Scraps Stuffs - Random musings from apun ka desh

The march of seasons never ends.

Its starting to get sunnier and we can actually get hot water from the solar geyser and don't have to use the electric immersion heater much. Not that its sunny all the time, but temperatures are certainly rising. A shower maybe once in a week is what characterises Bangalore towards the end of the monsoons. Soon there will be a short period of sunny days before winter arrives.

I completed Ruskin Bond's novella, A Flight of Pigeons, yesterday. Its beautifully written and I could actually imagine what it would be like in the year 1857 in present day Uttar Pradesh. I judge a historical based story on how well its able to recreate the period it was written about. This one succeeds brilliantly. I could be a little biased because Ruskin Bond is my favourite Indian writer in English along with R. K. Narayan, but not much.

I thought I had finished the book just in time to watch the movie Mangal Pandey, sadly that movie wasn't quite able to create the atmosphere of the book. Maybe I was hoping for too much. The movie appeared too modern while the book managed to recreate that old world charm. I must get the DVD for the movie Junoon that's based on this book and watch it to see how far it is faithful to the book.

I saw Mangal Pandey - The Rising yesterday. One family friend had panned the film and some of the reviews I read didn't rate it highly. Being an Amir Khan film and being an Amir Khan fan, I was waiting to watch this with great expectations which I knew wouldn't be fulfilled. I was right but that doesn't give me any pleasure.

I was underwhelmed and still have a vague feeling of dissatisfaction. The film has been shot beautifully and the acting is decent. Amir Khan can now sleepwalk through just about any film and still give a better performance than a huge number of his contemporaries or juniors. Rani Mukerji and Amisha Patel didn't have much to do and hence didn't do much. Toby Stephens was the surprise package of the film and he played the part of William Gordon to perfection.

At its heart, I found the film to be a story of two friends and their conflicting loyalties against the background of the 1857 war of independence. But the director probably wanted to depict how one man becomes the symbol of the war and how his destiny changes because of some events. This got lost somewhere because of the confusion as to what was to be depicted. I felt the passion was somewhat missing. And, except for life in the native infantry, the film didn't succeed in depicting life in those times, which is what I was hoping for. Maybe too much to expect in a three hour film!

All the same, I enjoyed the movies as it was competently made and had lots of eye candy in the form of generously endowed Rani Mukerji. The scenics are stunning too.

The movie was titled "Mangal Pandey - The Rising" in Hindi. I think the English version is titled "The Rising - Ballad of Mangal Pandey", i didn't know that the movie was shot in both languages.

Why Dhimmi Watch?

So, yet another spineless performance by the Indian team in Sri Lanka yesterday! First they gifted enough runs to Sri Lanka to enable them to put up a very competitive total. They then squandered away a decent start and made a hash of chasing that total. So nothing changes. All talk, hype and hyperbole and not much action. As usual.

Its a good thing I don't waste much time nowadays watching India play on TV.

Sanath Jayasurya became the fourth man to cross the 10000 run mark in limited overs international cricket. Joining Sachin, Inzamam and Saurav who reached there earlier. The thing that struck me was that all four are players from the subcontinent. Makes you wonder about the pitches we have here. Batsman's paradise, bowler's hell. Since these four players are from the subcontinent, they would naturally have made the bulk of their runs on these dead pitches. So although the achievement for each of the four bastmen is stupendous, I wonder how much the pitches helped.

When you run so fast to get somewhere,
You miss half the fun of getting there.
When you hurry and worry through your day,
It's like an unopened gift... thrown away.
Life is not a race, do take it slower,
Hear the music, before the song is over.

Manning the barricades of the class struggle has been the subliminal fantasy of every Communist. Before he presided over some of the more telling examples of loutish proletarianism on the streets of Gurgaon last week, it is doubtful whether Comrade Gurudas Das Gupta's idea of revolution had extended to anything beyond encouraging over-unionised bank tellers to be rude to customers.

Let's face it. When it comes to self-aggrandisement and perfidy, there is none to match the record of CPI. Since 1969, the entire basis of its politics has been parasitic. Till 1989, it banked on tyrants in the Soviet Union and its satellite states for junkets and nourishment. These days, to bolster its diminishing equity, it is not even averse to becoming an additional custodian of Beijing's interests in India. Till 1977, it maintained its parliamentary presence courtesy the charity of "progressives" in the Congress. After 1980, its presence in Parliament and the Vidhan Sabhas owes everything to either the CPI(M) or regional satraps.

Those who trembled at Comrade Das Gupta's threat of "far-reaching consequences" or smirked at his comic effrontery should be mindful that he heads the parliamentary wing of a party that is incapable of winning even a single Assembly and Lok Sabha seat on its own steam. The CPI is so pathetic that Bhupinder Singh Hooda's earthy administration didn't even consider it politically worthwhile to credit it with the Gurgaon disturbances.

It has become obligatory to preface any assessment of the Gurgaon disturbances with a full-throated condemnation of an over-zealous Haryana Police. There is no doubt that the crowd-control techniques of the local administration were somewhat archaic and a throwback to the early years of the previous century. However, it is undeniable that the Haryana Police was far less brutal than, say, the French and Italian police in their operations against English football hooligans. In any case, their methods were remarkably effective. By penning the unruly mob into a small area, the administration prevented a demonstration from degenerating into a riot, as was the intention of the trade union leaders.

Despite being called Honda's "dalal", the Hooda Government deserves credit for nipping militant trade unionism in the bud. The dispute at the Honda Motorcyle (HMSI) factory wasn't about pay and working conditions. A company that awards a Rs 3,000 across-the-board pay hike in April to its 1,800-strong workforce cannot be accused of primitive exploitation. It was a straight-forward political dispute centred on the recognition of a CPI-run trade union.

The Communists were aware that the outcome of this battle would have a bearing on the future of militant trade unionism in the entire belt. The CPI-controlled AITUC planned to use its affiliated union in the Honda works as a springboard for expansion in the entire automobile and auto-ancillary sector in Haryana. I have little doubt that it would have triggered an atmosphere of strife whose impact would have even been felt by the BPO sector. Those who have witnessed the havoc created by militant trade unionism in, say, West Bengal and Maharashtra and are familiar with the corrupt ways of labour leaders, will know that the issue involved in Honda was more than the simple recognition of a union. At stake was the management's right to manage.

Militant trade unionism of the sort practised by Communists has invariably led to managements losing control over the shopfloor. With union bosses exercising control over the levers of production, industrial relations have been reduced to simple extortion. If the company has the ability to endure bleeding, it pays up, alternatively the loss of profitability leads to closure. Whether in Kolkata, Mumbai, Kanpur or Ahmedabad, the industrial wastelands of India serve as permanent memorials to militant trade unionism.

Gurgaon was a timely warning. Either we stop the likes of Das Gupta holding industry to ransom or we pave the way for China becoming the unchallenged global hub for manufacturing and services. Upholding India demands we clobber the saboteurs and the enemy within.

Learnt something important last weekend - what I believed are my strengths may not necessarily be strengths and what I believed were my weaknesses may not always be weaknesses.