taken a break from his driving duties to play god and collect his fee and lunch.

This business of tithi hotels is only bound to grow, since the population is increasing, which also means that the population of dead immediate ancestors is increasing. And I think the rate of growth of population is faster than the rate of growth of various forms of atheism, so this seems like a good business to be in. Actually this business has undergone some changes in the last 20 odd years.

Earlier, there used to be some large-scale tithi hotels, where they would do several tithis on the same premises, with priests and brahmins jumping from one to other and multitasking to cater  to a large number of clients. As you would expect, these places knew little about concepts such as hygiene (I’ve been to and conducted tithis in places like these, and haven’t understood at all the “cleanliness” (maDi) that is supposed to be associated with religious brahmins). But they think commercial and exploit economies of scale to provide tithi services at a reasonable cost.

Of late, these have been supplemented by “standalone” tithi hotels, which do only one tithi per day, thus ensuring greater cleanliness (though tithis continue to be messy affairs) and privacy, and allows you to invite a larger number of relatives to the tithi. Oh, and the one that I go to (twice a year, once each for my father’s and mother’s tithis) does serve up a damn good lunch.

Oh, and I don’t get this, but every tithi hotel I’ve been to has been largely staffed with Gults. Wonder why.

Separation of Church and Estate

I’m talking about Sathya Sai Baba here (incidentally, in Kannada his name translates to “did you die? Die! Come, come!”), who recently “attained his own lotus feet”, to paraphrase what someone said on Twitter. Even Sachin Tendulkar’s prayers for his health didn’t help him, it seems.

So there are two sides to saibaba, and going forward it is important that the two be kept disjoint. On the one hand is the “NGO work” that his organization has undertaken – the super-specialty hospitals in Puttaparthi and Bangalore, the drinking water project they’ve implemented in Rayalseema, and the like. On the other is the spiritual side, where you have thousands of “devotees” (I once called my aunt “Sai baba’s follower” and she got offended saying “I’m a devotee, not a follower”) singing bhajan and going delirious when Sai Baba produced Caramilk toffees out of thin air and threw them into the crowd (a long time ago, I was one of them, jumping up and down to catch these toffees).

I guess efforts are on to find his “spiritual successor” (and I hope China doesn’t step in to prevent his reincarnation), and there is already reportedly a huge fight among his “close devotees” regarding control of his estate. The estate is huge, and is supposed to get lots of donations, a large part of which at least (it appears) has been deployed in developmental projects. It is important that these developmental projects continue, and to ensure that they’re not hijacked by “devotees” who want to pursue a different agenda, it’s important to spin off this side of the organization into a registered NGO – recognized and regulated by the government, providing tax exemption to donations, publishing accounts regularly, and the like. You know how common it is that “spiritual NGOs” are hijacked for purposes of money laundering.

I don’t care what happens to the rest of the organization – with the delirious “devotees” who sing bhajans and give “global” speeches” and start TV and radio stations. Perhaps it is important for it to also continue – for its presence will mean people continue to be attached to the baba, which could help in fundraising efforts for the NGO. I’m sure they’re going to find a spiritual successor, but it needs to be seen how many of the baba’s “devotees” remain devoted to this successor.

On an unrelated note, I see in the papers that the baba is going to be buried. I don’t know what the rules of the caste he was born into (Raju) is, but I suppose this is a tactic so that there is no mad fight for his ashes, the “holiest of the holy vibhutis”, in case he is cremated. Even then, I wouldn’t be surprised if his body gets exhumed by some overzealous “devotee” sooner or later. They need to dig deeper.

Criminals in politics

During the Anna Hazare show, skeptics said people shouldn’t randomly protest, they should come out and vote (for the record, people have voted in really large numbers in the recently concluded assembly elections). Hazaarists replied saying that there’s no point voting because every candidate is a crook, and they are all corrupt, or something to that effect. Then someone else popped up and said that criminals should not be allowed to contest for elections.

Now, there exists a law barring criminals from contesting elections. However, only people convicted of a criminal case can’t contest, not those who are under trial. The justification of this is that activities such as “riots”, “protests”, “dharnas”, etc. come under the criminal law and you can’t “obviously” bar people who take part in such “noble activities” from contesting. So you have people who have led noble dharnas contesting, as those who have been accused of committing rape or murder. Inclusive democracy, as they say.

What I don’t understand is what is so noble about holding protests, blocking roads and railways and holding entire population to ransom. I don’t understand why perpetrators of such crimes need protection, and are allowed to contest elections.

So I think one step in decriminalizing politics would be to bar people with a criminal case against them (not necessarily convicted) from contesting for polls. Of course we won’t put this law with retrospective effect, but it’ll apply to only new cases that might be filed against potential candidates from the date on which the law is notified. It would have welcome side effect that politicians would now think thrice before they decide to hold rallies that stop road and rail traffic and hold the mango man to ransom. And apart from potentially decreasing corruption, it would make our cities a much more peaceful place to stay in.

But I’m being impractical here. Who will bell the cat? Why would any politicians “act against themselves” and bring in such a law? Can some Hazaarists please stand up, or rather sit down in fast, for this, please?

The problem with “civil society” people

is that they can’t work with people with whom they have minor differences – which is where politicians easily trump them. Politicians are expert in the art of working out compromises and working with people with whom they have divergent beliefs. Of course, it creates “unholy coalitions” but you have to give it to the enterprise of the politicians (let’s not question their motivation here) to come together as a group and get stuff done.

With civil society types, however, as soon as they discover that there is something disagreeable about the other party, they’ll cry hoarse and refuse to work with them. So for example, if for some reason I come together with these “civil society” worthies for some cause, I’m sure they’ll all ditch me as soon as they come to know that I was a member of the RSS when I was eight years old.

Because of this, it is rare that civil society types come together for a cause, which is what makes people believe that the Anna Hazare-led protests of two weeks back were such a significant success. That this magnificent coalition hasn’t really lasted, and cracks are already coming up in the “civil society” half of the draft committee just goes to illustrate my point.

There can be exceptions to this of course – civil society people drawn from an extremely homogeneous distribution ARE capable of “getting things done”. Think National Advisory Council!

Cab guys’ tales

I travel to and from work in the company-provided cab. It’s a fairly convenient system, offering you flexible timings, and routings that aren’t too bad. The overhead in terms of time of traveling by cab is about 15-20 minutes for a 40-minute journey, so I take it on most days.

Given a choice, I try to sit next to the driver – maybe that’s the most comfortable seat in an Indica, and it definitely is the best seat in a Sumo. On most occasions, I chat with the driver as he drives me, but sometimes I don’t have the opportunity – since the driver is too busy chatting on his mobile phone. Yeah, company rules forbid that, but I guess no one really complains, so these guys get away with being on the phone a lot of the time.

Most of the time, the conversation is about loans, and repayment. Most of it is about informal loans that people have lent each other. The amounts these guys lend each other – seen as a percentage of their income (which I’m guessing based on what one cab guy told me last year) is humongous! They make loans to each other of the order of a few months’ salaries, and it seems like these loans are in perpetual transition – between the cabbies and their friends.

I hear them shout, strategise, pacify, ideate, about these issues. And sometimes after they’ve hung up I talk to them about this. One conversation comes to mind. So there was this cabbie whose family had lost a lot of money by “investing” it in a chit fund. It was an “informal” (i.e. unregistered fund), and in the previous “round”, his family had invested and made a good return. So in this “round”, more members of the family invested in the fund. And the fund manager decamped with the money!

I remember telling him that it was a bad strategy putting all their investments with the same guy, and tried to explain to him the benefits of diversification. He replied saying that he didn’t want to invest in the chit fund (the one he lost money in) but family members forced him to invest along with them, calling him a “traitor” when he tried to diversify!! Strange.

Back then, I didn’t know how exactly chit funds work else I would’ve also told him that it was an especially bad idea for people from the same family to invest in the same chit fund. If you think about how a chit fund works, you are basically betting on the desperation for money among the other “members” of the fund. You are betting that someone else in the pool needs money so badly that they’re willing to forego a higher “discount” which will then come into your kitty. So with members of the family all putting money in the same fund, they were just betting against each other! So even if the fund “manager” hadn’t decamped, it’s unlikely they would’ve got a particularly significant return on their investment.