Digging for Meaning

Marketer's assault on our Language = MAOL What do you do to wash your behind in the washroom? Do you trust your hands to do the job with water, or do you use paper? One day in college, a Chinese professor talked about this pertinent question when talking about cultural differences. She talked about how people see tissue paper as an essential solution, while there is an ecologically better solution 'at hand!'. The students were surprised with her point of view. Most of the students hailing from Indian metros, saw the tissue as a better alternative, a logical next step to the 'primitive' practice of washing with hands. That was one of the easy ways to differentiate oneself from the lower classes. The upper class is the one that has access to western lifestyle, which in Indian imagination is a 'step up', a logical next step . But this was different. This was a Chinese lifestyle too. (which is fairly absent from Indian imagination and hence exotic). ...

The thing with an empire is that that you can't keep on ignoring it. As biased and abrasive it might be to all things sacred, one has to deal with it, allow it in consciousness from time to time. I have managed to keep TOI out, but do read ET often. There are many things wrong with the publication. I will talk of just one instance right now (otherwise i will end up writing a thesis). Read the editorial today - ' Open up for more Foreign investment' . I haven't read a more inane editorial ever before. well, that is perhaps because I skip editorials most of the time. I understand that editorials have become lobby vehicles. But can't they be atleast intelligent? Is a well researched argument too much to ask for from the biggest business daily of the country? First off, what is it with ET's love for FDI ? If ET were a doctor, it would be a road side haqim (wearing neck tie in a Air conditioned tent, modern haqim) Like an unqualified quack, ET keeps on pr...

The Volvo (not just your average bus) screeched to a halt somewhere between here (Gurgaon) and there (Kasol) in the middle of the night (didn't bother to check time, it was somewhere around hungry time). The screech  put the dhaba waiters into accelerated motion. Towel on the shoulder, slippers under the feet. Hands busy waving away the flies. Eye roving compulsively and furiously over the fat contingent vomited out of the bus, straight into the washrooms. The washrooms lacked soap. (there perhaps was something that resembled a soap near the wash basin, but one can't be sure.) But that didn't deter us to go order food in the restaurant after visiting the washrooms. At a distance, there were 3 portly men. One sitting, the other two were standing. They were intently avoiding each other's gaze. If accidents of timing made one catch another's gaze, both ended up smiling profusely with wild hand gestures. One can only surmize that the gestures were theatrical acts of ...