Mumbai Winter—Chilly Monday!

Mumbai shivered on Monday yesterday and its genuine winter after 2008 is continuing. The mercury had reached 11 degree Celsius yesterday—at least 4-5 degrees below normal—and the met office forecasts further decline in temperatures. In the coldest city of Maharashtra, Nashik, the mercury went down below five degrees. With the sun coming out strong cold breeze at daytime gets neutralized and you feel comfortable with your normal attire. But if you go out late in the night you feel the biting cold and you wake up to chilly mornings. For a change Mumbai nights are being decorated with bonfires with the most vulnerable people like watchmen, guards and night-duty staff enjoying the warmth.

 Mumbai gets such an occasional winter thanks to severe cold wave conditions in North India. From mid-December, 2011 till now acute cold wave conditions have been gripping and sweeping across the region. For the past five days it has been snowing in Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh—the northernmost states. There is no respite expected al least for the next few days. 

Most Mumbaikars (inhabitants of Mumbai) are not used to winters and woollens. So they are in a sort of a dilemma the moment a rare winter hits them. They feel the pinch while going out in the mornings or returning at night, but as the day progresses things get back to near normal. So, if you decide to wear warm cloths you start sweating at noon and if you don’t then you shiver in the odd hours. You face the dilemma at home too. Going to bed with the thick blanket is fraught with grave dangers though you crave for its warmth, because very soon you feel like throwing it off. Wise people keep the ceiling fans on and balance it out cozily under the blanket. In this uncertain process of adjusting to winter many catch a sore throat or a fever or an infection keeping the doctors busy.

But some others are excitedly digging out their sweaters, jackets, overcoats, mufflers and so on from their closets and are having a great time. There is no reason why you should not enjoy. You get it only once in a while. It’s set to dip below 10! You are set to have the most biting winter in decades! Enjoy! 

Husband And Wife—The Law of Equality!

At the start of the New Year a good friend of mine sent me a joke on the husband-wife syndrome. While talking about a certain ‘Law of Equality’ it says,” The time taken by a wife  when she says to her waiting husband ‘I’ll get ready in five minutes’ is exactly equal to the time taken by a husband when he tells his wife from office ‘I’ll call you back in five minutes!’”

This reminds me of an old joke about couples where the law of equality seems to be maintained in some measure. “A couple quarreled bitterly and they were not on talking terms. It was night and the logjam continued. Now, the hubby had to go for an urgent appointment early in the morning and he did not believe in the alarm clock because he used to shut it up on the very first ring. He needed his wife’s help, but how? So he left a note by her pillow-side that said ‘Please wake me up at 7am’. He overslept and finally waking up found the clock striking 8. He jumped up and as he began cursing the institution of marriage he saw the note by his pillow-side. His wife’s note said ‘It’s 7! Please wake up!’

In another very crucial segment of marital existence namely ‘the division of labor’, this particular law gets a little weaker. Normally the wife is very concerned about the burden of work she is being subjected to and the burden her husband takes on or pretends to take on. If she fully manages the kitchen the husband has to take care of setting the dinner table, filling the water jars and doing the beds. But the law ultimately gets very biased and partisan. Hubby returns home after a hard day’s work looking for a warm cup of tea from his darling wife, but he faces the music instantly. His ‘over-burdened’ partner exclaims, ‘What do you do in office? Just relax in air-conditioned comfort and gossip with your friends and pretty secretaries the whole goddamned day! You make the tea for you and me too now! Else you are not going to get your supper!’ 

Corruption Remix!

Article first published as Your Liability, Our Asset! on Technorati.

Recently the main opposition party of India, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), inducted into its party fold an expelled minister of the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh—the largest northern state of India. The former minister, Babu Singh Kushwaha, was expelled by the Chief Minister of the state Mayawati due to his involvement in the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) scam.

Under the NRHM scheme the Government of India had released around 100,000 million Indian rupees to the state to be utilized for rural health expenditures. Following murders of two Chief Medical Officers and one death under suspicious circumstances the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) took up the case about two months back. Mayawati suspected Kushwaha’s involvement in the murders too apart from the gross misuse of the funds.

The BJP’s inspiration for this act was obvious. It wanted to garner more votes since assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh were round the corner. The expelled minister belonged to a particular caste and in this feudalistic state caste-politics had been the accepted norm. If the ruling party dismissed him for corruption another party would still expect to get the votes for him from the community he belonged to.  

The problem was that the BJP had been capitalizing on the anti-corruption movement all the while and had been making maximum gains by giving support to Team Anna. So now the party found itself under tremendous pressure from within the party and from all other political parties including the ruling coalition of India. To make matters worse the CBI as part of their investigations of the NRHM scam raided many places including the residence of Kushwaha just the day after his induction and an FIR was lodged against him. Rumors were doing the rounds about his impending arrest.

In an effort of damage control the BJP cried of conspiracy on the immaculate timing of the raids, but there were not many listeners. The party spokespersons hurriedly announced that the tainted inductee would not be given a ticket for fighting elections and that he would also not be used as a star campaigner.  The party still did not reverse its decision despite a palpable rift within the party. Instead, it preferred to send a huge delegation to the President of India requesting for a special session of Parliament to pass the deadlocked Lokpal Bill trying to emphasize its continued commitment to the fight against corruption. Even though it was still not clear who really sabotaged the passing of the Bill in the upper house on that night of December 29, 2011. The BJP embarrassment made Team Anna clueless about what to do in the forthcoming assembly elections. They finally announced that they would not any campaigning for the assembly elections.

For Indian politicians getting votes is such a tremendous urge that it makes them compromise on issues so often. They try to make amends the moment they feel the compromise is going to erode another vote bank.

Fight against corruption is finally subject to politics of vote.  Meanwhile CBI has made more arrests under the NRHM scam.