Random Music Musings–The Return of the Blog

In fits and starts, I try. The drafts folder on my PC is testament to these efforts, but heck, this seemed like an easy way to get something up here after one previous attempt to restart this blog. Someone once said “Great artists ship”. So wannabe bloggers…tweet?

-  It is not very often that chart-topping popularity and true quality meet in music, especially in that all-encompassing ‘pop’ category. However, Adele has managed just that, and how! 21 is a powerhouse album. It’s impressively mature, especially as a musical statement, drawing on the same neo-soul vibe that made Amy Winehouse’s short career. While the songwriting is frayed in places, you want to forgive her that. She is only 21, after all. 

- Radiohead is one of my favorite bands, simply because of the amount of texture in their music and arrangements. However, one of the things that dawned on me recently was how dance-friendly some of their tracks can get. I was browsing in a bookstore this week, and found myself bobbing my head and tapping my feet to Reckoner from In Rainbows. That rhythm section is to die for.

- I’m quite annoyed by the constant sniping about lyrical quality in Hindi films today. While all the attention was paid to Bhaag DK Bose and Character Dheela, I wish there was more attention paid in media to the good songs and the people behind them.

Except for a recent profile in Open, I’ve seen no good profiles of Amitabh Bhattacharya, who in addition to doing DK Bose and Character Dheela, has also done pretty amazing “traditional” songwriting for Udaan, I Am and No One Killed Jessica. Aitbaar in NOKJ comes together in a way no song in any soundtrack this year has – the lyrics and music conveying anger, despair and a welter of complicated emotions in one explosive package.

Previous music musings - I, II, III, IV and V

Pass Me By

Wadi. Guntakal. Bhusawal. Mhow. All of these are places I’ve passed, either on road or by rail on my way to bigger destinations like New Delhi and Bangalore.

These names evoke images of a slower, more relaxed time. You jumped off the train for a quick stretch of the limbs, maybe a quick cup of steaming hot chai. You looked in at the A.H.Wheeler, eyeing the Archers and Ludlums on sale, maybe picking up a magazine as consolation on the way back to the train. You had pohe at a roadside dhaba near Mhow and heard stories from more knowledgeable people on how it was a big military base. You wondered about the sudden explosion in hoardings related to pareshani? and advertisements for “Ashok Clinic” as the train hurtled northward passing Bhopal and Gwalior.

All that is gone now, replaced by security checks at the swank Terminal 3 in Delhi and cups of Nescafe from a machine at Pune’s tiny Lohegaon airport. Getting from place A to B in India in under 3 hours is transformative. However, what of the romance that every Indian of a certain era attaches to rail travel and roadside dhaba food?

It’s not all bad. Productive business dealings in distant cities can now end with you sleeping in your own bed. The bulk of short vacations need not be spent in trains or cramped bus seats, increasing your options and actual vacation time.

This isn’t a lament of a tangible loss of some kind. One always has the choice of taking two extra days off work to make a journey by train instead of flying. However, what I do worry about is the loss of perspective. The rich have always been different from you and me, and now they (and this group does include me) needn’t even see the rest of this fine land.

We finally have our own version of flyover country.

Branded

World Cup 2011, ad-fest. Like clockwork, at the end of the over, transmission shifts to an advertisement. Shah Rukh Khan is on a living room couch with a girl half his age. Just as things are about to get interesting, a WWE-style wrestler jumps into the frame, followed by a couple of cricketers, and then a saas-bahu prototype. There’s a LCD TV mounted on the wall behind him. It’s an ad for the HD package of a DTH provider, DishTV.

Wait, rewind that. (I don’t have a DVR, but bear with me here). Didn’t you just see Shah Rukh Khan on TV a few days back endorsing the Airtel phone network? Doesn’t Airtel also have its own DTH service? He’s endorsing two competing brands?

So, you say? What’s wrong with him earning a bit of money on the side for his star power? Oh, none, I say. More power to him. However, I’ve already made the SRK-AirTel connection in my mind, so I unconsciously associate Airtel DTH with him. Dish is getting the short end of the stick. I’ve also linked A.R. Rahman to Airtel, Junior Bachchan  to Idea Cellular, and of course, Saif Ali Khan to some brand of banians (Amul Macho, really?)

Which brings me to my second point. I’m all for Saif Ali Khan in banians and a luscious Katrina Kaif posing with juicy mangoes. But just because you can do it doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. For the celebrity, for the brand, or for the audience. 

It should be straightforward to state what a brand stands for. And if we’re treating the celebrity as a brand, very few celebrities in India can claim to have that kind of consistency, especially when it comes to their endorsements. The Detroit ad for Chrysler with Eminem, for instance, is a great example of how Eminem’s persona and his Detroit roots can tie in to a good story, enhancing the perception of both celebrity and brand.

The only celebrity in India giving his endorsements some kind of thought is, of course, Aamir Khan. (He does march to his own drum-beat, doesn’t he?). After a moment’s thought, I can instantly say what his general endorsement philosophy is. He endorses mass-market brands that are affordable, but not necessarily cheap – Samsung, Titan, Tata Sky (and Coke). He has an instantly recognizable face, so he plays characters that tie back to a story the ad campaign is trying to tell. His series of advertisements for Coke were quite memorable, and the current Tata Sky Bablu series is another good ad series spread over multiple advertisements.

I do wish he didn’t do the finger-wagging, funda-spouting bit in the Incredible India ads, but that, too ties back well with his on-screen persona. He does do a lot of that in films like Taare Zameen Par and 3 Idiots. Though that is a story for another post.

Lost in Translation

 

While they say great films can truly transcend language, how do films cross this barrier when language is part of the deal?

I’m thinking of this as I scan reviews for The Fighter released in India last week. I see a lot of Indian reviews dismiss it as another middling-to-good ‘boxing’ film. While I still haven’t seen it, I think that the most interesting thing about it is not the story but the performances (of course, 2 Oscars went to the supporting cast) and the portrayal of the boxer’s family from a working class neighborhood in Lowell, Massachusetts.

What of their accents? Does the portrayal of the matriarch and the family ring true? Are these nuances lost on an Indian audience, or more precisely, on Indian reviewers?

A sense of rootedness places films in context and can enhance your viewing experience. For instance, I can’t think of Omkara without the rustic dialog, or Raging Bull without Robert De Niro’s very New York twang. How much context do we lose while watching foreign films because we may have no way of having it?

Essential non-software books for the software professional

I somehow got into thinking about this topic recently. There are, I’m sure, a number of lists of essential software readings for the software professional. These include books like Code Complete, The Mythical Man Month and The Art of Computer Programming. A quick search found me this lovely link listing (gulp) a hundred books. I’ve read only ten of them.
However, my pet grouse against fellow programmers is their singular vanity about how unique their profession is. (It’s my profession too, but I don’t have such illusions). Us programmers are like other humans(!) in many ways and the life lessons one learns (often the hard way) are similar.
Keeping that in mind, I present my list of essential non-software books for a software professional. This is a fairly personal list, but these are books that have shaped my thinking and beliefs over the years, and I think they’d make a great addition to the thinking software professional’s library.

Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman! - I think this should be essential reading for everyone, and not just engineers. It captures the playfulness and never-ending curiosity that Feynman brought to his profession and life. I’ve written at length on this book here.

Better - Atul Gawande is a very rare kind of writer: he manages to write about complicated topics (medicine, surgery, US healthcare policy) in a way that’s accessible and illuminating. Of the three books he’s written, Better remains my favorite. Gawande writes about performance in the medical profession from his vantage point as a surgeon and physician. Yet, he beautifully links the specific to the general, drawing out conclusions that are applicable to any person who’s trying to do better at her chosen profession/vocation. Again, a general read I’d recommend to anyone.

Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell gets a lot of flak, rightly or wrongly for his sometimes provocative theses. The Tipping Point was widely well-received when it came out and has been questioned since. I myself am a bit of fence-sitter on that book and I disliked his second effort, Blink. However, Outliers seemed to me like a much better work overall. In denying ‘genius’ as a pat explanation for all success, Gladwell gives a lot of credit to a combination of immense hard work and plain dumb luck.
I find his conclusions reassuring and daunting. 10,000 hours at anything, even something you love seems like a lot of work. But when I’ve seen senior engineers at work knock a task out the park while I’m still processing it, it’s encouraging to think that with enough conscious hard work, I can aspire to that kind of expertise.

The Last Lecture – I cheat here, in that this is not a book. I found the video of Randy Pausch’s last lecture a much more satisfying view, and the book was mostly a rehash of a lot of the material with some supporting material and detail. The original Last Lecture (more here), was pretty much perfect. It’s just over an hour, and if you haven’t, watch it already!
Again, like Feynman’s book, it combines a certain audacity of thinking with playfulness and a sense of humor. Importantly, it’s a healthy dose of perspective on what truly matters.

On Writing – Writing well is a craft software professionals ignore at their own peril. Writing cogently to make a point or to explain tough concepts is an art (see: Atul Gawande) and is an important part of professional growth. Stephen King does a great job of explaining his craft in this heart-warming book. Part memoir and part-how-to, it’s an entertaining and illuminating read. 

This list is pretty basic and I leave out other books that I love, focusing more on books that I feel matter in a professional context. List-making exercises are ongoing, and I have this one from a few years back. That list too will see additions (including a couple from up here), and yes, I now own over 140 books. Book acquisitiveness is a habit that I can’t help.

Bank logo Blues

 

That’s why they call it the Rich Kid Blues…

                                               - The Raconteurs, “Rich Kid Blues”

I remarked to AG how I liked Café Coffee Day’s logo. The distinctive purple, red and white just stands out, especially in chaotic cityscapes like in India. Barista’s muted brown and orange/earth tones set the tone for the kind of place it will probably be: upscale, a tad quieter and ‘classier’ than the more mass-market Coffee Day.

However, I notice that banks tend to be a quite boring with color choices. While ICICI Bank makes a splash with its orange hues and HSBC’s red is distinctive, blue seems like the dominant color of choice otherwise. There’s HDFC ( blue, red and white, very square design), SBI (blue, green and white), Citi (blue & white, nice, very modern fonts) and Federal Bank (white and blue).

I wonder why that’s the case. Subliminal reinforcement of values of solidity and dependability?

Alan Moore on the Emergency

Thoughts on Vishwajyoti Ghosh’s Delhi Calm

You expect book titles to be nouns. “Midnight’s Children”, “Salmon Fishing in Yemen”, or “Reading Lolita in Tehran” all evoke things, or actions. “Delhi Calm”, however, doesn’t fit the bill. Trying to make sense of the title (the Calm of Delhi?) takes its own time, until you realize that it’s ripped from a newspaper headline during the Emergency in 1975. (“Delhi Calm as X happens.”)

As graphic novels go, this one is gorgeous. The visual style is distinctive and the dull browns and earth tones perfectly convey the era of fear, uncertainty and doubt that the Emergency was.

The narrative, ostensibly revolving around three idealistic Left-leaning friends during the Emergency is just a front. It cleverly places the era in a context, allowing Ghosh to play freely with, and make fun of the age’s dark realities and absurdities. The infamous sterilization drives, the Orwellian propaganda and a brazen power grab by India’s first political family all make great fodder for Ghosh’s inventive style. However, the story also harks back to a more idealistic time, when universities were alive with the sound of debate, and youthful idealism wasn’t in as much short supply as it now seems to be.

Comparisons to Alan Moore’s Watchmen wouldn’t be unfair. While the thematic content is obviously different, just as in Watchmen, Ghosh pushes the graphic novel medium to the fullest. Asides like news articles, hagiographical Films Division-style video profiles of ‘Moon’ (the leader based on Indira Gandhi) and her son, quotes and snippets of poetry pepper the narrative, painting a fraught and claustrophobic portrait of the times. It’s a time underrepresented in Indian popular culture (no books that I know of, and the only film that comes to mind is Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi), and this book paints an unforgiving picture of Indian democracy’s darkest hours. This is a story that needed to be told, and by telling it well, Ghosh brings it alive for a generation that wasn’t even born then.

The publication of Indian books in styles other than The Great Indian Novel or The Populist Bestseller is itself encouraging, and though it’s still early days, the quality (both of the art and writing) of this book bode well for the graphic novel form in India.

On your marks

<Is this thing on?>

Let’s get this (re)started.

Maps, not timetables

Stephen Covey says that people should lead their lives by maps, and not timetables. Though the analogy isn’t perfect, it did come to mind when I read of  weeds resistant to herbicides like Roundup in the New York Times .

I wonder at what point did big farmers lose track of the fact that their primary purpose is producing food, and not producing X tons of soy/corn/whatever. When you’re reducing what you’re doing to a set of pure numbers and quarterly goals without any underlying purpose or mission, the danger of unintended consequences is much higher. Where’s your map telling you where you want to be headed?

 

In a corporate environment, competence counts for a lot. I was at a party once with some people at work, and Z (who had had a bit too much to drink, I must add)  said about J “He knows his shit. And when you say that about someone, that’s a great compliment to give, you know, that he knows his shit?” Number of cocktails inside Z aside, point noted. Competence matters.

But in the public sphere, it’s apparently OK to be a complete dimwit. I’ve been following the depositions of Greenspan, Robert Rubin and the good folks at various multiple-fancy-named institutions on Wall Street ( Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley et al), and everyone’s saying this about the crisis: No one saw it coming.

Seriously? I’d like to see a CEO make that argument in a closed-door board meeting.

I shudder to think that these jokers hold the keys to the world’s largest economy. I don’t know which is worse: that they were incompetent enough to not understand that this was a train hurtling out of control, or that they are lying.

On the Radio

There are programs, and people who are made for a medium. For instance, Scorsese and Spielberg are cinema people, period. They may be great storytellers, but I don’t see them achieving greatness as, say, theater directors. Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly) is the quintessential television guy: his best work comes when he’s constrained by the hour-long format and he has the luxury of a full season or two to build character arcs.

In a similar way, Ira Glass and This American Life to me embody radio. The lack of visuals and the lo-fi audio are limitations the TAL team seems to revel in.

Not all radio shows feel that way. Even the good ones. NPR shows like Wait, wait, don’t tell me and Says you, I see them working as TV game shows or live acts of some kind.

But “This American Life” is pure radio (though, ironically, it had an award-winning two-season run as a TV series). The connection is direct and visceral: you and that voice on your radio. Technique goes a long way in making that work: a ‘sticky’ radio experience is dependent on atmosphere. As Ira Glass himself detailed in an illuminating talk on stage last year, great production and background music help immensely in making stories that stick. While listening to TAL, there are times when I’m absolutely riveted, and a break in the proceedings seems intrusive. 

Those driveway moments take hard work.

Reading Pico Iyer in India

The day after I landed in Mumbai on vacation, I started reading Pico Iyer’s Tropical Classical. Pico Iyer’s one of my favorite writers of any kind now. He is ostensibly a travel writer. However, his writing resonates as not just a chronicle of new places, sights and sounds, but of journeys within.

But the problem is, reading Pico Iyer while traveling yourself doesn’t seem to work. India is home, but it’s also a journey of sorts, as every trip here is an exercise in melding the familiar with the unfamiliar.

Going to a completely new place is one thing. Going to a place that’s at once familiar (and holds memories) and seeing it changed in 18 months to something that’s different (though not different enough) is disorienting. It’s disorienting enough that reading of religiosity in Ethiopia or tango in Buenos Aires seems just redundant.

Finally, I just gave up. Reading Gurcharan Das’ The Elephant Paradigm seemed more appropriate.

Small Pleasures

There’s a tendency to want every media experience to be extra-ordinary. Every album should be Sgt. Pepper’s, every film should be a Sholay and every TV series should be a Battlestar Galactica.

However, in the timeline between Chris Nolan, Radiohead and Joss Whedon, there lurk lovely little gems. They aren’t masterpieces or classics, but they have their own special place. They light up your life in small ways at unexpected corners. They never change your life, but they definitely make it less burdensome to live on a day-to-day basis.

I remember making this remark about Kaminey on Twitter (on why it was unfair to burden the maker of Omkara and Maqbool with so many expectations) . “It’s a small film with smaller pleasures.” And I’d definitely apply that to these films/TV series.

As I’ve shifted my TV viewing away from ‘live’ TV to more and more shows on DVD and streaming via Netflix, I’m encountering a lot of these. It’s been a lot of fun and a million times better than watching another rerun on TV.

Inside my comfort zone

In It Might Get Loud, Jack White makes a remark that stuck. To paraphrase, he states that great art comes from emotional conflict. He talks about how he has to stop himself from getting comfortable and take himself to a hard place emotionally, because that’s the only place from where his creativity flows.

As I look at the frequency of posts on this blog go down, I wonder about that more and more. This blog isn’t high art, and I’m not Jack White. However, writing here requires a level of ardor that I don’t feel that often anymore. I’ve been in a number of situations this year that would have me mad, or angry or happy and pages of (bad) musings would’ve come out of it. But not anymore. So this blog sits, forlorn.

This emotional settling down isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as I was too excitable for my own good in the past. But I worry about crossing over and becoming blasé. The world is a beautiful place and there’s lots to love and be excited about here. It’s just that a lot of things don’t seem  as blog-worthy anymore. In addition, tidbits, random insights and link-love have passed over to Twitter. 

As the zeros draw to a close, I don’t fret about the future of this blog. It has its place and its pleasures. It’s just that I (or you, dear reader) will partake of it less frequently than before.

Punching at the Sun

I particularly enjoyed reading Jim Collins’ two management classics Good to Great and Built to Last. One of my favorite parts in Good to Great is the window vs. mirror paradigm used by successful CEOs to describe success and failure.

Put simply, when successful, CEOs of great companies tended to use the ‘window’ paradigm – they say things like “I got lucky, the economy turned around at the right time” or “I have a great management team” – statements that deflected credit for the success away from them as individuals to external factors beyond their control i.e. outside their ‘window’.

In contrast, they used the ‘mirror’ unsparingly in times of failure. Every failure of the company finally rested at their feet. It was their fault that they didn’t judge the economy slowdown, or that they let costs get out of hand. They held the mirror, where every problem was because of a failure on their part.

By these standards, there isn’t much hope for Wall Street. This President on the other hand, generally comes through as being quite the ‘Great’ CEO.

However, where I find this analogy most interesting overall was in terms of how you look back at life. I was having a conversation with SK about an incident a couple of years back, and it was interesting how I saw it differently from him. As a third-party bystander, he didn’t see it as being my fault.

However, in my head I could see a million different places where I could’ve done things differently, and exhibited better judgment. May I have those decision points back and do the right thing this time around please? But then, real life offers you no do-overs.

Every day, you face small and big hassles and crises. I could be the ‘window’, blaming the world for my problems and existential angst that crops up occasionally. But the ‘mirror’ seems like a better thing to hang on the walls of your life-abode.

I’m normally not given to this much navel-gazing, but this seems to be all that’s flowing from my keyboard, so that’s the way it goes.

Right-ward pacing

I play softball at work with my co-workers. Our in-field is really really good. We have great people at first base, third base and shortstop positions.

I haven’t really learnt softball/baseball as properly as some of these guys did, so I observe their technique with great interest. Our shortstop (let’s call him T) throws the ball in a very specific manner. He picks up the ball or catches it off the bounce, gets into position and then pauses for maybe half a second. Then he lets the ball go to first/third base depending on what’s necessary.

That stop is key. He could, like a lot of people I’ve seen, release the ball as soon as it hits his hands. But he stops, makes sure his body and arm are in perfect position and then positively rockets the ball to the right player (I did say our in-field is good). The half-second margin he gives himself adds a lot of things: it ensures his body and arm are in position, he has a clear assessment of where he has to throw the ball to be most effective, guarantees the accuracy of his throw and prevents injuries. In all likelihood, he more than regains the time lost during the pause through the speed of his eventual throw, since he’s never in a suboptimal position while throwing.

As we navigate our way through this wired, ever-connected, faster! faster! world, this is a parallel I think about a lot. I see people all around me with the dial set to 11, furiously multitasking. Updating Facebook status at concert? Check. Tweeting while watching a movie? Check. Email while hanging out with friends (in lieu of real conversation)? Check. Doing more! All the time! With less time!? Check.

While in and of themselves, I have no problem with any of these, the question I ask is: as we navigate through our lives, faster and faster, doing more and more things, are we still in sight of what matters? I can only speak for myself, but the more overscheduled I get, the more important it becomes for me to unplug and just be. I find something vital about disconnecting and letting my brain float. Long stretches of time, at home or outside where I have no clear agenda are worthwhile. I may read for a while, watch Once for the nth time or just make a cup of chai and stare out my balcony.

I saw an interesting talk at my workplace by Carl Honore, the author of In Praise of Slowness where he talks about doing things not too fast or too slow, but at the right pace. In part, it was a relief to see I wasn’t the only person who felt this way.

What does this mean for me apropos life on a day-to-day basis? Unplugging a bit more, saying ‘no’ occasionally to random stuff that doesn’t really make me happy anyway and less multi-tasking, so I’m engaged with what I am doing. Somehow right now this seems to mean shorter yet more productive workdays, a clearer and less stressed-out brain and a happier me. What’s to not like?

Edit: Fixed typo.

Stories on a trip

Tell me a story
Sing me a song
Of life’s wars lost
And sundry battles won

Tolstoy once wrote “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Traveling groups fall in similar categories. They are similar, yet different in their own ways.

Duomo di Milano, Milan

A precocious pre-teen is skipping up the steps, adult-chic glasses in hand. The father follows the mother. Disaffected teen brings up the rear, clicking away on a phone. She looks like she doesn’t want to be here. I wonder: What happens to children in their teens?

As we climb up to the roof, I see a young girl, presumably with her mother. Late teen, at most early twenties. I think it’s a mother-daughter bonding trip. AG thinks maybe the girl is here studying abroad, and her mother is here to visit her. I like this story better. They seem to be enjoying themselves. The bond they share is visible. I see them repeating this: trips together, new experiences, shared mother-daughter moments.

Passenger Train – Milan to Tirano

A father and young pre-teen boy. The father looks like a young Walter Matthau. His beard already has a salt-and-pepper streak. Again, the father-son bond is apparent. The son holds on to his father’s hands occasionally. They share laughs, secret confidences I half-wish I could eavesdrop on.

It’s a passenger train so I’m guessing this is a day trip. I wonder where the mother is. Is it that the parents are separated, and the child is spending the day with a father sorely missed, a son served up as collateral damage for an unfortunate turn of events?

Maybe it’s just that the mother’s working and father-son managed to take off for a day to bond. I like this story better.

Every story is different in its own way.

This came together in a 15-minute writing burst on the Milan-Tirano train. Thanks to AG “Gullito” for one of the story ideas, for reading an initial draft and his stamp of approval.

Milan, Lombardy, Italy - 11th September 2009

The more you know the less you feel
Some pray for others steal
Blessings not just for the ones who kneel, luckily

- U2, “City of Blinding Lights”

Looking at Renaissance-area churches and cathedrals , B and I were discussing this: “Were these built solely as religious places of worship or was there more at work here?”

Cathedrals/churches were commissioned by the aristocracy of the time. They were designed and built by the artistic aristocracy of the time too. While these soaring steeples and tall spires are definitely meant to inspire awe and evoke the greatness of the Lord Almighty, one cannot but help feel that at some level these are manifestations of the ids of the people behind these – either the aristocrats bankrolling them, or the artists responsible for the architecture and the stunning beauty of these places.

The Duomo in Milan

However, all of that is moot. The sense of grandeur and pure awe that one feels on viewing something like the Duomo in Milan make all this questioning of motivations academic. Evoking hushed reverence, the perfect grace of this place left me speechless.

In the spirit of the beautiful symmetry these places exhibit, I close with the same U2 song I started with.

The more you see, the less you know
The more you find out
as you go
I knew much more than I do now

More posts on the way as I process my diary and unscramble my thoughts.

Be Kind, Rewind

The flight now seems interminable. I’m looking at a row of seats next to me with screens flickering various stages of recent blockbusters. Ben Stiller is still running amok in museums while Arnold rises, buck-naked elsewhere. Staccato gunfire echoes from someone’s headphones that are way too loud. The steady hum of the jet makes you wonder “Don’t they build sound dampers into this damn thing?”

The end of a vacation is a time of ‘epic suckage’ (to use a recent hip expression I picked up from an acquaintance). Security checks, removing shoes and belts, metal detector passes. Things you grinned and bore with a song your lips on the way out here suddenly become onerous.

Every moment is fraught. “This may be the last time I drink coffee here.” (though, at the back of your mind, you know you’re going to come back. Soon.) Wistfulness sets in even before the trip is over. You look at photos in the tiny screen of a camera, trying to hold on to something that is slipping away, fast.

*sigh*. It’s time to stop fretting. Life as you have known it for years now awaits on the other side of the Atlantic. You try to switch off this feeling of dread by tuning in to the bizarre pleasures of The Hangover.

This was written on the flight out from Zurich to JFK after a most enjoyable 10-day vacation. More posts on the vacation itself coming soon. This was unfortunately the most well thought out of the paper posts from my diary, so this goes up first. Last-In-First-Out, stack-style.

Tijuana, Baja California (Mexico)

Come to think of it, the process is Kafka-esque. You are working at the same job, in the same work designation doing the same kind of work. But at the magic three year mark, the US government decides you must be subjected to a scrutiny not just by someone in the immigration department, but also by someone necessarily outside the country, who then wants to go through all your information (again, since you already submitted it once and it was scrutinized and approved).

But all that was moot as I flew the length of the country to cross the border into Mexico. All so I could get a stamp on my passport to enter and leave the country as I please (till the next time this formality will be required, of course).

I’d heard a few horror stories about Tijuana, but it was as nondescript as any random small town in a developing nation. At least the parts I saw. Apart from two flashing police cavalcades at night, nothing in my time there indicated anything remotely dangerous about the place. But the restaurant I had lunch at had postcards for a number of “Gentlemen’s Club”s at the door. Let’s just say I am more used to seeing brochures for Leukemia “Team in Training” at such places.

There’s dust. Lots of it. Concrete and new construction commingles uncomfortably with rundown old buildings. There’s a statue of Lincoln in a roundabout, the largest one I’ve seen outside of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. The Banamex in that square is the only bank where you can pay your visa fee. Imbibing monopoly economics lessons brilliantly, they charge $150 for a $131 visa fee.

The area outside the US Consulate is a hubbub of activity. The concept of appointments and time is long forgotten as people just jostle to get in line. Someone with a noon appointment can show up by 9 AM and be done before people who have earlier appointments.

As expected, there’s a host of small businesses that have sprung up to cater to the hundreds who walk through the halls of this in-demand institution. A dozen small shops sell “visa photos”, and provide form-filling services et al. A shanty next to the US Consulate offers to hold bags for the princely sum of $3. This is a boon since the Consulate won’t allow phones or electronics inside. But sharks lurk. Someone in line with me (whose cellphone refused to understand ‘roaming’) paid $5 per minute for an emergency call to his lawyer in the US.

No passport on me - it’s in processing at the Consulate for next-day pickup. No car as I walked across the border (it’s less time-consuming and there are less checks). What’s a bored, forced tourist to do in the birthplace of the Caesar salad?

The local mall provided for some entertainment and insight into Mexican consumption. (So many jewelry shops!). The local theater ran latest Hollywood films in English and Espanol. For me and another kindred soul in a similar soup, it came down to watching films I’d already seen or Fuerza G! in Spanish. Luckily we found Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaoh running (again in Spanish) in an IMAX theater nearby.  Feeling particularly adventurous, 35 minutes of sarcophaguses, Ramses and British archaeologists it was. In Spanish.

The next day wasn’t very different. But it was time to pick up my passport and the hour of departure was near. Resignedly, more lines and a gruff border post were negotiated. Unlike that fateful journey across the seven seas seven years ago, this time there was not as much a sense of excitement as a sense of weary relief.

Travel Aside

When you cross the US-Mexico border some 40-odd miles south of San Diego, the world changes. As you make a leap from the first world to the third something vital is different and you know it immediately. This manifests itself differently in different places. In Tijuana, it struck me forcefully at the Starbucks (two blocks from the US Consulate). My idea of Starbucks has evolved to that of a place with chatty tourists, solo wi-fi warriors, stray copies of The Stranger and monotonous iPod white earbuds. However, this place was buzzing with well-dressed PYTs hobnobbing with like-looking others, male and female. The vibe was more Paris cafe than border huckster and proved that there’s more to this place than met the eye.