Bangalore Rising

Indians and Maintenance don't seem to go hand in hand. We buy expensive homes, but cringe paying our maid decent money for its upkeep, or delay painting our homes when a lick is due, or not repair an equipment the 'right way, right time'. This same attitude is visible in our public infrastructure too - our utilities look run down right from the beginning - the bridges look old Day 2, new roads get laid but budgets are not allocated for their upkeep, and sidewalks are built with nary a thought for its use. The list goes on and on. We Indians just don't have the orientation, the process, the skills, or the training to keep things in good shape. And that is because, deep within us, we lack pride - in ourselves, in our neighbourhood, in our city, or in our country. Pride is not about chest-thumping and singing Vande Mataram or Jana Gana Mana twice in a year. Pride is doing those small things, irrespective of whether it is our duty, to keep our own homes, and own our locali...

The sole purpose of our visit to the US this time was a package drop-off at Vassar College, a small liberal arts school, spread across 1,000 acres of pristine beauty, and tucked in a quiet part of Poughkeepsie - a good six miles from main street, if there is one. And the package was none other than our strapping young lad who is finding his feet back in the US, but this time as a freshly minted adult. Founded in 1861 as a women's college, Vassar turned coed in 1969. Former Vassar grads Meryl Streep and Lisa Kudrow suggest a strong affinity amongst students to drama and arts, though its pre-med and pre-law programs are apparently extremely good. Touted as one of America's Top 10 liberal arts (and sciences) schools, Vassar has a reputation to guard. They screen carefully, and look for variety in their student community. LGBTQ is big there, and so is liberalism. And that brings me to a very interesting interaction. After dropping our son off in school for his freshman orientation...

I can never get the pronunciation right. Pough-keep-see. Pa-keep-see. Pu-keep-see. Peek-see. Peep-see. Anyway, the name is longer than the town itself. Now you know that is a lie. But P'see is indeed a small town of 70,000 people - Southern Avenue would have more people outdoors on a hot summer day that all of P'see I suppose. While I have not read the history of P'see much, I understand IBM put it firmly on the map several decades ago during their growth boom in the '50s and '60s, as they were searching for towns to set up offices not far from their HQ in Armonk, NY. IBM has since downsized their operations in Poughkeepsie but they still have a few buildings full of techies, and have a street named IBM. Small town America is very interesting and very predictable in its own way - the same strip malls with similar stores, the same shopping mall with large box stores. Target, Converse, Reebok, Body Works, Burlington Coat Factory, Foot Locker, DSW, Sweet Tomatoes, Fre...

New York city always fascinates me. It is, in my opinion, one of the world's three great cities, with London and Mumbai being the other two. All three have some open spaces in the middle of the city - Hyde Park and St Johns Park in London, Azad, Cross Maidans and Cooperage in Mumbai and of course the famous Central Park in New York. Of course, there are more things in common, and some things very very different from one another. Each time I visit NY, I walk away a bit more fascinated by the city and its people - the chaos of traffic and unruliness on the road, amidst the order of nice broad walkways, traffic lights that work, and pretty decent roads (their potholes thankfully are fewer and smaller). But NY is far safer than either London or Mumbai - certainly Mumbai. When I went to NY for the first time in the early nineties, apart from all the touristy things that I got to see, I found out about the infamous peep shows near Times Square. Of course, during the last part of Mayor M...