For the love of vroom! – plight of the Indian petrol-head

The smell of gasoline after refuelling, the hum of the engine while cruising on an empty road, tyre marks on asphalt, artistically aesthetic wheels. These are some of things that tingle the grey cells of a petrol head. I am no different and I live in a country where the only thing holier than our cows is the curry we eat.

The automobile industry in India as far as the choice of the customer was concerned was pretty lacklustre for almost forty years since the country obtained independence. This was primarily because of the licence raj that was strictly followed by the Government of that era, which somehow believed aping the USSR (as Russia was called at that point in time) was the way forward. Therefore, with the exception of the Rajas and Maharajas of the yester-year princely states who rolled in their Rolls Royces and Cadillacs, the fate of the Indian petrol head was pretty much like a black and white movie. It was then that two good men decided India should have cars manufactured or at least assembled in the country. Ghanshyamdas Birla manufactured the Hindustan 10 based on the Morris 10 in association with Nuffield of UK and Walchand Hirachand started Premier Automobiles by assembling De Soto and Plymouth cars in association with Chrysler of the US.

The Hindustan 10 subsequently morphed into the Hindustan Ambassador which ruled the roads for the next few decades. An Ambassador or Amby as it is endearingly called was like a tank in today’s terms, the kind of car which you could walk out of, even if Juggernaut decided to head-butt you. The ‘King of Indian roads’ as it was called went out of production in 2014 but still finds a place on the roads of Kolkata. They still ply the roads of the City of Joy as taxis if you ever want to ride in one, albeit at your own personal risk. The piece de resistance of Premier Automobiles was however the Premier Padmini, another four door saloon which was vastly popular among the film fraternity as also women folk in general. Padmini shared its name with a Rajput princess and means ‘she who sits on the lotus’, probably because the body roll on this one was slightly lower than in the Ambassador. However, the car became popular by its pseudonym Fiat, since the Premier Padmini was originally a Fiat. Hindustan Motors also produced a ‘luxury’ sedan by the name of Contessa which reached a few garages but not as many as the Amby.

The true transformation in the Indian auto industry was however brought in by the launch of the Maruti Suzuki 800 in 1984. This vehicle was a sea change from the bulky Amby. I still remember the time I drove an 800 for the first time after learning my driving skills in the great Amby. I had the same exhilaration as General Rommel the Desert Fox would have had if he was dislodged from one of his Tiger tanks and put on a flying carpet. This little hatchback was so light that it could be lifted off the ground by a couple of well-built people. It was light on the road, needed very little space to park and it was Japanese and came with all the Japanese efficiencies. It was an instant hit! The 800 transmogrified into other models over time like the Alto and the Zen, but the charm of this model which revolutionized the Indian auto industry still stays fresh in the memory of all Indians with the exception of the young millennial. It would be pretty impetuous of me if I don’t mention the Maruti Omni minivan which was launched along with the Maruti 800.  This was a pixie version of a station wagon with slide doors and became pretty notorious as an instrument of kidnapping in reel and real life, when it was not being used to ferry school children from home to school and back. The only problem with the vehicle was that the body and chassis of the vehicle had minds of their own. So if you applied the brakes in New York, the chassis would stop there but the body would come to a stop only in Boston.

The mid 1990s saw an influx of the whole Japanese automobile industry into the Indian market like Honda, Toyota and Mitsubishi.

The Japanese are a clever lot. They realised that the discerning Indian customer was starved for new vehicle models and decided to use that psyche to mould their business model. They created multiple versions of the same model. Now you will think that is common practice across the globe, but not the way it is done in India. Here the car companies invented the concept of different versions of the same model.  All versions had the same engine capacity, output, security and other features which should be the parameters for difference in models. But no, Akihiko was like - “Tanaka-san! Karera wa orokamonodesu!” (See Tanaka, they are fools!).  They gave two versions of the same model, one with air-conditioning and one without, though this country is located a stone’s throw away from the equator and aircon should have been an inclusion and not an add-on. Mind you, the price differential between the versions was quite substantial and had no resemblance to the cost of adding an aircon. Similarly, there were models with floor mats and models without, models with “body colour” fender and door handles and the one without, all at differential pricing. The sale strategy which took the cake though was where the companies offered a different model with chrome tipped door handles and chrome strips on the door frame! Alas, the great Indian middle-class gobbled up the body coloured gibberish, hook, line and sinker with the auto industry recording multi fold growth in their toplines. The Koreans were not far behind!

It wasn’t until the mid 2000s that the Germans realised that the Japs and Koreans were creaming the Indian market and they were not even present here. Achtung, achtung they cried and landed here with their Mercs, Beemers and Audis! But they weren’t any different. Audi had an A4, A6 and A8 as popular sedan models abroad. Moment they landed on Indian shores, they released the A5, A7, A7 and a half, A8 and three by quarters and God knows what else. History repeated itself.

However, the irony in all this was the condition of the roads in India. It was only in the late 1990s that the Government started privatising road projects and the infrastructure started to improve. National highways and state highways became broader, longer and crater-less. That was a welcome change! However, the paucity of driving sense in us Indians far surpassed the apathy of the Govt towards road development.

I was watching a series on Netflix the other day covering the life of Special Forces Snipers. They have to undergo countless hours of training to achieve an elevated efficiency of their senses, where every sight, sound and smell is registered by the brain, where their breathing rate is lowered and they achieve a heightened sense of their surroundings and their own existence. We Indians can achieve all that in fewer than five minutes by driving around in rush hour traffic! People on the roads here just do not care. Lane discipline is a misnomer, civic sense is not civic in anyway and any space that can be claimed on the road shall be claimed whether you run over somebody in the process or not. In such a scenario, it doesn’t matter whether you own an A8 and three by quarters. The guy riding a run-down Vespa is in a far better position than you are. It is in such circumstances that I visited a friend of the family. He owns many businesses and as expected his garage has an Audi A6, a Mercedes AMG C-63 sedan and a BMW M5, all a dream to drive. But our friend lets them rot in the garage and uses a Toyota Innova, a compact multi-purpose vehicle to move around daily. Even Akihiko was like – “Tanaka-san! Karera wa orokamonodesu!”  

It is only in the recent past that the competition started picking up and companies from all across the globe started setting up shop or getting into joint ventures with Indian companies to launch their vehicles here. Launch of Kia and the re-launch of Morris Garage are typical examples. With increase in travel, purchasing power parity and access to information, the auto industry is witnessing a major transformation in the country, for once skewed in favour of the petrolhead.

P.S: - A question which may have popped up in some of your minds is why I only mentioned sedans above and not bikes, jeeps or SUVs. For the love of vroom! We shall take that up separately.

Think like a dog, roar like a lion

Let me start this write up by narrating a little incident that happened sometime in my past. I had attended a three day conference of accountants once and daily before the start of the technical sessions, we had a lifestyle improvement coach or a spiritual guru give us a talk for an hour. In one such session, the question that was put forth to the audience was a very simple one. The speaker asked a random selection of people from the audience to describe themselves. Looking in hindsight, the result was appalling, to say the least, because all of those people talked for a straight ten minutes each but none of them described anything about themselves. All they described was where they were from, in which locality they lived, their occupations, vocations, designations at the work place etcetera. I am in no way blaming those guys because if I was in their place that day, I would have done the same.

That little exercise by the guru opened my eyes to the fact that we as a people sometimes mistake the means to the end in life as the end itself. Let us start by asking our self why we do anything in life. What is the purpose of earning all that money? What is the purpose of all that fame and popularity? What is the purpose of all that success? Or is the money, success and fame the end in itself? Most of us think they are and some die believing so. It is only a handful of us who have the privilege of coming across an enlightened soul like that old man at the conference, who give us a knock on the head and make us see sense. The sense that all those achievements we keep talking about are nothing if we are not happy at the end of the day and sleep peacefully at night. Once we realize that, we slowly start rephrasing the questions above – What is the purpose of earning all that money if I am not able to spend some quality time with my family and friends? What is the purpose of all that fame and popularity if I can’t use it to positively influence the lives of the younger generation? What is the purpose of all that success if I am not able to give back to the less privileged in the society?

I see two basic reasons why we fail to make this realization. Firstly, we don’t meet a good master who will show us the right path. Secondly, we are all a bunch of egotistic idiots who refuse to see beyond the mirage that we have defined as our purpose in life.

Finding a good master or a coach to learn something technical is very easy. We just need to Google up our requirement and we will have a load of references available, but a master or counsel who teaches you the truth of life is not someone we can look up on Just dial. We need to be lucky to be at the right place at the right time. We also need to be humble enough to realize the importance of that counsel. Life coaches need not always be in person form. They can be animals, places or incidents too. Life takes us through umpteen instances which break our ego, and make us realize that we are not always the invincible beings that we assume our self to be. But most of the time we refuse to accept the same; rather our ego refuses to accept the same. This results in us believing in the mirage that we define as the purpose in our life.

A wise man once narrated a comic snippet to me to stress upon this point. The story goes thus – ‘Lord Vishnu, the preserver of this world as per Hindu mythology was so distraught on seeing the state of affairs of humankind that he decided to interfere and pay the humans a visit. However, the sage Narada advised him against it telling him that he will fail because humans have gone beyond repair. But the Lord was not discouraged so fast. He coaxed Narada to join him in this venture and decided to present himself to a whole congregation of people who had gathered in a hall to perform a ritual sacrifice in honour of the Lord himself. So both Vishnu and Narada appeared before the crowd dressed as commoners as soon as the ritual got over and declared that they were Vishnu and Narada from heaven. Though the crowd was perplexed at the sudden appearance of these two gentlemen, they were not convinced as to their identities. With the advances in virtual reality and theatrical special effects, one can never be too sure. Narada immediately told Vishnu – “See my Lord, I told you this was not a good idea. These guys have too much technology in hand that nothing can perplex them. They do not believe who we are.”

Vishnu replied – “It is okay Narada. We can’t expect them to believe that we are who we say we are. Let us reveal our true form to them. Then probably they will believe us. They are very well holding this ritual in my honour, so they must be believers.”

Having said that, Vishnu lifts the veil and presents themselves in their full divine glory to the congregation. The people are in awe at the spectacle, but just for a few minutes. Then one of them exclaims, “This is all fine gentlemen. I like your dress, the conch, the chakra and the mace. But all these are available in the corner shop down the road from here too. So how can we believe that you are the Lord himself?”

Narada pulls Vishnu aside and says – “I told you they were idiots my Lord and I don’t really trust them. So let us leave in dignity before one of them gets the idea to burgle your Sudharshan chakra or mace.”

Vishnu replies – “No Narada! I don’t have the heart to give up on these people. They may have corrupted over the ages but they are still my people. Let me handle this.” Thus explaining, Vishnu picks up a pebble that was lying on the floor of the congregation hall and turns it into pure gold. That did the trick. The whole congregation ran out of the hall.

Vishnu triumphantly tells Narada – “See Narada? They are finally convinced, though I didn’t mean to startle them. All of them ran away in awe.” Narada heads to the entry doors of the hall to check on the crowd and to ask them not to run away. He however rushes back and exclaims – “My Lord, they didn’t run away in awe of you! Those imbeciles are collecting rocks from the garden outside to convert them to gold!” That my friend was the last time the Great Lord Vishnu ever made contact with us humans’.

Though this story was in good humour, it highlights how we as a people have gone beyond redemption in our greed for wealth and glory. This attitude will also deprive us of the ability to recognize a life master when he is right under our noses. Once the ego is broken, we will be able to see clear even in the pitch dark. This mad rush to accomplish the inane will subside and we will look for a higher goal in life, to realize pure unadulterated happiness; happiness which is already within you. We are not mature enough to realize that on our own and that is why we need the help of a teacher or coach who can guide us onto the path of self-realization.

Taking advice or counsel does not make us lesser human beings, to the contrary it means we are humble enough to realize that we have much to learn and understand. That reminds me of a phrase from a book of proverbs – ‘Where no counsel is, people fall, but in the multitude of counselors there is safety.’ This is the official motto of the Institute of Intelligence and Special Operations which is no department in a high school university. This in fact happens to be one of the most dreaded and efficient intelligence services in the world, commonly known as the Mossad. So if the spooks can understand that then we commoners should definitely too.

Now let us move to the second reason. The predominant description of a person is two-fold, the external appearance and internal disposition or behaviour. There is also a third layer which hovers over the external appearance as an invisible aura; the ego. Unfortunately for us the third layer rules us for most part of our lives, at least until life decides to break it and break us along with it. It is because of this ego that we look outward trying to project our physical and mental qualities to others about how beautiful we look or how smart we are. We have even coined phrases like outer beauty and inner beauty, which is one of the biggest farces of its kind. As somebody rightly said, “You are either beautiful or ugly, accept that. There is nothing called inner beauty. It is just an excuse you make to console your ego because you are feeling insecure. Have you ever heard a short person saying they have inner height?”

When we stop looking outside and start looking inside our self, deeper than our physical appearance, body and mind, we will see that ultimate, unchanging reality called the soul. That reality is what is referred to in Indian mythology as the Brahman. Interestingly, this word has been convoluted so much that people today think Brahman means that bald headed Hindu priest who wears a thread across his chest like a cross-belt and performs religious rituals at a temple.

So what do we do to lose this blanket of an ego and become better living beings and a reflection of our unblemished souls? We start to think like a dog. People who have pets at home will have experienced that seamless, bottomless love their pets give them without questions or reservations. Let me stick to one category of pets for the purpose of this write-up – dogs. Have you ever wondered how dogs get all their needs met by us without uttering a single word while we rack our heads on explaining things to other people? Does that mean that the boon of speech and language that we are so proud of is actually not one?

In truth, it has got a lot more to do than the ability to speak. Because dogs give us such unadulterated love we reciprocate the same. We make that extra effort to understand their requirements, read their mannerisms and make sure they are met without any fault. We would never think of making such an effort with people. Also, dogs never judge you. If you disappear for a month and meet them after, they are so happy to see you again. They simply enjoy the moment and your company without asking questions. This is because dogs don’t view us as man or woman, tall or short, handsome or ugly, rich or destitute. Just as their eye sight is dichromatic, meaning they can see only in two colours, their behaviour is pretty monochrome. They only know how to love.

Hence, the moment we start thinking like a dog and see the truth that all of us are a part of that ultimate, unchanging reality, we will start being better human beings. We will stop weighing our self in gold, success or beauty and start realizing that we are made out of something far more valuable, a happy soul. A happy person is a confident person and a confident person is a content person. There is a popular name in India which signifies this – Satchitananda. Sat means truth or existence, Chit means consciousness and Ananda means bliss.  

Let me conclude with the clichéd story of the lion cub which was brought up among sheep. An orphaned lion cub was raised by sheep and he learnt the ways of the sheep, how to graze on grass, how to bleat, yada yada…you know the story; until the leader of a pride of lions spots him grazing and bleating like sheep. How much ever the leader tried convincing the cub, he refused to accept that he was a muscular, meat eating cat christened as the king of the jungle. The leader had lost hope until he dragged the cub to a stream and showed him his reflection in the water and the cub reluctantly realized that he looked less like his sheep brethren and more like the lion leader. As soon as the acceptance crept in, the lion in the cub woke up and when he cried at his own reflection in the water, the cry was not the bleat of a sheep. It was the roar of a lion.

What does this nursery story have to do with anything that we discussed earlier? Well the lion cub is us, the sheep all the other ignorant idiots just like us and the leader of the pack is the teacher/coach/counsel who finds us.

Just like the cub, unless we let our guard down and accept who we truly are, we are never going to listen to the teacher. We will also not be able to think like a dog and roar like a lion.

We are a special kind of stupid

The primary necessities of humankind are food, water, clothes and shelter or so we thought, until we accessed the digital ether. Now food and water can take a back seat, but our smart-phones can’t. I will not be entirely wrong if I say that we cannot survive ten minutes without checking for notifications on our phone these days. If you can, then you are either my dad’s age or have reached a higher spiritual plane.

It is true that digitization has taken the world to a different pedestal, simplifying how we approach our daily tasks in a far more efficient and time effective manner and improved the quality of life in general. With the miniaturization of digital platforms and applications, everything that we need is available on our fingertips, in other words the smartphone. Our phones can do much more than make or receive calls these days. In fact now-a-days they are used for everything other than making calls.

I still remember the first time Whatsapp was launched. Everybody was intrigued with the emoticons or emojis as you may call them. They were so exhaustive that all emotions humanly possible were covered therein. After a week of using Whatsapp I happened to realise with quite a bit of alarm that I had not spoken to my family, who stay in another city for almost a week. It was only a matter of time before greetings were sent by Whatsapp, school homework was submitted by google apps and party invites were posted on Google maps.

Then there was the dawn of the “all knowledgeable multi-faceted personality”. An engineer gives lectures on the country’s monetary policy and the nuances of capital market dealings. An accountant becomes an expert in rocket trajectories and gravity-turns as does an athlete on political strategy and foreign policies. It is good if everyone has an opinion on some things, but not so much when everyone has an opinion on everything. If someone doesn’t post their opinion on their Facebook page or Twitter handle on any event of the day, they are considered uninformed and lagging behind. It has become a slugfest to display one’s expertise about events on social media, how much ever trivial they are and thus resulting in a satiation of egos as opposed to any fruitful accomplishment.

This feat would have been next to impossible or highly utopian until 04^th of September 1998, on which day two gentlemen in Menlo Park, California founded Google. It is the ultimate go to tool for any kind of information so much so that the in India they are referring to Google as Google Matha (read: mother) and sister of Goddess Saraswati, the Goddess of knowledge.

The topic of satiation of egos brings me to the umpteen social media apps which we all access on a daily basis. All fantastic apps, I must say, which help us keep in touch with friends even way back from school, to portray achievements, share ideas, art and culture, to promote businesses etc. However, it also develops a kind of “have to post” mania. We can’t seem to travel anywhere these days or have a good meal without posting the fact on social media. We always argue that this is just for the benefit of those people who couldn’t join in but would secretly admit that these posts also give us a weird sense of accomplishment and an ego boost. The irony though is the fact that whenever we join any of these social media apps, the first thing we do is to go to the security settings and up the security on all parameters.

In short, we are eternally addicted to social media applications which were invented by their respective founders so that people who don’t know each other can come into contact with each other; but however complain and express surprise when a stranger does exactly that and approaches us on said ‘social’ media. We post everything about our lives on social media including what we had for breakfast  and how hard our stool was that morning, but make sure that these posts are seen only by close family or a list of selected friends. We wish the family a good morning on Whatsapp rather than walk up to the living room where we can do that in person.

Therefore, in summation we are a generation of the un-social social! We are also a generation of a special kind of stupid!

Inner peace is called 'inner' peace for a reason

Peace and happiness are very much like conjoined twins or two sides of the same coin, whatever way you like to look at them. One pulls along the other. They are also the most sought after state of being that everybody yearns for and works towards. People embark on different paths to achieve these twins. Some work their bottoms off to create wealth and find happiness in their professional success and money and others travel to exotic destinations to be closer to nature than they would ordinarily be and find happiness in those experiences. Some embrace sport as a way of life and find happiness in the adrenalin rush that it gives while some find the happiness and rush in food, drinks and other indulgences.

However, in spite of all this effort and the multiple paths people take, they realise that they sometimes end up with inner pieces and not inner peace. People who work hard many a time work too hard and burn their health up in the process. So much so that the Japs have coined a term ‘Karoshi’ for it, which translates to death by overwork. People who travel extensively have hidden health risks or social consequences. People in sports suffer injuries and people who indulge get addicted. So how do we attain this inner peace without the resultant side effects? Well, we don’t! Because peace and happiness cannot be achieved as they are already within you. Remember the blog ‘You are already happy’ that I wrote two years ago? (http://kingkongsfft.blogspot.in/2015/09/you-are-already-happy.html) This write-up is more of a supplement to it.

The irony of the whole situation is that the words ‘inner peace’ themselves signify that the peace is there somewhere inside all of us. But we always tend to look for it outside. That is human fallacy. We always love a challenge. We like to assume that anything that we are looking for is hidden in some elusive Shangri-La which nobody knows the whereabouts of. Peace is also one such unfortunate item. The day we decide to look inside our self and contemplate upon our self, the path to inner peace will reveal itself. We do not need to stand in some convoluted yoga asana for hours together as the sages do in epic movies.  We just need to peel off the layers of self-doubt and ego to attain inner peace. We are all basically like onions and if we peel off the non-palatable skin and layers we will end up with the fresh heart.

Peeling off the layers of ego and self-doubt is not as easy as peeling an onion for the evening curry though. We run away from relinquishing self-doubt and ego without fail. It takes the concerted effort of self and an outside force, usually a teacher or a coach to work towards that. The task of losing one’s ego is like pushing two magnets with the same polarity towards each other. They will repel each other vehemently. We will resist any attempt to break our ego and self-doubt because we feel that we are losing our self by doing that. This is because we as humans identify with our ego than with our true self. That is why a majority of the people who are requested to describe themselves will inordinately describe what job they do, where they live and what they have accomplished and not utter a word of what kind of people they are.

All this said and done, people who have knowledge of physics will tell you that two magnets with the same polarity will repel each other initially but when they come close enough, the stronger magnet will change the orientation of the magnetic domains of the weaker magnet and you will all of a sudden find that they are attracting each other. In the same way, if only we allow ourselves to alter our orientation (p.s : not the sexual one) and peel off the layers of ego and self-doubt we will in fact be able to peer into our ‘inner’ self and find inner peace.

In short, we need to let go and let ourselves be pulled towards inner peace than fight it. It is like diving from a plane 15,000 feet above the ground and letting gravity do the rest, except in the case of skydiving we better use a parachute, without which we will most definitely end up in pieces and find eternal peace. Well, let us stick to the metaphor for now! 

The most dangerous creature on the planet

It was a beautiful morning! The sky was a crystal blue as if a turquoise cloche covered the earth. The waters were serene except for an isolated wave every now and then. The best part of the sea for scuba diving they said. John slowly ambled his way to the edge of the boat, weighed in by the heavy scuba equipment. He had paid top dollar to get the best scuba dive organiser on the cape for this dive. He was accompanied by a guide from the dive organisers, a stocky fellow who looked like he did scuba diving from the moment he stepped out of high school, with a perpetual frown creasing his face. They eased themselves off the stern of the boat into the azure waters of the cape.

A half hour into the dive, John felt his muscles cramp a little, fruit of all the gallivanting and extra beer the previous night. He signalled to the guide that they need to head back. John was gauging the distance back to the boat when he felt a presence in the water next to him and that presence was definitely not the forever frowning guide; unless the guide knew how to swim at more than a forty kilometres per hour. Being a marine biologist, two words crossed his mind. Carcharodon Carcharias, or by the name that normal mortals know it by, the great white shark!  The boat was a good twenty metres away and John felt his muscles burn. It was not the beer or his lack of exercise this time, it was pure panic. John also realised that he was in the presence of one of the most dangerous creatures on the planet!

He swivelled around to spot the guide a few feet away, who was now gesturing for him to swim to the safety of the boat. So he aimed for the boat and swam with all the energy he could muster. The twenty meters started feeling like twenty miles and John wondered whether he was going to meet his death today. His knowledge of sharks didn’t help the situation. He knew that the great white didn’t have any natural predators and had gained the epithet of the Great White Death for good reason. It was responsible for the highest number of unprovoked attacks on humans. One of the most dangerous creatures on the planet!

When he got to a few metres of the boat, he decided to check on the guide. To his dismay John realised that the guide was no longer behind him! What was behind him though was a large murky shape the size of a minivan, a minivan that was approaching fast. The snout of a great white is very uncharacteristic of its reputation. It looks like the killer fish is approaching you with a bright wide smile with all its shiny teeth, to give you a hug. That is, until the teeth part and it bites your head off. The most dangerous creature on the planet! So John watched the shark rush towards him and along with it his imminent death. He was not a man of God, but at that moment he let out a cry for help to the Almighty. Then he shut his eyes and waited for his demise.

That was when he heard the sound, like the sound of metal hitting rubber. John slowly opened his eyes and realised that the azure clear waters around him were crimson red now. The great white which was going to make a meal of him was now drifting away from him, oozing blood with a harpoon pierced right through its head. He also felt a hand on his shoulder, the hand of the guide who had shot the shark dead. John felt an immense sense of relief and gratitude to the stocky guide with the perpetual frown. John also realised he was in the presence of the most dangerous creature on the planet! 

The battle wages within you, not outside

News articles and fights have become synonymous with each other nowadays. All that we hear or see when we put on the news or take up a news article is about how the rest of the world is fighting the ISIS in the Middle East, how law enforcement is fighting the jihadists, how the US is sabre rattling in the backyard of the Chinese and how the North Koreans are shooting missiles into the sky every other day. We also hear about the fight against corruption, inhumane treatment of animals, rape and theft; fight for property as also fight in the name of religion. Over the centuries, the reasons for fights or battles have shifted from extrinsic factors to intrinsic ideology. When that happens, the reasons to fight also multiply as ideologies differ from person to person.

This fact is surprisingly seen in the context of Yugas, which stand for eras or epochs of time as given in the Hindu puranic texts. The four primary yugas cited therein are the Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dwapara Yuga and the Kali Yuga. Though the texts talk about inception of time well before the start of the Satya Yuga, let us stick to these four cycles of time for the purpose of this discussion. Satya Yuga was the age of truth. There was utmost intelligence, virtuousness and content in that age. Hence there arose no question of war or fights. The second yuga was the Treta Yuga. The Indian epic Ramayana fell in this time cycle where Lord Rama fought and vanquished Ravana, the demon lord who kidnapped his wife Sita. In this yuga, it was a fight of good versus evil. The third yuga was the Dwapara yuga. The great war of Mahabharata fell in this time cycle where the Pandavas fought and defeated the Kauravas. The great war was a fight between two families for control of a nation. It signified the lust for power and control which lead to the fall of both parties in the end. The fourth yuga which is ongoing as per the texts is the Kali yuga, which is described as an age of darkness and ignorance. The fights which we see in this age are because of differences in personal beliefs and ideology. There are fights within families and communities because members don’t agree to the same thing.

Therefore, you see that as the cycles of humanity progress, the closer to oneself the fight gets. We have reached a stage where the battle is not for larger goals. It is not a fight of good against evil. It is not between nations anymore. Even the fight between nations is no longer just for control of resources or land. What is happening in the Middle East today is a typical example. Different factions of the same country are fighting among themselves because the beliefs and values of each faction are different.

This status is only going to worsen as the years pass by and will reach a stage where every person will be pulled in two different directions from within, to support a particular ideal or other; to do right as against wrong. What is right though? Does what I consider right, construe the same to you? Or is it wrong in your perspective? What do we do when we reach such a point of conflict? What we can do is cut out all the jargon and propaganda and turn within and reflect. Self-reflection really helps because many a time the answer to our questions is also within us. The problem is that we always turn outwards for the answer.

Inward  introspection sounds simple, but in fact is nowhere close to easy. Sitting in a lotus position on the floor, with eyes closed and listening to the hum of the ‘Om’ chant on audio as they show on the early morning meditation classes on TV will only help to the extent your doubts and questions start to resurface. Many a times we need a teacher, a guru in Indian parlance to lead our thoughts to the right answer or the state of questionless-ness if I may coin it that way. A guru need not always be a person with two hands and two legs. It can be an object or place or any other being which will trigger the self-search process within you. Since we spoke of the Mahabharata earlier and we are talking about a guru, let me draw from the 1^st Shloka of the Bhagavadgita, the sacred word of Lord Krishna to Arjuna, the warrior and the son of Pandu, right before the start of the great war. It goes thus:

“Dhrutarashtra Uvacha -  Dharmakshetre  kurukshetre  samaveda  yuyutsava!

Mamaka pandavaschaiva kimakurvata sanjaya!”

It translates to – “Dhrutarashtra said, ‘Oh Sanjaya! What did my people and the sons of Pandu, assembled with the desire of fighting in the Dharmabhumi of Kurukshetra do?’”

The blind king Dhrutarashtra, the king of the Kurus asks his charioteer what his sons the Kauravas and his nephews the Pandavas assembled on the battlefield of Kurukshetra do. In comparison we are like the blind king, full of ignorance and ego in this kali yuga trying to understand the truth out there. Sanjaya though a charioteer for Dhrutarashtra is in fact more than a charioteer. He is the guru or the conduit who will lead Dhrutarashtra to the truth by dispelling the darkness of doubts surrounding him. Similarly, we would be lucky to find our respective Sanjaya who will direct us to the truth and settle the turmoil within.

The Hindu puranas say the great lord himself will reincarnate as the warrior Kalki and emerge from the sacred land of Shambala (better known as Shangrila in Hollywood movies). He will be the harbinger of the end time (Kali yuga) after which he will usher in another peaceful and content epoch or Satya yuga. However, we needn’t wait for the sword wielding warrior to ride in on a horse. Each one of us can be a Kalki and our collective souls, Shambala.

In conclusion, in this age of ignorance, sin and conflict, it is time we introspect and find a way to win the battle within so that we don’t have to fight one outside.

Why the Hyderabadi driver is better than Vettel and Hamilton

I am an avid follower and a huge fan of Formula 1 racing. Though there are many versions of auto racing like production car racing, GT championships, stock racing like NASCAR which is a rage in the US, with all due respect to all these, F1 has always taken the cake away for me with its impeccable attention to technological and mechanical detail, the endurance and skill of the driver, the pit team strategy and the sheer thrill of watching those mean machines streak across the track. Trust me, if you are an F1 fan you should watch a race in person and take in the sounds, smell and sights of the F1 cars when they scream past you making the hair on your neck stand and giving you goose-bumps. 

This would make you wonder about the title of this write-up. If it was framed as a question, it would be rhetorical and the answer would be a big fat “No”. Therefore, this is intended only as a satirical take on the traffic situation at Hyderabad or any Indian city for that matter. As they say “If you learn to drive in India, you can drive anywhere else in the world.” Whether you will be trusted to do so is an entirely different story.

Now what is so special about a Hyderabadi driver?

Let us begin at the starting grid of the F1 race. The F1 drivers neatly assemble in a grid at the starting point and streak away when all the starting lights illuminate and blink off. Well the Hyderabadi driver is different. Traffic line, zebra crossing, lane discipline etc do not form part of his vocabulary. If he was made to line up on an F1 track, he and the other members of his breed will crowd at the start line like hungry spectators in a gladiator match ready to jump into the ring. You as a spectator need to be careful, as you may find him with his vehicle right inside the viewing paddock if the grid line is ‘full’. Further, the lights do not decide when he vrooms off; he decides when the lights should blink off!

If you thought Seb or Hami (for the benefit of the uninitiated, those are the nicknames of Vettel and Hamilton) follow some of the best driving lines around the track then you have got it wrong. The Hyderabadi driver flows like water in a brook or a gust of wind in a valley, following the path of least resistance. If he sees an inch of space then doubt you not, he will stuff his vehicle into it. If the vehicle in the front slows down, he will inevitably barge into the adjacent lane without any warning. It doesn’t matter whether his grandpa is in his death throes in that adjacent lane; he WILL run him over!

Then there is the time penalty or drive thru’ penalty that an F1 driver has to contend with if he joins the main race by driving over the pit lane line. But the Hyderabadi driver gives a plug nickel’s worth to such meaningless rules when he joins the main road traffic from a by lane or street. He will take such a nonchalant turn onto the main road and such a wide one when he is at it, as if he was taxiing a 747 instead of his car that he will either grind the whole traffic to a halt or get mowed down by a truck driven by “another” Hyderabadi driver as his fate deems fit; and all this without even a single glance at the oncoming traffic. If you ask him how brash his ignorance of basic traffic rules is he would just say “Traffic rules ki maaki kirkiri” which roughly translates to “Traffic rules’ mother’s (kirkiri doesn’t have any specific meaning and is used to represent something utterly irritating)”. The traffic cops hovering at the junctions will generally not mess with the Hyderabadi driver in spite of this disruption as his wrangling skills generally supersede that of the cop.

There is also the matter of overtaking other vehicles on the road. Formula 1 drivers have state-of-the-art technology to assist them overtake other drivers on the track, like for example, DRS or Drag Reduction System where the rear wing on his car is moveable to reduce drag or KERS which stands for Kinetic Energy Recovery System where the energy on braking is stored and later converted to kinetic energy to give that extra thrust during overtaking. The Hyderabadi driver does not need such pitiful technology to overtake. In fact he would consider them as an insult to his driving skills. He will come by your side and slowly start edging towards you. That is the sign that he wants to overtake you and such manoeuvre maybe done at varying speeds depending upon your luck and how much paan the Hyderabadi driver had that morning. If you slow down, you will get home in one piece. If you do not, hallelujah!

Moving over to pit stops, the F1 drivers need to change their tyres atleast twice or as many as 3-4 times in a race and they have a fully equipped pit team to assist them in this job. But our Hyderabadi driver will simply get Rahim bhai from Ministry Road (that is where many car accessory showrooms and repair shops operate at Hyd) to patch up his tyres. That way he saves on the cost of the expensive and absolutely useless pit crew and their paraphernalia! What a waste of money right?

Finally, coming to the end of the race, Seb and Hami would be really happy to pass the guy with the Chequered Flag before anybody else does, thus signifying the end of the race. Well, our Hyderabadi driver would spit on the chequered flag and the guy holding it because nobody tells him when the race is over. He decides when the race is over! You may as well put a guy with a Shawarma stand in his stead.

In conclusion, I bet you would agree with me when I say the talented Seb and Hami and the Formula1 championship with its entire technology and glam quotient come nowhere close to the Hyderabadi driver and his Formula less maaki kirkiri!!!