The other day I went to one of my relative’s place for dinner and we sat down to watch an old DVD of a Simon and Garfunkel concert. Listening to their music made me wonder, when was the last time a modern day rock/pop band came up and had a cult following. And when I say modern day, I mean in the last 15 years or so. I scratched my head, thought over and over and couldn’t come up with  — forget many — even one band which created a mass hysteria amongst music lovers.

In fact, the only few names which I could come up were Green Day, Coldplay, and to stretch the list, I had to include Linkin Park in it as well. At this point, I must tell you that when it comes to music, I am very snobbish. In fact, music is the only form of entertainment, where snob value is the highest amongst people. You will rarely hear someone say “Oh, I can’t watch a SRK movie” or “All Yash Raj Movies are trash”. But when it comes to music, people have erected these mental barriers around themselves, which doesn’t allow them to go beyond the genres which they like. Like a friend of mine the other day said, “I just can’t listen to the likes of Rihanna”. Of course, it’s music, so personal tastes do vary from genre to genre among people.

In my case, I genuinely hate the Hip Hop genre and to a certain extent rap (Eminem is the only exception). Most of the artists sound the same, they have some of the most ridiculous names (what sort of a name is Three 6 Mafia for a band?!) and the words of their songs are inexplicable to say the least.

My wife is the exact opposite of me when it comes to music. Though she rarely allows me to use her iPod, when I do manage to lay my hands on it, I find all genres of music on it. From Bob Dylan to Black Eyed Peas. From Frank Sinatra to Freddie Mercury. From Pink Floyd to Pussycat Dolls. She knows what’s the “in-thing” and knows the songs of artists whose names even I can’t even pronounce. For instance, Soulja Boy, who is apparently a rap artist!. It’s something I really admire, she is always open to listening to new music and gives it an honest chance and then forms an opinion.

This other friend of mine, who like me is still stuck up on the music of 70’s and 80’s, says that its not because the new artists haven’t been that great. It’s just that when we were in college the likes of Pink Floyd, Metallica, Pearl Jam, Nirvana left an inedible mark on our minds. Even in college, there used to be these two groups. One who were always high on music and other “stuff” who preferred the likes of Cobain and Gilmour and the other who’s dose of music had the then contemporary music of Ricky Martin and Michael Learns to Rock.

But even then, Pink Floyd was never the “in-thing”. At least when I was growing up, the likes Backstreet Boys, Boyzone and the million other boy bands were a rage. Girls loved them, guys didn’t like them but listened to them as they weren’t all that bad, while some — as is the case with any genre — trashed them like anything. The point being even they had a fan following. These days, I guess it’s too much about one-song wonders band/artists. People like their songs but soon are forgotten.

So when last week Michael Jackson died, me and wife were having this conversation about how no artist/band in the last few years have managed to dominate the charts over a period of time. She said don’t crib as it’s your fault only. “Who’s asked you to listen to the same songs and artists over and over again?”. But I love them, was my immediate reposte. She agreed that there have been no new rock bands in the last decade or so to have a cult following. But added “Just because your snob value is so high, doesn’t mean good music hasn’t been created post the 80’s”. True, I guess, we can’t sob, sob…when we are so snob, snob!

That’s the question most are asking of new Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal. Getting rid of the 10th class board exams has gone down very well with the kids (my 12-year old says he loves ‘Kapil-uncle’ even though he’s never seen him, even on TV!), but it’s not necessarily a good thing. The 10th Board may have added to pressure, but it also gave kids a fairly good idea of just where their skills lay (or didn’t lie, more accurately)… with the Boards abolished, I bet schools will be pressured by parents to allow their children to study ‘science’ till the 12th, even though it’s obvious they don’t have the aptitude for it. And I don’t see how it helps if, as Kapil Sibal wants eventually, even the 12th Board is abolished and, instead, kids just give an entrance examination for university, much the same way those wanting to do an MBA sit for the CAT. One exam is being replaced by another, that’s all. And what happened to the vocational studies after the 10th which was the original reason for the 10 + 2 system … basically those who wanted to study beyond the 10th would do so, the rest would do vocational stuff … secretarial courses, windows, carpentry and so on. Since the vocational training never happened, why not just go back to the old 11 years in school?

There are a million other such questions being asked of Kapil Sibal and his enthusiasm to implement the Professor Yashpal report – if someone like Kaushik Basu should dissent from the other members of the committee, it has to be for a good reason (Disclosure: Kaushik was one of the best teachers we had in DSchool back in the mid-80s). Plus, it’s still not clear, even after having gone through all Sibal’s interviews and press conferences, how he plans to deal with the issue of getting better quality teachers, higher salaries for them, genuine autonomy for colleges/schools. Is he saying the government, and his ministry in particular, will not appoint the next chief of the IIM Ahmedabad, or that the next vice chancellor of Delhi University will be decided by the university itself?

Maybe Kapil Sibal doesn’t get it in quite the same manner that educationists like Kaushik Basu or people like Pratap Bhanu Mehta (he’s the head of the Centre for Policy Research and resigned from the National Knowledge Commission) who’ve spent a lifetime looking at such issues. But no one person agrees with everyone else (think Kaushik and Prof Yashpal), so why hold this against Kapil Sibal? The minister’s understood a few basic things, and he’s got them absolutely right.

One, since you can’t resolve everything, focus on just a few things. Two, most of the problems we’re seeing today are related to poor quality of supply. So, Sibal’s solution is to create more supply! Once you do away with the UGC granting clearances for universities and come up with some basic criterion which people who want to set up universities must meet, the supply response will be great – by way of example, most of the big software companies, like TCS or Wipro, run mini-universities anyway even today for their staffers, so if one of them wants to set up a full-fledged university, it shouldn’t be too difficult.

In an ideal world, Sibal should give Delhi University autonomy and concentrate on getting it back to shape. But that’s like attempting for the moon. Why not create another university, or a group of classy colleges, that will give Delhi University a run for its money? To understand this, let’s use the telecom example, since that’s an area I understand.

In the mid-1990s, BSNL was your only choice if you lived outside of Delhi and Mumbai. So, if you wanted top quality phones, you’d ask the same questions you’re asking about Delhi University. Will the government ever free up BSNL, allow it to hire top-class professionals at market-salaries and so on? The government didn’t do it then, and it won’t do it now, or if the UPA has its way (as you can see, I’m an NDA fan!), ever. But what happened? Bharti came up and took up that space! And now it is really irrelevant whether BSNL survives or not. Of course it’s a tragedy that BSNL is being suffocated the way it is, but we can either spend the rest of our lives trying to fix it and run up against all manner of obstacles or simply circumvent the problem – it’s a bit like a bypass surgery. By the way, that’s precisely what Dr Manmohan Singh tried to do in the early 1990s – to create more supply. Of course there will be problems, but just the presence/threat of new supply will also fix a lot of things.

Will the new accreditation system Sibal has in mind for universities help? Basically, much like in the US, you’ll be able to choose your universities on the basis of scores some independent evaluating agencies give. You have to be naïve to think it’ll work flawlessly – arre, the financial mess we’re in is largely the result of ‘independent’ credit rating agencies colluding with financial institutions. But it’s not as if the current evaluation system is flawless and doesn’t throw up charlatans. So, we’ll have to come up with ways to ensure the raters don’t get captured by those they’re rating.

Short point is that there is no final solution to anything, at least if you’re not like Hitler, or Sanjay Gandhi. So, give Sibal’s plan a chance. He’ll get a lot of things wrong, and won’t be allowed to go ahead with a lot considering education is a concurrent subject, and he hasn’t thought through a lot of things… how do you square the demand for reservation with institutions of excellence, for instance? And, as we’ve learnt to our horror, if you don’t get the detail right, the whole plan goes for a toss… the best-laid plans of men and mice, and all that. But anyone whose plans centre around creating more schools/colleges has clearly grasped the main point.

Disclaimer: Yes, I agree that Sania Mirza has done wonders for Indian Women’s Tennis.
But the comparison ends there.

I have a rather bad habit. Before going to sleep, I watch news. Sometimes, it’s a business channel (yuck to many), but mostly normal tamasha on news channels.
Yesterday, there was real tamasha. Some channels went quite gaga over Saina Nehwal’s super series win and Sania Mirza’s first round win in Wimbledon.
And while I am quite fine with the hoopla around Mirza, I am quite surprised with the lack of bandwidth for Nehwal.
In the last few years, Nehwal has consistently done well. Yet, for one tournament she was hassled for a visa (she rightly said that a cricketer wouldn’t have faced any hassles).
In fact, in this T-20 nonsense, I wonder if anyone even knew that Nehwal was quietly winning match-after-match.
In comparison, Mirza has to win one single match to be in the headlines. While I believe that Mirza has done wonders for Indian Women’s Tennis, but it’s simply as an ambassador. As a player, she has a long way to go.
At the age of 18-19, she had promise. At 22-23, she is still someone with promise. In singles, she hasn’t been in the quarter-finals of any of the Grand Slams.
But I guess tennis has more glamour than badminton. Everyone remembers Anna Kournikova…some, perhaps, even more than Chris Evert or Bille Jean King.
And someone may even argue that tennis is a more inclusive sport. Badminton is, after all, mostly an Asian sport. And the top ten have a lot of Chinese players and sometimes, a few Danish players.
For an Indian to break into the league is mighty impressive. If Nehwal’s coach is to be believed, she will be ranked sixth in the world after the recent win – in tennis, only
Ramanathan Krishnan was seeded fourth in the 1961 Wimbledon…
Sadly, talent and performance seldom gets reflected in television or newspaper coverage. Glamour, it would seem, works wonders.

I often end up tearing my hair in frustration when I am reading something or find something to read online and I am ‘told’ to pay up to continue reading. While it makes perfect economic and business sense for the content provider, I am left wondering if the world is flat only for some people, and not all.

I may be stretching things too far when I try to extend the concept of the flat world to accessing the content on the world wide web. But, the affordability factor cannot be ignored. This must have been because many an article I wanted to read had to be paid in dollars or pounds when I earned in the humble rupees.

Five dollars may not be too much for an American or a Canadian, or many a European to read an article. But, for me, $5 is nearly Rs 250. It’s not a price I can afford to pay for a single article. It is what I may pay for a novel.
I had thought the future would be brighter for those who love to surf the Net for information and knowledge, when more and more content from magazines and newspapers were being made available for free.

But, costing pressures of the content providers i.e. magazines and journals is catching up it seems with free-riders like me. Despite all those cost-benefit analyses of free content online, I seemed to throw logic out of the window when surfing the world wide web looking for information or to read. This, when I am always trying to spread the ‘gyan’ on why we pay how much we pay for whay we use.

In social sense and commercial sense the world is indeed flat. A schoolmate, on his way to work in Toronto pings me to ask how I am doing while I am at work or am winding up my work for the day. Now I can ping him when he is on his way to work to enquire how a common friend was doing in Naples, while an ex-colleague pings me from Hong Kong to ask if my job is safe.

Wish the world would become flat in the sense of affordability too.

I found myself grappling with the age-old debate about university education versus work experience when a friend, who could not complete a political science degree with an Australian university (no relation to the recent race attacks there), met me over dinner. The issue was financial, with a hoped-for grant not coming through and his finances having stretched real thin. Since this was a post-graduate program and not PhD, he had no option but to discontinue. He is now looking for work, and I found myself ill-informed to advise him on where he should try.

His dilemma reminded me of what the former book editor of an American newspaper once said to me. He had been to university but harboured very poor views on it. Most of his real eduction had come from the work he did — and not just learning the details of the job. He found that just to keep up with the demands of his job, he became an auto-didact, educating himself all that he needed to succeed as an arts journalist. That, and not college, was the most glorious phase of his life, as the security of a job and the absence of  hierarchical pedagogy were a blooming push for freedom.

While university can and does give you the centre around which to draw your life, many people find that their work is at great odds to what they have learnt in school, and by the end of the first decade of passing out, they have forgotten most of what seemed terribly important back then. In my case, for instance, I can probably help you with the construction of a very basic electrical circuit, which is not bad, considering I have no need for such knowledge in my current job as editor/writer. Even my friends who continued with engineering jobs have moved to writing code, which was learnt on the job and not at engineering school. And no, we did not learn Java at school. It was handed down during those six furious months of training at TCS, IBM, Infosys etc.

To succeed on the job requires us to so completely remap our college-addled brain that we are hard-pressed to recognise our former selves one year into the job. The backslapping has given way to a quiet self-awareness. Financial concerns have replaced more mundane ones. And conflicts suddenly seem more grave than the past taught us.

So why go to university then? Well, networking, for one. Being a Stephanian is a badge for life and will open doors for you long after you have forgotten the college and what it taught you. That’s true also for the IITs, IIMs, AIIMS and others. Plus the financial benefits. You are suddenly in another terrain.

But there are thousands of smart young men and women, like my Australia-returned friend, who have not gone to one of these five-star institutes, yet are devoted to improving their lot by some self-learning on the job. The question is, does the system give them a chance to make a decent living?

When I first began life as a travel writer six years ago, things were a bit different. I don’t mean this in the sense that the actual travelling part was any different – no, the sense of excitement and, indeed, uncertainty, is still the same. What I’m referring to are the nitty-grittys and the logistics involved, chiefly to do with my budget and my means of transport. When I did trips out of Bombay, of course, I would normally jump straight into the nearest available car and point it towards my destination. Travelling in other parts of the country, however, usually meant getting to a major hub, such as Delhi or Madras or Calcutta, picking up a car there and then driving off. All of this still holds true, of course, but in the days of smaller budgets, getting to these hubs meant a fairly long journey by train.
Preparing for one of these journeys was an event in itself. The Indian Railways website wasn’t especially reliable, so trying to book a ticket on it was an effort fraught with the danger of credit card double-charging and so forth. Also, since trains almost always ran full, there was no guarantee of actually getting a ticket, even if I tried to book one well in advance; last minute tickets were laughably out of the question. Given these circumstances, I relied on the mysterious ‘Ashok bhai’, travel agent non-pareil, to work his magic. I never met the man (all contact was over the phone) but his reach obviously extended deep into the bowels of the railway mechanism – only he could conjure tickets out of thin air, albeit for an additional consideration.
Ticket finally in hand, I’d prepare myself for the journey ahead. A Bombay-Calcutta leg, for example, meant at least 30 hours in a train, so that meant fortifying myself with enough snacks, music and reading material to last the trip, not to mention basic bedding (I can’t deal with the stuff handed out by the railways) and toilet paper –  although one glance at the average loo in a train usually guaranteed instant constipation. Arriving at the station, there’d be a definite sense of anticipation – would the train be on time? Would my travelling companions be amiable or borderline-nutters? The only way to find out was to actually get on.
I normally specified an upper berth, so that I could climb up there and be undisturbed if I so wished, and also because I could put my bag right next to me instead of under the bottom seat (I’m paranoid like that). Thus would begin a journey full of sights, sounds, tastes and smells – kids waving cheerfully at the train, bullocks in passing fields, ascetics meditating by the riverside, fellow passengers singing and playing boisterous card games, the train’s horn piercing the air, spicy samosas and dal-vadas, wood-smoke from villages and, if I was unlucky enough to be thus situated, the powerful aromas from the toilets. Arriving at my destination, I’d be dead tired and covered with a fine layer of dirt, usually necessitating a very long shower and a day’s rest – but there was a sense of satisfaction at having survived in one piece.
These days, it’s all become much more flexible. I have a somewhat larger budget, cut-price airlines have grown in number and tickets can be had literally a few hours before my desired time of departure. Flying also means I can spend that much more time on the road, rather than on a train, which in turn gives me greater leeway when I come up with an itinerary. It must be said that I’ve also become lazier; if I can get somewhere in two hours rather than 24, I’ll go with two hours any day, all things being equal. Still, I can’t help feeling sometimes that flying is rather impersonal, sterile even. Sitting in a metal tube for a couple of hours doesn’t give you the sort of sensory experience that a train does, and I miss that experience every now and again.

Why do problems of Dalits get such little exposure in mainstream media? How should this be addressed? Do modern newsrooms need Dalit representation - maybe in the form of reservations - to make them voice Dalit concerns?

This was the issue debated in a day-long seminar on Dalits and the Media. There were no highfalutin names present here, just ordinary reporters who are known to have an interest in Dalit issues.

Ravish Kumar from NDTV was cogent, blunt and interesting. “I have a problem with the Dalit middle class. Why do they constantly want to be someone else?” he asked. “They change their names, never take anyone home, never talk about themselves…” But must a Dalit always feel a Dalit to be noticed? He answered his own question: he was invited to a Dalit home and when the teenaged girls showed him their room, the walls were decorated not with pictures of Babasaheb Ambedkar but Shahrukh Khan.

A Dalit government servant, who invited him to have dinner at the Marriott, told him that his other colleagues would not break bread with him even in a hotel. The government servant told Kumar, “To such Dalits I say: use humour. Ask these people, OK, you won’t come to my house, but at least come to a hotel. How much will you run from us? How long?”

Kumar said it was impossible to divorce Dalits from the violence that seemed to follow them. But occasionally there were good news stories that were a joy to do: He recalled the Dalit settlement in Ahmedabad where, the only thing dividing a Dalit seth and a rich upper caste Patel was caste. They were happy to do business with each other, they handled volumes worth crores of rupee every day but the Dalit was never allowed to visit Patel’s home. The Dalit seth lived in an opulent house in the Dalit quarter of Ahmedabad - which is wealthy from all accounts - but never went to his partner’s resident. “I told Patel I will give you untold riches. You live in the dalit locality, next to your partner for a year. He spat at the camera,” Kumar said.

So how will Dalits and svarna society come to be at peace with each other? There were many questions about the public perception of Dalits. “Hindu festivals like teej get so much publicity in the newspapers. But Babasaheb’s birthday doesn’t get a single line,” said one dalit from the audience. “Why?”

A suggestion was that possibly until the Dalits were physically accommodated in newsrooms, newspapers would continue to ignore issues they considered important. Ramkumar, a journalist working in Saharanpur, UP, explained how in that city, every newspaper had a Muslim reporter to translate and understand the implications of the fatwas that neighbouring Deoband issued. Like that, maybe to understand Dalit issues, it was important to have representation from the community.

But is that really right - that only a Dalit reporter is capable of understanding the pain of being a Dalit? Hard to say. Recasting a newsroom along caste lines could have a profound implication for newsgathering and bringing out newspapers.

But underlying this, there is another question: of the relationship between Dalits and power. There are many, who consider that despite being a Dalit leader, Mayawati is not really a Dalit because she has changed her mindset, is mimicking the oppressors. So is being a Dalit a mindset?

Why should we charge Sonia Gandhi with perpetrating a regency but excuse Mayawati from the charge of being undemocratic? There is a significant Dalit vanguard that is critical of the way Mayawati functions. Why is it so shy of coming out and saying so in the open?

Erring on the side of political correctness is the worst thing a reporter can do - because this means he wants to be seen as good but stops telling the truth which is what reporters are supposed to do. What do you think?

LESLIE D’MONTE

By now most people acknowledge that a majority of the patents filed by companies border on the ludicrous. Take, for instance, the latest from the stable of software giant Microsoft that is one of the largest patent holders in the world.

Microsoft has now filed a patent for an architecture which provides feedback to a user on fashion and other personal appearance decisions that the user may desire. The user can upload self images for viewing and rating (or voting) by viewers who choose to provide an opinion on a set of images that depict the user in different fashion and/or cosmetic looks. For example, the user (or contributor) takes photo snapshots that show the user presented with a number (e.g., two) of different fashion choices. The snapshots can then be processed for upload to a website or other accessible location for viewing by one or more viewers.

The viewers can cast a vote for one of the images by selecting the desired image (e.g., clicking on an image). In response, the viewer(s) and/or contributor will be presented with overall statistics for that set of images as to how other viewers voted, as well as a next set (e.g., pair) of photos depicting the user in different fashion and/or cosmetic choice. Alternatively, or in combination therewith, the viewer(s) will be presented a set of images of other users desiring to be voted on. This process can continue until terminated, based on the viewer not voting, the contributor no longer providing images for voting, scheduling information, and so on.

The viewer is enticed to continue with the voting process by streamlining the way in which contributor images are formatted and allowed to be uploaded and processed for presentation. Additionally, the viewer is enticed to continue participating by receiving statistics that indicate how the viewer compares to other viewer opinions. For example, the statistics can be obtained via users and/or groups of users of a social network that may have similar interests. The statistics and new set of images are quickly presented to the viewer to optimise viewer participation by reducing delay in providing the feedback to the viewer. Other enticements can be provided such as rewards, points, content, discounts, etc., that serve to maintain viewer participation.

The contributor can also select a specific set of viewers rather than allowing public access to the viewer feedback process. For example, if the contributor values one viewer opinion over another, the viewer with the valued opinion can be selected and notified for a voting opinion.

In a broader implementation, the contributor can upload images or other types of media (e.g., video files, audio files, etc.) related to non-fashion content for viewing and voting by other viewers. For example, the contributor can upload images of automobiles for viewing and voting by the viewers.

REASON: Microsoft argues that the advent of global networks such as the internet has made available enormous amounts of information not only in the form of static data but also for dynamic interaction with other systems and users. Users can now access information and other users to discuss and exchange views on virtually any topic and in realtime. Moreover, the fact that this exchange is interactive (reality-based) rather than a receive-only scenario provides immediate feedback. This is evidenced in an emerging trend in TV shows that provide technology for allowing viewers to vote on contestants in a variety of different competitions (e.g., singing, dancing, etc.).

Commercial enterprises, it adds, have realised the potential in reaching millions of potential customers to conduct anonymous surveys to obtain demographics and other desired information in order to determine the type of advertising to present on websites, and so on. A website may present information (e.g., audio data, video data, image date, text, etc.) or questions to which users can take a few minutes to rate or answer in anonymity.

A variation on this model is also applied to rating websites where users can rate other on physical appearance, pets, personality and other user traits and attributes. In voting sites, typically, it is a general purpose question posed to viewers, and once the viewers have answered the question they tend to leave the website to do something else. In other rating websites, when viewers have rated an image, the viewers are presented with a seemingly endless series of other images to be rated or voted on, the purpose of which is to generate a flow experience so the viewers will stay at the website to continue participating. This process can generate revenue for advertisers by presenting advertisements while the viewers are voting. Moreover, there is a fascination with anonymously critiquing the appearance of another person.

In SUM One thought that the software giant would be more busy warding off threats from Google. But then, Microsoft employees reportedly get a $2500 bonus for every patent. They don’t have to write it either, The patent lawyer does. All you do is describe the idea and give any relevant documentation and someone else converts it to a patent. Maybe that’s one of the reasons there are so many patents to be filed. Incidentally, the Patent Office now gets some 500 million applications a year, leading to litigation costs of over $10 billion a year to define who has what rights.

And if the goal of patent law is “to promote the progress of science and useful arts”, one wonders where this “hot or not” type of patent fits in.

Incidentally, Microsoft, this May, was also granted a patent for a way of limiting access to certain features of an operating system depending on whether a user has paid for those features. The patent, titled “Restricted software and hardware usage on a computer”, covers a means by which it can offer software that has features either enabled or not enabled depending on which edition a user has purchased. It’s a concept already in use at the company.

Microsoft has already said it will offer all versions of Windows 7 on a single disc, with a particular product key unlocking the features that come with that edition. Users will be able to upgrade to a higher-end version of Windows 7 just by purchasing a new product key.

Shezan, which had been my saviour for the last five years (especially when it rained cats and dogs), is now under threat of ditching me. The restaurant, which has stood there for well over a decade, is now in danger of passing into history.

Being not more than just a hop, skip and a jump away, Shezan was a blessing for many of us in desperate times. But, it is the fickle-minded and illogical real estate market that is strangulating it now. Notwithstanding the economic slowdown, the landlord wants the restaurant operator to pay double the rent he is paying now. “Pay up… or vacate” is the ultimatum for him. (The restauranter was a contemporary of mine in college).

Every other day, there are news reports that speaks of rents crashing or correcting. But, the landlord thinks otherwise. He is sure of getting a much better or much bigger tenant. He seems to be preparing for the take-off, of the economy. He wants to keep the space vacant and grab the best deal that will come along.

This is not a one-off case. All landlords seem to be taking this view unless, of course, the tenant is in a position to “arm-twist” the landlord into accepting your arguments.

My friend is in a fix. But, he is not ready to vacate. The landlord is trying to figure out more ways than one to squeeze him out of the building. He has banned parking for the customers of the restaurant.

In fact it has been a double whammy.Takeaways and home deliveries or office deliveries were a major source of income. But, while the number of orders have not fallen much, the average revenue per order has plunged … that is over 50%.

He has had to raise the prices of his dishes. Thanks to the increase in the input costs… not to mention the energy costs. With fewer people visiting the restaurant to spend some ‘quality time’, he is not exactly laughing his way to bank.

But, the real estate fundas, if there exist any, it seems, may drown him sooner or later.

The landlord only needs to look to the left and right of the building to see what is happening. The building to the right of his has two tenants while he had four just a couple of months ago. The much building to the other side was vacated months ago and remains vacant with no signs of a tenant coming.

Meanwhile, I am keeping my fingers crossed about the fate of Shezan. I am too lazy to walk half a km to grab a bite, and that is point.

A word must be said on just how frustrating travel by air can be these days. Of what use are low-cost airlines, if they make you wish you had taken the Rajdhani instead? Recently, on a short trip to Bombay, my GoAir flight was delayed for more than four hours. I wasn’t, of course, surprised that the airline did not bother to inform us of this prior to our arrival at their airport counter, but I found that a number of passengers had been waiting since early in the day - because their morning GoAir flight had been cancelled and they had been put instead on the evening one. Meagre refreshments were served around 7:30 pm, and a short while later, the flight was announced to be further delayed to sometime after 11 pm that evening (I use the word ‘sometime’ particularly because this airline only seems to believe in using vague terms).

At this announcement, my co-passengers and I marched up to the GoAir duty manager and inquired how, if we were going to land only after 1:30 am, were we expected to travel within Bombay at the unearthly hour? Granted, Bombay is considered a safe city at any hour, even for women, but that was besides the point. We didn’t know our way around the city. Would we be provided transport? And would dinner be arranged for all the passengers? NO, was the big fat reply from the staff, and we were offered completely unhelpful alternatives like a morning flight the next day or a full refund for the ticket. “Ma’am, on a personal level, I agree this treatment is unfair, but on a professional level, I cannot do anything about it,” was the reply from the GoAir duty manager.

A few minutes into this discussion, a few murmurings of protest from the other passengers later, the four of us who were travelling together decided to take this up with the airport authority because clearly, the GoAir staff were washing their hands off the matter.

The idea behind making this fuss obviously went beyond the question of dinner or the cost of one. It was quite evident that neither was the airline concerned that they were at fault, nor were they willing to take any measures to make up for it. Their nonchalance was incredulous. DIAL regulations clearly state that any flight delayed at a mealtime must provide all passengers with a full meal.

The airport authority on duty was, thankfully, extremely helpful and sought the GoAir airport manager for an explanation. When, by way of mention, the airline were told that we - the ones who had spoken up and complained - were journalists - they grudgingly relented just a slight bit - and offered us dinner - ”but only for the four of you.” While 150 other passengers, including a number of children tired of waiting, sat out endlessly without a proper meal or an inkling of when they would actually reach their destination - we were shocked that the airline had the gall to suggest something so outrageous. “Dinner for everyone” was bluntly refused, it’s “just not possible, sorry”. We scoffed at their offer, and told them there was no question of being selective in an issue like this.

Meanwhile, the other journalists travelling with me immediately got on the phone and made a few quick calls which resulted in something good - we were promised by the GoAir Corp Comm head, that dinner would indeed, be arranged for everyone, and transport for the women. But despite an SMS intimation from this lady, we had to check with the staff every few minutes to see what exactly was keeping them from following an order.

We walked around stopping passengers and informing them of the service they could now avail of, because many of them were walking away towards security check without knowing of this change. An almost coerced announcement was sheepishly made a little while later. No wonder their flights nearly never get off the ground. By the time we were airbound, it was midnight. Incidentally, this isn’t an isolated case, for in the past few days I have happened to hear of several complaints against the same airline.

Hey, Mr Wadia, IPL is long over, what’s your excuse now? Perhaps learning from competition would help - Indigo, for one, has never failed to impress in the low-cost sector. In manner of further conciliation, GoAir later sent me a voucher for a discount on a ticket, which I declined with few choice words. I wonder how clever they think it is to be selectively conciliatory.