Eliminate Vegetarianism

A most interesting concept was introduced to me some time during my first year of engineering. It, was, of course, not remotely related to engineering; closer, in fact to the nobler line of catering. It was the concept of classification and discrimination between humans on the basis of the food they ate. More Indianly, it was the distinction between those that subsisted wholly on a diet of herbs and grass and those that did not. Vegetarian vs Non-vegetarian.

As a schoolmate of mine  eloquently put not so long ago, up until then, most of us had eaten, in a word, 'food' . We were aware of a distinction between plants and animals, but it did not matter so much in matters of food; most of us ate what was daily put in front of us (I was among the fortunate few who had a mother regularly dishing out gourmet delights) and the thought stopped at whether or not we enjoyed what we ate. Some food was more interesting than others - mutton for instance, being far more appetising than brinjal. We also knew that most foodstuffs tasty were going to cause problems in later life and all foodstuffs tasteless were going to guarantee a fruitful and productive oldhood. We lived in a bubble; an innocent utopia in which food differed only in taste and effect and their zoological v botanical origins were merely superficial differences.

Imagine my shock then, when the second question of the first girl I spoke to in class was "Are you a non-veg?" . The shock didn't register immediately for I was somewhat aware of the sinister concept of the vegetarian; my father had caught hold of me that morning by both shoulders and said these bursting-with-gravity words "Son, you are entering a new life. You will experience much and learn much more. One word of advice from your father : Watch out for vegetarians. Hitherto existing merely in the form of isolated Vivek Thackers and Phoebe Buffets, you may now encounter them by the score. See that you hold your head up high be not afraid to eat your meat".

With these inferential words ringing back in my ears I mumbled some sort of reply to the girl and tried to exit. It was lunch time and I had my sandwich of bread and bird to munch . After putting as much distance as  possible between the girl and my b-and-b, munching soundly for a few minutes and musing on the grave face of my father, a resolution began to form in my mind. "Damn the woman" , said I, "I shall uphold my honour". And so, I marched right across the room into the very centre of a group of shifty looking boys whose cynosure had now become the girl with the unconventional greeting. My entry had  immediate effect. The girl gave a little scream and pointed at my half eaten sandwich. Two of the boys stood bolt upright and hitched their pants up to their solarplexa. One of them began to cough rabidly, the other one, by way of remedy, gripped his nose and began thumping him on the back.  Eventually there were retching noises, sprints down corridors and projectiles of puke in and around Indian toilets. Rather rummy, thought I.

However, that was my first day. I subsequently spent four years in that place and have now realised the true nature of this malady called Vegetarianism. It infects as much as forty per cent of the country; an additional twenty per cent profess to not be vegetarian but in reality consume, apart from herbs and grass, only the semi-vegetables, chicken and fish.  Indeed, consumption of anything more meaty than semi-vegetables will instantly get you classified as a bad boy. Many such meat-eating bad boys revel in the fact that they are pork/beef eaters; they parade around with smug expressions on their face and talk incessantly about the 'non-veg' they are going to consume. Similar to the breathless excitement accompanying a gang of silly fourteen-year-olds on their first surreptitious journey to the local bar. All rather, at odds with what was clearly a very irregular ideology that I'd been brought up with - that of food being food and nothing more.

I wonder why people make such a song and dance about sexism and racism when a far worse evil threatens to burn the very fabric of our nation. One can't point at someone and say "BOY!" without being accused of racism and told to shut up. That, even if you are pointing at a girl and saying it. Yet, these dreadful vegetarians are allowed to pull grotesque faces, run away, shake their heads, hold their nose and in some cases even prevent you from buying a flat near them, should you be a fearsome "Non-Veg" . I think it's time we stood up for our rights, fellow meat-lovers. I am not proposing anything Hitleresque (I'm a nice boy and also genocide is illegal) ,but we must do everything in our power to eliminate their ideological plague. Steps will be outlined in further posts.

That awful airport

People are ever ready to scream about the traffic problems in the city. And they are not entirely unjustified. Whichever way you look at it, our Bombay is a tiny, tiny city. The entire area of the city stands at a mere 450 odd square kilometres; as opposed to London and New York, both three times the size; both containing fewer people.
Furthermore the city is shaped all wrong - it resembles a pear or I daresay even a banana to the poor souls that need to travel from Churchgate to Dahisar daily. And to make matters worse, half of the city's area is occupied by :
Lakes (Vihar, Powai, Tulsi )
A National Park teeming with vicious leopards.
Airports.

Of the three, I can't say I object much to the first two. Since I'm griping about transport alone I will not venture into the criticism of our municipality for being unable to transport water from the lakes to the nearby, yet waterless suburbs of Bhandup and Mulund. I like the lakes. However much area they occupy, however many crocodiles they contain and however many pesky school children go thither for picnics , I would never dispense with them. Use them properly instead, says I.
National parks teaming with vicious leopards are the sort of constructs that merit a hearty pat on the back. Vicious leopards often snack on the nasty pariah dogs India is home to, occasionally bumping off the nasty pariah humans that caninely co-exist. Altogether, behaviour to be highly encouraged.

And now, to put it proverbially, I come to the point. Airports.
In the plural. Already , dear reader , if thou art not from Bombay, thou hast sensed something wrong. Why should a city of 400 million square kilometres, lakes and national parks contain within its city limits this Wright brother creation in its plural form?

Yes, Bombay has two airports. The main one occupies the area that would have been Vile Parle East and serves as the office for glorified waitresses and glorified taxi-drivers. Also, aeroplanes directed at the rest of India and the rest of the big ballsy world are fired every two or so seconds from this region. The necessity of this expanse of land that was never named after a dead British Queen (whose name we are making our business to eradicate but whose sexual code of conduct we obstinately refuse to part with) is debatable; I myself would have it just outside the city but smartly connected to all parts. But as I said, it is debatable, what would have been Vile Parle East is any way a nasty place and I am never one to deny the non-thinker his point of view.

What is not debatable is the presence of another, wretched, dysfunctional airport on the other side of the Highway and railway line. One that erodes into the life within a precious haven of residential beauty - I refer to the grand western side of the suburbs of Bandra and Santa Cruz, the conceptual suburb  of Khar and the beach blessed neighbourhood of Juhu.
While this stretch of paradise is undoubtedly the best place in Bombay to live in, commuting from one end (Juhu) to the other end (Bandra) is rendered virtually impossible by the presence of this monstrously repugnant bit of marshland called Juhu Airport.

As a result of this overgrown toy airport, we, the south suburb commuters have to make do with two roads. Travelling on SV Road is always a tortuous business; travelling on the Juhu Tara road used to be all right but has ceased to be so since Amitabh Bachhan acted in his first chick flick. And the only thing that separates these two hellpaths is the subject of this rant - the pointless Juhu Airport.

Imagine there were no Juhu airport. We'd have a lovely five-lane highway right in the centre of this region flanked by beautiful parks on either side: vast open spaces of land for the elderly to reminisce about their naughty old days, the little ones to run amok and the name of God to be praised. And our suburban paradise would then be complete.

To sign my petition for the removal of Juhu Airport, please continue to visit here, I am unpredictable and may take a few years to make a complete draft in flawless Marathi.

The Preciously Talented Wall

Not so long ago, I had posted a facebook status update indicating that I thought the phrase 'The Wall' was rather a poor nickname for someone who has arguably been the most effective Indian of the past decade.

This status update was made the subject of plenty of Inference and yours truly was upbraided in no small measure for using the 'F word'. Indeed this little word has caused plenty of heartache, plenty of debate and much Russell Peterhood as regards its versatility when it is in fact no more versatile than any expletive that implies the fascinating things it does.

I choose, however, for this post to dwell upon another more Inferentially acceptable F word : Fortress. And I intend to use the same Rahul Dravid for this purpose.

I first saw Dravid on TV in the Lords test of 1996, where he was overshadowed by Ganguly (my silly seven year old mind thought so anyway). He seemed rather too inclined to lean forward, plant the foot and halt the progress of the ball, in a word - defend. Furthermore, the expression on his face was rather uncomfortable; he looked to me like a toothless crocodile - menacing but incapable of causing damage.

Fortunately for me and the historical record of my intelligence, this opinion was not to last very long. Within a year, Dravid had become my favourite Indian batsman , within two years he became the reason I still supported the Indian cricket team on a few occasions. And now that I know Rahul Dravid is never again going to walk in for India at number three, those occasions are set to diminish further.
But enough about me. Let's talk about the man himself. A man who has been cliched by people as 'Lacking Talent but making up through Sheer Hard Work' .
I don't know precisely what the Oxford dictionary's definition of 'talent' is but I know very well what I consider it to be. To me, an exceptional talent is one capable of performing what very few others can. And in cricket, the ability to score of  quality bowling, particularly quality fast bowling on a helpful track, seems to be the single most elusive one.
Dravid possesses this ability in bountiful quantities, as he has proved on countless occasions, the most stark being last year, his thirty-ninth in this world and last as a Test batsman. That lightning response when he saw a fast bowler attempting to bounce him out, be it a 6'6" English Broad or a 5'8" Barbadian Edwards. That wonderful straight bat with the perfectly soft hands when  a tricky good length delivery swinging away outside the off stump approached. That rock solid defence when they tried to slip in a yorker to break through his fortress. Ever so often, that glorious square drive, never hit too hard, as authoritative as a Supreme Court judge and as balanced as the Tied Test. And occasionally, the commanding  pull shot  no one else in the team dared  play. All these are indications of an exceptional talent made all the more phenomenal by the fact that fast bowlers and greentops in India are about as sparse as hundreds have been for Tendulkar in the past year.
Yet, Dravid will continue to have patronising words like 'gritty' and 'technically perfect' associated with him. And the primary reason for this is because if he lacks one quality, it is the (quite unnecessary) ability to make his innings look spectacular. He possesses neither the crease-grace of Tendulkar  nor the flashiness of Sehwag. His style is a down to earth and practical with everything geared towards effectiveness for the team. And it is this, which is perhaps his greatest talent, which has lead the  cricket-watching flock to bandy their ridiculous adjectives around.

But then, he is a possessed of another great gift and that is wisdom. And therefore, unlike me,  while he is aware of all of this, he very likely gives not a damn about it.