Krazy Kochi

(Photograph by Rajeev Prasad) There is no telling when a bandh or a hartal will be bestowed on the Kerala populace. The tourists in Kochi forced to take a detour from their planned itinerary try to comprehend this unusual but popular culture of the place. Where else can one witness the frequent spectacle of silent cities? Only in Kerala! Asianet Business desk reports that Kerala makes a loss of 650 crores on a single bandh day.

(Picture By Rajeev Prasad. Click on it to enlarge.) The Idukki dam rising to dangerous levels. A beautiful but potentially catastrophic scenery.

Book Review: The Reluctant Fundamentalist By Mohsin Hamid. The Reluctant Fundamentalist it is not about the hyphenated identity crisis where the emigrant longs for his roots- plenty books have dealt with that in plenty tired ways. Here the voice of the narrator - a tense monologue -reveals the dilemma of the Self as the Other sees him. Post 9/11, a Pakistani in America is viewed with suspicion and fear. The “fragile identity” of the narrator slowly merges with the image the Other has of the Self. The slow change of the protagonist from a self assured executive to the image of the “fundamentalist stereotype” manufactured by Americans is angst ridden and tense. Satre’s theory of Existentialism points to this effect: “The Other has not only revealed to me what I was; he has established me in a type of being which can support new qualifications. This being was not in me potentially before the appearance of the Other, for it could not have found any place in the For-itself….. ”

From Bakelite telephones to sleek BlackBerry the journey has been a flippant twenty years. World has changed much, back then when the telephones were in dial mode, you can call that the Mumage- we talked less, surreptitiously and guiltily. Along the years Indians rapidly learnt to shed their guilt of enjoying themselves and did so with abandon. “Teacher we don’t need no self control” became the consumerist creed. Remember the time when “Talking” was considered a national waste- almost a crime during the dark years of the Emergency.                                             Remember this picture: We two have two  The hegemonic dictates “Talk Less Work More” and “We Two Have Two” were pasted on the sides of buses, on the derriere of lorries, on signs all over the country. It had filled the Indian mind with a foreboding sense of hushed fear. And then a couple of decades later came the riot of excessiveness of the cell phone era with their luring “Talk More On Free Time” and

All in the game: Rooting for a losing India (photograph by Rajeev Prasad)

(Photograph by Rajeev Prasad) The Kochi weather cannot wash away the memory of the T20 win. Even as the rain gods threaten to play spoil sport, fans are high and hoping for another exciting game in Kochi. Kochi has always been favourable to the Indian team. Four of five games played here have gone to the Indian side.