Davos for dummies

My ‘Dateline Mysore’ column this week is on Davos. You may ask, what the piece has to do with the dateline. Little, if anything. It’s my way of pushing Mysore, calling it ‘Dateline Mysore’. It is a tag-line to sort me out from other columnists on zine5.com. Literally, the dateline refers to my operating base. My earlier zine5 pieces used to appear under ‘Dateline Coonoor’. I used to stay in Nilgiris before shifting residence to Mysore. Occasionally, I do Mysore-centric pieces, perhaps, to justify the dateline.

My Take on Mysore’s Miseries

If Pigs Have a say, They’d sue the Mayor

Importance of being T S Satyan

No Ideas Please, We’re Mysoreans

MATF: Toothless Tiger on a Thorn in the Flesh

MyMysore Dot Com

Davos fascinated me because of its coverage on blogs. It was in a blog, of The New York Times, I read about the ‘India Everywhere’ PR campaign in Davos. As they put it, there were few places (in Davos) one could go to without seeing, hearing, drinking or tasting something Indian. Davos buses carried ads. proclaiming India as the world’s fastest-growing free-market democracy. The cost of such elaborate charm offensive is estimated at $5 million… For More click on Davos for Dummies

Kissa kursi ka (nahi) ?

Sampling from a single day (Jan.25) of politico quotes our media reported faithfully:

Janata Dal (S) is not after power… Mr H D Krishnaswamy, at Kollur Mookambika temple

I am sure that question (Mr Dharam Singh resigning) does not arise…Law and parliamentary affairs minister, Mr H K Patil, to the media in Bangalore.

You have spoilt my reputation ….Mr Deve Gowda to the media in front of his Bangalore residence

He (Deve Gowda) has asked me to tell you to leave. Avoid making him angry……JD(S) spokesman to media persons hanging out in front of Mr Gowda’s residence.

Karnataka regime change and I

I claim no insight into impending regime change in Karnataka. Which enables me to write for Zine5.com, a website focused on creative, rather than fact-filled writing. Besides, it was the TV visuals that had an appeal for me. I was inspired to write on Karnataka regime change after reading about reality TV in Thailand. The TV show - ‘Backstage Show: The PM’ – features Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra on a five-day tour of the poorest region in Thailand. The Thai tycoon-turned-politician is seen waving at the camera, talking at village meetings halls, plunging into throngs of villagers, always trailed by 40 cameras.
This post is pure plug for my piece on the Karnataka regime change, which I reckon is a poor-selling reality TV. In my long stint as newspaper reporter I’ve learnt this – you don’t ask politicians sensible questions on camera unless you want silly answers. There was this hotshot reporter on TV who caught up with HDK, Sat. morning, at Bangalore Oberoi, as he was about to bundle off his party loyalists in a luxury bus….Click here, if you care to read more.

It wasn’t Mr Gowda’s day

Haradanahalli Dodde Deve Gowda told The Hindu that Wednesday (Jan.18) was his political life’s ‘saddest day’. I quote him, advisedly, because Mr Gowda could change his mind tomorrow, and say, ‘No, it wasn’t my saddest'. For the benefit of those whose TV set stays always at B4U or some other movie channel, and those who skip Page One and read newspapers only for sports news, I would mention that on Wednesday there was revolt in the Deve Gowda household. One of his sons crossed the Lakshman Rekha drawn by Mr Gowda, and made a pact with his political Ravana to stake his claim to rule Gowda’s Ayodhya.
It was a day of high drama, featuring a deluxe coach ferrying MLAs through rush-hour Bangalore traffic, speeding cars fitted on top with revolving red lights, and a clutch of media mikes thrust at some ‘B’ league political players for kerb-side briefings, as they rushed from one closed-door meeting to another.
Meanwhile, at his Padmanabhanagar home the JD(S) supremo skipped dinner (raagi ball with soppu) and refused to pose for media photographs.

Hurray for a subway ?

No way. That’s what I said when they raised the matter in April last. They are at it again, kite-flying the idea, with a news item that the Mysore civic body’s standing committee on town planning and development has given approval to a pedestrian subway opposite the city bus stand. No blueprint has been prepared. Nor has the cost estimate been worked out. Maybe there is some other basis on which our standing committee gives project approval.
Anyway, a subway, to my mind, is one way we can start heading the ‘Bangalore-way’, in terms of smell, squalor, and the snarls of a big city. To be sure, this wouldn’t be the only subway Mysore would have, if our city corporation is allowed to have its way.
A city subway brings to mind trash and litter, patches of dirt and stain on the flooring and subway walls, and stench (if our sanitation and conservation staff go on strike as routinely as they do). Hawkers and beggers find a subway the most convenient place for business. Well-lit to start with, a subway tends, before long, to have the bulbs stolen and electrical fittings vandalized. Waterlogging wouldn’t be uncommon in a subway after sharp showers.
Our civic body, I gather, is justifiably concerned about traffic congestion. Subway is a solution, if we don’t count the maintenance problems a subway creates. But then, I reckon, our civic body has another standing committee to address problems arising out of creating a subway.

(Click here for the item: ‘A subway? No way’)

Is Mr Ibrahim the source of all ills?

Must say this right away. I don’t know Mr A B Ibrahim well enough to wish him ill. In fact, I haven’t had occasion to meet our city commissioner. But he seems to emerge a no-good guy, if we go by media reports. Says a newspaper, citing an association of concerned and informed citizens, that our city is badly in need of a ‘good’ commissioner and ‘sincere’ officer. And here I am, blissfully ‘uninformed’ about this dire need. What’s worse, I wasn’t aware that Mysoreans were fed up with Mr Ibrahim’s ‘misrule’ (Deccan Herald), and that he stood accused of ‘a series of mistakes, including mismanagement’ (The Hindu).
In a democracy we are all entitled to our opinions (read noises). And we have a hand-out driven media in which anything goes as reportage. I am into citizen journalism. And I have no views, only some naïve questions.
Is Mr Ibrahim the source of everything that has gone wrong in our city? Don’t we have anyone else in authority capable of mucking things up?
Is transfer of the municipal commissioner, if warranted, such a hassle that it calls for people-powered initiatives, such as those of the mayor, our councilors, not to speak of the association of concerned and informed citizens (no less, I guess) ?
Incidentally, does this association speak for the Mysore citizenry? Don’t you think they should really call it A(S)CICM ( ‘S’ for ‘some’ or ‘so-called’) ?
Should postings and transfer of bureaucrats be the concern of an association of citizens, however concerned and well informed they be? Weren’t such things the prerogative of the administration ?

Why I fancy Mr Prasad

I am a fan of Krishna Prasad. He has a flair for picking telling things to write about. And, he really got down to the root of it in his latest Deccan Herald edit-page column. Mr Prasad refers to a screening of ‘Beru’ in Shimoga. The award-winning Kannada film wasn’t evidently much of a hit. The Shimoga show reportedly attracted an audience of two. Yes, there were just two persons in the hall.
It’s the kind item that sets one thinking (now, do you sense why I fancy Mr Prasad?) The column prompted me to read up on ‘Beru’. Must clarify here, I am unfamiliar with the Kannada film scene; am even less familiar with the language. But then the Beru theme is provocative, and you wouldn’t need to know the language to get the drift of storyline. Maybe corruption is a theme about which pretty much everything had been said before, in the media and cinema, but not everyone has said it. What appeals to me about ‘Beru’ is that it’s a co-operative endeavour of Karnataka film artists and technicians. It was Mithra Chitra’s third film, after ‘Munnudi’ and ‘Athithi’.
P Seshadri-directed Beru’ portrays the degradation of values in the bureaucratic system, and the impact on common man, of a corrupt, insensitive and indifferent administration, says R G Vijayasarathy. For more on his Rediff.com review click here.

Girish: Giving up his childhood for dad’s greed?

Elsewhere on this site I wrote about eight-year old chess champ, Girish; had read about him in ‘The Hindu’ and, after a phone talk with his father, I shot out messages to 40 e-pals on our MyMysore network for exploring sponsorship possibilities. On meeting Girish’s father, Mr Kaushik, and from his subsequent conduct I am constrained to believe that helping such a guy might not be such a good idea, and it might even hurt the chess kid’s future.
My perception is shared by Ms K R Prathiba, a social activist, who lobbied Girish’s case for sponsorship at the Town Hall; took the boy and his father to the mayor on the very day she met Mr Kaushik. She was to set up a meeting for him with the DC the subsequent day. But then Mr Kaushik, presumably, found something else to do. He didn’t even bother to inform Prathiba, let alone thank her for the trouble she had taken.
Lack of such niceties apart, I found Mr Kaushik to be not very straight-forward in his talk. He told me that the recent New Delhi trip for the Asian chess championship ties had set him back by Rs.15,000 (of which Rs.7000 he claimed was entry fee). What Mr Kaushik neglected to mention was the Rs.50,000 cash award announced by the Central ministry for sports. The first we heard of it ( Prathiba and I ) was when the mayor quizzed Mr Kaushik, “Isn’t there a cash award that goes with the chess gold ?”
And then there is this aspect. In response to my network messages an e-pal put me wise on the danger in pushing child prodigies into public shows. This had happened again and again, he said, and added, “parents who want to exploit the rare talent of their kids are sometimes too greedy for fame and profit to think of giving the kids a chance to experience childhood”.
(See item: Girish brings chess gold to Mysore)

Civic activism

Wish I am proved wrong, but I sense that our civic authorities (read mayor/commissioner) have already made up their mind on the Devaraja Market issue. The kind of public pressure we tend to exert doesn’t seem to work. This may be because of a conspicuous lack of rapport between MGP/ACIC and MCC. Correction - it's mutual mistrust. Isn’t there something we are missing here? I thought both have the same mission statement - strive for the public good. Besides, I don’t get the point of another group. Is the Association of Concerned and Informed Citizens (is that right?) an alternate group or an alternative to MGP?
Problem is some of our self-styled caretakers of the interests of ‘informed’ and ‘concerned’ citizens do not seem to realize that they are not taken very seriously by an overwhelming majority of lesser residents. Maybe it’s our mindset. We tend to view with suspicion even the most civic-minded individuals who show up too often in newspaper photos and press statements.
I can see my friend Dr Shenoy taking me on. Do I suggest MGP stay silent when things go wrong? We have been through this, Dr Shenoy and I, in private conversations. His grouse is the good work MGP has done in exposing wrong-doings and the wrong-doers goes unappreciated. As for arm-chair critics, his prescription is, “why don’t they come forward, and take over?” A valid question, to which other arm-chair critics and bloggers might have a definitive answer.
It is not my case that MGP has no role to play. Nor would I say that those at its helms are less capable. In fact, they have expertise in varied fields. To my mind there appears to be an attitude problem – an attitude of confrontation towards MCC. Elsewhere in this site I have held forth on how MGP could do better.
As for arm-chair critics such as yours truly, there are many of us who are not cut out for a meaningful role in MGP. So of us are more inclined to do some public good in our own limited sphere. Individual efforts of a civic-minded few have made a big difference to life around them.
I read a web magazine piece about an NRI pair -”. Aravinda Pillalamarri and Ravi Kuchimanchi – who transplanted themselves from the US to Gujarat, to bring electricity to an Adivasi village . When the web editor Veena Rao asked what NRIs could do to help people back home, they suggested that urban educated individuals, especially NRIs, can help by taking a live interest in issues of public concern back home, and ‘write to our government officials and civic authorities, who tend to behave differently when they know they are being watched, especially by NRIs’. I see a message here for non-resident Mysoreans with a feel for Devaraja Market.
Incidentally, Aravinda and Ravi were the inspiration behind Ashutosh Gowariker’s “Swades”, a Shah Rukh Khan starrer..

Siddharth is out and kicking

In my opening blog piece – New Avatar – I referred to my son and his wife conceiving around the same time. His ‘baby’, a revamp of MyMysore.com, came out in September. Meera took longer to deliver Siddharth – nine months, to be precise. I don’t suppose genetic engineering has yet come up with a mechanism to shorten the process or devised an enabling technique to have a baby without pangs. Mid-way through the 24 hours that Meera spent in the labour room my son sent an e-mail saying she was going through severe discomfort and pain, but managing with great calm and confidence. And this was just a build-up to an excruciatingly painful finale that took several hours in coming.
The FIR (first information report) said the new arrival weighed 6 lb.13 oz., was 20 inches long, fair, with a headful of jet black hair. Time of birth: 7.03 a m (in San Francisco); 8.33 p m (IST).
I don’t know if other NRI parents ponder over this: Which time do we take into account to draw up the child’s horoscope? US, or the Mysore time? “Our time, of course, 7.03 a m,” said Meera, from her Oakland hospital bed. She made sense.
My thoughts, however, are philosophical, if utterly anachronistic. Astrology, presumably, predates America by thousands of years. Legend has it that someone in Ayodhya drew up Lord Rama’s horoscope, which was ages before they invented the concept of Time Zones. If there hasn’t been much change since, in the way we draw up horoscopes, wouldn’t ‘India time’ be more compatible than the relatively recent US Time Zone phenomenon? A swift Yahoo Search reveals that Time Zones were first instituted in US by railroads on Nov.18, 1883, though an amateur astronomer, William Lambert, had reportedly made a plea in 1809 to the Congress for establishment of time meridians.

What’s in a name(u), Bangaluru ?

Mr U R Ananthamurthy, who started it all, was heard telling NDTV that Kannada had this capability to embrace a foreign term by suffixing a ‘u’ – a table becomes ‘tableu’, a chair, ‘chairu’, and a bore, ‘boru’. Kannada is that simple. Tamil, a designated ‘classical’, tends to complicates things.
Had Madras been part of Karnataka we could have, simply, added a ‘u’ and called the place ‘Madrasu’. In its current Tamil ‘avatar’, Chennai has little in common with the good old Madras. I’m sure Mr URA had sound reasons – cultural and emotional – for coming up with an idea, so thought-provoking that it managed to move our government into action within days. Normally, any bright idea the government receives is put through the bureaucratic wringer, of a departmental committee, cabinet sub-committee, legislature debate, resolution and such rigmarole.
I, for one, find the name-change idea particularly appealing, as it plays on our innate instinct for keeping up with the Joneses. If TN and Kerala, not to mention W B and Maharashtra, have done it, why shouldn’t we?
But then in a democracy we have people who raise silly questions, such as, ‘what is the big deal?’. Bangalore, whichever way you pronounce it, would stay a city of IT-walahs, drought beer, bad roads, and traffic jam. What’s in a name? Bangalore, by any other name, would still have traffic jam.
We could say this about Mysore. When it becomes Mysooru, it won’t rhyme with eyesore.

Sheila Irani, an inspiration

Irani, F K is a name Mysoreans associate with Ideal Jawa. They don’t make the mo-bike anymore, but the brand name – Ideal Jawa - is still with us, in reference to the building housing Mysore’s Rotary headquarters and one of the city’s better run schools. The Irani name is also linked to a not-so-widely known, but equally well-run, institution – Chamundi Children’s Home. It’s a living testimony to Sheila Irani’s work of charity, says my friend T V Raghottam Rao, who is actively associated with the home. They take care of 25 boys and girls who are parentless or from broken homes. Inmates are schooled till Class-12, and in any vocational training of their interest. Many from the Chamundi alumni are known to have made it in the outside world. We don’t know if the trustees have case studies.
Statistically, it’s a drop-in-the-bucket effort. But Chamundi home represents an endeavour that has inspired individuals. Paddy Navin, a theatre person in Britain, is one such individual, says a report in ‘Star of Mysore’. A visit to Mysore in 2002 and meeting with Sheila Irani proved an inspiration for Paddy to do her bit for the underprivileged in this part of the world. Back in London, Paddy organized a concert that raised funds enough to educate four children till the college level. Two of Paddy’s chosen children – Pushpa,10, and Esther, 8, are now studying at the Good Shepherd’s School, Masinagudi, near Mudumalai, TN. If only everyone in our own entertainment world – actors and producers – were to emulate Paddy’s example, it would be a turn-around in the lives of thousands of our underprivileged children.

Mysore in a debt-trap

Thank you, Gen. Vombatkere, for putting us wise on how ADB loans work. It hasn’t occurred to the powers that be that they owe us an explanation of how a Rs.140-crore loan has morphed into a Rs. 295-crore liability. It took Maj. Gen. S G Vombatkere (retd.) a trip to Manila (where he attended a civil society consultations at ADB headquarters) to figure it out for us. As he explains, ADB charged a mere two-percent interest on its loan advanced to India government. The Centre passed on funds at eight percent to Karnataka. And the Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development and Finance Corporation (KUIDFC) gave it to the Mysore municipal corporation at 12 percent interest.
MCC can't get it from ADB, straight away. I can see that our municipal commissioner can’t just fill in a loan form and get a DD for the loan amount directly from ADB or IBRD. It is understandable that those doing it for us are entitled to service charges. But what I didn’t know, (did you?) is that development loans help, mainly, ‘development’ of the intermediaries; and, what is worse, have the effect of pushing the end-user (of loan) into a debt-trap.
Going into the nitty-gritty of how the money was spent by our civic body, with what results, would open quite another can of worms.
Meanwhile, how do we get out of this loan mess? My guess is that our municipal corporation would go in for a steep hike in levy, in line with the time-honoured bureaucratic ploy – ‘When in debt, pass the buck’. The buck stops with the law-abiding tax-payers here.
This is where our public administration/finance whiz-kids ought to think of something out-of-the-box. If it were a private firm, ‘liquidation’ would be the word.

Munnabhai’s message & Iqbal’s impact

I checked out with administrator of a lead hospital , specializing in heart, if he had watched ‘Munnabhai MBBS’, and whether he sensed a social message - ‘Healthcare with humour, and compassion’. His response was, ‘we all know most simple ailments can be complicated with a psychosomatic factor that has to be addressed’. He referred to head-ache, most bowel symptoms, and many other unexplained ones.
Evidently, the Munnabhai storyline has aspects that medical administrators wouldn’t find amusing. But then the movie wasn’t made for their amusement. This Bollywood masala mix obscures its message in clownplay. Our kind of films are not made with social change in mind. In fact, as actor-director Naseeruddin Shah put it at the Goa film festival, ‘I’d write it off (cinema) as a medium of social change’.
Mr Shah appears to have been proved wrong, for once. Iqbal, a film in which he plays a role, has indeed impacted the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) into making a radical addition to its school curriculum. NCERT, taking a cue from Nagesh Kukunoor-directed ‘Iqbal’, plans to teach sign language to std. III students in all NCERT-run schools in the country.
Iqbal is a deaf-mute boy who dreams of playing for India cricket team, as a pace bowler. He has the backing of Khadija, his ten-year-old sister. Kadija learns sign language to interact with Iqbal, and to interpret his hopes and aspirations to the world at large. Learning from Khadija’s example, NCERT has decided to include teaching sign language in its school curriculum. If normal children could learn to communicate with the hearing impaired, the needs of the disabled could be better understood, and the disabled could be fully integrated into the mainstream school environment.
Kamala Balachandran, in her Deccan Herald article, summed it up by saying the NCERT idea is simple, and yet so potent that it could revolutionize the way the next generation of children would look at a disabled person.

Scaling walls for sport

When someone mentions scaling walls, many of us tend to think of our college days. A wall is something to be jumped over when you reach the hostel after hours. Some walls come with a convenient hole our thoughtful predecessors on the campus had left behind. It was one such hole in the compound wall of Kirorimal College (Delhi University) that served as a short-cut to the Kamla Nagar coffee-house, frequented by those of us in neighbouring colleges – Ramjas, DSE or the Hindu.
My friend and Bangalore-based Statesman correspondent Tyagraj Sharma would know what I am talking about. But the wall he has in mind nowadays is the one his college going daughter, Kavya Sharma, scales for sport. The 16-year-old has no use for hostel walls (Is she a hosteller, Tyagraj ?); she goes for the one that is 60-ft tall. Kavya is poised to tackle the wall in Hong Kong this December at the Asian Youth Sport Climbing championship.

Kukkarahalli mo(u)rning walkers

The walkway is okay. It is the lake that lets out a stench that makes morning walkers reach for their hanky to stick it on the nose. The sewage inflow and the spread of algae are the result of our inaction. The Mysore University that has jurisdiction for the lake’s upkeep pleads helplessness. The municipal corporation hasn’t been proactive in clearing encroachments on Dewan Poornaiah canal. The walkers, residents living close to the lake and other stake holders have petitioned, protested and called for greater accountability on the part of everyone other than their own.
We all know what needs doing – clear feeder channels to help fresh water inflow; block inflow of sewage. We even got funds for doing it – ADB loan. Yet the morning walkers may well have to take out, before long, a mourning walk; and Kukkarahalli may well become Algaehalli. This, as my friend E R Ramachandran said (in ‘The Mysore Mail’) can happen only in Mysore.

A glitzy ‘Id’meet

An Id Milan, lined up by Anjuman-e-Hadeeqatul Adab at Le Olive Garden, Sunday, was a glitzy affair. Scented ladies, suited gents, local admn. top brass, academics, and other high-end professionals comprised the guests list at a meeting marked by laudatory speeches and sumptuous buffet. If the idea was promotion of harmony among the ‘Hindu, Muslim Sikh, Isai’ elite, the organizers were, perhaps, preaching to the choir.
Mysore municipal commissioner, Mr A B Ibrahim, hit the nail right on its head when he expressed doubts if such elitist gatherings would have a trickle-down effect on the mindset of the masses. He would rather have Id Milan organized at the grass-roots level, promoting a mingling among communities at the middle-class and poorer localities. Mr Ibrahim spoke of the need for wider circulation of Koran, translated in the language of the locals, among all communities. For Koran was a lot more than a religious work; it was a book on life and how best it is led. Islam was a far more enlightened faith than people gave credit for. Gender equality and women’s right to property was there in Islam centuries earlier than western civilizations thought of them. Islam is egalitarian; it stipulates that the faithful should spare two percent and a half of their income for the welfare of the poor. And it had all been worked out way back in the 5th century. Wasn’t this a magnificent religion, as G B Shaw put it? Mr Ibrahim’s lament is that Islam today is the most misunderstood religion, all over the world. Listening to him gave me a fresh perspective on our municipal commissioner, who, like his faith, has been much misunderstood by the caretakers of ‘concerned’ and ‘informed’ citizens.

A Sikh at his ‘taavu’s Id milan’

Dr Javeed Nayeem, master of ceremonies at Id Milan, invited from the audience a representative of Mysore’s community of the Sikhs (13 families) to address the gathering. An elderly Sikh who took the floor held the audience attention with his earthy talk and anecdotal message of harmony. He thanked organizers for so honouring him on the occasion of, what he called, ‘my thaavu’s Id’. Thaavu is one’s father’s elder brother – ‘Gurudev is our (Sikhs) father; and the Prophet is our thaavu’.
His message was that sharing love and affection with others, in other communities, works wonders – ‘you should all try it sometime’. Speaking from experience, he was once caught up in an Id day traffic jam, while on his way to a conference on the JNU campus, New Delhi. The bus carrying him got stuck on road near an Idgah. Sensing the hopelessness of the situation the Sikh stepped down onto the street and hung around in front of Idgah, as the congregation streamed out after ID prayers. Finding a Sikh at the doorstep of Idgah a Muslim asked, ‘what brings you here, sardarji ?’
‘It is my thaavu’s Id’, said the Sikh, explaining to the Muslim stranger they were spiritual cousins. So pleased was this Muslim that he lifted the Sikh off his feet with ‘juppi’ (bear-hug of the passionate kind). He wouldn’t let him go without ‘kathirdari’ at his (Muslim) home. The host later sent his car to reach the Sikh to the JNU campus. On reaching the venue ‘I found the others traveling in my bus had not made it to the conference’.
Moral of the story: a ‘juppi’ with stranger can, sure, work magic.

Blah…to Mysore Blog

In an effort to evolve a Mysore-centric blog group that could synergies with www.mymysore.com I called/e-mailed friends and contacts. The response was enthusiastic from a few, notably journalist Mr Krishna Vattam, who said he could think of five or six pieces right away for posting. The snag, however, was his utter computer ignorance. But then he is willing to learn. Till which time, his blog pieces are held on hold in his head.
The last I heard was that Mr Vattam is undergoing e-learning crash course from his school-going grandson. After a lesson on how to work the mouse, cursor and the keyboard all that it takes for one to blog is an alert mind, an engaging interest in the life around you, and Internet connectivity. So I thought, till I had these reactions:
- What’s the point in blogging? And who cares for what I have to say?
- Wouldn’t want to step on someone’s toes, by saying something that triggers controversy.
- I can’t think of an issue to write about
- Too many things on my plate to find time for blogging.
- No one comments on what is blogged (this, from a blogger)
- Came to Mysore, seeking a quiet life, with my books and music. Don’t ask me to blog.

‘Star’-less Diwali

I can pick holes in its coverage, content, and copy-editing, but I can’t easily do without a daily dose of ‘Star of Mysore’. Aren’t we accustomed to Mysore water, however ‘contaminated’ as MGP claims ? SOM is a daily after-siesta ‘fix’ to which I have become a slave. When she found me pacing about our place like ‘kuttipotta poonai’ (Tamil expression for a form of irksome behavior), for some 20 minutes soon after my nap this afternoon, my wife put it down to ‘smids’ - Star of Mysore immune deficiency syndrome. The paper wasn’t delivered today. It is closed tomorrow as well, for Diwali.