A Wednesday (BH:D49)

September 21, 2011

If you are anyone like me who overcompensates for his diminished worldly stature by buying longer jeans, then you would be familiar with the regosol explosion that happens from time to time when the perpetually folded up ends of these jeans come unfolded. A veritable geologist trove tumbled out this morning. 

One week of ground level Thiruvananthapuram that had managed to get into my pants so to speak. A small piece of granite! A tiny white bead from a shattered cheap necklace! What looked like miniscule cubes of sugar but I was afraid to taste. Dust that might have originated in the hidden treasury vaults of Sri Padmanabha temple!

After this sweeping inspection, I proceed to sharpen my Natraj pencil with a 7 O'clock blade. It must have been 7 O'clock somewhere in the world.

Victoria showed up in the morning with two fairly large Kingfish tails sticking out of the aluminium vessel on top of her head, much like the two peacock feathers in the representations of Krishna. Hardcore bargaining ensued with Amma. 

"500."

"500?...500?!...500?!!!!"

"450."

"350."

"350?!!

!!...350?!!!!!!"

"400?"

"400?"

"400"

"400"

"half a kilo"

None of the fisherwomen who come home ever bring a balance, but they divide up the fish into metric units by some technique only available to yogis in the Himalayas. I think the assumption is that a 10kg fish weighs uniformly through its body. Fish don't have extra head weight like humans. But such unscientific measurements won't pass in front of neighbor's like our neighbor Molly aunty who insists on using the home kitchen scale before buying the fish. I presume the scale was calibrated in Paris.

While Victoria was cutting up the royal fish, the other fisherwoman who services the colony showed up. Steve Jobs and another Steve Jobs in the same room. Intense stares. Even the neighborhood cats who were in attendance sensed the latent cat fight!

"There goes my bank holiday," Amma grumbled while carrying a handful of 'bonus' mackerel into the kitchen. The childish delight on her face gave her away! The bank holiday today was because of the death anniversary of Sri Narayana Guru.

Yesterday during the drama, some heavy duty bass rock music filtered into the auditorium from the nearby men's hostel. Fortunately, the organizers reacted quickly and not more than a minute of the play was slightly disturbed. Ambient noise is a perpetual problem in the still majorly non-airconditioned city. Those ambient noise simulated vibrators would be disastrous if introduce here today. The neighbor's kid learning 'chenda' or 'mridangam' could lead to multiple orgasms. May be that is not a disaster. You can let off steam timed with the next door pressure cooker's whistle.

In the evening Amma wanted to go check out some new cars. Off we went to "Hercules", a new dealership that opened at Kowdiar. Rather overweight name for a dealership that specializes in Maruti Suzukis. Parked outside was a Dzire. Much to big for Amma to handle. Rejected.

Sanoj, the sales rep, was introduced to us by the receptionist. He handed his photograph-bearing business card to me while we sat at one of the glass round table inside the glass facaded two storey building. I pushed the card to Amma. Sanoj took the cue nicely and went on to work his magic on "madam". "I dont want to put a cushion while driving," Amma declared her primary concern. I remembered the small asian lady drivers in USA who make it appear as if the driverless Google car is coming your way. 

Sanoj opened up an Estella, a WagonR and an Alto for Amma to sit and verify. The good old Maruti 800cc model is still in production but it has no power steering and air-conditioning. Finally we zeroed in on an Alto K10 model. Sanoj keeps calling it "Keaton". That brought to my mind images of Diane Keaton, so I instantly approved the car. 

In the next couple of days, TruValue agents will come to appraise our faithful car. Off late it has developed an interesting behavior. If water gets into it from rain or from washing, the musical reverse alarm comes on. Very much like drunkards who transform into singers once their throat is wetted!

Amma started to impress Sanoj about her attachment to the old car. I think she hoped this would raise the appraisal price. "They say the car is like my third child," she said. I wondered who the 'they' were. Must be those universally invisible 'they' who come preceding the word 'say' in whenever some mythological or folk non-fact is unveiled. Sanoj quickly moved in to quench this attempt. "Madam, please don't expect much in return for this old car," he said, "they will only look at the model." "It has the best engine," Amma continued, "one of my friends drove it nonstop to Bangalore and said I should tell him if I was ever going to sell this car." Sanoj smiled politely and avoided asking the obvious question of why Amma wasn't selling it to "that friend".

Initial plan was for Amma to drop me at the Institution of Engineers hall where I wanted to listen to a lecture on the "Evolution of Aviation". After the car dealership, Amma decided to sit in the lecture too. That increased the audience size to 25 and provided the only female member in the hall. Sugary tea with milk powder and circular Arrowroot biscuits.

Institution of Engineers was established in 1920 and got recognized by "Royal Charter" in 1935. Their logo, as it is sculpted in the hall above the stage, looks like an executive transvestite on a wheel chair trying to check his mail box while his house burns behind him. When I checked online, the best resolution image I could find reveals a ship, an airplane, a huge gearwheel but still the person's sexuality is up in the air. I think there is a book and table also on the logo.

By contrast, there is a splendid bust of Bharat Ratna Sir Visweswaraya in the garden and a great portrait of him shares in the inner side wall with Gandhi.

The lecture was delivered by a certain Jeyakumar Thomas who has 30 years of experience working in ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization). He certainly doesn't have much experience delivering effective lectures. Though he tried to say something engaging once in a while, it boiled down to an hour of reading out from jam packed powerpoint slides. Half way through, the reading started dropping off into mumbling like some school kids do to satisfy their parents who insist that study by reading textbooks out loud. 

I learnt a few things about Russian Tupulev aircraft.

After the reading of the slides, there was question answer session. One old man wondered why the speaker did not mention the "fully indigenous" airplane manufactured by Mahindra Aerospace recently. Mr. Thomas lied initially that it was because he did not have the time to pack in all the details. The questioner insisted that it is a great achievement of India. "I doubt it," said Mr. Thomas, "we don't even make all the parts of our rocket and satellite systems. I don't think Mahindra made the whole aircraft in India with indigenous parts." "They did," insisted the questioner. "You may be correct," Thomas said and moved on. 

Actually, the Mahindra 5-seater is designed by CSIR. It was built in Australia and has a non-Indian engine. 

Next questioner wanted to the speaker to elaborate on the problems with 'fly-by-wire' systems. The speaker started talking about rats gnawing on wires because they like the insulation and they get "an itch" on their teeth. He even made a face like a Thiruvananthapuram rat to emphasis the point. This did not satisfy the questioner because he already knew the answer and this was just a test. The questioner proceeded to answer himself. 

In the presentation, Thomas talked about Brazil aerospace industry becoming a major player in smaller aircraft manufacture. The next questions were "Why did Brazil get the advantage that India did not have? Was it because of immigration of smart German engineers? Do they get support from USA? Is there is monopoly in large aircraft manufacturing that is preventing India from manufacturing?" All from the same person sitting right in front of the speaker.

This question's implication that all other nations succeed only because of external support and immigration and the previous questioner's attitude of "testing" and one-upping the speaker are mostly why Indian success is far and few between when it comes to large scale engineering projects. "Lack of will of leadership" Mr. Thomas suggested.

And lack of a collaborative mindset, I think. Indians rarely work in teams in schools and colleges. Sports, which are a great way to learn to play in a team in an assigned role, are actively discouraged. The only model for assigned role-playing available to Indians is the wretched caste system which can only create discontent. The competition is intense. Even to get into heaven, what matters is what you can afford to do as an individual (and may be your family) to please the gods that matters. Evidently, it is going to be difficult to expect minds nurtured in such a society to be receptive to team spirit and collaboration except when it comes to destruction of public property, gang rapes and demolition of mosques or anything that taps into baser, tribal instincts. 

I presume all the women engineers of Thiruvananthapuram were busy with other engagements this evening!