keep the change

It’s a fine line between a gift and a bribe. And a lot of people think no one sees that line anymore. When this man slipped a Rs.100 note to the driver “for tea”, and shone a servile grin at me, I wondered if it didn’t matter to him that the entire street was watching. All eyes hoping that his possibly representative offering will bring a Corporation official to dry their waterlogged homes. Maybe the press could pressurize the real authorities to act. Let’s flatter their ego, whoever they are, if they show a little worry about our stinky streets and open manholes.

The man actually managed a hurt look when we slapped his hand away. Immediately, he appealed to my cameraman. As if saying “You’re a man, you know the ways of the world. Let’s let little honest girls be righteous… come on, let us men be realistic.” And the street was still watching. Some soft confident grunts even insisted we stop making a fuss. Once threatened that he was risking us covering his locality at all, he put the dirty money away reluctantly. Not only was he still not convinced we were for real, he clearly thought we were idiots and wouldn’t survive in this bad bad world.

But I do think I won’t survive in this bad bad world too long. If you’re not screeching down the road, the traffic won’t part for you. If you’re not a foul-mouthed feudal lord, many who work under you do not respect you. If you’re not a hard-ass bribe-taking (and giving) reporter, you don’t get the scoop. Forget the scoop, you don’t even get what every reporter in the world and his never-leave-the-office editor has got. The realization makes me feel old. And pitifully young. At the same time.

Another day, a man in the court slipped a 500 to a tamil newspaper journalist. In a few minutes, he was powdering his precious nose for many camera interviews. “Should I look at camera or to my left? Is this white shirt a problem? Yes, yes, I’ll wear my robe” He’d done it all before, and parroted what some would consider quotable quotes. Nothing clever, nothing funny. Just TV-lingo that TAM and other organizations making money out of scientific ice-vecchufying (flattering) would pin-point as the words “Indian households tuned into”. Sure, how their hair must’ve stood on end when the powdered nose quivered in passion to “Justice must be done!” But his 500 mars his credibility.

Maybe they've learnt a hard lesson from the sharks of the journalism trade. Maybe they want to make sure they’ve done all they can. Leave no stones unturned, is what they say, I think. But the lady can demand to know when her story will come on air when I’ve just walked into her home and stuck a camera in her face. The uncompensated can expect reaction, even if temporary, from the authorities if they see the story. The ones fighting for their homes have every right to demand an answer from an often TRP-enslaved me when the twist of a cricketer’s knee elbows out their unfair eviction. But they cannot demand a space in the viewers' minds by handing me a note. Many journalists will continue to make the aggrieved believe in their supreme, far-reaching individual power. But if they’ve done so for a few sodden rupees, their power is not that supreme, is it?

Why is there widespread trust in underhandedness? Money makes the world go around, someone I didn’t much pay attention to, used to say. But if it’s your money, can it please just pass me by? I’d like to keep my conscience. They say it’s getting rare.

postal dilemma

Who should I write to if I want to apologize for the world?

baby you can drive my car

There is a remarkable amount of talk about women drivers. The usual accusations: too slow, can't park, too panicky.

It is believed that every woman driver, without exception, sucks. There are still some countries where insurance companies refuse to cover women drivers. There are books dedicated to the subject. Example: "28 Days: What your cycle reveals". We understand, the book says, you have menstrual cycle, you poor girl. It isn't your fault that PMS makes you take the wrong lane, it consoles. But also suggests that anyone with lower levels of oestrogen is bound to be a better driver.

There are tons of "humour" websites with photographs of bizarre accidents and cars stupidly parked inside pedestrian subways, and a caption in capital letters reading "Yes! It's a woman!!" Some driving schools in Chennai too offer women learners longer classes so they don't hit the road in a hurry. The nicer people empathize with this innate incapacity to drive: maybe she's born with confusion about gears.

Yes, bad women drivers do overtake from the inside, they do maintain irritatingly low speeds on highways, they do take ages to park. But the bad male drivers (yes, they do exist) do the same things without being bumped/rushed/yelled off the road for their road skills, or alleged lack of them.

An Australian Transport Safety Bureau's website makes an interesting observation from accident statistics involving men and women drivers. The national toll is decreasing, they say, but the number of women drivers killed and hospitalised is increasing. "This is due to an increase in the number of women obtaining drivers' licences and an increase in the amount of travel they are undertaking." If there are more women figuring in the accident statistics, it doesn't immediately mean they're getting worse by the minute. It just means more women drivers are now included in the total count.

Busy as we are shaking our heads ruing "these women drivers", we forgive those men who would take sharp swerves around wrong sides in peak hour traffic to say, "Madam, what are you doing?" Whatever we might say about women at the wheel, it is hardly an equal road for her and her male counterpart. The teenaged boy shifting gears lurchingly isn't offered a Traffic Rules manual at the next signal. The man on the cell phone driving in the two-wheeler lane doesn't get knocked on his bumper by angry motorists. When the call-taxi always in a hurry whizzes past a red light, no one yells expletives about the driver's flawed genes. And no male driver has to try and block out the lurid gaze of the woman in front, twisting her rear-view mirror for a better look at his chest.

Update: Some phew-ness here.

the world needs cartoons

"Everybody has a cartoon of themselves," suggests David Remnick, the editor of New Yorker, a magazine famous for cartoons, "Mine is: I write very fast, and I'm ruthlessly efficient with my time."

This is fun! Let me see... Mine is: I eat a lot of rice, and come up with stunningly crackerjack last minute ideas."
Tentative name: Last minute rani (with a ticking clock showing 11th hour in the background)

What cartoon are you?

BlogCamp!

I went, buzzed around, and because I was covering it, didn't get to listen to anything except for one little limerick by Aparna Ray. Were there really just 200 people at the BlogCamp? That was supposed to be the upper limit of the number of participants, because as Kiruba says, "After that, it's either too chaotic, or we'll have to induce structure to make things more orderly." And at this event, asking for order and structure is blasphemous.

What excited me was that in a BlogCamp, if you're in the audience, and can't believe how boring the speaker is, you can actually stand up and show him how wide you can yawn. Fun, but that's a long way off. The rules have been broken for you, but it takes a while to relish that freedom. While some people sat with legs crossed on the table, some others hissed "How rude!" on the side. Teachers in school have trained almost irreversibly to only speak when we're spoken to. You wanna say something? You raise your hand, buster.

But the unconference did show signs of weaning its participants away from the usual conference etiquette. I caught at least half the people bringing their lunch plate to the table; those who didn't have probably had bad (and common) experiences of sambar splashes on their keyboard (No, drumstick sambar was last week. This week T,H, and N have slurped onion sambar).

There were bloggers who talked about pet fish and pandas, fashion (unrelated to the pandas), rural connectivity, disaster management, sleeping on the job while your blog earns for you, body shopping, blog journalism, podcasting, firewall skirting, how to avenge those that steal your content, how to increase your hitcount (I need to learn a thing or two), how to be likeable.

But today, a certain sense of wooziness was perceptible as soon as I entered the room. When I asked if it was post-lunch ennui, someone corrected me. “Post Beach House party booziness!”

I wish I’d hung around a little longer, but as soon as too many people started noticing my CNN IBN mike logo and saying "Why don't you attend my talk on a very pathbreaking concept," I decided it was time to leave. After all, they know that a little appearance in the media can do much for your blog. At the same time, I did know of some interesting bloggers like Amit Agarwal only through TV. It’s not surprising that blog-branding and promotion was one of the talks. But I was primarily looking out for blogs with a cause, and found Osama Manzar. He doesn’t blog himself, but came from Delhi to ask bloggers to be responsible in their writing—in that they don’t just detail their breakfast menu, but write of what they see in their travels. “Not take Coca Cola to the villages, but bring the sherbet to the city,” he said. His Digital Empowerment Foundation searches for solutions to bridge the digital divide. They’re the guys that awarded the now quiet and bitter youth, Raghav Mahto, for his enterprise in running his own radio station from rural Bihar.

I expected less tolerance for clichés in such an environment, but politeness and a will to be democratic let some sessions unclocked. Of course, it’s also probably just my patience that needs work. But being at the BlogCamp (even for a few hours) was great— you can almost hear the whirring of minds. And it’s a place where you meet so many you’ve only just read before. Even for those who spend more time in the virtual world than in the real one, shaking the hand of your favourite URL can put you in a great mood.