The Mariamman temple opposite to the Bell Hotel in Sivakasi where I stayed 
  ¶ 4:25 AM 0 comments

  Up there it looks different !
This ten-year old boy makes a living exhibiting his amazing acrobatic skills in the town of Kanakapura in South India .He displays rare balancing skills walking through the streets of Kanakapura on a 4-feet -high stick !  ¶ 7:20 PM 0 comments

  At Vedangal the birds from Siberia have arrived on the dot. The last Saturday we watched the birds in groups on perched on several treetops submerged in water .The distance for viewing was quite long and no close photography was possible without a zoom lense.I had , however, managed to take some good photographs of the paddy fields in sunset :
  ¶ 2:06 AM 0 comments

  At Vedangal the birds from Siberia have arrived on the dot. The last Saturday we watched the birds in groups on perched on several treetops submerged in water .The distance for viewing was quite long and no close photography was possible without a zoom lense.I had , however, managed to take some good photographs of the paddy fields in sunset :
  ¶ 2:06 AM 0 comments

 
The returning cows at Vedangal   ¶ 2:05 AM 0 comments

 
The Gingi Fort   ¶ 2:02 AM 0 comments

 
The gingi fort deserved a second visit because it offered me the opportunity to re-live history as well experience the vastness of open spaces. The views were breath-taking .I have taken quite a few photographs :
  ¶ 1:55 AM 0 comments

 
The kitchen in a typical mudhouse of a village in coastal Andhra    ¶ 5:05 AM 0 comments

 
The first floor hall of a Syrian Catholic house in Kerala   ¶ 5:02 AM 0 comments

 
The typical house of a brahmin in Tamilnadu   ¶ 4:59 AM 0 comments

  Dakshina Chitra

Dakshina Chitra is a place exhibiting the diverse living styles of the residents of the South Indian States . It is a sort of cultural tour de force designed to make people aware of the traditional life styles more particularly of the rural folk .It is a very laudable effort to bring together at one place so much of the culture and social conditions of the South Indian people.

I have taken some very fine pictures of the replicas of houses found in different parts of the South India .
  ¶ 4:45 AM 0 comments

 
Inside of the Venkataramana temple in the Gingi Fort   ¶ 4:42 AM 0 comments

  Madras (or Chennapatnam ,if you please) started off well with securing decent hotel accommodation at GRT hotel .The fringe benefits of an inspection assignment have also started accruing . I mean I could see some very nice places and add to a bulging collection of digital photographs.


The last Sunday we went to the Ramana Maharshi Asram and the Shiva temple there. The temple is fabulous .While returning to Chennai in heavy downpour we stopped at the Gingi Fort . The visit was truly a memorable one , especially the temples which ,as part of the Fort , were vandalised by the Moslem invaders .

The photographs of the dilapidated temple are highly evocative .A second visit is worth making.
  ¶ 4:26 AM 0 comments

  Tuticorin , the pearl city

Thanks to an official visit to one of the borrowing companies , one St.John Clearing and Forwarding Agents Pvt Ltd., I could see the beautiful container berth at the Tuticorin port. The sea was calm and pretty. The unloading of sugar was very interesting. The berth no 7 has been given to a joint venture company called PSA-SICAL ,a partnership between South Indian Chemical Industries ltd and the Port of Singapore Authorities on a thirty year lease for running the container berth .

The port is an artificial one created purely out of indigenous technology .The shallowness of the harbour does not permit big ships to call at the port . Only feeder ships operate between the port and the mother ships berthing at Colombo or some other international ports where ocean liners have facilities to berth.  ¶ 5:21 AM 0 comments

 
A plant on my hotel's rooftop   ¶ 5:56 AM 0 comments

 
Sunrise over Sivakasi town   ¶ 6:46 AM 0 comments

  Kuttyjapan

Nehru reportedly called it mini-Japan -Sivakasi, the city of matches , fireworks and offset printing .80% of the matches produced in India come from this place. A very interesting story is told about the origin of the Shivakashi enterprise . A Nadar boy, studying for his exams in a Madurai library chanced upon the formula for making matchsticks at home .He immediately informed his brother and uncle at Shivakashi inducing them to go to Calcutta to learn the technique so that they could come back and start the cottage industry of match-making .The boy , accompanying the other two, died of cholera on the way to Calcutta but the other two returned duly educated . Their first enterprise (some time in 1920 or thereabouts )was the forerunner of today's flourishing match industry .A very interesting thing was this new industry was just the thing needed at that point of time when this area was reeling under successive onslaughts of famine. There was no looking back after that for Sivakasi which later developed its own printing industry as an offshoot of the match industry which needed printed labels. Today in both match and fireworks industries as well as offset printing Sivakasi holds a preeminent position .  ¶ 2:29 AM 0 comments

  Here , in Shivakasi, I am staying in the Bell hotel , which appears to be a decent enough hotel. Yesterday , as I opened the blinds I saw the magnificent spectacle of a beautiful Amman temple just opposite to the hotel.Today I have visited the temple.A very spacious temple complex , constructed at at a cost of Rs.8 crores , I was told , by the Nadar community who are the prime movers behind the spectacular growth of Shivakasi as an industrial centre.  ¶ 10:08 PM 0 comments

 
The Perumal temple at Sankagiri fort   ¶ 5:38 AM 0 comments

 
The gorgeous Kaveri in monsoon   ¶ 5:23 AM 0 comments

  On the E-Road again !

The second stay here comes to an end today .I stayed at the same hotel, The Jardin , a fancy French name meaning the Garden. The people here are very hard-working and enterprising . You dont find them indulging in lavish display of wealth . Very simple people , clear-headed and focussed on wealth-creation .What they tell me is that these people have come up through industry because there was nothing much that the inhospitable terrain offered by way of agricultural bounty . The typical work-centredness of the people is illustrated by the people here stating that nobody takes holidays beyond one or two days .Anybody who has to be away from work either to attend a marriage or a funeral ceremony of their near and dear ones gets back to work on the next day !  ¶ 8:47 AM 0 comments

  Beautiful Kaveri

On our way to Yercaud we saw , hardly a furlong from the road, the beautiful Kaveri glistening in the morning sun . We stopped on the road to have a closer look at the river which was full with water ,flowing bank to bank. It was a spectacular sight . Apparently the Karnataka authorities have released the waters for use by the Tamilnadu side. Generous ? No. It was probably because the dam on their side was bursting at the seams !  ¶ 5:03 AM 0 comments

  The British contribution to India

The Mettur dam , constructed over a period of nine years between 1935 and 1944 cost just Rs.4.80 crores to the exchequer ! Amazing how much the amount would work out to at today's money value ! About Rs 4800 crores ? Mind -boggling.  ¶ 8:00 AM 0 comments

  Sankagiri, the hill fort

On the way to Yercaud we climbed some distance of the massive fort of Sankagiri , supposed to be the fort occupied by Tipu Sultan and Hyder Ali in the 19 th century . We tried to see the renovated Perumal temple on the hill but could not , because it was closed at that time.The steps leading to the top and the massive fortified walls and stone halls with carvings of Sita Rama and Hanuman were amazingly beautiful. My own hunch is that it would have been a Hindu ruler's fort later occupied by the Moslem rulers .That is what probably explains the Hindu motifs on the stone pillars.  ¶ 7:25 AM 0 comments

  Yercaud , the poor man's Ooty


Yesterday we were at Yercaud , one of the lesser known hill stations of Tamilnadu nestled in the Eastern ghats.The temperature , a nice 28 degrees or so, was very enjoyable and the thick woods were as beautiful as the Topslip ones which I had seen last month.

I could not see Kurunji , the flower that blooms only once in twelve years.Nor could I go the Servarayan temple which leads you into a cave which is supposed to stretch right upto Mysore .The flowers were exotic and beautiful and the tall silver oaks enchanting.There is supposed to be a wishing well into which the local belief says that if you manage to throw at least one stone out of three ,turning your back you may run into luck and get what you desire .No such luck for me because nobody told us where the well was !  ¶ 6:59 AM 0 comments

  Marudajalapathy temple

 

 Close to Coimbatore there is the temple of Marudhajalapathy (Lord Subramaniam) on a picturesque hillock . The legend says a certain Siddha , who was doing penance under a Marudha tree here, prayed to Lord Subramaniam asking for water to quench his thirst and lo and behold there was water springing from the roots of the Marudha tree. Hence the Marudhachalapathy name of the Lord of the temple.  

  When I visted the Topslip forest I tried to read about the life of the aboriginals of the forest there .One very interesting thing about these people is the part played by their Gods in their lives . Every single natural phenomenon is attributed to some God and if the harvest is good there is thanksgiving to the Gods in the form of various sacrifices. If the Gods do not deliver on their promises  they are held accountable and   severe punishment is meted out to the Gods by way of transfer of their residences to different locations !     
 

  ¶ 11:16 PM 0 comments

  The Mother of Bannari
 
 
Two hours drive from Tirupur , on the Tamilnadu-Karnataka border there is this three hundred-years old temple of Amman (Parvati ) which is very popular in this part of the country .Close to the Satyamangalam forest the temple  is reportedly visited some times  by Virappan of the sandalwood fame . While not much of the earlier structure seems to have survived the temple has a beautiful inner sanctum and the idol of Parvati remains intact .
  ¶ 11:16 PM 0 comments

  An appointment with child-God
 
Yesternight we had travelled to Guruvayur and stayed for the night there , at the Bank's guest house, for the early morning darshan of the Lord. At 2 morning we walked to the temple , wearing a dhoti and an upper cloth and joined the already swelling crowd of devotees waiting in the queue. The temple was absolutely marvellous , a fifteenth century structure built in the typical Kerala style architecture of stone and wood with leisurely slanting roofs and wooden structures  so prettily finished that they looked like metalwork . The charged atmosphere was simply wonderful with devotees jostling with each other in the temple sanctum chanting God's name. Little Balakrishna seemed to watch us everywhere with His wonderful smile ,with amused indulgence .

  ¶ 11:16 PM 0 comments

  A night in the forest


This Sunday we went to the nearby Topslip forest which is situated on the Tamilnadu-Kerala border and extends to cover large areas in both the States. We stayed in the forest Resthouse thanks to the courtesies of the Warden of the Forest Mr. Ganesan who is related to one of our colleagues here.

At night , we went ,along with a trained forest guard , into the jungle trying to spot some wild animals . Our efforts did not yield much results except for one or two bisons and some sambars we could spot in the searchlight beamed from our swaraj mazda van .The efforts were of course rewarding because we could feel the awesome power of the forest at night . Small herds of spotted deer could be seen grazing very near to the Guesthouse.

That was a beautiful resthouse constructed by the British in 1926 . All through the night I heard the bamboo stalks making gentle moaning sounds against the wind . I would have loved to watch rain through the glass windows of the resthouse.

  ¶ 1:50 AM 0 comments

  Avinashi, the Southern Kashi

Yesterday I visited the 15th century Avinashi-easwaran temple , magnificent in its splendour and grandeur.A beautiful temple with a hoary past , the temple is famous for its association with the poet-saint Sunderamurty Nyanar who was supposed to have brought back to life a three-year-old boy killed by a crocodile . The myth has rich poetic possibilities . I tried converting the myth into poetry but could not somehow make much out of it . May be , I will try later when I am properly charged !

At Avinashi the colleague took me to a nadi-astrologer who was supposed to predict your future by looking at your thumb-impression which will be analysed with the help of age-old palm leaves in the possession of these astrologers. Today he tells me that the records pertaining to me are not available with him and he has therefore sent my thumb impression to Tanjore for a detailed examination using their palm leaf data base there ! I keep my fingers crossed in the meanwhile. I pray that he will tell me some nice things !  ¶ 5:32 AM 0 comments

 
A matter of inside pride


Tirupur city upholds our honour
And our citizens' modesty
A matter of inside pride
For its undying undie industry .

  ¶ 2:11 AM 0 comments

  I now 'knit' my brows in Tirupur


My travels resumed at the end of the evaluation of exam. papers that I had been asked to do at Hyderabad. I landed here , in Tirupur, the knitwear city , very close to the Towel city of Erode where I had spent a month last February .Tirupur is the city which supplies undergarments to the whole country . Apparently it is all a matter of "andar ka mamla " !  ¶ 7:37 AM 0 comments

  Midsummer in Midnapore



I stayed at Midnapore for 17 days , to be precise. The first one week was unbearably hot . Then there were rains at night , rains which lashed the hotel room windows violently , hurling waves after waves of water through the chinks of the window. The town looked so oldworldly and the life so leisurely.

I could go to Bishnupur on a Sunday . Bishnupur had so many 18 th century temples of terra cotta ,constructed in the typical Bengal temple style which incorporated the elements of a rural mud - house with a sloping roof . Only a few ruined temples had the Orissan temple architecture . The Bankura clay horses did not impress me much but the balucheri sarees of Bishnupur , of which i picked up two , did.  ¶ 8:40 AM 0 comments

  Midsummer in Midnapore

Now in Midnapore , a small town ,blazing -hot . The hotel is Rs1500 + per diem ,a so-called suite with a small bedroom and an ante---room. The saving grace is the a.c.s in both the rooms are working. I insisted on the poor B.M. to install an a.c. in his cabin which of course he did.Let us see how it goes here.
  ¶ 8:39 AM 0 comments

  Oh Calcutta!


Back again in Calcutta , now Kolkata, the city of joy . Whose joy is not clear. The listlessness is still there. Communism has not filled their bellies . The garbage continues to stink. I of course stay in the Grand Oberoi hotel in the comfort of a Rs.4000 per day room having a breakfast fancily priced at Rs.500.







Volvo- E-Volvo


Yesterday I travelled ,overnight , by the Volvo on Mumbai-Hyderabad road .It was indeed a pleasant experience. I had got into the bus at 5 o clock in the evening at Mumbai and reached Hyderabad at 7 a.m.That was a lovely bus ride .









Bengal's lost glory


From the run -down condition of most of the Kolkata's buildings and the total absence of slick shopping malls that dot the cityscape everywhere else one comes to the conclusion that Kolkata has lost its pre-eminence among the modern cities of India .However this remains a culturally alive city .The amount of breast-beating that the Bengali intelligentsia have done after the loss of Tagore's Nobel Prize shows that concern for culture is still alive . In other cities nobody cares.The poem which I wrote on the subject a few days ago goes :



Mother Kali


Mother Kali’s magnificent lidless eyes
Were moist with maternal tears
As Bengal squirmed at her bygone glory
The loss of yesteryears’ literature trophy
Has left its bhadralok bewildered and bereft,entirely.






Thunder and lightning


Yesterday night there was lightning and thunder at the dead of the night. Suddenly the climate has cooled appreciably.In the morning when I came back into my room I found patches of small puddles formed in the maidan which shone beautifully against the morning sun.From the 19 th floor it appeared as if streaks of a dry river suddenly appeared overnight where there was this open ground.

The bridges appeared more beautiful than ever. The yellow taxis which were crossing the bridge looked like toy cars of solid gold from a distance .













Memorable Date !


Guess what , yesterday's date was something to remember ! It was 02-04-2004.






Oh Kolkata



Well. back again here after a gap of less than a month .This time I stay at the Park Hotel , closer to the Foreign Dept. where I am supposed to be spending the next twenty-odd days . The room , on the 19 th floor , which has been given to me in the office has a pretty view of Kolkata and of the magnificent suspension bridges, the old and the new both. Outside , on the ledge,an eagle perched nervously looking at me . Considering the tons of garbage and the oversupply of rodents and other scavengers the presence of eagles is not surprising .







  ¶ 6:48 AM 0 comments

 


Delhi Chalo

On the Delhi-Mathura highway a very curious thing can be seen . There are everywhere dancing bears,literally, on the side of the road. I was surprised to see so many people trying to make a living out of dancing bears. A haikoo is not out of place here :

Big black bears
Dance dutifully on the highway
To douse their master's hunger-fires

The other thing is the large number of camel-driven carts carrying huge cartloads of cattle-fodder . The caravans carry very funny-looking tarpaulin-crates ,oversized and an absolutely comic sight.







Agra Chalo

The last Sunday I went to see the Taj . Imperious kings , beautiful queens and catacombs of powerful people of the 15 th century .The Queen delivered the fourteenth child and turned into cold marble.







Dehi chalo


Here in Delhi the Centre Point Hotel was quite a bit of come -down . Smelly and dingy . The only plus point is its nearness to the Overseas Branch . I decide not to shift to another hotel. In desperation I write a poem , in the dinginess of the hotel,entitled "You , me and God " . The title sums up my mental state!








End of the E-Road


End of the E-road, that is . Today evening when I catch the Kerala-Hyderabad express.





The Cheddi-banian city


While driving down to Tanjore from Erode we passed through Karur ,the famous cheddi-banian city which produced a relatively respectable- sized bank , The Karur Vysya Bank Ltd , with around 40 branches spread throughout this region. A formidable presence in this region the KVB is giving a tough fight to other banks . More importantly Karur is known the world over as the Cheddi-baniyan city , the hosiery capital of Tamilnadu .The Karur businessmen are astute people with a keen money sense. A Karur crorepati sitting in our bank was trying , the other day, to make an s.t.d call on the bank's phone although he had a mobile in his hands, in order to save a few rupees !








Nocturnal Creatures


In Tiruchirapalli the roads are busy and the shops full of people even at the dead of the night . Buses ply even at midnight ! These guys are absolutely nocturnal creatures . When they sleep is a big mystery because the hotels are open in the wee-hours with steaming idlis doing brisk business .The typical hotel works round the clock . Only at night you dont get a thali but only tiffins as they call it here. Similar situation prevails in all Tamilnadu cities !








The little girl who saved the Dist Collector




In1814 a certain English gentleman named Mr.William Garrow turned an ardent devotee of the Goddess Bhavani in the town Bhavani . He got made three holes in the temple wall through which he would offer worship to the diety as he could not enter the sanctum due to his Christian faith. He also gifted an ivory bed to the Goddess engraved with his name. All because a little girl had walked in pouring rain into the Inspection bungalow where he was sleeping and waking him up led him out of the bungalow which crashed soon there after. When he pursued the girl he found her disappearing into the sanctum of the temple.

Surely that was Mother Bhavani herself who saved the District Collector in the guise of a little girl.









The towel city




Erode , the towel city, insists on wiping(not off )the entire population of the country .On Monday nights you have all-night markets where traders from all over the country , more particularly Bihar and U.P. come bargain hunting for towels and lungis which they seem to pick up in entire lots by paying either hard cash or demand drafts in the names of imaginary persons which would be encashed by the towel sellers through a cosy arrangement of routing them through a middle man's bank account. Everything is in place and no law is breached because the drafts are for Rs.49900, just short of the Rs.50000 mark above which demand drafts have necessarily to be routed through bank accounts in terms of the country's income tax laws.




Wiping the population---------------------

Erode's thriving bath-towel industry
Threatens to wipe(not off)
The population of the entire country.






Pisstales of South India




We were returning in a car from our trip to Ooty . On the way I wanted to shoot the spectacular sunset scene and got down to have a good vantage point from which I could do the photoshoot. After I had done the shoot I got back to the front seat where I was sitting beside the driver and the driver started the car immediately .It was only after 10 kms drive that I realised that my companion who had been sitting in the back seat of the car was missing.We turned back and got him into the car . The gentleman had apparently got down without our knowledge to have a hearty piss on the roadside bushes !














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  ¶ 6:32 AM 0 comments

  The popularity of the Mark6 lottery in Hong Kong is unbelievable.Thee is practically nobody in Hong Kong who does not buy these tickets.The people are compulsive gamblers.You can see the whole city crowding in the Happy Valley race course on the weekly race days.Jockey clubs can be found in every corner of the city just like the seven-eleven stores .You can even bet on the telephone.I used to see the Chinese girls in my office going around and collecting moneys for subscription to the Mark6 lottery.A few girls have even got one or two prizes .  ¶ 6:49 PM 0 comments

  The South China Morning Post is the major English newspaper in Hong Kong. Run by a British expat the paper is nothing much to talk about.Any English newspaper in India is far superior to this newspaper both in content and presentation as well .The paper is perhaps hamstrung by limitations of lack of patronage among the predominantly Chinese population of the City and paucity of good staffers.Once the the newspaper did an interview of me on the telephone and published it on the occasion of India's independence day.  ¶ 7:03 PM 0 comments

  Shentzen is a town on the China-Hong Kong border where you find plenty of cheap shopping.Lots of people in Hong Kong cross over the border during the weekend and do their week's shopping at Shentzen .The most interesting thing about the shopping experience at Shentzen is the lookalike merchandise of almost all the branded products.Thus you can pick up a copy of an Omega watch at 100 honkies.A pair of nike shoes at 70 honkies. Many of the haute couture dresses and accessories could be picked up at ridiculously low prices .The only thing is that they are not the real ones but deceptively look like the originals.
Windows of the World in Shentzen is a large park which has models of all the beautiful places of the world and the seven wonders of the world.Our own Taj Mahal attracts quite a large number of tourists who have themseves photographed in Indian attire with the Taj replica in the background.  ¶ 6:57 PM 0 comments

  For minor ailments all my Indian colleagues used to consult a Chinese g.p. who has his office in Wanchai .His name is Dr.Sato .He was o.k.as a general practitioner but the only problem was that he would follow the normal procedure of having all the investigations done before the actual diagnosis is done. There used to be a fairly large number of people waiting to see him and consequently you have to wait for an hour or so every time you want to consult him.Dr Wahid is an Indian doctor whom we found easier to consult .Dr.Wahid , a Tamil moslem,had migrated to Hong Kong years ago and worked for two decades in the Hong Kong health services before he retired.He had married a Chinese woman who was a nurse under him.Dr.Wahid was an excellent doctor whose clients were mostly the Indians .While he himself could not speak much Hindi he could somehow manage with the several Indian patients with a mixture of Hindi ,Tamil and Chinese. I was surprised to see Sardarjis speaking to him in Chinese.  ¶ 5:36 PM 0 comments

  Thanks to a field visit to a potential new unit for business I could visit Guangzhou during my stay in Hong Kong.I never thought that the Chinese towns were so pretty.The glitz of a western city is missing but the old world charm of these towns and cities is simply captivating.People there are so much like the Indians in their daily lives.Only the cities and towns are so much more clean.I did not find people easing themselves on the road .Beggary is no doubt there but apparently not as alarming as in India.The streetside shops are very much like what one would see in Indian towns .
At the Essar Packaging unit which we had visited there the Chinese employees were entirely different from their counterparts in Hong Kong.For a change the Chinese girls who brought coffee seemed to be smiling brilliantly at us although they could communicate nothing with us due to their ignorance of english.The Hong Kong girls have always found it difficult to bring a smile on their lips.  ¶ 10:27 PM 0 comments

  On the i.c.q .I met a Philippino lady,35 years-old, who has an Indian boy friend ( punjabi) .She loves everything Indian and wants to travel to India to see Punjab .She says she knows Punjabi .She has started calling me ''paji'" .Apparently she wants to marry this gentleman and settle down in the U.S. with him .She has a house in Manila and belongs to some northern city of the Phillippines.
This is the second case of a Phillippino girl marrying an Indian .It was only six months ago that I attended the marriage of Saraswati's son with a Phillippino girl in Tirupati.I teased Saraswati about her Phillippino bahu who could be a good house-keeper in the tradition of a Phillippino housemaid.  ¶ 2:17 AM 0 comments

  Sars in Sar ! The casualities have been too many .At the least count 20 people have died of S.A.R.S in Hong Kong.Todays newsreport says that a lot more casualities have taken place in Mainland China .The situation now is like what it was in 1997 when the bird flu hit Hong Kong. Most of these newfangled deseases are transmitted through animals. Doesnt it follow that the world should switch to vegetarianism?  ¶ 6:52 PM 0 comments

  A unique system of microfinancing has been evolved by the Sardarjis in Manila .The Sardarjis have tied up with several roadside restauranteurs for financing their working capital .Under the system the Sardarji lends the working capital for a day and collects the money back with interest at 24% p,a, at the end of the day . The motorcycle-borne Sardar hands over crisp peso notes at 10 a.m. to the hotelier who uses the money for buying the day's provisions which are stocked up well before the lunch time of the office-goers. By evening the hotelier has done his business and is in a position to repay the money to the lender when the latter returns in the evening. The whole lending is hasslefree and has zero nonperforming assets!  ¶ 9:44 AM 0 comments

 
Unlike the poker-faced upwardly mobile Hong Kong citizen the peasants who have recently migrated from Mainland China are much more friendly and have no airs about them.They are more favourably disposed towards Indians .The educated wealthy Chinese thinks that the Indians are a poor lot and somewhat unhygienic .Most of them have an impression about India which is based upon partly what the local media depicts and partly on the interactions they have with the local Indians and Pakistanis many of whom belong to the tough cut-throat business classes. There is a feeling that Indians pursue dishonest exploitationist policies.  ¶ 9:33 AM 0 comments

 
Most of the security staff at the multi-storeyed buildings are upwards of seventy years of age but are surprisingly agile. The old man at our flats retired at the ripe age of eighty .It is not that at that age he became unfit to work.The guy was lean and wiry and was bursting with vigour.It is just that he wanted to get back to his village or some other place in Mainland China .It is amazing to see them so fit although their jobs are sedentary in nature. These guys cant speak English .Conversation with them is ruled out. But the friendliness of these chaps can be easily felt the way they smile at you. Unlike the educated Chinese these guys have an extremely amiable disposition and none of that uppity air of a typical upwardly mobile Hong Kong resident.  ¶ 9:19 AM 0 comments

  They are a bunch of giggling girls ,always on the move and bursting with vitality .They get a statutory minimum wage of 3000 honkies per month;they give everything back to their employers in quality work. Instances of their exploitation by the Chinese employers are many .They have their own union to take cudgels on their behalf.They speak excellent English and are hot favourites with the British employers too. One often hears of the British employer marrying a Philippino maid as a second wife (the first wife continuing to remain in England ).  ¶ 7:25 AM 0 comments

  The Philippino maids make up a sizeable portion of the Hong Kong population .Despite their meagre savings they constitute a major market for cheap clothes and accessories.You find them everywhere in the various shopping malls as well as in the streetside shops .The ten-dollar shops are always crowded with these very active women who always appear to be brimming with a rare joy of life . The Tagalo they speak sounds very much like an Indian language . On Sundays all the roads at the Central are closed to enable these women to congregate in large groups .  ¶ 4:57 AM 0 comments

  There are some interesting stories about the resourcefulness of Sardarjis in Hong kong. The Sardarjis form a sizeable portion of the population there. Many of them belong to the second generation settlers' families. Their fathers had served the British army when Hong kong was under imperial rule. Some of them were also in the imperial constabulary .You can find them in old Chinese movies where they appear as instruments of repression .Nothwithstanding their association with the British brutality they have made a place for themselves in the history of Hong Kong. Today's Sardarjis have integrated themselves with the local Chinese population .Their children study in Chinese medium schools without any hassles.
A number of Sardarjis work as doormen at restaurants and nightclubs. They also work as valets for parking the cars of rich clients who just hand over the car keys to the valet who would take the cars to the nearby parking lot.It is believed that the clients are so munificent that they take out wads of dollar bills from their pockets and stuff them into the valet's palms without counting them.


  ¶ 8:09 AM 0 comments

  One felt so much at home in the Chunking mansion in the kowloon area of Hong Kong .To begin with the whole place was full of our compatriots .The brown skin is all over the place .What is more significant is the 'Indian' feel of the place. The filth there is so much obtrusive in a relatively clean place like Hong Kong.You have all the pan stains ,cigarette butts and blobs of spit which are ubiquitous in any Indian city .You can get our banarasi pan there easily.
As a nation we are compulsive spitters. Even in a relatively cleaner city of Hyderabad you find any road liberally spattered with betel juice.   ¶ 8:29 PM 0 comments

  Once I was talking to a Hong Kong -based Sindhi gentleman at the Hong Kong airport. I asked him how he dealt with the relatively less efficient airport staff in india .It took one hour to complete the immigration/customs formalities in the Bombay airport.His answer flabbergasted me.He would use a wheelchair as soon as he arrived at the Bombay airport which would enable him to get past the immigration /customs staff in a jiffy. He spoke with a glint in his eye taking pride in the manner in which he hoodwinked the airport staff.People now seem to be setting great store by their skills in conning other people .  ¶ 6:44 AM 0 comments

  The Chinese believe in all sorts of mumbojumbo just like us .There was the story of a Chinese neighbour seriously objecting to the presence of the icon of a Ganeshji facing their flat in an Indians drawing room .This man believed that it was some kind of an evil figure transmitting illuck to the neighbours.Very amusing ,isnt it ? Especially because when we consider Ganeshji as the most auspicious presiding deity in all functions.  ¶ 6:28 AM 0 comments

  Nurie Vitachi has written a fine book about the Hong Kong people. One very curious thing about young h.k. girls and boys too, is that they are furiously talking to somebody or other on the mobile even while walking on the road. Does it mean that they have to do some long talks with somebody at home just 5 minutes after leaving their house? The whole city is so small and the public transport is so good one would reach anywhere within 10 minutes. Where is the need for a chat with somebody you took leave of only 10 minutes ago? A colleague of mine used to say that , the old-fashioned man that I am,I am unable to see that they have boy friends to talk to.  ¶ 7:04 AM 0 comments

  My three years stay in Hong Kong has given me a "peak-view" of life back home. It is a kind of a satellite picture like what Rakesh Sharma replied to Indira Gandhi when she had asked him" UPAR SE BHARAT KAISE DIKH RAHA HAI " .The reply was so beautiful: "SARE JAHAN SE ACHHA HAI" .So many times I used to gas away to other expats about the beauty of the life back home .It is not that I was unaware of the grime and squalor of our life and corruption and collective failure .  ¶ 8:16 PM 0 comments

  My son says that you hardly find the Westerners getting angry with people. According to him Indians get upset over trifles and for very trivial reasons lose their temper. One often finds adults in India scolding children over petty matters .Then you find irritated telephone operators ,school teachers and railway clerks who become impatient with people very quickly. During his stint in Hong Kong my son found the westerners( The British more particularly ) listening to you very patiently if you have any query and trying to reply to you as completely as possible. In India if you ask any passerby for directions he may reply to you politely but will give you half-information on the assumption that you know the other half. The Chinese in Hong Kong ,on the other hand , give you a cold stare probaly because they dont understand your heavily accented Indian English .
Coming back to the irritability of an average Indian ,this may perhaps have something to do with the hot dusty climate .The average Indian has to pass through a lot of hassles in his daily life as life is chaotic and nothing comes to you without struggle.  ¶ 7:18 PM 0 comments

  Lots of guys try to be very clever in their phrasing of blogs .Why do they try to do that?If you are using blogs as another form of literary expression I think the spontaneity of a blog is lost. Surely blogs cannot substitute for literature .I wonder if these guys who host these blogs have enough space on their servers , Already tons of stuff exist on them .May be they would empty all this stuff at periodic intervals.  ¶ 5:11 PM 0 comments

  I took thirty years to get rid of nicotine. Now that I have got rid of it I have now found a substitute in the web .This blog thing has now become an obsession with me.I find thousands of people hooked on to this.I wonder if we are not creating a cyber-junkyard.  ¶ 4:57 PM 0 comments