As we all know now, it was eventually left to the Indians to save the planet from the perils of global warming. We found water on the moon, there go your droughts.

Like poverty today, in a few years the food crisis will be a thing of the past. Renowned scientist, Y S Rajan, who along with Kalam wrote the incredibly optimistic book, India 2020: A vision for the new millenium, prophesized: “I am really very happy to know that the NASA payload on Chandrayaan-1 has traced water. If it is true then it will pave the way for growing vegetation in moon surface in five or 10 years from now.” Even though he doesn’t trust the scientists who claim that there is water (understandable, considering the Pokhran II debacle in political circles today), he’s sure that farmers all over India will take up this opportunity and grow sugarcane and what not on the Moon surface. Schedule and booking details later.

Now that we’ve found water on the moon, it’s up to India to spend millions of dollars into training and sending manned missions to the moon. Also, considering the farmers will have started their farming by then, they could very well build a community of Indians there, name streets after Patels and Singhs and cricketers, one lane to Gandhi, create dams, and basically, spread the hindu word.

Another leading scientist, who wasn’t involved with the project, but was deemed too important to not be woken up from his sleep for a comment blew further wind to Chandrayaan’s sails: “Yes, we are very happy. I was not part of the mission so cannot give technical details but yes, the discovery is very significant. It is great and very important”. All this with the customary Indian sideways nod, 2 per second.

All in all, the world’s hope lies on our shoulders and we’ve started on the right foot.

1400 hours. How hot can it get here? The taxi seems to be melting. Both sides of the road lined with slums. How do you cleanse Bombay of slums? They seem to be boiling, emiting steam. Maybe they’ll disappear this way. How do these people walk the road? Some conduct their business of course. Dogs too. Cows? Useless wrinkle-free Cambridge shirt, false advertising, works exactly the opposite.

Long periods of silence. Did the trip to the terminus always see such inactivity inside the cab? Amma chooses to keep mum. Another person defecating in the open. How do you eradicate poverty? Kill the corrupt. Bah, bullshit. How long away is this place? Another 10 minutes. Don’t remember trips being a drag. This isn’t supposed to be one. Nostalgia trips are good. This has to be good.

When was the last 3-day trip to Kerala? Five, six, …, eleven years! Did I really like them as much as I remember liking them? Did I loathe the sweltering heat, the unending barren flora and fauna, the loneliness of the single child? Romantic. The dirty toilets? The water stops?

Finally! How fucking long was I in the taxi? “I’ll pay.” The authoritativeness of the child, finally can fend for his family. Again, he rips me off. No time for petty talk, let’s just get the hell out of here. “Rakho, tumko pachega nahi yeh!”

Am I caught in a time warp, or hasn’t VT changed a bit? “Nahi chahiye”. I can bloody well carry my luggage. “One minute amma, let me just check this out”. Paragon book store, books on wheels. I swear I have brought books from this store, the countless Tinkles and Chacha Chowdharies. No kids here today though. Book store check. Nostalgia trip off to good start.

The floors are the same broken, albeit mostly smooth, detached brown. Don’t seem to end to the left and right. Sky high pillars separate another huge area before the platforms begin. The weighing machine with its colored bulbs and rotating fan. Not worth wasting another rupee. Weighed myself enough times before, getting an Indian fortune-cookie-like prediction on a ticket, along with the unimportant weight. Unimportant in those days atleast.

“Let’s walk towards the platforms”

Another waiting hall before the platforms begin. What are all these families doing here, sleeping on the platform, which train are they waiting for? Did they ever move from here? That’s a gujju family, for sure. Too many cloth bags, tiffins, kids, colorful excesses. The smell of samosas. Too fat to have them. “Mone, you wan’t some samosas?” How does she do that?

Noisy. How did I ever not notice this noise before? Probably would’ve been busy following dad’s lead. “Achcha, comics… achcha, mixture… achcha, can I get my weight checked?” Was I a pain as a child? Used to leave mom alone with the luggage, and check out train details with dad. Load up with comics and food for the trip. Roam around. Forget mom left alone with luggage. Used to see her standing alone when I returned. What a pain as a child I must have been.

Platforms extend to infinity perpendicular to this main hall. Platform no 11. “Nahi chahiye”. “Mone, are you sure you can handle all that?” I bloody well can, don’t want to pay a coolie, they overcharge. I can do it for free. Katerrrrrrr Katerrrrrrr. Why can’t they make noiseless rollers for bags? Ridiculous, sounds like a train of it’s own. Too far to walk in this heat. Blue colored train remains blue. Yellow board on the compartment says “Jayanti Janata: Mumbai – Kanyakumari”. Familiar. Why do people stare out of their berths? Standard Indian mentality. What are they thinking? Kids. Oh god, please no kids in near our seats. Insensitive prick.

Compartment looks dirty. Good that I insisted on second class, to experience the journey as it used to be, untainted by air conditioning and contemptuous people. I hope the heat subsides though. Poor mom, but she agreed, and this is about me. “25 C … 25 D”. There. Someone’s sitting there. Seemingly annoying lady. “25 C, that’s our seat… hello…”. “Amma, please! Let’s be polite”. I shouldn’t do that, she probably hurts.

Another hour for the train to go. Longest part of the journey, to the start. Carts with their magazines. Carts with their fruits. Carts with their exotic, cheap hand-made toys. Things have improved though, the free-market boom must have a big say in this. Beggars are nowhere to be seen. Maybe Kalam was right, 2020 might be the year that India becomes a… “Saab… saab”. Shit. “Saab…”. Can I ignore her into boredom and leaving me alone? “Saab…”. “Kuch nahi, jao…” Mom can be brutal. Poor people, circumstances are the villian. “Saab… saab”. A polite sideways wave of the head, a graceful brush from the palm. Must be enough to indicate my lack of interest. What happens to the kid held to her side, a marketing strategy? Why aren’t all men born equal? “Nahi bola na…”

Whiz past the underbelly of buildings. Rythmic rocking of the train, the sounds, Rahman. Thadaaankachikachika. Thadaaankachikachika. Seemingly abandoned buildings stare, do these buildings have a history? Dirty water bodies. We must be going through Thana now. “Garrrrammm garrammm vada-ppav”. Get a few, continue ignoring the beggars. Mom’s already sleeping. She must be used to a son who keeps to himself. Things would have been no different if I had gone to the US. I’m glad I didn’t. Can’t imagine leaving her alone here, would’ve been tremendously self-centered.

Another decision by president Obama that fails to send a concrete message about his intentions. The latest, apparently protectionist, move by the president is to levy a 35% tarriff on Chinese tire imports. Although it seems like a step towards a definite direction in keeping jobs at home,  questions still remain unanswered. As always, free-market drums like the Economist absolutely lambast the president for his latest move fearing that this could send America and it’s consumers to the stone age.

A valid concern, because of which the message isn’t clear, is that this kind of a tariff doesn’t prevent agents importing from other cheap avenues like Brazil and India. So, one wonders whether this is just a gimmick to pacify the unions before the major health care reform could be passed peacefully.

Whether import duties and regulation is the solution for saving jobs at all. But if not, what is the solution? The problem isn’t about the quality of the imports being higher, but the costs being lower, and this not necessarily because of efficient processes (although that might be the case) but mainly because of lower employee wages. American workers, for a multitude of reasons (cost of living in the US, worker bee culture in China, etc) have to be paid higher wages than their Chinese counterparts. Similarly, an American consumer can afford to pay a price much higher than a Chinese consumer. How is the economy, as the free-marketeers propose, truly global unless consumers are measured against the same scale?

Critics also complaint that the consumer will be the most hit if the president continues in this direction. I feel, behind this facade of “the consumer must win” are the corporates who make a much higher cut in imported products; cheaper the import, higher the cut. Since globalization happened to people, when exactly did prices actually go down? I wonder if the corporations will take a small hit on their profits, considering their beloved customers are suffering.

Again, there are the others which confound the issue further:

The president of United Steelworkers International, Leo W. Gerard, applauded Mr. Obama’s decision, saying, “The president sent the message that we expect others to live by the rules, just as we do.”

[praising the loophole that the president exploited, ignoring the possibility of a strategy]

Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat said in a statement, “If American workers and manufacturers are going to compete in the global market, they need to have a government that uses trade enforcement tools.”

[I don't see how this propels steel manufacturing in America to compete in the global market. Cheaper products at the same quality might continue to be produced elsewhere, and how this tariff helps in the above stated purpose is beyond me ... ]

It’ll be interesting to see to what extent China takes their antagonism regarding this move by the president, especially with a G20 conference coming up late this month…

Beginning movie appreciation wasn’t easy. I don’t exactly remember when I started seeing acclaimed foreign movies (acclaimed here meaning a significant part of the population didn’t sit through it) and why. Maybe it was disgust with the corporatist nature of the hollywood and bollywood franchises where emotions were traded for cola and women were represented as objects of pleasure of a degenerated culture. Maybe it was extreme self-loathing and boredom. Most probably the later.

In the eye of a busy intellectual hurricane, when I was transitioning from graduate school ignorance to industrial bliss, I began with a movie subscription which would challenge the very existence of my being. I wasn’t earning then you see.

These were great movies by great directors. The Bergmans, the Fellinis, the Hefners. Movies where you had to listen to the included commentary to understand the movie in it’s totality. One such instance was when the Polish movie didn’t come with subtitles but the commentary did. Movies where the frames speak for themselves. Like the one spectacular Antonioni film where the climax was a long shot of buildings, like the ones in government quarters, for around fifteen minutes. Really drove the point in your sorry head.

These were times when you had to keep aside your established beliefs about cinema aside, and accept that you are a worthless fool.  Once you make that humbling realization, movie appreciation is cake walk, if you prefer to walk through cake. It’s no different than a newly established good-intentioned dictatorship; cleanse your mind, accept torture (in this case, beautiful movie torture), and transform into a new improved person.