The Day on which Nothing Happened

The screeching ring of the intercom woke us up from our deep slumber. It was reception lady calling to remind us that 9-30 AM was the official check out time. “What time is it now?” queried Chinmay who had been the quickest to reach the receiver (well, it was not a great feat to beat two lazy bums who were more than happy to continue to snuggle in their respective beds). The receptionist had been overly optimistic and had given the reminder call just 5 minutes prior to the scheduled check-out time. We somehow managed to pack-up everything, got ourselves in reasonably presentable attire and proudly handed over the keys just about 35 min late. The train which was going to take us onwards to Gokarna was to arrive at Kudal station at around midnight and so we had entire day to kill in the hamlet of Tarkarli, without a roof on our head. Dumping our luggage at the reception (the reception lady was kind enough to allow us to do so. May be the hallowed CB-effect played a part), we proceeded to the open-air restaurant to grab a rather late breakfast.

As we were chomping on Omlettes and Upamas, I began with my favourite pass-time – IIMA bashing. Chinmay responded eagerly with a ‘bring it on’ expression; like the one you would find on the face of a heavy-weight boxer matched up against a feather-weight opponent. To my surprise, the placecommer chipped-in with his fair share of cribs as well. After about half an hour of finding faults with our esteemed college, one which we were supposed to be extremely fortunate to be a part of, we mutually decided to digress onto more productive topics. We shared our knowledge on everything from music, to list of ‘home-runners’, to origin and progression of religions. The placecommer, who was fidgeting around all the time, intermittently kept narrating to us the enormous virtues of the great land of Sikkim; with which he so obviously was awe-struck. This inspired both, Chinmay and I, to go ahead with some of our own travelogues. All throughout we were treated to the melodious symphony of the sound of waves, which were gently bringing in the morning tide. The enriching and enlightening discussions temporarily caused me to change my idol from Warren Buffett to Socrates. We sat and talked for so long that, by lunch time the only occasion on which any of us had left our breakfast table, was when I walked away to answer nature’s call. Chinmay never once got up from his chair and would have made a felicitous specimen for a Fevicol advert.

Post lunch, we decided to embark on the long, arduous walk towards the beach, which was not more than a hundred feet away. By this time, the tide had begun receding, exposing the magnificent, light grey beach sand. Once on the beach, we gave our over-stressed jaws a break and spent most of the next 2-3 hours in complete silence. As Chinmay deserted us and ventured along on a lonely, romantic walk; the placecommer and I discovered a delightful and fun-filled hobby. We decided to walk-in with the tide, taking small steps forward; all the time ensuring that we just averted our feet being wetted by the incoming waves. In a matter of half an hour or so, we had managed to traverse a distance of a whole ten yards; reaching the conclusion that the speed of receding tide was about 20 yards/hour. As the afternoon sun shimmered through the predominantly overcast sky, the placecommer resorted to his narcissistic habit of clicking his own photographs. So I trudged along the pristine beach, occasionally crouching to pick up a couple of colourful seashells.

Soon it was time for me to leave for my native place of Walaval, a small village about 35kms from Tarkarli. As I waited at the entrance of the MTDC beach resort for some mode of transport to take me to Malwan, a fisherman’s van whizzed past and I wondered if I should have summoned it for a lift. As luck would have it, just minutes later I found a good Samaritan in the form of a jeep driver who offered to drop me to the Malwan bus stand, from where I boarded a state transport bus for Walaval. As I was feasting on some sumptuous fried fish in our traditional, family villa; Chinmay and the placecommer (this they later told me) were sipping on their caramel-flavoured army drink, looking into moonlight sky. Later that night, as this uneventful day drew to a close, we converged at Kudal station, wondering whether the next 2 days in Gokarna were going to turn out to be as wonderful as our stay in Tarkarli. And as I end this note, I am left wondering as to how I needed more than eight hundred words to jot down the litany of events that took place on the day on which nothing really happened.

We get knocked down, but we get up again

Back in August 2006, I made an audacious retort to a Liverpool fan friend of mine who kept mocking me with the 18-5 to 15-2 argument. As much as I didn’t believe in it myself, I dared to counter him by claiming that it would be 18-5 a piece in 3 years time. Guess what? What might have then seemed like a fool-hardy jibe from an over-zealous, arrogant United fan was a draw and 2 wins away from becoming a reality by May 2009.

The summer that followed was anything but depressing. We lost our best player to the sunshine of the Iberian Peninsula and were left licking our wounds in the bitter battle for an Argentinean with our formerly poor, recently turned wealthy, neighbours. The signings of a 24 year old Ecuadorian and a crocked Scouser did little to restore the damaged confidence and more importantly pride. However, no matter what happens over the next two months, the season has transpired into a truly memorable one already, for more reasons than one.

After losing players who combined to score almost a century of goals over the last 2 seasons, United as a team have still managed to hit the back of the net more number of times than at the same stages in each of those seasons. In a year, in which any hope of winning silverware rested on our hallowed defence, we have had to play large portions of it without the 3 sturdy pillars of that back five. Yet as we enter April, United are very much in the hunt for the two biggest prizes in English football. In spite of these remarkable achievements, what has been most heartening is the unprecedented support received by the campaign to win back the club from the American owners and free it from the gigantic debt thrust upon it by them.

Well, rising from the ashes of the Phoenix has always been the ethos of the club. It’s hardly ever been personified as much, as by our reactions to two of the most humbling defeats of this past decade – both 3-0 reverses away from home; against Chelsea in April 2006 and against Milan in April 2007. Sir Alex has always emphasized on bouncing back from losses rather than trying hard to avoid each one of them. I mean no offence to the 2004 Arsenal invincibles, but I am sure any football fan would prefer winning a hat-trick of league titles to going a season with a big nought in the losses column followed by 5 with bigger noughts in the trophies column. Rooney, Ronaldo and co were taught a harsh lesson by the ruthlessly efficient Chelsea juggernaut heading towards its 2nd title on that spring evening in London. I grudgingly accept that it was like watching boys against men. But the kids did grow up very fast to win the next three on the bounce. Same was the case in Milan on the most painful of the rainy European nights. The team responded by going 25 games unbeaten in continental competition, adding one more giant trophy and reaching another final. And as much as the defeat in Rome still hurts, there is one thing that following United over the past decade has taught me, that is “To B.E.L.I.E.V.E”

Manchester United never make it easy to support them. I am sure there are more cases of hyper-tension and chewed off nails in the borough of Trafford than anywhere in England. We don’t end seasons unbeaten nor do we win titles by garnering 95 points and conceding just 15 goals. Supporting United has always been a roller-coaster ride, full of brave, miraculous comebacks interspersed with heart-wrenching defeats but that adds to the fun of it all. And luckily for me and other fellow Mancs, unlike the ones in amusement parks, this roller-coaster more often than not finishes at the very top!

Is IPL a big price?

The debate whether the upcoming 2nd season of IPL should be held or not has dominated both the electronic and print media over the last few weeks. Law abiding, tax-paying citizens are disappointed that they are losing out on some very wholesome entertainment due to ‘dirty’ politicians (there’s such a negative connotation associated with the word these days that Oxford may soon include ‘use with care, some people find it offensive’ in its definition). Someone I was talking to recently raised the question, “Is India so incapable of keeping itself secure?” This reminded me of an incident that happened during my internship in Freiburg, Germany last summer.

I was having a discussion about crime rates in Mumbai and other Indian cities with a German friend and I happened to mention the contribution of the encounter specialists in the Mumbai police department towards wiping the city off dangerous criminals. He was astonished to hear this and also gave me a mini lecture on humanity, justice and the right of all human beings to a fair trial. All the while I listened silently but not for a lack of retort. A reply on the lines of “how could a man who had lived in a city where ‘cycle theft’ is the most common crime, ever comprehend the measures necessary to provide security in a country where businessmen getting murdered, women getting raped and cop and army convoys being ambushed were not that rare occurrences?” would have clearly exposed his narrow outlook in accessing the morality of the ‘killer cops’. But I couldn’t come to terms with honestly accepting these ghastly shortcomings of my country in front of a foreigner.

Many of those, advocating vociferously in favor of the IPL, suffer from the same predicament. For all of our economic and technological progress, we still are a country where bombs explode in a major city once every couple of years and whose neighbors derive more pleasure by causing her trouble than securing their own progress. Mind you, I would love it if we had the IPL, not so much because I am an ardent T20 fan but because it would be a matter of pride that we are able to carry on with our normal lives at a time when armed militia are flouting the most basic human rights just a few hundred kilometers from our borders. The point is our security forces are not confident enough to handle the load of the elections and such a big international sporting event together. And postponing or canceling it is a small price to pay in return for the assurance of fair violence-free elections.

Freedom of expression ?

People with the power to reach a wide audience abuse this power of theirs all too often. I have been wanting to write about it ever since I saw the ‘the need for revival of interest in PAF’ performance at the Performing Arts Festival in the institute about a year ago. The theme revolved around how the hitherto most important event of the institute cultural calendar was drawing lesser and lesser participation and showcased the lament of the PAF creators towards the lazy bums who have no passion towards it. As a matter of fact, the prevalence of computers in student rooms has resulted in dwindling attendances in most extra-curricular and social activities on campus. A couple of years back, there was a lengthy discussion in the Institute Sports Council regarding the glaring dearth of students using the plentiful sporting facilities on campus. Sadly, sports-lovers never got a chance to sing about their grievances owing to the lack of a medium. And the writers of the aforementioned PAF, who had that medium, never felt the need to address the larger issue.
Well, this isn’t all that surprising. We find the mass media, both print and electronic, using this power to much greater effect all the time. If one remembers, the Government boycotted the broadcast of all news channels for a brief period during the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai when it was thought that the television footage was potentially aiding the assailants. I was left stunned when the usually excellent Arnab Goswami launched a scathing attack on the administration accusing them of intruding on fundamental Constitutional rights and hailing the media as saviors. On the contrary, the completely irresponsible live telecast of the detailed movement of the commandos should have brought remorseful apologies from the man.
Over the years the media has displayed their tremendous intolerance towards any criticism and ridicule quite a few times. A few years ago they were up in arms against the Shah Rukh Khan starrer ‘Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani’ which sarcastically showed the no-holds-bar battle between two power and money hungry media barons; the extensive bad press causing the movie to be a box-office disaster. I agree that although the movie had some refreshingly funny moments, overall it was quite a shoddy piece of cinema. But much worse has been dealt with much less severely by our self-righteous newsmen.

Last Day in Mensa

As I returned my Mensa card this afternoon after lunch, the gourmet inside me was reeling under a pungent sense of melancholy. I had just finished my last meal in the Flugplatz Mensa and it had dawned upon me that the next time I eat in a refectory, it would be the Hostel-4 mess in IIT Bombay.

I have tasted the entire gamut of animal flesh – from beef to turkey to fish and also feasted on a variety of vegetarian cuisines like spargel and südtiroler here. Although, I have never had a chance to visit the Rampartstraße Mensa adjoining the University’s main campus, I have heard rave reviews about the same in terms of both the quality and variety.

In stark contrast, to label the food in H-4 mess as pathetic would be a euphemism. It’s high time the IIT authorities wake up to the fact that along with good education, healthy food is also a vital component in the development of a student.

In spite of all this, students here often crib about the deplorable taste of the meals served in the Mensa. When will men start being happy with what they have? … I wonder!

The German Language

"Thank you for travelling with Deutsch Bahn" - the next time I travel by an ICE, I am going to pay careful attention to this announcement, especially the words 'Thank' and 'with'. Wondering why? At the DAAD Stammtisch this Mittwoch (that’s Wednesday in German), I met an American girl who was majoring in Linguistics and the topic for her Masters thesis was the German pronunciation of the English 'th'.

The love Europeans have towards weather-talk is well-documented but from my experience their favourite topic of conversation is 'languages and accents'. One of the first questions I am bombarded with after my revelation of my Indian origins is 'how many languages you people have and how many of them can you speak?’ So, I will take a leaf out of their book and write a blog on the German language.

The German syllable which has attracted my fascination is the 'tsch' which although not exactly same, is quite similar to the 'ch' in English('ch' as in 'chair' not as in 'choir'). You must have noticed it making an appearance in 'Deutsch'. Its usage is quite widespread as you can see in 'Tschüss' meaning 'bye' and 'Tschechischen Republik' which stands for the Czech Republic. Even after knowing this, I would revere you, if you manage to give me the correct German spelling of the Russian tennis player, Anna Chakvetadze. Another syllable which is interesting in relation to Deutsch is the 'j'. Now, you might be aware that like the Dutch, the Germans pronounce 'j' as 'y'; as is evident in the utterance of 'ja' meaning yes (I guess that is from where we have got the English slang 'ya') or 'Joachim'. But what I found weird was that the Germans resemble the Iberians in the way they pronounce the English 'je'. You will know what I mean in case you have heard how the name Javier of the Argentine midfielder Mascherano is pronounced. With this background, I guess they would spell 'Chechnya' as ‘Tschetschnija’.

Even so, German system of spelling isn't flawed like English. Just like in Indian languages, you pronounce as you spell and vice-versa. But all those I have interacted with seem to agree on one point; that German has the most difficult grammar and sentence construction among all European languages. Another notable feature of German is that all nouns, even common nouns, have their first letter capital.

Moving on to vocabulary, I have 3 favourites here. Anyone who has given GRE recently might recollect that 'apothecary' means a druggist. Well if you have ever visited Germany there is no way on earth you will ever forget that. 'Apotheke' is the German word for 'Chemist' and you find these 'Apotheke' shops all over the place. With infectious ailments almost absent here, I have often wondered how so many of them manage to sustain. Do you know the evolution of the word 'bus'? It is actually an abbreviation of 'omnibus' meaning for everyone since a bus is a means of transport for everyone. Now, although colloquial German does take the liberty of using the abridged version, formal announcements in trains and trams always say 'omnibusbahnof' while referring to a bus-top. The names of all weekdays in English end in ‘day’. The same is the case with Hindi and Marathi. But German has one anomaly. Although Monday in Montag and Tuesday is Dienstag (tag means day in German), as I already mentioned above Wednesday is Mittwoch meaning middle of the week. At least, that solves the dichotomy as to on which day does the week begin; Sonntag or Montag.

Apparently, there are more than 50 different dialects in Germany, some quite similar, some mutually unintelligible. The ‘standard’ Deutsch used in newspapers or businesses is ‘Hochdeutsch’. That is also the dialect you will learn if you enrol for a language course in the Max-Muller Bhavans in India. Although it is understood almost everywhere in Germany, it is practised in regular usage only by people from the Hannover-Hamburg region. Even the state of Baden-Württemberg has 2 different dialects – Badish, in use on the Western slopes of the Blackforest and Swabian, spoken along the Eastern slopes. According Thomas, a friend of mine, who hails from Stuttgart and has majored in American history, Swabian speaking people find it easiest to imitate the American-English accent. Another very strange German dialect is the Alemannic, which most Germans, used to other dialects, find difficult to comprehend.

In spite of so much diversity within, a German is quick to distinguish a foreigner on the basis of his accent, irrespective of his lexical and grammatical perfection. Not just that, they can even pin-point the nationality of the foreigner (if he is European of course) on hearing him utter a few sentences in German. And the same goes to a German, fluent in English, who has migrated to the UK. And here I thought only Indians discriminated on linguistic basis!

An hour by the road-side

I am sitting on a wooden bench thoughtfully placed under the foliage of a giant pine tree. Its a pleasant Saturday morning - almost noon now actually. I have just finished reading "Jeeves and the Song of Songs". In it Jeeves, Bertie Wooster's butler, once again displays his sagacity in hatching an ingenious plan to prevent Tuppy Glossop from drifting away from Bertie's cousin Angela. As with any of the readers of Wodehouse's tales, Jeeves is one of my favorite fictional characters.

Oh! I forgot to mention how I landed up on this bench. I am on my way to Todtnauberg in the Blackforest mountains - the birthplace of the "Schwarzwalder Kirschtonte" or the Blackforest cake. I had contemplated a shout at hitch-hiking initially but then resigned to an hour long wait for the next bus. So here I am with time to kill in this idyllic hamlet of Notscheri.

Having only had a glass of hot chocolate for breakfast (I avoid saying Bournvita for the fear of sounding juvenile), I am quite hungry by now and cant wait to devour on a medley of chocolate, cream, cherries and cake.

Meanwhile, a middle-aged couple, who seem to have returned from an errand into the woods, have joined me on the bench. After exchanging the usual pleasantaries (read gutentag meaning good day), they have expectedly gone quite silent. They have been exchanging words sporadically but hardly any sound has reached my ears although I am only a couple of feet away.

A dozen super-bikes have whizzed by just moments ago, disturbing the tranquility and quietude of the scene. I have encountered these gangs on each of my three weekend jaunts in the blackforest.

As I write, the couple has just walked away to the bus stop. Maybe it is time for the bus to arrive. Fortunately, I have yet to venture into "The Episode of Dog Mcintosh". The last few minutes have provided the most charming setting to submerge oneself into the delightful world of Mr.Wodehouse.

The Chain that Never Sleeps

While relishing a Fruit Yogurt at 5 am on a Tuesday morning at Karlsruhe station, my mind nostalgically went back to the day on which I had heard this hallowed name for the first time. It had been less than a week since this giant had set foot on Indian soil and my Dad had taken us to have our maiden taste of globalization. It was ironical that we had to wait for almost 2 hours in the queue to grab our meal at an eatery which prided itself on instant service. Well, even the best are helpless when Indians decide to turn up in numbers.

Since then it has rapidly spread its tentacles through the length and breadth of the country, all throughout maintaining its ambition to grab the hottest property. Just as you find an outlet outside Paris Est, at Berlin Hbf, below the Golden Roof or on Mozart street; you encounter one in front of Victoria Terminus, inside Water Kingdom and across the road at Andheri station. It set a benchmark by selecting Linking road, Bandra for its first outlet in India which was soon emulated by Barista and KFC. “If a square is the most visited one in the city, we must have a shop there” – seems to be their motto.

One laudable attribute of this chain is its continual endeavour to blend with the local culture and culinary habits, as is evident from the ingression of the aloo tiki in it’s highly Indianised menu or the accretion of the café to it’s eateries across Europe or displaying the traditional wrought iron nameplate at it’s store on Getreidegasse in Salzburg.

On a personal level too, I have had a couple of experiences with this giant which I deem worth mentioning. Staying true to its word of a free drink if your meal is not delivered within a minute, once when the last grain of sand dropped from the hourglass with my order not being ready, I was immediately handed a cup of coke. The eatery also came to my rescue during our night-out at Berlin station. It was the last shop to close at 2am and the first to open just a couple of hours later.

While waiting in line on that night some 12-13 years ago, I had wondered if it was worth it. In hindsight, it certainly was and much more. It may accrue criticism for its monotony or for being the prime culprit behind an over-sized America, but for a hunger-stricken traveller in alien land renowned for unpalatable bland food, the sight of the thirteenth letter of the English alphabet will always bring solace

Size does matter

One of my notions about the developed nations was cheap availability of basic necessities of life, which in modern world subsumes communications along with food, clothing and shelter. Hence, I was quite taken aback by the exorbitant calling rates in Germany. This topic sprung back to my mind after I happened to read about the proposed AT&T take over of Aircel.

The article mentioned that only about 25% of India’s population had access to cellular services and hence AT&T was keen to capitalise on the immense growth potential of the Indian cellular market. This prompted me to analyse my earlier query in greater depth.

Let’s do some number crunching to arrive at a rough estimate. Considering India’s population to be about 1.2 billion, 25 % of that would mean about 300 million cell users. Leaving out the old Germans, who are certainly not acquainted with the gizmos, kids and the few below the poverty-line, who can’t afford cells, claiming 75% of Germans own mobiles wouldn’t be that wild a guess. Since the population of Germany is about 80 million, that adds up to 60 million cellular customers. Now, say an average Indian talks about 10 times as much as an average German - I am certainly not exaggerating here. Germans could easily be the most laconic people in the world and Indians, the most garrulous – that would amount to 50 times as much talk-time consumed in India as compared to Germany. The local calling rates in the 2 countries are around Re.1/min and 25 cents/min. That would mean that even under current conditions, Indian cellular service providers earn an estimated 3 times as much revenue as their German counterparts. If you also take into account the fact that we in India are charged ridiculously high rentals (I don’t have an idea of the general picture, but T-Mobile didn’t charge me a dime for its 3 month service.) and also the huge gulf in the salaries of the employees in the 2 countries, you realise why they need to have such high calling rates in Germany.

In spite of all this, the above discussion has an inherent Indian bias. While we have to pay roaming rates to make and receive calls once outside our states, the rate is same wherever you travel in Germany. That just multiplies the profits of Bharti, Reliance and co manifolds.

An Aberration

The most incredible litany of events unfolded over the lunch table today. For the 1st time since my arrival in Germany, I shared food with a German. Not just that, in fact I ate from someone else's plate. It might not be an incident worth mentioning for us Indians, but if you have read my previous blogs you will realise that this unprecedented occurence does call for a post at the very least.

To elaborate, a new female student joined our laboratory at IMTEK yesterday. Actually now she is the sole representative of the fairer sex in our hitherto all-guy department. Apparently German Engineering universities suffer from the same fate as the IITs but more about that later. Back to the point. So, I was having lunch with my lab group. All of us had wiped our dishes clean while this new entrant had left half the salad that she had taken, in her plate. I was startled when Daniel, a phd student in my lab, offered to finish the left-overs from her plate. He later even offered me to help him in his task and together we cleaned up all the remnants of carrots and peas. Then, he even gave a - turn back if a black cat crosses your path - type of explanation for his extra-ordinary act. Purportedly, they believed that if food was left in the plate, inclement weather followed the next day and so he was finishing the salad to prevent this bad omen. For once, I was exposed to the superstitious side of the normally pragmatic Germans :)

I have a nice anecdote to illustrate the similarity between the gender inequalities in German universities and IITs. A few weeks back, I found about 10-12 young girls going in and out of the 3 labs in my department. Quite surprised at seeing alien faces in the department, I posed my query to Andreas, my professor(I quite like this way of addressing your prof by his name). His reply was "We here in Germany are facing the problem of not enough girls opting for engineering, physics and chemical branches. So these school seniors have been brought here to aquaint them with technical fields." When I followed this up with figures from my batch in IIT Bombay, it brought a wide grin to his face.

P.S. - This is not the last you will hear from me about the 'not sharing food' habit of Germans. I have dissected the pros n cons of it in great depth and there's more to follow

Tagebuch – My German Diary – Part I

I have been travelling around a lot in Europe and my stop this weekend was Berlin. It’s a city steeped in history and I had a poignant sensation while learning about the asperities Berliners have had to go through, via the numerous informative writings at Checkpoint Charlie and Reichstag. It was hard to believe that the modern, happening metropolis we were standing in was witness to the worst side of the cold war until 1991. That the Germans have since put their capital on the fast track of development was apparent from the large amount of construction activity going on in Berlin – a fact conspicuous by the numerous cranes that you see while looking in any direction from the Reichstag dome. And to think that this is the scene when the construction business in the developed world is suffering its lowest trough in years, takes the high position the Germans occupy in my eyes a notch higher.

In the evening, with the summer solstice sun still beating down on us, we toured the Olympiastadion. Being an avid sports enthusiast, the sight of the track where Jesse Owens won his record 4 golds and prompted a racist Hitler to storm out of the stadium remarking ‘isn’t there any White who can beat this fellow’, made my day. That was also the very pitch where Zizou showed his temperamental side during the infamous World Cup final incident. From there, on our way to Schloss Charlottenburg, we experienced the rather warm side of the reticent Germans (you can very well imagine how reserved Berliners are known to be when even people in Freiburg call north Germans cold). We were discussing which metro lines to take for our journey, when an old lady realising that we were misinformed, volunteered to correct us.

Later, around dusk-time, we visited the Reichstag, Brandenburg gate and Holocaust memorial. The walk from the newly built, magnificent Berlin central station to the Holocaust memorial has been one of the high points in my Euro trip, second only to the incredible atmosphere of the evening stroll along Champs-Elysées. At nightfall, after grabbing ek-pe-ek free big Mac, we retired on one of the benches at Berlin station.

I had barely slept for an hour when it was time to catch our train to Fehmarn, an island in the Baltic Sea just off the German coast, via Hamburg. We enjoyed ourselves in the chilly, crystal clear water and then relaxed for a couple of hours on the sand. I also tasted the Baltic water to corroborate the claim made by the school textbook of the Baltic Sea having the least salinity and found it to be true.

On returning to Freiburg on Sunday night, I was pleasantly surprised to see the town having undergone a metamorphosis during my weekend away in the capital. It had been cool and sunny during the past week but the mercury levels had suddenly risen in 2-3 days and this had brought about a marked difference in the appearance of the people. By the time I reached my room an hour after alighting at Hauptbahnof – in between I also paused to catch a glimpse of the penalty shoot out in the Italy-Spain match - I had already seen more pretty girls than I had noticed in the past 7 weeks ;). The lifestyle of the people here is so dependent on the capricious European weather that it is no wonder that it occupies such a preeminent position in their topics of conversation.

Euro Update

It's been a surprisingly entertaining Euro until now, although with the knock-out stages commencing today one expects teams to get a lot more cautious as the stakes get higher.

While talking about the group stages, you just can't miss the Dutch. They have been in red hot form and have come out of the Group of Death with flying colours. Snejider and Van der Waart have been a revelation and it's frightening to think that they have the likes of Van Persie, Robben and Huntleer warming the bench. Once they score first it is extremely difficult to come back against them as with the pace they have upfront they are lethal on the counter. What would be interesting to see is how the young team reacts to going a goal down. That would really test their character.

A couple of performances have really caught my eye until now. Croatia's upset win over Germany being one, although you have to say the Germans were quite ordinary that evening.

The game of the championships so far has to be Turkey-Czech Republic. The Czechs looked to be cruising, leading 2-1 with less than 5 min on the clock, but Nihat had other ideas. What was heartening to see is the way the senior pros, Tuncay and Nihat, conducted themselves when 2-1 down and time running out. Tuncay worked his socks off , even running the entire width of the pitch to replace the linesman's flag so that his team doesnt lose those precious seconds and then even donning the gloves when Volkan unnecessarily got himself sent off. Also when Kazim Richards hit 2 wasteful balls when in good positions on consecutive possessions, the skipper, instead of frowning at him, just told the youngster to calm down. A lesson worth learning for many of the big name stars, especially on how to deal with the inadequacies of their less talented colleagues.

I had predicted the Russians to be the surprise package for this Euro and so was delighted with the way they streamrolled Sweden yesterday after putting 2 quite uninspiring performances against Spain and Greece. You felt they lacked that little bit of quality and composure going forward and Arshavin seemed to have provided that. He was in scintillating form during Zenith St. Petersburg's amazing Uefa Cup run and he has carried it here too. They would need to improve their finishing though to stand any chance against the marauding Dutch juggernaut. I am expecting a sumptutous feast of attacking football when the 2 teams meet in the quarters at Basel. Hopefully Hiddink and Van Basten won't disappoint

Patriotism

It’s funny how quickly we develop affinity for the place where we live. I have encountered quite a few manifestations of this boundless love for your land in the past few weeks.

During the DAAD convention in Heidelberg, I, along with another Badener (if at all such a word exists – Baden is the state I live in by the way) had a gala time ridiculing a colleague of ours for his East German ‘roots’. We were from the far superior West Germany where so many of the Easterners had tried to immigrate decades ago.

Also, during the past week, a heated altercation had ensued on the IIT Bombay Euro-intern mailing list about ‘whose’ country had the more beautiful women. People went to the extent of searching for internet polls and youtube videos to prove their point. And all this when most of us hadn’t even visited many of the countries we claimed to be inferior to ‘ours’ in chick coefficient.

Then the other day I was waiting at Schaffhausen SBB for my connection to Luzern. It had only been a day since I had left Germany but I was so relieved to see the Deustch Bahn ICE arrive and once aboard, I instantly felt at home. The Swiss trains, however efficient they were, could never take the place that the ICE occupied in my heart. It was similar to the nostalgic feeling I have experienced many times while returning to Mumbai, after being away for a fortnight or so, and catching my first glimpse of the beloved Mumbai Local.

I may not have German blood running in my veins but I am a loyal German at heart, at least for 3 months.

PARIS

I reached Paris on Saturday, 31^st May , morning. The plan was to meet in front of Notre Dame at noon. May be the European punctuality has rubbed on, but still it was heartening to see around 15 IIT boys gather there within 15 minutes of the decided time. We then proceded to watch the Palais of Justice, Pantheon, ... , Place de la Concorde, Champs Elysee, Arc de Triumph, ..., The Eiffel and quite a few other architechural splendours that line the Parisian Boulevards and were left completely exhausted by the end of the day.

Sunday was reserved for museums. Not that any of us is a connoissuer of paintings and sculptures, but being obedient tourists, we thought we should pay a visit. The French government's policy of allowing free entry to most of them on the first sunday of a month did play a huge role, I must accept. We reached Louvre early and were one of the first few to enter. No wonder people say one needs days to explore Louvre exhaustively. It is so huge that a mere glance at each exhibit might add up to a day. With 3 wings and 4 floors connected by its many passages and staircases it would be a felicitous venue for the 'Crystal Maze' finale. We finally left the museum at about 1pm and proceeded to have lunch comprising of crepe, a typical Parisian dish and a panino.

Then after a short nap in one of the many gardens, we left for our second instalment of artistic fodder, Centre de Pompidou. If ever doubts arise in anyone's mind regarding the position of Paris as the cultural capital of the world, he should visit the Louvre and follow it up with Pompidou. The two museums are markedly different in both their external appearances as well as their exhibits. While one is a majestic building with 18^th century architecture, housing works from centuries ago, the other is state-of-art structure having external escalators and some of the most unconventional drawings and sculptures. As you enter Pompidou, you are greeted with M.F. Hussain style abstract paintings. But if you manage to get past them, you are exposed to a completely novel branch of art. Many of the ingeniously designed products that we encounter in market everyday are slight modifications and simplifications of the out-of-the-box imagination of these ‘modern artists’. All through-out, there was a great emphasis on modular objects – diverse and complex structures built from smaller simpler ones. One of my favourites was the dinning table fabricated from 2 thin sheets of metal. Then, there were some mind-blowing paintings from a chap named Philip-Lorca diCoria. His attention to detail like drawing cigarette stubs strewn on the footpath – such a characteristic feature of any European alley, or a scrap of paper rumbling in the wind, was admirable. We were completely mesmerised by the photograph-like genuineness of his work.

I will always be grateful to this place for helping me overcome my aversion for ‘modern art’. But the icing on the cake was finding an exhibit from one IIT Bombay alumnus. The 1992 Industrial Design Centre pass out had developed a funky chair-cum-sofa-cum bed. It was a proud moment indeed.

The Centre de Pompidou most certainly doesn’t figure in must-watch places in Paris but we had gone there without high expectations and thoroughly enjoyed it.

(visit -http://picasaweb.google.com/anchit56/PARIS to see pics from Pompidou)

P.S. – All said and done, the most notable feature of European museums are their free washrooms. To save on lodging expenses, we had spent the night below Eiffel tower. Thankfully the Louvre men’s room came to our rescue :P

Germany in short

A month in Freiburg, a small, sunny (sunny by European standards. Among german cities, this receives the maximum sunlight in a year) city on the western edge of Schwarzwald (thats what Blackforest is called in German) has passed by in a whisker. Here is a small effort on my part to help you understand Germany and the Germans slightly better.

1. Germans love fußball, potatoes, ham and beer – unfortunately I dont drink

2. Germans never share food – this is a habit I find quite agonizing. Imagine the torture you go through when you watch your professor and his phd student chomping on everything from apples to cupcakes in front of you without ever offerng you a bite, and all this when you are living a frugal existence and trying to save that last cent ;)

3. Germans dont have ceiling fans; neither do they have ACs and mind you the temperatures do cross the 30s in peak summer. (well this is true about most european countries though)

4. Germany seems to have Arabs as the maximum immigrants. You will find Turks, Syrians, Lebanese, Iranians in plenty here.

5. Germany has left-hand drive cars and so cars travel from the right-side lane. You may say that everbody knows this and whats the need to state it here. But there is, because it is not enough to just know this for a fact. Its impportant to ingrain it in yourself as a habit. You will realize what I am saying when, while crossing the straße after ensuring that there isnt any approaching vehicle within a mile, you suddenly turn around and discover a huge truck within feet – the sooner you forget the 'look to your right before crossing' rule and imbibe the 'look to your left before crossing' rule, the better it is.

6. Germans (as do most other Europeans) have coffee after lunch.

7. The most popular cars here are Volkswagon, followed by Opel and Renault. All buses and taxis are by Mercedes, by default. You will also find Mercedes small cars here.

8. 'V' is pronounced as 'F'. So volks is folks, Vauban is Fauban and Sharapova is spelt as Sharapowa.

9. Spargel (Esparagus in English) is a delicacy here, atleast in southwest Germany – I quite liked it too.

10. Destuche Bahn is by far the best Railway company in the world. SNCF can have its TGV and Benilux can have their Thalys, but when it comes to easy access to information and punctuality, noone comes anywhere near the Germans. Their website is so easy to use and provides so much information that I can say with certainity that, even for an Indian, rail travel in Germany is much easier than it is India or any other English-speaking country.

11. Germans dont have switches for plug points – found this extremely strange. You just plug-in your device and it starts working. To turn it off, you have to unplug it from the socket.

12. Deutsch, like most European languages, takes the liberty to spell and pronounce proper nouns from other languages as and how they like. for example French in Deustch becomes Franzoish and Greece becomes Greichenland.

Shifting Homes

Written in May 2006

Having stayed in the same house for fifteen years, I had my first experience of this dreaded activity just after my SSC exams when we decided to change our residence from the quiet neighbourhood in Matunga to the busy and industrial suburb of Chembur. But we weren’t vacating our old home and so the process went off quite smoothly.

My next date with ‘Shifting’ was to follow within a year when my grandparent’s apartment was taken up for redevelopment. Fortunately, as I was preparing for JEE, I was the golden-eyed boy and was exempted from my responsibilities.

But this time when my grandparents were returning back to their newly constructed swanky tower, there were going to be no excuses. I had gone picnicking with my friends after my semester was over and my father had purposefully arranged the shifting date to coincide with my return to the town. And with my sister being in final year MBBS I was definitely the scapegoat. This surely was going to test my patience and ability to see the lighter side of things.

As you get older you tend to resist change. At least this was what I experienced. With the May heat really troubling her, my grandmother (aaji) would get frustrated on frivolous matters and it would need my dad’s intervention to calm her down. Incidentally, I discovered quite a few interesting things while going about my latest assignment.

I realized that we had innumerable utensils in our house carefully preserved to encounter the ultimate eventuality of a hundred relatives storming in to give us a warm surprise. The fact that there was not enough space in the house for so many human beings to even stand, forget having food, is a different matter altogether. But analyzing this matter in more depth lead me to the realization that my aaji was actually a great visionary! With iron ore deposits around the world diminishing and with the likelihood that stainless steel prices would escalate in the near future she had thoughtfully made arrangements for her future generations.

Then came the woolens. While packing all the blankets and shawls in the cartons I happened to look out of the window and mistook the dog for a polar bear and the coconut palms for pine trees. But again there was futuristic thinking behind this accumulation. What if the sudden movement of the earth’s plates changes Mumbai’s altitude so drastically that we start experiencing snowfall and thunderstorms or what if the world is struck by a fifth ice age? We had to be prepared, didn’t we?

After that, while emptying one of the cupboards we came across so many crockery sets that if I put them all on sale, I would gather enough wealth to make sure that I would never require monetary assistance from my parents to satisfy any of my needs. But I will have to accept most of the blame for this addition of glassware to our already overstuffed home. The authorities of all the basketball clubs in Mumbai had probably started a co-operative business venture because there was a period when the finalists of all tournaments in Mumbai were awarded glassware. So in about 3 years I had received almost a dozen sets of glass bowls and cups. Finally, fed up of this, I hung up my boots!

As if this wasn’t enough, one day, my grandfather (ajoba) pulled out so many share certificates and annual reports from his closet that would put even Babasaheb Ambedkar to shame. But I have no qualms with him because that’s one of his few passions and he otherwise leads a very simple life with frugal requirements. And also his perseverance and methodical approach in these matters have been the key to our family’s financial progress over the last two generations.

Fortunately, my mom and I were lent a helping hand in all this by my dad and he is quite an expert at getting rid of unwanted goods. Although he would never accept it, in his hurry to clear the mess in the house, he has put my mom in trouble a couple of times by throwing away some important things. I hope he doesn’t read this article. Otherwise I could be the next one to be the victim of his skills.

This reminds me of an anecdote related to this subject. A few years ago we had added a couple of new wardrobes to our crowded house and my ajoba was proudly showing off the new additions to my dad’s friend. He politely appreciated whatever he was shown but later queried, “Now, where are you going to stay?”

After having gone through all this I would any day buy ‘studying for exams’ at the cost of being involved in this agonizing and torturous activity of ‘Shifting’

YHAI Trek

A village inhabited by the successors of King Alexander on the Himalayan slopes which has a parallel government of its own.......seems like a story that is a fabrication of a dreamer’s imagination, doesn’t it?

Well this is exactly how I felt when I heard it while on a summer trek with the Youth Hostel in the Paravati Valley. Not even in my wildest dreams had I anticipated that in course of my journey in this remote river valley in eastern Himachal Pradesh, I would stumble upon white-skinned, red haired residents with distinctly Caucasian features. But this is precisely what I discovered on the 3^rd day of our week long trek.

The legend goes this way – During Alexander’s invasion of India in the 4^th Century BC, when the continuous battles started taking a toll on his soldiers, the Greek king sent a batch of his warriors to judge whether the land beyond was worth waging a war. When these men returned to describe to their master the beauty and virtues of the Himalayan Mountains, they found to their horror that their comrades had deserted them and gone back. Left without much of an option, they decided to make this land their home. It is this group of people that are now known as the “Malana tribe” and their hamlet, the Malana village.

In course of our travel, we had heard some very strange accounts of the lifestyle and customs of this tribe. One prominent aspect of all the narrations was their affinity for a reclusive life and hatred against any intrusion. While traversing through the town we weren’t supposed to touch any of the men or their belongings. There was also a warning that unnecessary inspection of the details of the surroundings could call for hostile response from the locals. In light of all this, we approached the village with lots of anxiety and also some fear.

On reaching the town, we were greeted by some startling revelations. Having seen pictures of clean and majestic historic Greek cities in encyclopedias, I expected this village to be a miniature version of those. But what I encountered was arguably the filthiest Himalayan town I had visited. With a population of over a thousand this was easily the largest settlement in the Parvati valley. And although the residents clearly looked alien in comparison to the local Himachalis, they came across as quite a friendly lot. All throughout our walk through the Malana village we were encircled by kids pestering us to give them chocolates and sweets. There were signs on places of worship saying “Anyone touching these monuments will be fined 1000 rupees” but frankly those structures were so dirty one would not feel like touching them even if offered that much money. Also the thrash of tetra packs and Lays packets strewn all around seemed to contradict the notion of the Malana tribe leading a secluded life.

All this while I wondered what these people did for a living. The answer to this question was quite shocking. A majority of them, according to our camp leader, grew and traded opium. They were rumored to have political links which most illegal businesses in our country have. This also explained how they were allowed to have their parallel government in a sovereign country like India

A quite bizarre clan with quite a bizarre profession!!