Thoughts on Commuting in Bangalore

Long time readers of this blog will know that I'm against people using cars for their daily commute. It's a belief that has evolved over the past four years in Bangalore, and probably has a lot to do with how terrible Bangalore is traffic-wise. 

I also ascribe this belief in part to my first company, which tried to promote green values in its employees. (Though it was slightly schizophrenic in its actions. People were encouraged to cycle to work, but manager grades and above had subsidized car loans as a benefit. It ran buses for its employees, but the monthly charges were prohibitively expensive. It sent out nice colourful mailers to promote Bus Day, but refused to have parking fees for car-users.)

Anyway, back to topic. 

My daily commute offers me contrasting perspectives on Bangalore traffic. It's a pretty short commute by most people's standards - only 5-6 kilometers each way. But thanks to Bangalore's convoluted system of one-way roads, the commute becomes about eight kilometers long if I choose to travel TO office by bus. AND I would have to walk about two kilometers in total - not an easy thing to do in heels. So I take the easy way out - I get the long-suffering husband to drop me part-way, and then I take an auto. 

Yup, that was quite the decision to make for a bus-supporter. But I tell myself autos run on CNG, so it doesn't matter. (If you know otherwise, please don't tell me - I want a clear and ignorant conscience.)

But here's where the contrast comes in. 

In the mornings, sitting in my cold and windy auto, I curse pedestrians. And it's not me being elitist, by the way. To get to my office, I have to cross a junction where cars from my part of town turn into and join the main arterial road that leads to my office. It's a crazy place, with people trying desperately to get across before the allotted thirty seconds are over. And that's precisely when some amazingly intelligent person will decide that it's a good time to cross the road.

I've noticed this phenomenon at other places too - the pedestrians of Bangalore seem to have a biological urge to cross the road when the lights are green for vehicle movement. I've seen this over and over and over again. This may be forgivable in places where there are no traffic lights, but not at busy junctions, where there are separate timings for pedestrians to cross. Is it lack of common sense or lack of awareness of traffic rules?

But then I reach my office and get off the auto, and it's now my turn to be a pedestrian. Not for long - I just need to cross the road and enter my office building. And what a road it is - cars and buses and scooters and autos all screaming past like they don't know they're going to be stuck in a traffic jam just a kilometer ahead. 

Since I'm the pedestrian now, my resentment is towards the people in the vehicles. Would it kill them, I wonder, to slow down and pause for the pedestrians to cross? Do they think the zebra crossing is funny road graffiti that they can happily ignore? 

There have been times when I've stood at that zebra crossing for as long as ten minutes before being able to get across. And my chief entertainment at such times is to curse the men who're happily and ignorantly and idiotically driving their cars all alone to work. (I don't curse the women though - given what I hear from my friends, it's generally the women who do all the work at home, so they need all the extra time they can get. But my thoughts on that particular topic need a whole different blog post of their own.)

The evenings are better though. To assuage the grief that my conscience is giving me for having taken an auto in the morning, I take the bus back. I have to change once, and it takes double the time - but at least I feel better. To be honest, I like BMTC buses - the service is pretty frequent, the buses are generally clean, and the conductors are (mostly) civil. I keep wondering why more people don't use buses for their daily commute. 

Personally, I can't understand why anybody would voluntarily put themselves through the torture that is Bangalore traffic. Driving anywhere in evening rush hour takes an hour. Instead of torturing yourself, wouldn't you prefer to travel by bus - read the paper, watch people, get some more exercise than you generally do?

Left Right Left (Malayalam) - Movie Review

I don't usually take a lot of time to get a movie out of my head. A good night's sleep is usually enough to wipe the movie from my mind.

But somehow, with Left Right Left, it's not happening. It's been two days, but I'm still caught in the magic of the movie. I can't figure out why. Is it the movie itself - is it the great script, the gritty characters, the brilliant acting and the addictive music? Or is it that the movie awakened the deeply-buried kernel of communism that exists inside every mallu, never mind the three years she has spent in the corporate world?

Coming out of the theater on Monday night, I found it tough to get back to reality. Suddenly, my own life seemed very ordinary, my own concerns very petty. Where was the headiness, the romance, the sheer willingness to fight for something, that the movie had just shown me?

Yes, the movie is THAT good.

LRL is a very harsh depiction of politics in Kerala today. It focuses on communism, and somehow manages to both romanticize and criticize it at the same time. It shows us the sacrifices people have made for the fictional Revolutionist Party of India (Marxist) or RPI (M) since the beginning, and how it has lost its way today. Nobody is spared - not the two main leaders (easily identifiable in the movie), not the party's youth wing, not even the people who're trying to criticize it from the outside. The movie has seen a slightly controversial release, because one of the two identifiable characters is cast as a corrupt man, a man who will stop at nothing to maintain his hold on power.

But wait - let's begin at the beginning. LRL follows the lives of three characters - a Marxist leader named Kaitheri Sahadevan, a corrupt policeman named Jayan, and an erstwhile Communist youth leader named 'Che Guevara' Roy. Apart from these three, there are some other minor story-lines as well. There are two journalists - ex-members of the RPI (M) - who publish an explosive story about Sahadevan's corruption, and are forced to go on the run. There is a nurse who is trying to escape her violently abusive and unstable husband. There is 'Che Guevara' Roy's wife, a former Communist herself, who is trying to make her husband take care of his weak heart.

The script is based on the tenet that a man is part genetic material, part something unknown and part what he sees and goes through as a child. And so the movie begins with three scenes - one each from each man's childhood. Kaitheri Sahadevan's uncle is murdered by the landlords; his father goes out to avenge him, and never returns. Roy's father is murdered during the Emergency - right in front of Roy's eyes. Jayan's sister is dying of TB, and a policeman tries to help out with money he has accepted as a bribe. So Jayan decides two things - he will become a policeman, and he will earn a lot of money. 

My favourite thread in the movie was that of Roy and his wife Anna. Roy has visible scars, a limp, a dysfunctional left hand. But we're not told how he came by these. We only get hints that it's linked to his commmunist past. The story gradually builds up, till it's explosively revealed. (Though it IS a bit jarring to hear two Communist sakhaavs breaking into English while talking to each other. There's also a scene where Anna breaks into a Spanish song about Che Guevara, and I went, "Huh?")

The film's main strengths are a set of extremely real and gritty characters, and some great acting - mostly by people I'd never seen before. The actor playing Kaitheri Sahaedevan seemed to fill the screen with a magnetic presence (something that the person the character is based on isn't exactly known for). Indrajith as Jayan played the role of a lifetime. I haven't generally been a fan of Murali Gopy's acting, but he puts in a brilliant performance here as 'Che Guevara' Roy. Even Lena, whom I hadn't thought of as a great actor before, puts in an amazing performance as Roy's wife. 

Murali Gopy as 'Che Guevara' Roy

The other factor that makes the movie so absorbing is the music. I've had the LRL Anthem on repeat for the past three days. The background score is brilliant as well - it helps create that Communist chora-thilapp. 

Since I loved LRL so much, I'm now determined to watch Ee Adutha Kalathu, this director-writer duo's previous movie. 

5 Sundarikal - Movie Review

The other day, I was feeling really glad about being a mallu. The specific context was accidentally coming across the below song. I'm so glad that I can enjoy the incredible beauty of that first line. Somebody on YouTube has tried to translate Sooryakireedam veenudanju ravin thiru arangil as, "The crown of the sun falls and shatters in the sacred stage of the night." Meh - it's so funny that even the translations that convey the literal meaning of the line can never capture the essence and the beauty. 

But tonight, I'm feeling glad about being a mallu for another reason altogether. I'm so glad that I know there are better movies being made in India than the ones Bollywood churns out. I'm so glad that I don't think Aamir Khan is the last word when it comes to "good" cinema (quite a few people do believe that, by the way). Call me parochial, and see if I care. Considering that it's always Bollywood movies that become India's official nominees for the Oscars, I really don't care if I'm parochial.

Tonight, I watched 5 Sundarikal (literally, Five Beautiful Women), a compilation of five short movies in Malayalam, directed by five different directors. And it was so worth it. I sat there feeling absolutely complacent and content. The quality of music in Malayalam cinema might have gone down since the days of Sooryakireedam, but Malayalam cinema as a whole is staging a comeback alright - and how!

Or is my over-reaction caused by the fact that the last movie I watched was Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, which (I now realize) was the most atrocious piece of junk ever? Quite possibly. Many may dismiss at least a couple of the movies in 5 Sundarikal as needless tugging of the heart-strings, but I don't think anybody would be able to dismiss them as ordinary or stereotypical in any way.

And it's nothing to do with the acting, by the way. Though the films boast some of the biggest 'new names' in Malayalam cinema (Kavya Madhavan, Biju Menon, Fahadh Faasil, Dulquer Salman, Nivin Pauly, etc), the directors and the script-writers are clearly the stars here. And that, to me, is a sign of good cinema. If the movie doesn't depend on the stardom of the lead actor, if any good actor could have done that role without compromising the movie - that's good cinema.

It may seem contradictory, but the short format seems to have given the directors the luxury of taking their time. Most of the movies build up very slowly - layer upon layer till the inexorable ending. The first movie especially was beautiful. I was thinking, "No no no.... Don't let that be happening..." all the way to the ending. Two of the other movies have twisty endings that you don't see coming. The only movie I didn't particularly like was the second one, which was slightly random and pointless. 

So if you're a mallu - go watch this movie. If you're not - well, too bad for you.

Goodbye, Google Reader!

Because tomorrow, you're dead. Your parents, who once swore to do no evil, are now killing you off. They're being the Big Bad Corporate they once swore not to be, and they're being merciless with you and with all of us who love you.

But wait - this post is not going to be a whine-post. This is going to be a happy celebratory post, about all the good times we've shared, and all the laughs we've had.

I don't remember who introduced us, or even when we first met. I know it's been at least six years, because you were with me when I moved to Jamshedpur in 2007. So that's a long time, Reader. I know there must be millions of others who've known you longer, and who've even spent more time with you than I have. But that doesn't matter to me. You occupy a special place in MY heart. 

I'm going to miss your white-and-blue face. I'm going to miss how simple you were to navigate. I'm going to miss how you used to let me decide what to read rather than try to figure it out on your own. I'm going to miss always having at least one Chrome tab showing those comforting blue and red squares. I'm going to miss periodically making Resolutions to read more intellectual stuff, and then guiltily lapsing back to the fun stuff. 

There was a time my favourite thing about you was the 'Like' option. I used to obsessively check how many 'likes' my posts had got, how many shares. But your parents stripped you of that in an attempt to promote their other, more colourful, more swashbuckling younger child, Plus. I should have realized then, of course, that the end was near, that it was only a matter of time before they decided to do away with you completely.

But you know what they say about how evil begets evil? I hope and suspect that that'll be true in this case. I don't think Plus will ever be loved as much as you were, Reader. They're shoving Plus down our throats in a way that'll just make us choke on it. 

Whereas you grew on us, you made us love you with your simplicity and your gentleness. You didn't mind when we were too busy for you. You waited for us to come back to you, as we all eventually did. You didn't wave periodically at us from Gmail and Blogger and every other Google site we use, the way Plus is doing today. You were patient, and you were laid-back, and you were nice. For me, you  represent an older and nicer Internet, and maybe an older and nicer Google. 

We love you, Reader. And we're going to miss you. 

Julian Barnes - The Sense of an Ending

Nostalgia, the tricks of memory, the subjectivity of history, the relativity of time - these are the themes of The Sense of an Ending, the Booker-winning short novel by Julian Barnes.

Tony Webster has had what would seem like a normal life, if somewhat staid. He says of it, "It's been interesting to me, though I wouldn't complain or be amazed if others found it less so." 

Now sixty-something, he looks back upon his life - or rather, certain aspects of it. He describes his school-boy friendship with Adrian Finn - a boy far more intelligent than him, a frequent quoter of Camus, somebody who thought deeply about moral choices and courage. He also looks back on his relationship with his first girlfriend Veronica Finn - the long courtship and the eventual breakup.

More than anything else, the novel is about the tricks that memory plays upon all of us. As we age, memories grow less grey, more black-and-white. Good things become great, and bad things become revolting. Memory gets stuck in the same reel over and over again, and we frequently forget or mis-remember details. And then something - a chance running into somebody, or perhaps an unplanned visit to a place of personal importance - makes memory run on a different track, and we remember subtle nuances and details that we had chosen to forget. 

Webster's journey is similar. In the first part of the book, he tells us what he remembers of his relationships with Adrian and Veronica. And then, in part two, he is indirectly reminded of Veronica again, ruminates on some of the events of the time, and discovers details that he hadn't previously known. He is forced to correct some of his own memories, to reconsider his own feelings about both Adrian and Veronica. He is forced to admit that he may have been overly charitable to himself in his memories. 

It's fascinating to see this evolution happen. As Webster uncovers layer after layer of emotion, works through all the memories he had repressed (especially of his relationship with Veronica), it's like seeing a Russian doll being systematically un-nested to finally reveal the true kernel of truth inside it. Or perhaps it's the reverse that's happening - a gradual nesting of smaller half-truths inside the larger reality. Because in this case the "truth" Webster has told himself for forty years is the smallest and pettiest truth, more lies than otherwise. The reality is so large that it takes Webster many weeks to comprehend it.

Also pervading the book is a sense of - remorse, perhaps? Initially, Webster claims to be content with the way he has lived his life. But later, he contrasts Adrian's promising youth with his own uneventful life, and concludes that he hasn't really "lived" his life. He didn't take charge of his own life, he never went out and claimed it, he side-stepped most of its challenges. 

Webster also ruminates a lot on life and old age and relationships. In fact, I felt like noting some of these so that I could keep coming back to them. Maybe I'll put some of them up here in the days to come.

Patrick Lencioni - The Advantage

The best business books are the ones that make you think you can solve all the world's problems in one go. Patrick Lencioni's book does exactly that. It offers a magic bullet  (well, four magic bullets) for solving all the organizational problems in the world. 

Unlike most management authors, Lencioni doesn't claim that his suggestions are based on extensive research or data. He provides no graphs or exhaustive tables to back his premise. He says his ideas are based only on his extensive experience as a consultant. A few simple models suffice to illustrate his concepts. 

Perhaps that's what makes the book so compelling. A book written in accessible language is such a rarity in the field of management that you're tempted to hold it up and proclaim it a model for everybody else to follow.

Lencioni's premise is simple. He says that there are two things that leaders can focus on to improve their organization's performance. They can either focus on their organization's "smartness", which is the usual stuff like Finance and Marketing and Strategy. Or they can focus on their organization's "health", which is the touchy-feely stuff like mutual trust, lack of politics, high morale, low turnover, etc. 

The mistake that most leaders make, says Lencioni, is that they focus on organizational smartness at the cost of organizational health. They dismiss the latter as touch-feely - mostly because they don't know what it's all about. He illustrates this with an example from I Love Lucy. 

Ricky, Lucy's husband, comes home from work one day to find his wife crawling around the living room on her hands and knees. He asks her what she's doing. 

"I'm looking for my earrings," Lucy responds.

Ricky asks her, "You lost your earrings in the living room?"

She shakes her head. "No, I lost them in the bedroom. But the light out here is much better."

Good for the Lucy-like-leaders in the world that Lencioni can tell them how to look for the earrings in the bedroom. He offers a four-discipline model for organizational health:

1. Build a cohesive leadership team
2. Create clarity
3. Over-communicate clarity
4. Reinforce clarity

Lencioni's themes are simple and have been around for a long time - well-aligned leadership; organizational simplicity; good communication; good systems and processes. His success lies in putting these themes together into a model that is easily understood. He also illustrates his ideas using examples from his consulting career.

His ideas will not be very acceptable to self-important leaders who want to create a hero culture in their companies. He is very clear that great organizations are created by great leadership teams, and not by great leaders. The only way the CEO contributes is by ensuring that the conditions are right for the creation of a great team. 

I would recommend this book both for current leaders who're trying to make their organizations more effective; and for wannabe leaders who want to understand leadership better.

Art and Life

The below extract is from a 1934 essay titled 'The Novels of E. M. Forster' written by Peter Burra. In Forster's own words, "Burra was a brilliant and sensitive writer of great promise who was killed at the age of twenty-seven in a flying disaster."

... the fact remains that the real life is chaotic and formless, and the artist is faced with the problem of confining his impressions of that life into a space which is infinitely smaller than itself and with at least one of its dimensions removed. He has no other alternative, therefore, than to select what seem to him its most significant parts, and to arrange the chaos into some sort of an order. Inevitably the life he presents is much neater and tidier than the diffuse reality. It is probable that most people take the impressions afforded by art - especially the novel - so much for granted that they sincerely believe life itself to be quite a neat and tidy event and suffer from shock or melancholy if something occurs to disturb their belief. Paradoxically, the more actually 'like' life a work of art is, the more nonsensical it appears to them. One of the most interesting aims of modern writers and artists has been the attempt to dispel this illusion of life's tidiness.